"Y'r stir-crazy a' me, lad," Alex had said. "Ah nae hae kenned th" hae wee symptoms. When Ah wae but kilt-hem high, m' mum gie me three warnings: Nae play a' cards wi' ae bonny lass—"At that he had shot St. Clair a grin full of Kilgour charm. "—nae eat ae a place called Campbell's, and nae go inta a room wi' brawny bars ae its door!"
Clot! Sten thought. Kilgour's mum was right! What was he thinking of? His body temperature dropped to zero at even the prospect of another long stretch of forced confinement. It was at that point, as he hesitated between going on and calling the whole thing off, that he heard footsteps. And then humming. It was a Tahn sentry. Freezing was no trouble at all.
Sten hugged the depression, turning his head just slightly to the side so that he could see—a cautious hunter's peep he had learned in Mantis basic. You never tested your quarry's instincts by looking directly at him.
Only to the sides of him, young Sten, he warned himself, and then only for a tick at a time. He saw that the sentry's path would bisect his hiding place only a half meter or so from his head. The sentry's steps were slow, ambling.
He or she was badly trained, lazy, or just plain vanilla stupid. As the sentry approached, the humming grew louder. Sten, recognizing it as a popular Tahn war-crossed lover's ballad always in demand from the lower-class crowds at St. Clair's club, chose a combination of all three.
Then he felt a heavy bootheel crush his fingers and resisted the temptation to snatch his outstretched hand away. The sentry paused, and agony smashed up Sten's arm as the Tahn turned slightly to the side—grinding Sten's fingers even further—and stopped.
There was the fumbling of a heavy greatcoat and then blinding pain as the sentry shifted most of the weight to the foot, jamming Sten's hand into the ground. Sudden relief flooded in as the Tahn stepped away, still fumbling with clothing, then more pain as the blood forced itself through crushed capillaries and veins.
Sten sensed that the sentry's back was turned to him. His head rose slightly, and he saw something large and pale peering at him. It was the sentry's naked behind.
From the splashing sounds on the ground, it was pretty obvious what she was doing. As she rose from the squatting position, adjusting her uniform, Sten curled his fingers, and his knife dropped from the surgical sheath in his arm. Its slim coldness in his palm comforted him.
Then he sensed startled motion. He had been discovered! Sten shot up like a great sea beast with a head full of glittering fangs rising above the surface of the water.
Numb fingers of one hand reached for her throat, and his knife hand drove at her abdomen. For one brief flash, Sten saw the sentry's face. She was young, no more than sixteen. And slender—no, skinny. So skinny that she looked like a poor, scrawny bird with flapping greatcoat wings. The eyes that widened just before death were filled with innocence and terror. A child, but a child who was about to die just the same.
It was prudence, not pity, that saved the girl's life. It was because there was no time to hide the body that Sten held back just before the knife plunged its needle length into her. Instead, he took a chance that his numbed fingers would work before she could scream.
He pinched the artery that cut off the flow of blood to her brain and then caught her in his arms as she collapsed. He lowered her carefully to the ground, fished in his pocket for a bester grenade, pulled the pin, covered, and blanked her memory.
There would be hell to pay when her sergeant found her on his next rounds. She would be cuddled up softly on the ground, sleeping the sleep of the blessed. The beating the sergeant would administer for sleeping on duty would be awful. But what were a few cracked ribs compared to a pile of pale guts glistening in the starlight?
Sten made sure the young sentry was comfortable, then slithered on up the hill, the ghost of her song humming softly in his head.
The chair groaned in protest as Virunga's 300-kilo-plus body rocked in mirth. Sten was catching him up on the war news. Although he tried not to paint a too-glowing picture of things, he could not help pumping up a morsel into a soufflй here and there for the hope-starved N'Ranya.
There was also a great deal of information about Sten's current activities on Heath that he was forced to censor on a need-to-know basis. And so, when he had the opportunity to embellish, he did, knowing that Virunga would do some censoring of his own when he filled in the others on Sten's visit. At the moment Sten was telling his old CO about St. Clair and L'n's adventures, exaggerating only a bit.
"... and so, there they were, General Lunga, his two aides, and at least a dozen joys of both sexes, and a couple in between, when they get the call.
"Priority One. Ears only. And all that rot. So the general shoos the whole shebang out. Punches in a supersecure line on his porta-com, and half a belch later he's on a direct to some muckitymuck aide to Atago herself.
"The aide double-checks. Is everything A-okay? No keen little ears hiding in a closet? The general looks around, then gives the guy an all-clear. The general gets his orders. He's to get his big-brass Tahn butt to the Fringe Worlds not yesterday but the day before yesterday. Big things are coming down.
"The general does a little lightweight protesting. Already heavy duties and that sort of thing. Meaning brass or no, he expects to get his previously reported butt shot off out there.
"There's a big long discussion. Pros and cons of ship and troop movements. A small shouting match. The general loses and storms out, his two boot shiners in tow.
"Of course, what he doesn't realize is that we've taken the whole thing down. Heard every word!"
"The... room... bugged," Virunga said flatly, knowledgeably.
"Not a chance," Sten said. "That room is permanently leased for the general's pleasures. His people run a sweep through before he comes and after he leaves."
"So how—"
"L'n," Sten said. "She heard the whole thing. The entire time the general was talking, she was curled up in the corner. Right in plain sight. You see, the general thinks she's just a pet. A largish, pinkish, cattish-type pet."
Virunga laughed again. But then the laughter cut off in midchortle. "Are... you positive all... this is good for... her? L'n is so..." His words trailed off not out of linguistic patterns but because of a lack of vocabulary for what L'n had to be witnessing daily.
"Innocent? Sheltered? Sensitive?" Sten filled it in for him. Virunga nodded.
"Not anymore," Sten said. "You wouldn't believe the change. She made the jump from Koldyeze to freedom and landed on all four of her pretty little feet. Even Michele—I mean, St. Clair—is surprised how she's blossomed. She sounds like a dockworker now. Or a pro thief. It's cheena, and sus, and a pretty good use of drakh and clot when she needs them."
Virunga marveled at that. He was soaking up everything Sten said as if he were personally living each word. After his own years as a prisoner of war, Sten understood that, just as he knew that in a few days the euphoria would die and be replaced by deep depression. And the great walls of Koldyeze would press in even more. Then Virunga—along with the others whom he chose to tell about Sten—would start doubting if he would ever live to be free again. And the chances were, Sten thought, that the doubters would be right. He knew the war would end soon, but he could offer no guarantees on the fate of the
Koldyeze prisoners in the melee that was sure to precede the Tahn's last fighting gasp.
But Sten had a plan—a plan that would do more than just relieve a little of the depression. It was a plan designed not only to save as many prisoners' lives as possible but also to hand any Imperial invasion force a small edge in the battle for Heath. It would not be a fifth ace. No, not that good. But it just might be a fifth face card of some kind. And there was a glimmer that it might even fill an inside straight.