Kilgour, three-gee muscles straining, had lifted a stone altar into position for his and Sten's personal last stand. He spread out his remaining grenades and ammunition in front of him.
Sten followed suit.
"Y' know, wee Sten," Kilgour observed. "If thae clottin' Tahn hae brain one, thae'll just filter gas down the steps an' be done wi' us. Thae's nae a filtermask't' be had."
At least, Sten thought, that would be relatively painless.
"Or p'raps," Kilgour went on relentlessly, "thae'll just seal us up alive. Thae'll be no bones f r m' mum't' mourn over. An me a claustrophobe, too."
Sten showed his teeth in what he realized probably did not much resemble a smile and settled down to wait for death.
It was, surprisingly, a fairly long wait.
They dimly heard the sound of firing from above. Sten wondered. Had the Tahn found some other way down to them? The firing suddenly rose to a dull storm and died away. There was the crack of single shots then.
Sten looked at Kilgour.
"Na," Alex suggested. "Thae's too convenient."
But both of them replaced their grenades and ammo into their harnesses and moved slowly up the steps toward the courtyard. A burst of fire shattered down at them, and they ducked behind the turn in the stairwell.
"Clot," Alex swore. "Ah was right. Too convenient."
Sten waited for the requisite grenade to roll down on them. But instead there came a shout in very bad Tahn.
"Surrender. Weapons no. Hands air in."
Sten and Alex grinned. And Sten shouted back in Imperial.
"Friends. Imperial. Kiss to be kissed."
"One up," came the shout, in Imperial but still suspicious.
Sten shucked his combat harness and, moving very slowly, hands in plain sight, climbed the steps until he saw two battered guardsmen, their red, exhausted eyes glaring through filthy faces. And he kissed them both.
Out of common courtesy, the one with the beard got the first one.
They were rescued.
The relief force was commanded by a one-star general. Imperial forces had mounted a massive armor assault and driven a wedge through the Tahn lines.
They had not stopped to widen that perimeter but had kept on moving, their tracks slamming at full speed through the city of Heath. Gravsleds hovered above them. Gunners opened fire on any movement without checking to see whether the target was a scared civilian or a Tahn soldier. They had hit the remnants of Wichman's forces in the rear and scattered them.
Sten and Alex stood in the courtyard, listening to the general. He was very proud of himself and his men.
Why not? Sten thought in stupid fatigue. After I sleep for about six months, I'll buy him a beer, too. Come to think, I'll buy anybody in this unit as much alk as they can pour down. Or whatever else they take, he amended. He was turning to Kilgour to suggest they find somewhere to collapse—and suddenly the Scotsman's rifle was snapping to his shoulder.
Senior Captain Lo Prek was aiming very carefully. He had followed the assault wave into Koldyeze, and no one had bothered asking who the hell he was.
He had found a position inside Koldyeze itself and waited. Perhaps Sten was outside the walls, or perhaps inside. But he knew that he would have his chance.
He ignored the destruction of Wichman's soldiers and the victorious Imperials. That was not a part of his war.
And at that point he was rewarded, seeing below him the man who had murdered his brother.
As his sights found Sten, his heart thundered and he aimed, knowing he would get only a single shot.
Sten and the Guards general went down as Kilgour fired a long, chattered snap-burst that blew apart the cathedral window above them.
Kilgour lowered the rifle.
"What was—" Sten managed, and Alex waved the barrel.
A body slumped forward out of the window and hung, motionless.
"Clottin' sniper," Kilgour said.
Sten picked himself up. That was it. For him, the war was over.
The body of Senior Captain Lo Prek was eventually picked up by a press gang of Tahn civilians under the direction of an Imperial sanitation expert, loaded onto a gravsled, and taken outside the city. It was cremated, along with several thousand other, equally nameless bodies.
And the war was over.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The surrender document was a small off-white sheet of parchment. There were very few words penned on the document itself, because there were no terms. The surrender was unconditional.
From the moment the document was signed and then countersigned, the Tahn would have to depend on the charity and mercy of the Eternal Emperor.
The document sat upon a small linen-covered table. Behind the table sat Ian Mahoney, the Emperor's representative and newly appointed governor-general of what had once been the Tahn Empire. The table and chair were the only furnishings in the yawning main banquet room of the Normandie.
It was in that room that the incident that had triggered the war had taken place. On that day it had been crammed with tables laden with delicacies to be enjoyed by the cream of Tahn diplomacy. It was there that an entirely different sort of document was to have been signed: a declaration of peace.
And the Emperor himself had presided. But the incident had ended in murder and the betrayal of both camps.
Now the Emperor was nowhere in sight. His deliberate absence was a calculated act to add to the Tahn's humiliation. Instead, there was Mahoney, his two chief aides standing at full attention on either side of him, and, lined up along the walls of the room, the top officers of the Emperor's fleets and armies.
On the far side of the room, partially hidden by a hastily hung curtain, was a livie crew filming the event for Empire-wide broadcast.
The main portal hissed open, and Colonel Pastour stepped in. He was the sole surviving member of the Tahn High Council. In a moment he would be just citizen Pastour. The Emperor had decreed that once the surrender had been signed, there would be no ranks or titles permitted in the lands of the Tahn.
As Pastour started the long, slow march toward the table, two other Tahn trailed behind him. One was dressed in the ragged uniform of a customs officer. The other wore that of a postal official. They were the highest Tahn officials anyone could find. Pastour himself, at the demand of the Emperor, wore civilian clothes.
Pastour came to a stop just in front of the table. The only movement in the room was Mahoney's head as it lifted. Two eyes below bushy, forbidding eyebrows bored into him. Pastour hesitated, unsure what to do next. He thought of his people watching on the public-square screens that the Imperials had erected in every major city. He knew it was his duty to abase himself for them. But how much humiliation would be required?
Mahoney slid the document toward him.
"Sign!" was all he said.
Pastour fumbled for a pen and scratched his name. Mahoney flipped the document over and signed his name beneath Pastour's. He handed it to one of his aides. Then he looked up at Pastour, his eyes filled with hate. Oddly, the hate was comforting. That Pastour understood.
"That's all," Mahoney said.
And in total silence, citizen Pastour turned and stumbled away.
Admiral Sten paced back and forth in the passageway. A commentator's voice crackled from speakers mounted on either end of the corridor, analyzing the events that were unfolding for his audience. As Sten paced, he kept glancing at the door that led to the Emperor's stateroom. And any moment, he would be called into his commander in chiefs presence. Sten was one of the few people who were aware that the Eternal Emperor was aboard the Normandie.