Vortex (6 page)

When the bodies stopped bouncing, Sten had decided—with the Eternal Emperor's ex post facto grudging approval—that the victors and new champions of the Wolf Worlds were the Bhor, the excessively nonhuman, obsessively barbaric, insistently alcoholic gorillas who were native to the cluster.

Cind grew up in a failed warrior culture—and studied war. Studied war until it became her love and her obsession. She joined the Bhor and became a warrior—sniping and ship-to-ship boardings among her specialties.

Part of her youthful obsession was the superstalwart that had destroyed her own Jannissar culture. A man of myth named Sten. Then she met him. And found he was not the bearded ancient she had envisioned, but a still-young, still-vibrant soldier.

In hero worship, she found her way to his bed. Sten, however, was in shock after a combat mission had led to the death of his entire team and had no interest in romance, especially from a seventeen-year-old naïf. Yet somehow he had managed, entirely accidentally, not to make Cind feel like a fool or himself like a complete idiot.

During the fight to destroy the privy council, they met again and again—but always professionally. Somehow, they became friends.

Then, when the Emperor returned and the privy council was destroyed, Cind traveled with Sten to her home worlds, the Lupus Cluster. Their perceptions of each other had changed during this time. Still… nothing happened between them.

And when Sten left to assume his new tasks as Imperial ambassador plenipotentiary, Cind soldiered on, but with less of an interest in hands-on slaughter than in studying the causes and results of war.

Now both soldiers sipped stregg, shuddered, and sipped again.

"I assume," Sten said, "that you've arrived as part of my Imperial circus and diplomatic mission to the Altaic Cluster."

"Is that where we're going? Alex said the AOR was classified."

"It is. You can draw the area briefing fiche from Mr. Kilgour."

Silence in the room. The old sexual tension between them warmed that silence.

"You look well," Sten said.

"Thank you. Since the last time I saw you, I decided I should become more familiar with civilian dress."

Sten admired—she had done her homework. Cind, just past twenty, trim in the conservative four-piece suit, hair close-cropped, makeup just enough to enhance without being seen, would have been taken by most as a CEO of a top multiworld corporation.

No one could have seen—and few besides Sten would have theorized—that the heel on her dress flat was the haft to a hideout knife, that her pouch contained a miniwillygun, and that her necklace could do double duty as a garrote.

Cind eyed him. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

Sten gurgled stregg through his nostrils, a distinctly unpleasant sensation.

Cind laughed at his reaction. "No, not that time. Before… at the banquet. I was in the receiving line."

"Uh…" Sten thought back. The woman—then girl—had worn… seemed to him she had just been wearing a uniform of some sort. But he felt he would be an utter ass if he so said.

"I wore walking out semidress," she said. "But that wasn't what I first chose."

It was now Cind's turn to look away, as she blushingly described the sleek sex-outfit she had paid nearly a campaign's bonus for, put on, and then ripped off and thrown away.

"I looked like a clottin' joygirl," she said. "And… and later, I figured out all I really knew how to look like—how to be—was a soldier. Which also meant a soldier's whore, I guess."

And there it was again, Sten thought. For some reason Cind was able to say astonishing things to him, things that other women had only said deep in intimacy and after long knowledge. And it was the same for himself as well, Sten realized.

He also realized that he wanted to change the subject. "May I be formal?" he asked.

"You may, Admiral."

"Not Admiral. This time around, I'm a civilian."

"Very good."

"Why so?"

Cind smiled once more. Oh, Sten thought. No chain-of-command drakh. No "It's not military kosher to want to hold hands with a lower (higher) ranking soldier."

"I am in a most uncomfortable position," Cind said, stretching into a more comfortable position and thus placing Sten in a slightly uncomfortable position. "I am a major now."

"Congratulations."

"Perhaps. Would you like to meet my ranking private?"

Sten waited. Cind rose, went to an adjoining door, and opened it. "Private? Post!"

There was a sudden clashing of leather, and a creature lumbered into the chamber. Just 150 centimeters tall, it must have weighed around 150 kilograms—twenty more than the last time Sten had seen the horror. The creature's knobbed hairy paws brushed against the ground, as did its enormous brush-tail beard, as the monster pushed its great trunk semierect and bellowed.

