Steel Gauntlet (38 page)

“You gave me a C, Professor, the only mark I ever got under an A during my studies, and you wrote on my paper in big red letters, The U.S. lost in Vietnam because they were fighting an ideal, the ideal of liberty. Decent people realized this and brought pressure on the American government to withdraw.

That’s vomit, pure vomit, you silly little twit! Wars are won by killing. The Americans folded because they couldn’t take the casualties. The communists won because they could. Pure and simple. ‘Ideal!’

Your ideals aren’t worth spit unless they’re backed up by guns. It was North Vietnamese tanks that ended the war, Professor, not idealists preaching freedom. That lesson was not lost on me.”

“The accepted analysis of that war is that the communists had the moral high ground—” St. Cyr stepped forward and smashed his pistol across the side of Professor Benjamin’s face. The professor gasped and fell back on his cot, blood seeping out from beneath the hand he clapped to his jaw. St. Cyr, breathing heavily, controlled himself with effort. “Camera!” he yelled. Somewhere within his hideout a technician made sure that what was to follow would be recorded.

“Sir!” Stauffer protested, “I must—”

“Shut up! Clouse, stand up against that wall and keep your goddamned hole buttoned up or I will kill you!” Stauffer stumbled back against the wall as ordered. He sensed what was coming but he never considered drawing his own side arm.

“Academics!” St. Cyr sneered. “Historians, philosophers, librarians, you are parasites.” He spit the words out. “You sit around, spinning your theories, and you think you really know something! You worthless carcass. You’ve spent your whole life studying what real men do, and now you propose to tell me why wars are lost? Are you watching this?” he screamed at Ambassador Wellington-Humphreys. He turned back to the professor, who looked up at him, unafraid.

“You lost because you are a stupid megalomaniac,” Professor Benjamin said evenly. “You lost because brave men were willing to pay the price to crush you like the ugly insect you are. And I had a hand in your defeat, so I must be good for something. And you are about to lose again because the Confederation will never negotiate with a madman like you.”

“We’ll edit those remarks out,” St. Cyr replied as if talking to himself. “Well, Professor, here’s your chance to be a hero.” He pressed the firing lever on his pistol, sending a bolt sizzling through Professor Benjamin’s left calf.

The professor at first just sat there, mouth gaping open, a look of profound horror on his face. The room immediately was filled with the sharp stench of vaporized flesh. The bolt passed through Benjamin’s leg and slagged the floor beneath his cot, which began to smolder from the intense heat beneath it.

Then Professor Benjamin screamed. St. Cyr fired another bolt, this time into his right leg. His scream intensified to a keening shriek. His mattress burst into flame as he writhed on it. “Are you enjoying this?” St. Cyr screamed at Wellington-Humphreys. She had closed her eyes and was shaking her head back and forth. St. Cyr stepped over to her and shook her violently. “Watch, you bitch, watch! This is what I will do to you if I don’t get my way!” He released her, and against her will she watched as St. Cyr stepped back to where Benjamin was, his body wrapped in flame on the burning bed, put the muzzle of his pistol close to the professor’s chest and depressed the firing lever a third time. The bolt burned its way entirely through his chest and Benjamin’s body went limp.

St. Cyr stepped to the door and threw it open. “Get in here!” he shouted to the guards. “Put that out!” He pointed to Benjamin’s smoldering corpse. He turned to Stauffer, who stood trembling and perspiring against the wall. “I have a special job for you, my boy,” St. Cyr whispered. He shouted to the guards:

“Drag this bitch along with us.” Then he turned back to Stauffer. “Come with me, Clouse. We are going to visit Ensign Vanden Hoyt, and you will see how I negotiate with my enemies.”
CHAPTER 30

Clouse Stauffer, his face an expressionless mask, stood rigidly at attention before Brigadier Sturgeon’s desk. “General St. Cyr commissioned me to bring you these,” he said, and gestured at two hermetically sealed containers now resting on the brigadier’s desk. “And here,” he handed over a microdisk, “are his terms, to be delivered to the President of the Confederation Council at once.” Stauffer had come to Sturgeon’s command post in New Kimberly under a flag of truce. To avoid being tracked, he would return to the hideout by a circuitous route through various checkpoints where he would be screened for hidden tracking devices and ambushes would be laid in case he was being followed.

