Кристофер Банч - Fleet of the Damned

The six Imperial sailors were cut down in the blast. The gravpallet drifted on another ten meters before it slowed to a stop.

Santol ran toward the bodies, a reaction team behind him. There would be more Imperials coming out of that hatch.

He slid around the gravsled… and Sutton reared up in front of him. Scales were ripped away, and ichor oozed from his wounds and mouth. The spindar loomed to his full height over the Tahn officer.

Santol's pistol was coming up, but late, too late, as claws sprang out of Sutton's forearm and bludgeoned forward, ripping away most of the Tahn's face. Santol screamed and went down.

His soldiers were firing. Sutton staggered back, against the wall, then forward again. From somewhere, he pulled a miniwillygun, brought it up, and fired—not at the Tahn but behind them, at the gravpallet. The round tore a cylinder open. Oxygen hissed, and then a ricocheting round sparked.

The corridor exploded, catching the Tahn in a miniature firestorm created by the exploding oxygen. Half of Santol's company died along with their commander. The disoriented survivors fell back toward the entrance.

Kilgour was waiting at a cross-tube. Again, the Tahn were not expecting an ambush. They fell back still farther.

It was the best chance Sten would have.

He found the nearest wall com. "All stations. All stations. This is Sten. Evac to entry. I say again. Evac to entry."

He and his four people linked up with Alex's crew and the one troop that had been left in the AP turret, and set up a rear guard.

It was not necessary. The CO of the second Tahn assault company had ordered most of the soldiers out of the fort. They would regroup and counterattack.

By the time they did, Tapia's entire crew had made it to the fort's exit.

They went back down the underground passage leading to the flattened maintenance shed, splashing through the deep muck. The shed was gone, but the hatch still operated.

Sten stood by it, taking a head count as his surviving sailors wearily climbed out. There were thirty-two left.

He formed them up and started across the flattened wastes toward the Imperial perimeter. Half a kilometer away, Sten took a small transmitter from his belt, snapped off the two safety locks, and pressed a switch.

Three minutes later, det charges would go, and Strong-point Sh'aarl't—or Sutton, or Tige, or whoever—was going to be a large crater in the ground.

The Tahn could have the privilege of naming it.

Two hours before dawn, Tanz Sullamora's shielded gravsled was cleared to land in the ruins of Arundel Castle.

There were only two man-made objects above ground. One was a transportable shielded landing dome, very common on radioactive mining planets but most incongruous in the heart of the Empire. The second was a very tall flagpole. At its peak hung two flags—the gleaming standard of the Empire and, below it, the Emperor's house banner, gold with the letters "AM2" superimposed over the negative element's atomic structure.

All Imperial broadcasts showed the ruins and the flag as their opening and closing shots. The symbol may have been obvious—but it signified. The Emperor, like the Empire itself, may have been hard-hit, but he was still standing fast and fighting.

Rad-suited guardsmen led Sullamora, also in antiradiation gear, from his ship through decon showers and into one of the drop shafts leading down toward the Imperial command center below the palace ruins.

At the shaft base, Sullamora clambered out of his suit, was decontaminated once more, and was ushered into the center. Two Gurkhas escorted the merchant prince down long paneled corridors that, even at this hour, were filled with scurrying officers and techs. Sullamora caught tantalizing glimpses, through portals that slid open and shut, of prog boards, huge computer screens, and war rooms.

He did not know that his route led through what the Emperor called a dog and pony show. The work was real, and the staff beings were busy—but everything he saw was nonvital standard procedures such as recruiting, training status, finance, and so forth.

The Emperor's own suite had also been carefully decorated to leave visitors with certain impressions. There were many anterooms, capable of holding any delegation or delegate isolated until the Emperor was ready to meet. The walls were gray, and the furniture was two shades above Spartan. Wallscreens showed mysterious, unexplained maps and projections that would be replaced periodically with equally unknown charts and graphs. The Emperor's quirky sense of humor had decided that some of them were battle plans from wars fought thousands of years previously. Thus far, no one had found him out.

The Emperor's own quarters were a large bedroom, a kitchen that resembled a warship's mess area, a conference room, a monstrous computer center/briefing room, and a personal library. These were also fairly simply furnished, not so much to continue the command center image but because the Emperor had little real interest in the tide of pomp and thrice-gorgeous ceremony.

The wallscreens normally showed scenes from the windows of one or another of the Emperor's vacation homes. But now three images formed a motif throughout his rooms: the ruins of Arundel above him, a shot from space showing the Tahn home world of Heath, and a still of the twenty-seven-member ruling Tahn Council. The three images, he explained, helped focus his attention.

Sullamora spent only a few minutes in an anteroom before being escorted into the Emperor's library.

The Emperor looked and was very tired. He indicated a sideboard that held refreshments. Sullamora declined. The Emperor started, without preamble. "Tanz, I've just requisitioned ten of your high-speed liners."

Sullamora's eyes widened, but the capitalist managed to bury any other reaction. The Emperor, after all, had called him by his first name.

"Sir, any of my resources are yours. You have only to ask."

"No drakh," the Emperor agreed. Then he asked, seemingly irrelevantly, "How long have you been arming your merchant ships?"

"Pardon, Your Majesty? Almost all of my ships carry weapons."

"Come on, Sullamora. It's been a long night, and I'd like to get my head down before dawn. You've got some ships booming around out there that're armed better'n my frigates."

"I did," Sullamora admitted, "take the liberty of increasing the weaponry on some of my vessels. Those, you understand, that were routed near any of the Tahn galaxies."

"Good thinking," the Emperor said, and Sullamora relaxed. "And that's why I'm grabbing ten of them. I'll tell you why shortly. The other reason I wanted this meeting is that I'm requisitioning you ."

Sullamora's response was a not particularly intellectual. "Heh?"

"From twenty minutes ago, you're now my minister of ship production. You'll have a seat on my private cabinet."

Sullamora was startled. He hadn't even known that the Emperor had a private cabinet.

"I want you to build ships for me. I don't care which contractors build them or how. Your orders will be A-Plus category. You have Priority One on any raw materials or personnel you need. I need more warships. Yesterday. I don't have time for all this bidding, bitching, and backbiting that's been going on. Pour yourself a drink. I'll have some tea."

Sullamora followed orders.

"We are hurting," the Emperor continued to Sullamora's back. "The Tahn are taking out my fleets faster than I can commission them. You're going to change all that."

"Thank you for the honor, Your Majesty. What kind of administration do I have?"

"I don't care. Bring in all those hucksters and sharpies from your own companies if you want."

"What will my budget be?"