"I will take your plea under study, Major," Mathias said. "I must say it merits consideration. I will inform you of the Prophet's decision after the Prophet prays, fasts, and asks for confirmation from the aetherian heart of Talamein."
Ffillips bowed as Mathias stood, arms spread.
"We thank you, Talamein, for overhearing this session, and we pray that justice was and shall be performed. S'be't."
"S'be't," came the amen as Ffillips was dragged back to her feet and back to the dungeon. Shambling along, faking a limp, Ffillips' eyes swept across the passageways, looking for ideas.
Not too bad, Major, she thought. You've delayed the headsman, got some possibly bribable or corruptible churchmen to come in, and, most of all, some time.
And she wondered just what Sten was doing and whether the man had abandoned his soldiers and simply fled.
Unfortunately the mercenary, battle-trained side of her agreed that the colonel would be a clotting fool if he'd done anything else.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
OTHO WAS FAIRLY certain that the mercenary who called himself Sten was a great deal more. There was, for instance, the highly modified radioset that was beam-cast in a direction that Otho, checking secretly, determined was close to Galactic Center. There was also the absolute idiocy of an unpaid mercenary sticking around to worry about his less-fortunate underlings.
So it did not surprise Otho at all when a sentry peered over his crennelated walk and screamed loudly.
Standing outside the castle, in the driving snow, were one slight human female flanked by two huge four-footed bulging-skulled black-and-white predators; a truly obese humanoid woman with an interesting moustache; and a tiny, fur-covered being with flicking tendrils. Plus four bulky, gravsleds.
Who they were, how they managed to insert themselves unobserved on the Bhor world, and why they knew where Sten was, Otho felt would be perpetually unanswered questions.
So he just opened the gates, set out an appetizing first meal of dried saltfish, the grain-filled, spiced and baked stomach of herding animals, and what remained of the last night's feast animal then sent an underling to wake Sten and Alex.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
THE RENUION WITH his Mantis team was brief and wild. Munin even rose to its hind legs and licked Sten's face. Hugin, the other, and Sten felt brighter animal, purred once, then jumped on the top of the table and inhaled an entire platter of saltfish.
"Y'see. you overstrong lump of suet," Ida rumbled to Alex, "you can't get along without me?"
Alex choked on his grain dish, but admitted that he was, indeed, quite glad to see the hulking Rom woman.
Bet pulled Sten aside. Concern on her face. "What went wrong?"
"We had to move too fast," Sten said grimly. "I'll give you the full briefing in a minute."
Doc was oddly subdued. Sten managed to hug Bet twice, which brought up some interesting thoughts about what they did in the earlier days of their relationship, then he walked over and knelt to get eye-level with the koalalike Altairian.
"Your revenge is a terrible one, Sten," Doc said glumly.
Sten looked puzzled.
"Do you know what Mahoney had us doing after you were detached? Do you know what his idea of On His Majesty's Imperial Stupidity consists of?" Doc's voice was rising toward a falsetto.
Sten knew Doc would tell him.
"Easy duty," the team's anthropologist went on. "Perfect for an understrength team, Mahoney told us. A tropic world whose government some local humanoids were about to overthrow. All we had to do was guard the embassy."
"Mahoney said the Emperor thoroughly approved the revolution," Bet went on. "We were supposed to keep all the Imperial servants—and their families—from getting fed down the same grinder the government was about to disappear into."
"We did it," Ida added. "For one thing there was no comscan I could figure out that wasn't monitored. Do you know how many credits I lost? Do you know how many of my investments—our investments—have turned to drakh because we were stuck on that armpit?"
"That was not the worst," Doc continued. "We were disguised as Guards security—and we even managed to convince those clots who call themselves Foreign Service people that Hugin and Munin are normally part of a Guards team.
"Pfeah," he sneered, ladling an enormous steak down his maw. And chewing.
"It was hilarious." Bet took over as Doc glumly chewed. She was trying, without much success, to keep from laughing.
"The indigenes took the palace. Besieged the embassy. Usual stuff. We fired some rounds over their heads and they went home to think about things."
Through a rapidly disappearing mouthful that looked more suitable for Hugin, Doc said, "We had, of course, prepared an escape route—out the back gate, through some interconnected huts, into the open, through an unguarded city gate and then walk twelve kilometers to a Guard destroyer."
"So," Sten wondered, "what was the problem?"
"The children," Doc said. "Ida. who somehow has time-in-grade on me, ordered me to be in charge of embassy dependents. Nasty, carnivorous, squeaky humanoids."
"They loved him," Ida put in. "Listened to his every word. Made him sing songs. Fed him candy. Patted him."
"With those sticky paws of theirs." Doc grunted. "It took me three cycles to comb out my fur. And they called me"— he shuddered—"their teddy bear."
Sten stood up, keeping his face turned away from Doc, and thumped Hugin off the table. He composed himself and turned.
"Now that you've had your vacation, would you like to get back to work on something nice and impossible?"
Doc levered himself another steak, and the team squatted, listening as Sten began the back-briefing.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
THE ESCAPE PLANS were going extremely well, Ffillips thought. Those mercs with any experience at losing war had secreted some kind of minor edged weapon on their uniforms. These had been put into a common pool, and those most suitable for digging or cutting assigned to the smallest, beefiest, and least claustrophobic of the mercs.
The flagstones that made up the dungeon floor had taken only two nights to cut around and lever up, and the digging had commenced. At each prisoner count and guard shift change, they were dropped back into place and false cement—made from chewed-and-dried bread particles—went around them.
Viola, who'd taken over the Lycee section after Egan's death, had triangulated a tunnel route using trig and what little could be seen from the barred windows at the upper portion of the huge dungeon.
Some of the more devout mercenaries and those who could sound religious had entered study groups with Mathias' instructors.
While listening, asking intelligent questions, and pretending to be increasingly swayed, they also pulled loose strings that held their uniforms bloused over boot-top and scattered earth from the tunnel across the pounded-dirt courtyard.
It was going very well, Ffillips thought, as one shift of naked, grimy soldiers oozed out of the hole and was replaced by another. The first team immediately began swabbing themselves clean in the last remains of the liter-per-day wash-and-drink water ration that their captors allowed.
Very well indeed. Ffillips thought. We have only three-hundred-plus meters of rocky earth to dig through before we stand the possibility of being beyond these walls. Then, once we break out, which should be in the cliff edge, all we need to do is figure out how to rappel down one hundred meters of rock and disappear into the heart of Sanctus' capital. All of which we can easily accomplish given, say, ten years.