Fleet of the Damned (Sten #4). Allan Cole

packed. All they wanted was away.

      Waiting near the sleds that would take the candidates to their ships were Ferrari and Mason.

      Again according to clichés there should now have been understanding on one hand and acceptance on the other. But Mason’s expression was exactly that of the first day—he looked as if he was sorry that any of them had made it. And he turned an even harder stare on Sten.

      Sten returned it.

      Clot forgiveness and understanding—he wanted to meet Mason in an alley behind a hangar sometime and give him a scar to match the first one. Preferably across the throat…

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      THE LABEL “the Fringe Worlds” suggests some sort of geographical or political cohesiveness to the spattered cluster that occupied space between the Empire and the Tahn System. There was almost none.

      The cluster had been slowly settled by Imperial pioneers. They were not the radicals or the adventurers who had explored, for instance, the Lupus Cluster. They were people wanting things to be a little more simple and peaceful. A large percentage of them were retired military or civil servants starting a second, or even third, career. Others wanted a chance to establish themselves in comfort as small manufacturers or business people.

      But if there were no hero pioneers, there also were none of the villains that pioneering creates. Not, at least, until the expansion from the Tahn empire brought new, and somewhat different, immigrants.

      What government there was in the Fringe Worlds mirrored the settlers themselves. Whether confined to a single world or including a half dozen or so systems, it was generally some species of parliamentarianism, ranging from mildly liberal to mildly authoritarian. Since prospective tyrants went elsewhere, what armed forces existed were somewhere between customs police and coastal guards. The only unifying political force the cluster had was an economic summit that met to iron out modern problems every five years or so. It was a backwater cluster, content to remain as it was.

      Until the Tahn.

      The Tahn who immigrated into the Fringe Worlds were financially backed by their leaders, as the Tahn birth rate and political ambitions clamored for Lebensraum. These were true pioneers, looking for more. Since their culture encouraged communal economics, they naturally had an advantage over the ex-Imperialists. And so the situation escalated into violence—riots and pogroms.

      The Imperial settlers were there first, so they had a chance to modify the government. Tahn were not permitted extensive freeholds. They were excluded from voting. They were physically ghettoized into enclaves either rural or urban.

      The Tahn settlers’ resentment was fed by the Tahn Empire itself, which wanted the cluster added to its holdings.

      The revolutionary movement was not only popular but well backed by the Tahn. And the Empire had done little to solve the problem. After all, backwater areas with minor problems—riots, no matter how bloody, are not as bad as active genocide—get minor attention.

      The Imperial garrisons assigned to the Tahn worlds were fat and lazy. Instead of being peacekeepers, the officers and men tended to agree with the settlers. The Tahn, after all, were different—which meant “not as good as.”

      There had been a brief time, not long before, when the confrontation between the Empire itself and the Tahn might have been prevented. Some of the more farsighted Tahn revolutionaries had recognized that if the confrontation occurred, they were liable to be crushed in the middle. Very secretly they had sent the head of the organization to Prime World.

      Godfrey Alain had been murdered in a plot that was aimed against the Emperor himself. Final negotiations between the Empire and the peace faction of the Tahn Council had also ended in blood.

      The war drums were not even slightly muted, especially on the Fringe Worlds.

      But no one in the cluster seemed to know how close Empire wide war was.

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      THE DUSTY GRAVCAR sputtered feebly over a country lane. It was an elderly design: long, boxy, with an extended rear cargo area. And the way it was balking, it was plain that it had been under constant and varied lease since it had left the factory.

      The salesman hunched over the controls seemed as weathered and as old as the vehicle. He was a large man with a broad, friendly face and bulky shoulders that strained at his years-out-of-date coveralls. The man hummed peacefully to himself in an off-key voice timed to the sputtering McLean drive engine. As he drove in apparent complete ease and relaxation, his eyes swiveled like a predator’s, drinking in every detail of the landscape.

      This was poor land, pocked with rocks and wind-bowed clumps of trees. It seemed to be one dry gale away from becoming a permanent dust bowl.

      During the course of the day, the salesman had skimmed past a half a dozen sharecropper farms tended by a few hollow-eyed Tahn immigrants. He had hesitated at each place, noted the extreme poverty, and gone on. None of them were places where a normal being would have even asked for a friendly glass of water. Not because of the hostility—which was real and more than apparent—but because if it had been given, it might have been the last few ounces of water left on the farm.

      In the distance he spotted a sudden shot of green. He shifted course and soon came upon a large farm. The earth seemed comparatively rich—not loam, but not rock either—and was heavily diked with irrigation ditches. In the middle of the spread were big shambling buildings surrounding a small artesian pond. This would be the source of wealth. Several people were working the field with rusted, creaking machinery.

      Still humming, the man eased the gravsled to a stop next to a cattle guard. He pretended not to notice the instant freezing of the people in the field. He casually got out under their burning stares, stepped over behind a bush, and relieved his bladder. Then he struck a smoke, gazed lazily about, and walked over to the fence railing. He peered with mild interest at the men and women in the field—one pro judging the work of others. He gave a loud snort. If he had had a mustache, the honk would have blown it up to his bushy eyebrows. The snort seemed to be both a nervous habit and a comment on the state of things.

      “Nice place,” he finally said. His voice hit that perfect raised pitch that a farmer uses to communicate to a companion many rows away.

      The group drew back slightly as a middle-aged Tahn, nearly the salesman’s size, strode forward. The salesman smiled broadly at him, pointedly ignoring the others who were picking up weapons and spreading slowly out to the side.

      “Wouldn’t think you could grow kale crops in these parts,” the salesman said as the Tahn drew closer.

      He looked more closely at the fields. “’Course they do look a little yellow-eyed and peaked.”

      The man stopped in front of him, just on the other side of the fence. Meanwhile, his sons and daughters had half ringed the salesman in. He heard the snicks of safeties switching off.

      “Next town’s about forty klicks down the road,” the farmer said. It was an invitation to get the clot back in the gravcar and get out.

      The elderly salesman snorted again. “Yeah. I noted that on the comp-map. Didn’t seem like much of a town.”

      “It ain’t,” the Tahn said. “Next Imperial place gotta be two, maybe two and a half days go.”

      The salesman laughed. “Spotted me, huh? What the hell, I ain’t ashamed. Besides, being a farmer is the only citizenship I claim.”

      The man stared at him. “If you’re a farmer,” he said, “what you doin’ off your spread?”

      “Gave it up after eighty years,” the salesman said. “You might say I’m retired. Except that wouldn’t be right. Actually, I’m on my second career.”

      The farmer’s eyes shifted, checking the positions of his brood. He inspected the horizon for any possible Imperial reinforcements. “That so?”

      Death was whispering in the salesman’s