Кристофер Банч - The Return of the Emperor

The creature lumbered to its feet, harness creaking under the weight of many weapons. It came forward three steps, knobbed, hairy paws brushing briefly on the floor. It was a meter wide from the neck down and weighed in at a fearful 130 kilograms. Although only 150 centimeters high, it was massive power in a smallish package. Muscle cells were easily as dense as Kilgour's, despite his heavy-worlder's genes. Its spine was curved, and its great trunk was supported on legs like bowed tree trunks.

The being raised itself to its full height, brandishing an enormous stregghorn. His shout filled the big hall like a large explosion in a small cylinder at depth.

"By my mother's beard!" it bellowed at Sten. "This is unbearable."

The being waddled to the table and loomed over Sten. Drunken tears welled out of the gaping holes the Bhor called eyes. Blubbering like a hairy infant, Otho collapsed next to Sten, his breath laced with enough stregg to peel the hide off a deep-space freighter.

"I love you like a brother," Otho wept.

The Bhor chieftain turned to his feasting subjects. He gestured with his stregghorn, spilling a pool that could drown a small human.

"We all love you like a brother!" he roared. "Tell him, brothers and sisters. Are we not Bhor? Do we hide honest feelings?"

" No !" came the shout from the more than a hundred assembled warriors.

"Swear it, brothers and sisters." Otho shouted the order. "By our fathers' frozen buttocks—we love you Sten!"

"By our fathers' frozen buttocks…" came the return shout, amplified by a more than a hundred Bhor maws. Otho flung himself on Sten and sobbed.

Alex shuddered. He did not envy his friend's popularity with these beings.

Across the great hall there were a few human warriors sprinkled among the Bhor. Of all the admiring eyes watching Sten—the returning hero—one pair viewed him with special interest. Her name was Cind. She was very, very young and very, very lovely. It was that special kind of beauty that grabbed at the heart through the loins. Cind was also one of the most highly regarded practitioners of that supremely lethal art—sniping.

Her own personal weapon had started life as an already-exotic Imperial-issue sniper weapon. It fired the normal Imperial AM2-charged, Imperium-shielded round, but instead of using a laser as propellant it used a linear accelerator. A variable power automatic-estimate scope gave the range to target. The scope could then be adjusted laterally on its mount—in the event the nominated target was sheltered behind something. It was a weapon that could shoot around corners. The rifle was never offered on the open market, not even to Imperially equipped allies. Cind had acquired hers on the black market and then further modified it for her own tastes—thumbhole stock built for her, increased barrel weight for better balance and less "recoil" flip, double-set trigger, bipod, and so forth. As issued, the rifle was heavy. Cind's modifications made it still heavier. But despite her slender form, she could lug it hour after hour over the hilliest terrain with little effort. So much for the alleged inability of female humans to possess upper body strength without hormone implants.

The problem with the rifle was that its ammunition, like every other form of AM2, was currently very scarce. So Cind had trained on every other weapon she could find that could reach out and tweep someone long distance, from crossbows to projectile weapons.

Like most of the Bhor warriors she was cross-trained in all fighting skills. On a ship, for instance, she was a boarding specialist and had proved herself on several hairy engagements.

The young woman was a Jann, or perhaps more correctly an ex-Jann. The Jann had been a suicidally dedicated military order, the striking arm for the Talamein theocracy that had once ruled the Lupus Cluster with genocidal hands. The Wolf Worlds, as the systems now controlled by the Bhor were dubbed, had long been a minor thorn in the Eternal Emperor's side. It was minor only because the cluster was on the outskirts of the Empire. It was not so minor in the view of the Bhor. The warrior trading culture was quickly being killed off by the xenophobic Jann. They had become very nearly extinct.

But many years before Cind was born, an important discovery was made well beyond even the Wolf Worlds. It was new deposits of Imperium X, the substance used to shield, and therefore control, AM2. The people of Talamein and the killer Jannissars, however, lay at the crossroads where the shipments of Imperium X had to pass. Flailed on by their homicidal religion—the worship of Talamein—the Jann became a cork in an extremely important bottle.

Sten and Alex had headed a Mantis team sent in to pull the cork. In the bloody sorting out that followed, Sten eventually had taken advantage of a deep gulf in Talameic theo-politics, placing two competing pontiffs in bloody competition with one another. They both died.

To Sten's dismay, the immediate result produced a third religious leader, as powerful as he was traitorous. He was also a handsome hero—the proverbial "Man On A Horse"—that attracted the fanatics even more than his passion for Talamein. But suddenly that final leader decided he was Talamein himself, denounced his own faith as being sinfully misguided, called for peace, and then suicided. It was a lucky turn. Luck, in that case, was provided by a brutal assault on the prophet's stronghold, followed by Sten's carefully thought-out hand-to-hand reasoning with the man and an injection of a hypnotic into his veins, followed by the Programming, The Speech, and The Self-Martyrdom.

With the reluctant blessings of the Eternal Emperor, Otho and his Bhor subjects were raised up as the new rulers of the Wolf Worlds.

Most historians agreed that thus far it had worked out fairly well. The Bhor tended to let other beings think and do as they please, so long as they did not interfere with the operations of the Lupus Cluster, or trigger new quarrels.

Oddly, the Faith of Talamein collapsed along with its power. Despite ancient roots, it had become so repressive that the surviving believers were delighted that their noses were no longer pressed against the rough stone wheel of Talamein. It helped that the sight of the two competing pontiffs had become so ridiculous that even peasants tilling distant soil had become embarrassed.

The Jannissars themselves became crusaders without a cross, ultimate ronin. They found other, peaceful lives but remained both ashamed and proud of their heritage.

Cind had grown up in such a household. The stories of the past were told to her, privately, around the family hearth with the old weapons hanging above it, or sometimes loudly at family/clan reunions held in very secret places.

Cind had grown up as a throwback—she was one of the former Jann who had the old love of battle. Since childhood she had disdained the ordinary playthings of other young Jann. Toy weapons were her favorite. Vid-books on great battles and heroic deeds stirred her more than any fairy tales. So it was only natural that when she came of age she volunteered for the Bhor military. Her culture's old enemies—but the only game in town.

Her instinctual ability with the rifle quickly won her favor among the Bhor. Now, whenever there was conflict requiring arms, Cind was among the first to volunteer for action and also among the first to be accepted. Her youth was no handicap at all. In fact, it was most probably a plus, since the Bhor loved a fight almost more than stregg, that powerful and evil potion Sten had first become addicted to and then passed on to the Eternal Emperor. The Bhor encouraged instincts like Cind's in their own young and boasted of them in their huge feasts and drinking bouts.

As Otho drunkenly blubbered and patted his clearly embarrassed friend, Cind gazed with adoring eyes at the great Sten. This was the being whose exploits were boasted of more than any other in the Bhor drinking halls. No Bhor who had been even vaguely involved in those exploits could walk down a public byway without drawing admiring looks and comments. Over and over again the tale was told, and each time Sten and Alex shone in greater and greater glory. Especially Sten. He was younger than she imagined. She had been expecting a hoary graybeard filled with stiff dignity. She also found him most handsome.