The Court of a Thousand Suns (Sten #3). Allan Cole

bomb.

      Dynsman was realizing he was a very small fish suddenly dumped into a pool of sharks when he spotted the man coming down the catwalk toward the Covenanter.

      Dynsman scanned the approaching figure of Alain. Ah-hah. The first person to come near the bar in an hour. Expensively dressed. Holding the glasses in one hand, Dynsman slid the headphones into position and the microphone on.

      Down on the catwalk Alain stopped outside the Covenanter’s entrance. Another man stepped out of the blackness — Craigwel, the Emperor’s personal diplomatic troubleshooter. He wore the flash coveralls of a spaceship engineer, and held both hands in front of him, clearly showing that he was unarmed.

      “Engineer Raschid?” Alain said, following instructions.

      “That is the name I am using.”

      Across the street, Dynsman almost danced in joy. This was it! This was finally it! He shut off the mike, dropped it, and scooped up the radio-detonator and the sports timer.

      As the two men went into the Covenanter, Dynsman thumbed the timer’s start button.

      CHAPTER SIX

      TEN SECONDS:

      Janiz Kerleh was co-owner, cook, bartender, and main waiter at the Covenanter. The bar itself was her own personal masterpiece.

      Janiz had no poor-farm-girl-led-into-trouble background, though she was from a farming planet. Fifteen years of watching her logger parents chew wood chips from dawn to dusk dedicated her to finding a way out. The way out proved to be a traveling salesman specializing in log-snaking elephants.

      The elephant salesman took Janiz to the nearest city. Janiz took twenty minutes to find the center of action and ten more to line up her first client.

      Being a joygirl wasn’t exactly a thrill a minute — for one thing, she could never understand why so many people who wanted sex never bothered to use a mouthwash first — but it was a great deal better than staring at an elephant’s anus for a lifetime. The joygirl became a Madame successful enough to finance a move to Prime World.

      To her total disappointment, Janiz found that what she had figured would be a gold mine was less than that. Not only were hookers falling out of Prime World’s ears, but more than enough amateurs were willing to cooperate for something as absurd as being presented at Court.

      Janiz Kerleh, then, was on hard times when she met Chief Engineer Raschid. They’d bedded, found a certain similarity in humor, and started spending time in positions other than horizontal.

      Pillow talk — and pillow talk for Janiz was the bar she’d always wanted to open. Twenty years’ worth of dreaming, sketching, even putting little pasteboard models together when the vice squad pulled the occasional plug on her operation.

      Paralyzed was probably the best way to describe her reaction when Raschid, a year or so after they’d known each other, and sex had become less of an overriding interest than just a friendly thing to do, handed her a bank draft and said, “You wanna open up your bar? Here. I’m part owner.”

      Raschid’s only specification was that one booth — Booth C, he’d told her to name it — was to be designed somewhat differently than the others. It was to be absolutely clean. State-of-the-art debugging and alarm devices were delivered and installed by anonymous coveralled men. The booth itself was soundproofed so that any conversation could not be overheard a meter away from the table. A security service swept the booth once a week.

      Raschid told Janiz that he wanted to use the booth for meetings. Nobody was permitted to sit there except him — or anyone who came in and used his name.

      Janiz, who had a pretty good idea how much money a ship’s engineer made, and knew it was nowhere near enough to front an ex-joygirl in her hobby, figured Raschid had other things going. The man was probably a smuggler. Or . . . or she really didn’t care.

      The Covenanter was quite successful, giving dockers and ship crewmen a quiet place to drink, a place where the riot squad never got called if evenings got interesting, and a place to meet colorful girls without colorful diseases. Raschid himself dropped by twice a Prime year or so, and then would vanish again. Janiz had tried to figure what ship he was on by following the outbound columns in the press, but she could never connect Raschid with any ship or even a shipping line. Nor could she figure who Raschid’s “friends” were, since they ranged from well-dressed richies to obvious thugs.

      So when the two men, Alain and Craigwel, asked for Booth C, in an otherwise totally deserted bar, she had no reaction other than to ask what they were drinking.

      * * * *

      SEVENTY-TWO SECONDS:

      When Dynsman had broken into the Covenanter to plant the bomb a week earlier, he had also paced out the detonation time. His man would enter the bar. Ten seconds. Look around. Fifteen seconds. Walk to the bar. 7.5 seconds. Order a drink. One minute. Pick up the drink and walk across the room to Booth C. The bomber made allowances for possible crowding — which the Covenanter certainly was not that night — then gave his time-sequence another two minutes just to be sure.

      Alain eyed the vast array of liquors on display, then picked the safe bet. “Synthalk. With water. Tall and with ice, at your favor.”

      Craigwel, the professional diplomat, ordered the same. His next statement would kill both men. It was intended only to lubricate the discussion that was to follow. “Have you ever tried Metaxa?”

      “No,” Alain said.

      “Good stuff on a night like this.”

      “Nonnarcotic?” Alain asked suspiciously.

      “Alcohol only. It’s also a good hullpaint remover.”

      Janiz poured the two shots, then busied herself making the synthalk drinks.

      Alain lifted his shot glass. “To peace.”

      Craigwel nodded sincerely, and tossed his glass back.

      Time ran out. On timer cue, Dynsman touched the radio det button.

      The bomb exploded.

      High-grade explosive, covered with ball bearings, crashed.

      The three humans died very quickly but very messily. Dynsman had erred slightly in his calculations, since the bearings also slammed into the bar stock itself.

      Across the street, Dynsman dumped his equipment into a case, ran to the rear of the building, dropped the thread ladder down two levels, and quickly descended. When he hit the second level, he touched the disconnect button, and the ladder dropped down into his hands. That ladder also went into the case, and Dynsman faded into the shadows, headed for his own personal hideaway, deep inside one of Prime World’s nonhumanoid conclaves.

      Ears still ringing from the explosion, he did not hear the clatter of boots on the catwalk above as they ran toward the shattered ruin that had been the Covenanter.

      * * * *

      Moments before the explosion, Sergeant Armus had been trying to soothe the injured feelings of the other member of his tac squad. The sector was so quiet and the duty so boring that it felt like a punishment tour. They were an elite, after all, a special unit that was supposed to be thrown into high-crime-potential areas to put the lid back on, and then turn the area over to normal patrols.

      Instead, they had been on nothing duty for nearly a month. Sergeant Armus listened to his corporal run over the complaints for the fiftieth time. Tac Chief Kreuger must really have it in for them. Nothing was going on in the sector that one lone Black Maria couldn’t deal with. Armus didn’t tell the man that he had been making the same complaint nightly! He had to admit there was a great deal of justification for his squad’s complaints. Kreuger must be out of his clotting mind, assigning them to a dead sector, especially with the festival going on. Maybe the crime stat computer hiccupped. Maybe Krueger had a joygirl in the area who had complained about getting roughed up. Who could fathom what passed for the mind of a