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

seemed to be exactly as he appeared. What he had here were several hundred hardworking Tahn farmers who had gotten tired of the poverty imposed on them by the Imperial majority. So they had pooled their talent and funds to make a life of it.

      From some of the stories he heard over the table, their success had not set well with the local gentry and rich Imperial farmers. There had been many attacks, some of them quite nasty.

      Mahoney could understand why the farmers had fallen so easily for the infiltrating soldier boys. Now they could protect themselves. Also, from their comments, Mahoney realized that they saw this as only a temporary solution. Sooner or later, unless events intervened, the commune would fall. Mahoney got the idea that the Tahn soldiers were promising an eventual rescue by their empire system. Tahn warships would someday come screaming in over the horizon, and the settlers would all rise up in support of their genetic friends of the cradle.

      Mahoney knew from experience that in reality all those kids and their fathers and mothers would be used as a bloody shield for the pros.

      Hadn’t he done it himself back in his Mantis Section days?

      The farmers had given him free rein. He was allowed to go anywhere he wanted—except one place. Every time he had come near it, he had been edged away. About half a klick from the pig crèches was a large, fairly modern—for the Fringe Worlds—grain silo. It was prefab, but still, it was an expensive thing to import and then to build.

      At first Mahoney expressed interest in it, just to keep up his role. Actually he didn’t give a clot.

      “Oh, that,” his guide had said. “Just a silo. You seen better. Always clottin’ up on us one way or the other. You ain’t interested in that. Now, let me show you the incubators.

      “Bet you never seen so many chicks crackin’ shells in your life.”

      This was not a chick ranch. The birds were used only for local consumption. Therefore, the incubator was far from a machine to delight a tired old farmer’s eyes.

      So, what was with the silo? Mahoney casually brought it up. And each time he was guided away. Ian, he told himself, it’s time you risked your sweet Irish ass.

      * * * *

      He slipped out the last night of his stay, ghosting across the farm past the obstacle run and then the grunts of the pigs. It was easy. He picked up one of the soldiers snoring away in his hidey-hole on the path to the silo. Rotten discipline.

      He circled the position, and soon he was inside the silo. A primitive sniffer was the only security, and he quickly bypassed it before he entered.

      The silo was suspiciously empty. There were only a few tons of grain. Considering the bulging storage areas spotted about the farm, the space was much needed.

      A Mantis rookie could have found the arms cache in a few minutes. Mahoney caught it almost as soon as he peeped his flashbeam around the inside of the structure.

      In one corner was a large, busted-down bailer. One doesn’t bail grain, and this was hardly the place to put a temporary mechanic’s shop. The bailer was a rust bucket, except for the joint of one leg, which was shiny with lubricant. Mahoney gave a couple of test twists and pulls and then had to jump back as a section of the floor hissed aside.

      Beneath the bailer was a room nearly the size of the silo floor. Carefully stacked in sealed crates were every kind of weapon that a soldier could need. About half of them were things that no farmer with the kind of training Mahoney guessed these people were getting could use. This stuff was for pros.

      He caught the slight sound of a small rodent just behind him and to his left. Rodent? In a modern silo?

      Mahoney back-flipped to his right as a hammer blow just grazed the side of his head. He half rolled to his left, then rolled to the right, hearing the chunk of something terribly heavy and sharp smash down.

      As he came to his feet, he could sense a large blackness rushing at him. He fingertipped out a tiny bester stun grenade, hurled it, and then dropped to the floor, burying his head in his arms. His shoulders tensed for the blow, and then there was an almost X-ray flash through his hands.

      It took Mahoney many shaky seconds to come up again. He woozily tried to figure out what had happened.

      The bester grenade produced a time blast that erased very recent memory and time to come for some hours. As near as Mahoney could figure, he was missing only a few seconds.

      He peeped his beam to the dark shape slumped near him. Oh, yes. It was the soldier who had been sleeping on duty. There must be some other alarm system besides the one he had dismantled.

      Mahoney found it and disarmed it. He dragged his peacefully snoring opponent out and tucked him back into his bushes where he belonged. Then he rearmed both systems and slid back to his room.

      He made loud, cheery good-byes to his new Tahn friends the next day, passing out presents, jokes, and kisses where kisses belonged.

      Mahoney gave the snoozing sentry a few extra bottles of cider, and the man beamed broadly at him, clapped him on the back, and told him to be sure to stop by if he was ever in the area again.

      The invitation was sincere.

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      “I COULD TELL you how to solve your Tahn problem,” the farmer said, “and we don’t need the damned government to do it!”

      The farmer was a short man with an expansive waistline and soft hands. His spread was many times larger than the Tahn communal farm Mahoney had recently visited, and from what Ian could gather, the Imperial settler spent his days tapping in figures on his computer or huddled with his bankers.

      Mahoney beetled his brows in deep interest. He was seated at the dinner table with the man, his tubby pink-cheeked wife, and their large brood of obnoxious children.

      One of the snotty so-and-sos was trying to get his attention, tapping his sleeve with a spoon dripping with gravy.

      “A moment, son,” Mahoney soothed, “while I hear what your father has to say.” Little clot, he thought, I’ll wring your bloody neck if you touch me with that thing again.

      “Go on,” he told the farmer. “This is a subject that concerns all of us.”

      “Clottin’ right,” the farmer said. “The Tahn are lower than drakh and bleeding us all.”

      “Please, dear,” his wife admonished. “The children.” She turned to Mahoney. “I hope you’ll forgive my husband’s language.”

      Mahoney gave an understanding smile. “I’ve heard worse.”

      The woman giggled. “So have I. Still… If you had to live with these Tahn, you’d understand why my husband becomes so heated. They really are—” She leaned closer to Mahoney to make her point. “Different, you know.”

      “I can imagine,” Mahoney said. He settled back with their good after-dinner port to listen to the farmer expand on his subject. It was enough to chill the blood of a tyrant.

      Mahoney was absolutely sure what was going to be in his report to the Eternal Emperor. But he had decidedly mixed feelings about it. Like, who were the heroes and who were the villains?

      “Yes, please,” he said. “Another splash of port would go down just fine.”

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      IMPERIAL FLIGHT SCHOOL, Stage or Phase Two, began in deep space. Sten and the others in his class, now referred to as “mister,” regardless of sex or whether they were even human, started with pressurized spitkits—space taxis.

      Learn… learn in your guts… which direction to apply force. Understand when to brake. Learn how to calculate a basic orbit from point A to (radar-seen) point B. Then do it again.

      Once they were competent, the next step put them in actual ships. More time passed as they learned, still in space, the use of the secondary—Yukawa—drive.

      As