Sten (16 page)

trainee in derogatory tones?"

"Nossir!"

"Do you consider yourself happy, trainee?"

"Yessir!"

"Dismissed."

Sten saluted, whirled, and ran out. Lanzotta scratched his chin thoughtfully and looked at Halstead. "Him?"

"Not sure yet. But probably."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE ASSASSIN WAS methodical.

Mental notes: Sten; Thoresen; Time…time a question; Thoresen more so. Motive: personal. Possible—no, probable danger to me. Assignment questionable unless…

"There's a matter of payment," the assassin said finally.

"We've already settled that. You'll be well paid."

"I'm always well paid. It's a question of delivery. Uh…my back door?"

"You don't trust us?"

"No."

The Baron eased back in his chair, closed his eyes. There were no worries. He was just relaxing and taking in a bit more UV.

"It seems, at this point, your problems aren't a back door—a way out—as much as they are your knowledge."

"Knowledge?"

"Yes. If you choose to not accept the assignment…well, you're privy to a great deal, you must realize. Need I go further?"

The assassin casually reached over the desk and picked up an antique pen. "If you even look at one of the alarms," the killer whispered, "I'll bury this pen in your brain."

The Baron was still, then pushed a smile across his face. "Do you have your own way out?"

"Always," the assassin said. "Now, when I complete the task, I have a bank in—"

Thoresen waved languidly. "Done. Whatever the arrangements. Done."

"It's not enough money."

"Why not?"

"To begin. I must get inside the Imperial Guard. That may mean other deaths than your target."

"You're thinking of joining the Guard?"

"Possibly. There is also the matter of the man who recruited Sten, this Imperial intelligence operative."

"A minor agent."

"Are you sure?"

The Baron hesitated. "Yes."

"I still need more money."

"That is not a problem."

"The time?"

"Yes. This must be done immediately."

The assassin stood up to leave. "Then I can't do it. No one can.

If you'd still like to try, I'll give you a few names, but no one who would take the job is competent. Be warned of that."

The Baron looked at him thoughtfully. "How much time?"

"As much as I need."

Thoresen was running ahead of the assassin. He had the best here. So…yes. It was the only way. "Very well." The assassin started for the door. "A moment, please," Thoresen said. The assassin stopped.

"The matter of the pen. How would you have killed me?"

The assassin shook his head. "No."

"I collect martial trivia—I'm quite willing to pay…" The assassin named a price and Thoresen agreed. A few minutes later he was holding his elbow crooked in just the right position.

CHAPTER TWENTY

STEN FOUR-HANDED BEERMUGs and pushed away from the vendor. He clattered the mugs down on the table, drained one, and grabbed another before the other two trainees could get to it.

"Whaddaya think, Big Time Trainee Corporal Sten?"

Morghhan asked.

"Just like the clottin' world I came off. Anytime you get promoted, you end up payin'. Only difference is they take the credits now instead of later."

"Y'got a bad attitude, troop," Morghhan said as he sluiced down beer.

Sten poured more down his own throat and considered. Bad attitude? Not hardly. He was still pretty happy, in spite of the best efforts of Lanzotta and company. Maybe he was stuck in the Guard. But it was just for a few years. And nothing he did could extend that contract

Also Sten had, if not friends, at least people he could sit and talk with. Even though most of their tune was spent deciding what sewer pit Lanzotta crawled out of, he wasn't alone anymore.

The new jargon everybody used wasn't much different from Mig-talk.

He put Bet back behind the wall quickly and turned to Morghhan, the skinny recruit he'd been sure wasn't going to make it through the last weeks of physical conditioning on that three-gee world.

"Damn right I got a bad attitude. I didn't ask for no stripes.

They don't pay me better 'cause I gotta tell you clots when to wipe, do they?"

"If I was you," Bjhalstred said softly, "I'd be honored. Shows how much cadre thinks of you. Shows they think you'll make a real hero guardsman type."

Sten snorted at Bjhalstred. He couldn't figure the agri-world boy out. Nobody could be so dumb. Or could they? Not that it mattered. Sten shrugged and dumped the spare beer in Bjhalstred's lap.

He yelped and grabbed at his crotch. "Noncoms ain't permitted to discipline trainees. Ain't you listened to the regs?

You wanna go outside?"

Sten stood up. "You first."

"Naw. You g'wan an' start without me. I'll work on your beer while you're gone."

Morghhan interrupted. "Chop it. Here. Take Gregor's. Looks like he ain't gonna show."

They drained their mugs, and Sten sourly held out another handful of credits. "I'm buyin', somebody else is flyin'."

Bjhalstred headed for the machine.

"You got any idea why they gave you the stripes?" Morghhan asked.

Sten shook his head. "I sure ain't been leechin' Lanzotta.

Maybe they figure on trainee rank to wash out the weak ones, now they're finally gonna start teachin' us soldiering."

"That don't compute."

"Why not? We been nine weeks just doin' muscle-puffs, and we're down, what?"

"Seventy-three left. Out of a hundred."

"Way too high, Carruthers was tellin' me. They only graduate ten per company. Should've dumped forty percent by now, she said. Said they was gonna put everybody under the fine-line startin' right away."

"So what? Either way they're gonna get you if they want."

"Now there's a high-prob thought," Bjhalstred agreed, coming back with the next round. "Speakin' of high, here's ol' Lord Gregor himself."

Gregor slid into a spare seat.

"Looks like you're nursin' a case of the hips," Morghhan said.

"Who put it to you?"

"I was with Lanzotta."

"For almost an hour? An' the bloodstains don't hardly show."

Gregor smiled grimly. "I'm not the one with bloodstains. But Lanzotta's gonna be."

Sten waited.

"You went to him?"

"You have it locked. To tell him I'm sending off a letter to my father."

