The Return of the Emperor (Sten #6). Allan Cole

at him. The heavy wood caught him flat. He was hurled backward, clawing for balance and trying to twist as he hit the floor to free his knife-hand. He curled into a ball and let himself roll all the way. He rebounded off the wall, and using the force, was coming to his feet and slashing out before the knife had even cleared.

      “Dammit, Sten!” the man shouted. “Stop!”

      Sten froze, gaping. What the clot! It couldn’t be. It was...

      “Get your wits about you lad,” ex-Fleet Marshall Ian Mahoney said. “There’s a Mantis team right on my heels. And if I stand here explaining, we’re both for the meat locker.

      “Move. Now!”

      Sten moved.

      * * * *

      Sten and Mahoney quick-crawled through the tunnel that snaked from the hidey-hole behind the fireplace toward a small stand of trees about eighty meters from the main dome. It was dimly lit—on purpose. And it contained many bends—also on purpose. They could hear someone breaking away the stones of the fireplace to get at them. Sten tried not to think of the months he had worked on the beast, or of all the heavy rocks he had carried from the edge of the lake to build it.

      He was only very thankful to the gods of paranoia that had commanded him to construct a bolt hole in the face of no apparent danger. When—not if—the hunters broke through, Sten and Mahoney would be dangerous game to follow. The lights would make aim difficult. The many twists and turns would make it even harder. They would also lessen the force of any explosions set off. And the narrowness took away any advantage in numbers.

      Of course, there was always gas. But Sten was comforted by the howl of the powerful ventilators constantly pumping in fresh air. The atmosphere of the entire tunnel was recycled in seconds.

      They finally reached a dead-end vault where they could stand. Emergency clothing, gear, and weapons were stacked on shelves to one side. The exit was just beyond. With a press of a switch, the port would lift silently away. The exterior was artfully camouflaged with brush, dirt, and rocks. The tunnel emptied into a thick clump of woods near the edge of the frozen lakes.

      Sten quickly began donning his gear. He motioned for Mahoney to pick up a pair of gravskis like his. A small explosion rocked the tunnel as the hunters finally broke through the fireplace.

      “They’ll have this end covered, as well,” Mahoney said.

      “I know,” Sten said. He palmed the switch, and cold fresh air flooded in as the port lifted aside. It would close automatically behind them. He pressed a marble-sized bit of impact-explosive under the edge of the switch, a down and dirty booby trap.

      “They’ll find it,” Mahoney said.

      “I know that, too,” Sten said. “But it’ll slow them down.”

      “Maybe we ought to—”

      Sten raised a hand, cutting Mahoney off. “No offense,” he said, “but there isn’t a clottin’ thing I don’t know about tunnels. And exiting some. I had a little experience, if you recall.”

      Mahoney shut up. Sten had spent a small lifetime digging under the POW camp at Koldyeze. Actually, as Big X—commander of the escape committee—he had done a lot more than dig.

      “Now, give me a hand,” he said.

      He pulled the cover off an elderly snowcat, which had been converted to burn combustibles. Together they muscled it over to the exit. Sten flipped the various switches to the “on” position and set a meandering course on the navigator, then told Mahoney to stand back as he fired the engine.

      A great blast and gout of smoke roiled out. Mahoney coughed and wheezed.

      “So, we’ll not be sneakin’ up on them, then,” Mahoney said, dry.

      Sten silenced him with a glare.

      Then he jammed it into gear and leapt to the side. The snowcat jumped forward with a loud roar and in a flash boiled out of the tunnel. Sten peered after it. The tracks churned up huge clouds of snow as the cat plunged forward—straight for a tree. Sparks showered out of its engine ports, eerie against the night. The cat brodied to one side at the last minute. Laser fire smeared the darkness, and several holes appeared in the cat’s body.

      “Now!” Sten shouted.

      And he and Mahoney hurled themselves outside. Sten had just enough time to see one startled hunter whirl back from the cat and raise his weapon.

      The hunter jerked, and a neat hole appeared in his forehead. As the hunter slumped down, Mahoney got another shot off at the man’s companion, who dodged to one side. By the time she had recovered, Sten and Mahoney were gone. The Mantis operative moved forward, throat-miking hoarse instructions to the team inside the dome. She found the footprints leading deeper into the woods. They wouldn’t be difficult to follow. They stood out starkly—almost deep blue—in the moonlight.

      Then she sensed something behind her. She half straightened, bringing up her weapon and trying to spin to the side. Then she was lying in the snow, blood gushing from the red grin of her throat.

      Sten wiped his blade on her tunic.

      “Am I just getting old,” he asked as Mahoney stepped out from behind a tree, “or are the new kids really just not as good as they used to be?”

      Mahoney looked at the corpse of the Mantis operative. As the former chief of Mercury Corps—meaning Mantis, as well—he had mixed feelings about seeing one of his own in such a state. Then he looked at Sten. He was a little older, and there were a few hard lines etched in his face, but he seemed tougher, somehow. Harder. His dark eyes were sunk deeper into his skull. They were a little bitter, but there was still that touch of cynical humor in them. Mahoney saw the slender dirk disappear back into Sten’s arm.

      As for Sten’s question: No. They weren’t slower.

      Mahoney shrugged. “You’ve been practicing,” was all he said. “There’s five more. I doubt we’ll be so lucky with them, lad,” he said. “I hope you have a plan.”

      “I do,” Sten told him. Without another word he stepped into the bindings of the gravskis, flipped them on, and adjusted the lift so that he hung bare centimeters above the snow. He poled off into the woods, digging the poles in hard just to make sure no one would lose the track.

      * * * *

      Mahoney had seen a lot of strange things in his long life, but the thick grove that Sten was leading him through had to be up high on his personal list of the bizarre.

      The trees weren’t really trees at all, although they took that form. They towered over what, from a distance, appeared to be a gigantic root system at least three meters high before the main trunk started. Up close, the root systems were revealed to be more like immense tubers. They were so huge that Mahoney thought it must have taken centuries for so many leaves to form together to make such large bulbs for water and nutrients. Later he learned that it had only taken a few years.

      The branches were furry and appeared almost muscular—if a plant could have muscles. And they looped about like tentacles, although they seemed stiff and relatively sturdy, like wood. The leaves were long, needlelike, and edged with sharp spines, and they were covered with a thin film of moisture. Extremely odd in this climate. Why didn’t the moisture freeze?

      He reached out a hand to touch.

      “Don’t,” Sten snapped. Then he saw the puzzled look on Mahoney’s face and took pity—but only a little. “They don’t like to be touched,” he said. He pushed on with no other explanation.

      As far as Mahoney could tell, they were doing nothing more than traveling in a wide circle. Moving closer to the lake, he thought. With a shrill cry, a large, white bird with leathery wings suddenly bolted for the sky. It circled about in the moonlight, obviously angry.

      “They’re coming,” Sten said. “Finally. I was afraid for a moment we’d lost them.”

      “Not