"You like my figuring? Maybe I shoulda been an analyst, huh? My thinkin' goes on—if the Tahn don't win some kinda flat-out battle real quick, the grinder's gonna go on. And there's more of you than there is of us.
"So maybe the war don't go like the lords and ladies want it. And maybe—sooprise—Heath's got a little different system of government. Like maybe we're payin' our taxes to Prime World.
"I'm thinkin'—in a case like that—Mr. Chetwynd might not get a little gold star by havin' set up some hero intelligence type to get his brain scanned and then burned. Might end up bein' some kind of war criminal.
"Wouldn't like that at all.
"Like I said, I back winners. So... least till things change, and I can get a better idea on what game we're playin', and with whose deck... I'm planning on doing just what I been doing about you. Nothing.
"That's all, prisoner."
Sten was about to make a decision he hated.
Even in escaping, there was strategy and there was tactics. Tactics—find possible escape route, build possible escape route, equip escapers—was very easy.
The strategy was the agony.
A POW's duties did not end with his or her capture. He or she was still a combatant. The war still had to be fought—even inside a POW camp. Everyone in Koldyeze not only had been hypno-conditioned during training but had accepted that with his continued resistance.
Part of that resistance was escape.
Escape did far more than get the poor sorry prisoner to home base and, hopefully, returned to war—it continued the war while it was being carried out. Each prisoner who was a pain in the butt to his captors took one or more potential enemy soldiers away from the lines and made them into guards. The bigger the pain in the butt, the more he or she decreased the available fighting strength. The fine line to walk, of course, was gauging at what point the enemy would decide that a bullet was more economically feasible.
Thus far, the prisoners of Koldyeze had done an excellent job of continuing the war and their own lives.
Cristata's tunnel might change all that.
That was Sten's decision, one that Colonel Virunga gave his opinion on and then qualified it.
Once the tunnel punched out beyond the walls, there were two choices for escape—mass or planned.
A mass attempt would mean that everyone who could fit down that hole would burst out onto Heath.
The end result?
Certainly all troops and auxiliaries on Heath would be yanked from their normal duties to hunt down the escapers. Other units, headed for battle, could well be diverted onto Heath. The end result would be that most, if not all, of the escapers would be rounded up.
And then murdered.
It was also very likely that the entire POW complement of Koldyeze would be slaughtered in reprisal.
That was Virunga's recommended option. Go for broke. We are all soldiers—and we all accept the risks.
Sten chose the second option, even though at best he was condemning people who had worked long hours on the tunnel to staying in captivity, denying them even the slightest possibility of making it to freedom.
The second option was to filter out a handful of completely prepared escapers, given every bit of kit the X organization could provide, from forged papers to money.
Sten did not reach his decision for any humanitarian reasons. Or, at least, so he told himself.
There had been almost no successful escapes by prisoners of the Tahn—at least very few that he had heard of. If Koldyeze broke out en masse—and the escapers were captured, given a show trial, and executed—that would effectively dampen any resistance, let alone further escape attempts from any of the other camps scattered through the Tahn worlds.
Better that one escaper make his or her home run all the way from the heart of the Tahn Empire—and the success be promoted.
Virunga grunted in displeasure. "I delegated... your decision. Now. Who goes?"
Painful strategy turned into more painful tactics. Sten would have to play God.
It was easier to start with the exclusions. Virunga, of course. He could not—and would not consider—abandon the beings in his charge.
Sten and Alex—Big X was banned.
Other beings who could not blend into the essentially human population of Heath. The crippled.
Who could make an attempt—and probably get killed in the process? Sten had only the original thousand prisoners, plus the various additions, to choose among.
Cristata and his three converts. It was their plan. Sten hoped to force the four into accepting some assistance and a plan more rational than flinging themselves on the mercy of country peasants.
Ibn Bakr and his partner.
Sten grimaced. St. Clair. He liked her about as much as she reciprocated. But if there was to be one solo attempt, he thought she probably had the best chance of anyone.
Hernandes. If anybody deserved to go out, it was he. Also, Sten figured that Hemandes's continuing sabotage operations were due to get blown, and Hernandes due for the high jump.
Completely unsure whether he had made the right decision, or even if he had made the correct choices, Sten left Virunga's room to begin the laying on of hands.
Naturally enough, nothing worked out as Sten had thought.
"My friend," Hernandes said slowly. "Thank you. But... I shall not be going out through the tunnel. I dislike enclosed spaces."
Sten, having more than a bit of a tendency toward claustrophobia, understood that. But Hernandes continued.
"Probably what you've said is correct. Probably I've run the game about as far as I can. But I don't know that. Do you understand?"
No. Sten did not.
"I'll try it another way. Assume that I manage to wiggle down that tunnel without making an exhibition of myself. Further assume that I am able to disappear into the unwashed of Heath and, using your—I am sure—most clever plan, return to the Empire. That is all very well and good.
"But what then would happen to me? I assume that I would be pridefully exhibited across the Empire as someone who managed to—capital letters please—Find Freedom.
"I would be far too valuable to ever get assigned to combat once more. Isn't that probably correct?"
"You assume a helluva lot in how far you'd get," Sten said. "But you're right."
"My granddaughter died. As I told you. And I am not convinced that a full repayment has been made.
"Now do you understand?"
Sten did. There had been more than a couple of times when Imperial orders and duty had fallen second to personal vengeance.
And so he made apologies to CWO Hernandes—and made mental allowances that when Hernandes was caught by the Tahn, none of Koldyeze's secrets would be exposed.
Similarly, Sten went zero for zero with Lay Reader Cristata.
He had come up with—he thought—a severely clever plan for the three humans and one nonhumanoid. Rather than vanish into a guaranteed-hostile countryside, they should, Sten proposed, stay inside the capital city of Heath. Cristata should present himself as an absolute convert to the cause of the Tahn. He should become a street preacher, loudly espousing how, in seeing the way his own world had been "liberated," he had come to know the true evil of the Empire.
It would take a long time, Sten knew, for people to question a true believer if that true believer was telling them that everything they did was correct.
"But that would be a lie," Cristata pointed out, and his acolytes nodded.
Sten practiced jaw clenching and unclenching as a substitute for answering.