Oh, Mahoney, Sten thought again.
Then, business. One pace forward.
"UNIT..."
"COMP'NEE... COMP'NEE..."
The shouts rang across the wind of the landing field.
"Unit commanders. Take charge of your troops. Move them into the ships.
"We're going to war!"
And then nothing but the howl of the wind and the drumbeat of bootheels.
And then nothing but Sten looking at Alex and both of them knowing why they'd chosen the profession they did.
And so, without banners, without bugles, they went off to war...
BOOK THREE
TAKING THE BLADE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE JANN CITADEL hugged the plateau crest of the high, snow-and ice-covered mountain. Three sides of the mountain dropped vertically. Only the fourth featured a machine-carved road that S-snaked up toward the crest. A road with manned and electronic guardposts every few dozen meters.
The Citadel was more than just the theological center of the warrior faith/caste—it was also the training ground for all Jann cadets. And it was Sten's first target.
The Citadel had been located on a not especially welcoming world, near the tip of a northern continent. It promised, by its very appearance, monastic dedication, asceticism, and lethality—quite an apt summary of the Jann beliefs, in fact.
Sten and his 201 mercenaries had been able to insert easily, using the talents and the ground-lighters of the Bhor.
Now they lay crouched at the foot of one vertical precipice, the sheerest that Sten could pick from the vidpics aerial recon had taken. The sheerest and the least likely to be guarded, especially now.
Far above him, atop the crest, the Citadel itself sprawled on the plateau. It closely resembled a black cephalopod, with its humped center section and, finger-sprawling out from the central bulk, the four tube barracks that held the Jann cadet cells.
Lights were on in the barracks, red against the snow. And in Sten's mind, he could see the top of the "hump"—the massive building containing the temple itself, gymnasium, arena, and administrative offices, see its weather membranes "breathing" in and out as they adjusted and readjusted the environment within. Even from the base of the cliff, Sten could see one of the membranes, glowing yellow-red from the lights inside and gently moving in and out like a living thing.
He pushed out of his mind the fear response that the entire Citadel was a living, brooding entity—an entity one of the mercenaries had immediately dubbed "the Octopus."
Snow crunched behind Sten as Alex moved beside him. A second crunch as the ever-present Kurshayne snow-crawled up on his heels.
Sten tapped Alex on his shoulder and passed him the night glasses, then turned to check the rest of the mercenaries on the rock-strewn hillside behind him.
The 200 men and women wore white thermal coveralls and were snuggled deep into snowbanks. Sten's practiced eye could pick out a movement here and there, but only because he knew where to look. Not only were the troops white-cammied, but so were their weapons and faces.
Which is why Sten started slightly when Alex lowered the night glasses and looked at him, peering through large, white eyes. White-camo contact lenses were very hard to get used to.
Sten smiled about the obvious joke about holding your fire until you can see... Alex raised a questioning eyebrow over a pure white eyeball. Sten covered, smile gone. He didn't think even
Alex would appreciate the joke under the circumstances.
Which were: the Citadel. A deadly octopus in profile. On top of a sheer mountain. With black spots of soft shale where even snow couldn't stick. And where it did, the rock was old and rotten. Blanketed with ice and snow. Sten wasn't worried about the crumbling rock. That he could handle. But the ice sheets were waiting, ten-meter-long razorblades.
Sten shuddered.
Alex took one more look at the kilometer-high cliff. Leaned close to his side.
"Ah dinna lovit tha heights," the heavy-worlder confessed in a whisper. "Aye lads bounce whenit tha fall. Th' Kilgours squash."
Sten chuckled and Alex whispered into his throat mike for Vosberh and Ffillips to come forward.
Expertly the two swam-crawled through the snow until they were on either side of him. Sten gave his last instructions. He was pleased when the two professionals didn't even raise an eyebrow as they saw the climb that faced them. Ffillips, however, put in a word for bonus money, and Sten shushed her.
"I want to hit them where it hurts," he reminded. "The chapel. A legitimate target. Torch it. Melt it.
"Ffillips? Your group has responsibility for the chapel. Vosberh—the barracks. They should be empty now. Blow them to hell for a diversion.
"If you see an officer—a teacher—in your way, kill him."
He paused for emphasis.
"But if you can help it, don't kill any cadets."
Vosberh hissed something about baby roaches growing up to be...
"They're kids," Sten reminded. "And when the war's over, I'd rather face some ticked-off diplomats than angry parents, or brothers and sisters with short-range murder in their thoughts."
Vosberh and Ffillips—very much the professionals—remembered wars they had won and coups they had then lost, and agreed with Sten's reasoning.
The cadets—unless some got in their way—were not valid military targets.
There was a thump at Sten's boot. He looked back and saw Kurshayne. The man had Sten's pack of climbing gear. Sten sighed. Accepted.
"All right, you can come with me," he said.
Still, as he crawled forward to begin his climb, he felt a little bit better.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT WAS A temple of guttering torches. Deep shadows and oiled gold. A thousand young Jann voices were lifted in a slow military chant generations old. And the thousand-cadet procession moved in measured, slow-motion paces through the temple. The cadets were dressed in ebony-black uniforms, with white piping.
At the head of the procession was the color guard, carrying two heavy golden statues. One was of Talamein. The other was Ingild, the man the Janns called the True Prophet. Mathias and his father, Theodomir, would have called him many other things. True, or Prophet, even, would not be among them.
The procession was in celebration of the Jann Sammera: the Time of Killing. In Lupus Cluster history, it was a revenge raid by a small band of Jann. They hit one of the small moons off Sanctus that keep the potentially great tides in check, and slaughtered everyone. And then, trapped, they waited for the inevitable reprisal from Sanctus. When it came, there were no
Jann survivors. A bloody historical note of which the Jann were immensely proud.
The procession moved through the temple, past enormous statues of Jann warriors and the flags of the many planets the Jann had converted or destroyed. The temple was the Jann holy of holies.
The cadets moved out of the temple, and huge metal doors slid closed as the last row of men passed. Then the cadets slow-marched down a hallway so enormous that in the summer months humidity brought condensed "rain," into an equally huge dining room.
In the dining room, the color guard marched straight forward down the main aisle, toward the huge stage and podium where the black-uniformed guest of honor and the school's military faculty waited.
The others shredded off and wove black and white ribbons through the long aisles created by the dining tables set for a thousand young men who were soon to join the Jann.
As the color guard approached the stage, General Khorhea—the guest of honor—and the hundred or so faculty members rose. From the wall behind them came a hiss as a twenty-meter-wide flag dropped from the ceiling. It was black with a golden torch.