"By my mother's beard," came the shout. "Here are you two, ambassador and major, drinking all of the stregg, and leaving a poor, thirsty private, who loves you like a brother, to die of thirst, forlorn, abandoned in the outer darkness."

"What," Sten said, "in the name of my father's—your father's, hell, Cind's father's—frozen buttocks are
you
doing here, Otho?"

"I am but a simple soldier, following in the way of a warrior, as the great gods Sarla, Laraz, and—who the clot's that other worthless godling? oh yes—Kholeric have told me."

"He's been into the stregg," Sten said.

"He's been into the stregg," Cind agreed.

"Bring in the rest of the motley crew," Sten said. "Buzz down for Kilgour. Tell him to have the kitchen stand by for a buffet in-chamber. Tell him to order up more stregg, some of that horrible stuff the Emperor calls Scotch, and, oh yes, indeed, a case of—hell, whatever goes into a Black Velvet. And get his butt in here with a good thirst. Now, Otho. How many goddamned Bhor do I have?"

"Only a hundred and fifty."

"Oh, Lord," Sten said. "And we're still weeks from departure. Major Cind, have you arranged billets for your beings?"

"I have. There's an entire wing set aside on a new officers' quarters, just inside the Imperial grounds here. Set up for clean and black work."

"So the Bhor won't be able to get out and maim, pillage, and loot Prime?"

"With luck."

"Good. Now, Private Otho. Pour us all a drink, and explain. Quickly."

Sten needed an explanation, because when he had last been in Otho's brawling company the being had been a chieftain, the ruler—if a Bhor could be said to rule anything save by acclamation—of the entire Lupus Cluster.

Now here he was as a rear-rank warrior, as if he were a young Bhor whose beard was yet to sprout.

"I didn't know," Sten said, after the third stregg, but before Kilgour and the rest of the Bhor had descended on him and sobriety vanished into the night, "you beings had second childhoods."

"Don't be a scrote," Otho growled, refilling his horn. "First—the Lupus Worlds are at peace. Clotting well better be, if they don't want to get killed.

"Which is good—I guess. But it is a meatless plate, my friend. Back then, back when we were being exterminated by the Jann, I never dreamed how
boring
peace can be. So I ran away to join the circus."

He sighed—or Sten arbitrarily assigned the value of "sigh" to the alk- and stregg-laden gas blast that erupted from Otho's bowels to typhoon across the table. "And I am becoming civilized."

"Say clottin' what?" Alex said as he entered, and Otho's tale was interrupted by the obligatory roars, shouts, embraces, liquid kisses, and toasts that made a Bhor greeting synonymous with second-degree assault.

Then the Taittinger and Guinness arrived. Sten was forced to demonstrate Black Velvets to his guests. Otho said the stuff was weak mix for suckling babes. Alex preferred his Guinness straight from the pump and drunk in Eire. Cind touched her flute to Sten's. They drank, and their eyes held the moment.

Then Sten brought the conversation back to some kind of a track. "Otho, you said being here had something to do with your becoming civilized."

"By my father's icy arse, so it does. Using human standards, even. If I am civilized… and a great leader—which, considering my beard is yet uncut, I may be—then I am now spending my wilderness years. Which I understand must be spent among primitive beings.

"I found a fiche recently, the biography of what, evidently, you humans consider a great being. His name was Illchurch, or some such. Now, when he had done his first stint as a leader, where did he spend his wilderness years?"

Otho gestured with his glass, sloshing drink over the edge. "I'll tell you where. Among a primitive Earth tribe he called Americans. Since I could find no remnants of such a tribe, I decided to settle for what must be the second best primitives…" Otho raised his glass in toast. "To the human race."

CHAPTER FIVE

"I
would like," Sten said formally, "to request the pleasure of your company this evening."

"The pleasure is mine, sir. How many troopies do I bring for backup?"

"One more time. May I buy you dinner, m'lady?"

"Oh. Just a moment, I've got to check the 'dex… yes. I'd be delighted, Sten. How formal is this place?"

"Sidearms should be unobtrusive, but color-coordinated. At… 1930?"

"
Seven-thirty
it is," Cind said, and broke the connection.

"And dinnae we look pretty, lad. Are we wooin' or spookin' t'night?"

"A little of both."