“Admiral Wimbush speaks for the Confederation Council in this quadrant of Human Space,” Brigadier Sturgeon answered stiffly. He fingered the disk and then looked apprehensively at the containers. They were too small for bombs and too big for... what? A peace offering? “Where is the ambassador? Where are my people and Professor Benjamin?”

“Everything is on the disk, Brigadier,” Clouse said, avoiding a direct answer.

Brigadier Sturgeon pressed the latches on the containers and opened them.

A grim-faced Commander Van Winkle was waiting for Captain Conorado, First Sergeant Myer, and Gunnery Sergeant Bass of Company L at the battalion command post. The commander’s face was deeply lined with fatigue. “The Old Man wants us, and it’s something very bad,” was all he would tell Conorado. They engaged in desultory small talk as they walked together to the brigadier’s headquarters.

Captain Conorado was sure the meeting had to do with the hostages—everyone assumed the Ambassador and her party had been taken hostage and were still alive, although St. Cyr had not as yet announced that he was holding them, and every effort to find them had come to nothing so far.

An aide showed them into Brigadier Sturgeon’s office.

The brigadier stood behind his desk, his face drawn and pale. Stauffer, who had been sitting off to one side, sprang to attention when Commander Van Winkle came through the door and remained that way without moving a muscle or showing any emotion.

“Come over here,” Brigadier Sturgeon said, waiving military formality. “There is something you must see.” Captain Conorado felt a terrible cold knot forming in the pit of his stomach. The men gathered about his desk. The brigadier pressed a button on one of the containers and the lid popped open. Inside lay the severed head of Professor Jere Benjamin. He opened the other container. Ensign Vanden Hoyt’s head slowly rose out of the container on a pedestal, its glazed, lifeless eyes staring straight at the Marines.

A dead silence enveloped the men in the room. “The man standing over there is St. Cyr’s messenger, his chief of staff, Colonel Stauffer,” the brigadier said. Stauffer offered no acknowledgment, just stared straight ahead at a point on the opposite wall. “Colonel Stauffer has also delivered a recorded message I will pass on to Admiral Wimbush. It contains St. Cyr’s demands for the freedom of the Ambassador and the two enlisted Marines he continues to hold. I want you to see that message.” He pressed a button on a console and Ambassador Wellington-Humphreys’s image appeared on a flatvid screen off to one side of his desk.

The Ambassador’s eyes were swollen and red and her deeply lined face was puffy. “Madame President,” she began, as she had been told to by St. Cyr, although she knew Admiral Wimbush, as the Confederation’s primary representative in this quadrant of Human Space, would act in the President’s stead if there were to be negotiations with St. Cyr, “in exchange for my life and the lives of the two enlisted Marines who are also being held here with me, Major General Marston St. Cyr demands that he and a small contingent of supporters be given safe conduct to an as yet unspecified destination. They will be allowed to pass through the Fleet now blockading Diamunde and into hyperspace without being followed. Furthermore, no attempt will be made subsequently to locate him and no retribution for anything he has done is ever to be attempted.” She delivered this speech in a monotone, glancing occasionally to her left.

Marston St. Cyr’s face now appeared on the screen. He made a mock bow to the camera, smirked, then said, “You have heard my demands, Madame President. They are simple. They will be easy to meet. To the Confederation armed forces now in possession of Diamunde, who I am sure will watch this before it is transmitted to the Council, any attempt to locate me, any attempt to free the remaining hostages, will result in their immediate and terrible deaths. If you do not believe me, please watch the following.” He bowed again, and for the next three minutes the horrified Marines watched Professor Benjamin and Ensign Vanden Hoyt being tortured to death. The file ran out on Vanden Hoyt’s death scream.

For what seemed an eternity after the tape quit running, none of the Marines seemed able to breathe.

Then so quickly nobody could stop him, Bass leaped upon Stauffer, grabbed him by the throat and slammed him to the floor, smashing him into his chair on the way down, shattering it and sending a steel rod from one of its arms deeply into Stauffer’s own right biceps. Stauffer made no move to defend himself. His eyes bulged and he gasped for breath, and by the time the officers were able to pull Bass off the hapless messenger, Stauffer’s face had already begun to turn purple. He lay choking and gasping on the floor. The wound in his arm bled profusely. While Captain Conorado and Commander Van Winkle held Bass’s arms, Top Myer put himself between the platoon sergeant and his victim, but nobody made a move to assist Stauffer. Bass said not a word, just clenched his teeth and breathed heavily.