"I'll bet he was very interested," Bjhalstred said solemnly.

"Very important for a young trainee to keep his family posted."

"It was about this clotting trainee stripe thing."

Sten eyed Gregor over his beer. "You still think you got raw

'cause they didn't give you any acting rank?"

"Straight. Hell, I deserve at least as much of a chance as anybody. They say these jack stripes are to pick out potential leaders. Why not me?"

"Maybe they figure you're nothin' but a potential wipe,"

Morghhan said.

"Try me," Gregor glowered.

"Shaddup, the both of you," Sten put in before Morghhan had time to bristle. "We are sittin' here, quietly drinkin' beer, and celebratin' that we can now get out of barracks for two hours a night an' get swilled."

"Cadre gives us enough grief, we don't have to go out and synthesize our own," Bjhalstred agreed.

Morghhan added a massive belch and went for more beer.

"I ain't just blowin'," Gregor said. "You know my father's got influence. All I want is justice. Tell you what. I see all they gave you is a double stripe. Since you and I are the only ones in this company with any intelligence—"

"Appreciate the thought," Bjhalstred said. "Glad you two fleet admirals decided to split a beer with an ol' scrunchie like me."

"That's not what I mean," Gregor said irritably. "Sten and I are the only two who're aware how much your whole military career depends on what happens right here in training."

"Military career," Morghhan said as he came back to the table. "Whoo. Things getting serious around here."

"Let 'im finish," Sten said.

"So I told my father to go straight to the Imperial Court. Get an investigation. Why is the Guard wasting its finest potential because the instructors couldn't pour piss out of a spaceboot unless there was a printout on the heel?"

"Come on, Gregor. You mentioned my name. What's this got to do with me?"

"I'll use you as an example. You only got two stripes. You ought to have been trainee platoon leader. Or better. If I hadn't had training already, I got to admit you'd be almost as good a troop as me."

"Yuh."

"So I'm gonna mention you in my letter. Make a stronger case, and when my father takes care of things, it'll do you some good too."

Sten started to say something, then decided to spend a few seconds unhooking Morghhan's fingers from the spare mug and inhaling it Then he put the mug down.

"I don't think I want that," he said, just as quietly as he could manage. "I'll make my own way, thanks."

"But—"

"Gregor. That's what it is, like you say. End program."

Gregor stared at Sten, then nodded. "Whatever you want. But you're making a mistake."

"My mistake."

Gregor got to his feet. "Anyway. I got a letter to write." And he was gone.

"Trainee Corporal Sten?"

Sten looked back from the doorway at Bjhalstred, who had snapped to rigid attention.

"You have my permission to speak, Trainee Bunghole Bjhalstred."

"Request plus or minus reading on that last, over."

"Stand by. Computing. Prog 1—somebody's either gonna be trainee fleet general or Guard cesspool orderly with thirty years'

time in grade. I dunno. Prog 2—I'm gonna get imploded.

Halstead said training was really gonna start tomorrow mornin', an' that's more than I can face without a hangover."

Three mugs clanked solemnly.

"Awright," Carruthers said in what were almost human tones.

"What you're about to get is the most carefully engineered way of killing someone known to man. Imperial engineers designed it so not even maggotbrains like you could screw it up. Which is almost unbelievable.

"I need one idiot volunteer. You." She waved at Sten. "Post."

Sten slid out of the bleacher bench, double-timed to a position in front of the low stand, and waited at attention.

In the distance, behind Carruthers, ran the thousand-meter tree- and bush-studded emptiness of a firing range, lane-marked at its far end.

Carruthers opened the top of the lecture stand and took out a weapon. A smooth black triangle formed the stock/pistol grip, and a stubby inverted cone ended the seventy-centimeter-long barrel.

Carruthers handled the rifle reverently.

"You probably seen this, and handled it in the livees. This is the assault rifle Mark XI. We call it the willygun. Tell you something strange about this. This was invented more'n a thousand years ago, on Terra, by a designer named Robert Willy.

"It was a fine design," Carruthers said. "On'y problem was that lasers weren't that good and nobody knew for sure how to handle hunks of antimatter, which is what makes this piece so deadly."

She touched a stud, and a long tube slid out of the rifle's butt.

"This is the ammunition. Antimatter Two—AM —the same stuff 2

that powers spaceships. One tube contains fourteen hundred rounds. The bullet's a one-millimeter ball of AM , which is inside 2

an Imperium shield, which is the only thing that keeps the whole magazine from exploding when it touches conventional matter.

"We once calculated, as a matter of interest, that one of these tubes has enough energy to power a scoutship all the way around this system at full drive level.

"Ain't that interesting, Bjhalstred?"

Bjhalstred jumped awake.

"You wasn't sleeping on me, was you, Bjhalstred?"

"NO, CORPORAL."

"That's good. That's very good. But why don't you come on out here and get down in pushup position to make sure you don't
get
sleepy.

"Anyway. Fourteen hundred rounds. If the Empire ever sold these guns on the open market, which of course they never will, each little tiny AM ball would cost a guardsman three weeks'

2

salary. You see how good the Empire is to us?"

Carruthers waited.

"YES, CORPORAL," came the shout.

"Aren't you all glad you went and joined up?"

"YES, CORPORAL."

"You sounded a little weak on that one," Carruthers growled.

"Assault rifle Mark XI. You got two controls. One is for your safety/single-shot/automatic fire mode selection, the other is the trigger. You got one dial, here on the butt, which shows you the state of battery charge. Each battery will give the laser enough energy for about ten thousand rounds, depending on atmospheric pressure, if any, and conditions.

"The laser is what is used to fire the particles. This means the only sight you got is this crosshair. You don't have to worry about trajectory or bullet drop or any of that other dust that's important with a conventional weapon.