"Ah." Alex brushed nonexistent lint from Sten's raw silk shirtjac. "Well, y're set up on th' far end. Sh'd Ah hae extraction set up, or will y' RON?"

"My God," Sten said. "I never realized the joys of being an orphan before. Mother Kilgour, I don't have any idea of whether I'm remaining overnight anywhere, whether I'm even going to get kissed, and what concern is it of yours, anyway?"

"Ah'm mere remindin' you y' hae a 1115 wi' th' Emp tomorrow, f'r final briefing."

"And I'll be there. Anything else?"

"Noo… yes. Y'r scarf's all crookedy." Kilgour straightened it. "An' as m' mum useta advise, dinna be doin' aught you cannae stand up in church an' tell th' deac aboot."

"She really said that?"

"Aye. An' now y' ken why th' Kilgours are nae a church-goin't clan."

Kilgour slid out. Sten made a fast final check—damn, but I seem to be spending a lot of time in front of mirrors lately—and he was ready. He tucked a hideout willygun into a chamois ankle holster, curled his fingers twice—the knife came out of its arm-sheath easily—and he was ready for a night on the town.

There was a tap on the door.

"It's open." He wondered what new, last-minute harassment Kilgour had come up with. But no one entered. Instead, again came the tap.

Sten frowned, crossed to the door, and opened it.

Three small, well-muscled young men stood there. They wore civilian clothes—but their suits all looked as if they had been issued by some central authority.

They were Gurkhas. They snapped to attention and saluted. Sten started to return the salute, then caught himself.

"Forgive me, honored soldiers. But I am no longer a soldier."

"You are still a soldier. You are Sten. You are still Subadar."

"I thank you once more," Sten said. "Would you come in? I have but a few moments."

Sten ushered them inside. The three stood in uncomfortable silence.

"Shall I send for tea?" Sten asked. "Or whiskey, if you are off duty? I must apologize for my bad Gurkhali. But my tongue is rusty."

"We will have nothing," one said. The other two looked at him and nodded. He was now their appointed spokesperson.

"I am Lalbahadur Thapa," he said. "This man is Chittahang Limbu. And this one here is Mahkhajiri Gurung. He thinks he is of a superior caste, but do not let his arrogance trouble you. He is still a good soldier. All of us carry the rank of Naik."

"Lalbahadur…Chittahang… you bear honorable names."

"They are—were our fathers. This Mahkhajiri's father runs the recruiting depot on Earth. At Pokhara."

Havildar-Major Lalbahadur Thapa had fallen saving the Emperor's life from assassins years before. Long ago, Subadar-Major Chittahang Limbu had replaced Sten as commander of the Gurkhas—at Sten's request. Chittahang had been the first Gurkha to command the unit, establishing a tradition.

Gurkhas, in addition to their other virtues, had very long memories, at least as regards their friends and enemies.

"How may I serve you?" Sten asked.

"A notice was posted in the Administration Office, saying that you desired volunteers for a special mission, and any member of the Imperial household was invited to apply."

"You?"

"There are twenty-four more of us."

"But…" Sten sat down. He felt as if somebody had sucker-punched him in the psychic diaphragm. He regained equilibrium. "Gurkhas serve only the Emperor."

"That was true."

"Was?"

"Only cows and mountains never change. We discussed this matter with our captain. He agreed that serving the Emperor by helping you with your mission, whatever it is, would be
sabash—
well done."

"This volunteering was done," Sten said carefully, "with Imperial permission?"

"How could it be otherwise? The notice ended with 'In the Name of the Emperor.' "

Gurkhas could be very naive on occasion. Sometimes it was theorized they were deliberately so, using blankness as a device so they could do exactly as they had previously decided.

Sten thought that if the Emperor did not know—and approve—of their request, all hell might break loose. After all, one of the most impressive Imperial boasts was that after the assassination the Gurkhas had refused service under the privy council, returned to Earth, and waited for the Imperial return.

Sten didn't let this potential ego problem show on his face or in his words. Instead, he beamed. "I am most honored, gentlemen. I shall speak to your commanding officer and to your
bahun
, and begin the proper ceremonies."

Fortunately the Gurkhas were not obsessed with long ceremonials, so Sten was able to usher the three men out in a few momerits without offending anyone's dignity. Then he allowed himself a few minutes of ponderment and one stregg.