Stauffer gasped as he tried to get air into his lungs. He rolled onto his side, got his legs underneath him, and using his overturned chair as a prop, managed to stagger to his feet. He stood there, swaying and wheezing loudly. “I—I—under-understand how you feel, Sergeant,” he managed to say at last. “I wish you had killed me,” he whispered mournfully. Already his throat was beginning to turn red from the bruises Bass’s fingers had left there.

“I wish he had too, mister,” Top Myer raged. “Vanden Hoyt was Charlie Bass’s platoon commander, and a finer young officer we’ll never see in this life again, you miserable sack of shit!” An aide stuck his head in the door and looked inquiringly at the brigadier. “Put this man under guard and get him over to the FIST surgeon, Lieutenant—”

Stauffer shook his head and waved his hands. “Not yet, Brigadier,” he rasped. “I have something more for you to hear.”

“What?” Sturgeon snapped.

“I—I know—I know where they are.”

“What?”

“I can tell you how to get there.” The Marines stared at Stauffer unbelievingly. “I will tell you how to find your people,” he went on, speaking in a nearly steady voice. He nodded. “I will show you.”

“And what the fuck do you want in exchange?” Bass roared.

Stauffer shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing. I’ll tell you how to find St. Cyr, and then I will go back to him. That is all I want.”

Again the Marines stared at Stauffer. “Lieutenant,” Sturgeon said to his aide, “take this man to the surgeon. Keep him under tight guard. Don’t let anything happen to him. Colonel Stauffer,” he said, more gently now, “go with the lieutenant. You will be well cared for. We’ll talk later, when I have an answer for—your boss.”

After Stauffer was gone, Sturgeon turned to Bass. “Feeling better now, Charlie?”

“Sorry, sir. I—Vanden Hoyt was—” He shrugged. “Sir, if this bastard can lead us to St. Cyr, I want to go along with the rescue party.”

“No,” Commander Van Winkle said.

“Charlie—“Top Myer began.

Bass shook his head. “I want to go along,” he repeated. “I am responsible for them getting taken the night of the reception. If I hadn’t had my head up my ass I’d have been more alert. And Dean and MacIlargie are my men, sir. I want to go along. Please.”

Captain Conorado said nothing, but he nodded in agreement.

Brigadier Sturgeon was silent for a moment. “Charlie, you aren’t responsible for what happened that night. But I’ll think about letting you go. Meanwhile, let’s get over to General Aguinaldo’s headquarters.”

“Sir, I’ll take those,” Bass said. He carefully picked up the containers with their grisly contents.

General Aguinaldo did not bother to watch the tape all the way through. He did not bother either to inform the army commander what was going on. “This is Marine business,” he said. “We are responsible for the Ambassador, and Dean and MacIlargie are our men. If the army gets involved in this, they’ll only screw it up. Let’s go see the admiral.”

Admiral Wimbush could not sit through the whole tape. “This is monstrous, monstrous,” he whispered when it got to the part where St. Cyr began shooting plasma bolts into Vanden Hoyt’s legs. “Shut if off!” He sat for a moment, nervously running a hand through his thinning hair. He had been made physically ill by what was on the tape, and it was only with considerable effort that he was able to keep from vomiting.

Part of his reaction was the grisly nature of what he had just seen, but part of it was because now the buck was squarely on his shoulders. He could not bargain with St. Cyr after what St. Cyr had done to the peace negotiations, and certainly not after what he’d just seen on the tape. But if the rescue attempt went awry, he’d have the Ambassador’s blood on his hands. After Oppalia, Wimbush wanted no more failures. He had the authority to act, since it would take weeks to ask for and receive instructions from the Confederation that would relieve him of the responsibility. They had to act quickly too because as unstable as St. Cyr appeared to be, he might just kill the hostages at any time.

“All right,” he said at last. “We try to rescue them. Let me call for a council of war—”

“Sir,” General Aguinaldo interjected, “excuse me. I mean no disrespect. We don’t have time to discuss this, and if the army gets involved they’ll only fuck this up. It’ll be Oppalia all over again. I want to handle this operation.”

Admiral Wimbush twisted nervously in his chair. Oppalia had been a nightmare, and all Han’s doing.

The bastard had not delivered, and Wimbush knew it reflected badly on him, because he’d supported Han.