"Since this is an all-out effort," Lord Fehrle said, "we that command the attack should seamlessly represent the force of our Empire."
Lady Atago managed the formal bow to the Will of the Tahn, the formal salute to her replacement, Lord Fehrle, and then she broke.
Somehow she was out of the battle chamber and in her own quarters before she exploded into rage and words that even a Tahn dockwalloper would have admired.
She calmed.
She took out her personal weapon.
Yes, her honor was besmirched. But not, she realized, by her own doing. Injustice had been done. That was the way. Such things had happened. She had risen above many wrongs. Just as her race had. Beyond those was victory. Very well, she would accept orders. She would command that deception fleet. She would do more, far more, than any timeserver would have accomplished. And she would stand by, ready to assist.
Because she knew that her plan would work—even with the idiot modifications of Lord Fehrle. But after Durer was obliterated, as the combined Tahn fleets struck toward Prime, Lord Fehrle would discover just how hard it was to truly lead rather than merely replace the battle leader and become a last-minute figurehead.
For the final victory, she knew Fehrle would need her help.
And she planned to make him, pay most dearly for that, after the defeat of the Empire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
One-third of a meter to go. Sten could almost feel the cold blackness of the Tahn night just beyond the skim of earth on the other side of the tunnel. It pulled at him relentlessly, like an immense moon at the high tide of freedom. All he had to do was scrape away a little more dirt and he would be out. His long years as a Tahn prisoner would be over—leaving only his own survival to worry about.
He turned back, choking on the acrid air thick with fat-lamp smoke. It bit into his eyes, making them tear. He wiped the tears away with a sleeve and surveyed his troops, the men, women, and beings he had handpicked for the escape.
"Motley" was a distinct compliment. Some, like Cristata and his three converts, were dressed in the rough pale green and brown of Tahn peasants. Ibn Bakr had put all his sewing talents into his uniform and that of his partner, a tiny woman whose name Sten vaguely recalled as Alis. Bakr was dressed in what appeared to be the gutter of a full admiral. Alis's uniform was just slightly less so.
Actually, they were posing as the stationmaster of a grav-train and his assistant. They had identification and papers showing that they were on an inspection tour of all the main hub stations of Heath. Sten had laughed when Ibn Bakr had first shown him the sketches of what he and Alis would wear. He was instantly sorry when he saw Ibn Bakr's hangdog expression—there was nothing so mournful as a giant with his chops dragging on the ground. And then Ibn Bakr had explained about the Tahn love of uniforms and how the lowliest office tended to have some of the most glittering clothes.
"You should see the head garbage collector," Ibn Bakr said.
Sten closed his eyes against the glare and decided that was something he would just as soon skip.
The other members of the escape team were dressed somewhere in between Cristata and Ibn Bakr, ranging from fanners to shopkeepers to grunts to medium-and low-level Tahn officers.
One other standout was St. Clair. She was dressed in boots and a camo cloth jumpsuit so form-fitting that Sten found himself waver between lust and dislike. She had a small matching bag slung over her shoulder. Tucked into it were a change of clothing and the superlightweight camping gear favored by wealthy Tahn sportsmen and women. What St. Clair was relying on was that twice a year a very rare and very tasty tuber appeared in the ground on Heath. The tubers were so prized that only the nobility and the very rich were permitted to gather them. So twice a year the sports world turned out to comb the forests and meadows of Heath for those tubers. The locations where they could be found were as jealously guarded as the trout streams the Eternal Emperor had restocked on Earth.
St. Clair was posing as one of those hunters. She was convinced she could go to ground with ease and wait for just the right opportunity to get off Heath. Sten was not too sure. Still, he had turned down St. Clair's bet—even though the odds she offered were fairly juicy.
Sten observed it all in semisilence, waiting for the lay reader and his followers to finish their prayers for "the Great One" to look with favor on their efforts. The only words Sten could make out were the "ahhhmens" sighed by the three each time Cristata paused. Finally he finished and waddled over to Sten, plucking at die dirt clogging his fur. Every centimeter of his squat form was purposeful and somber. Only the sensitive tendrils ringing his nose squirmed with what Sten was sure was excitement.
"The spirit of the Great One is with us," Cristata said. "He told us it was nearly time to go."
Sten buried any sarcastic remarks that came to mind. After many thousands of tons of digging and shoring, who was he to criticize another being's beliefs? Besides, maybe it was some kind of "Great One" who had given Sten a nutball like Cristata in the first place. Would he have ever found the cellars that honeycomb Koldyeze otherwise? As far as Sten was concerned, it the Great One wanted the credit, he could clottin' have it.
So, instead, Sten grinned a weak grin and said, "Fine. Uh... Next time you talk... uh, tell him, or it, or whatever, I said thanks."
Cristata took no offense at all. He understood that Sten meant none.
There was a rumbling sound from the far end, and everyone pressed up against either side of the tunnel as Alex came around a corner hauling an enormous load of supplies on three trained-together carts, the same carts that had been used to move rubble back from the tunnel's face. The heavy-worlder moved with ease, as if he were pulling a few tots in a wagon. When a wooden wheel stuck in a rut, he simply lifted the front end of the train up and shifted it to an easier path. He was hauling at least a ton and a half of gear.
"Thae be the last of it, Home, lad," he said, stepping away as a few of the others began unloading his cargo and stacking the supplies at one point of the hollowed-out eye that was the tunnel's face. He glanced around at the faces in the small crowd, nodding pleasantly—a man without a nervous bone in his body. Then he casually moved over to Sten and leaned close to whisper.
"Ah dinnae like this, lad," he said. "Thae all appear dead't' me. Noo, ae we could only teach a few Mantis tricks... Aye. Thae they'd hae a hope."
Sten shook his head. "This dress rehearsal went as smooth as anyone could want," he said. "And as for teaching them any tricks... All they'd do is learn enough to be confident amateurs. Clot! Might as well kill them all right there, save the Tahn the pleasure."
"Still, lad. Ah'd feel bonnier ae they kenned a few more wee tricks ae th' craft."
"Believe me, Alex," Sten said. "They're better off this way. It's sort of like a style of fighting I read about. A few thousand years ago, they used to pile troops into these big clumsy aircraft. They'd load 'em down with maybe fifty kilos of gear, strap this big silk bag around them, and kick 'em out the door when they were maybe two three klicks up."
Alex looked at Sten in shocked disbelief. "Th' puir wee lads. Musta had Campbells fr officers. Atrocity committin' Huns! Pushin't boys oot't' squash 'em ae thae be't bloody bugs."
"Weellll... That wasn't their intention. See, the silk bags were supposed to open, and the soldiers were supposed to float gently to the ground.
"Anyway, they used to train these airborne troopers for the jumps. Some of the toughest training of that era."