Vortex (Sten #7). Allan Cole

The beer and alk on the table vanished. He burped politely, rose, and started toward the exit, threading his way between tables, Sten in his wake.

      Alex’s way was blocked by a very large quadruped, whose gray hide looked as if it would make an acceptable suit armor. The being emptied the large plas balloon he had been sniffing and bounced it away into a corner. All three of his — her? its? — eyes glared around separately, then settled on Kilgour. The being’s twin manipulating arms flexed.

      “Men! Don’t like men!”

      “Ah dinnae either,” Alex said equably.

      “You man.”

      “No.”

      “What you?”

      “Ah’m a penguin. Frae Earth. A wee slickit cowerin’t birdie thae lives on herring.”

      Sten ran through various ET handbooks, trying to ID the being. Nothing in his memory had four legs, three eyes, two arms, a dim brain — last undetermined for certain, given probability said being was blitzed — stood two and a half meters tall, weighed several squillion kilos, and had a terrible attitude.

      Oh, yeah. Not very vestigial claws on the arms. Sten felt mildly sorry for the being as it accused — “You not penguin.”

      “An’ how d’ye know, lad? Y dinnae hae th’ look ae a passionate penguin pervert aboot y’.”

      “You man.”

      “Look, son. Y’re tired. Y’hae a bit t’ . . . snuff, snort, swill, or suck. Hae y’self ae sitdown, an’ Ah’ll buy y’ a wee new balloon.”

      “Don’t like men! I hurt men! First I hurt you, then hurt him.”

      “Ah well,” Kilgour said. “Sten, y’ bear witness t’ m’ wee mum Ah’m noo goin’t out an’ gettin’ in th’ bloody frae like Ah wae a cub again.”

      “I’ll tell her.”

      “Ah knew Ah c’d rely on you.”

      The being was reaching for Kilgour’s neck — what little neck the tubby man had.

      Kilgour’s hands circled the being’s arms, just where a wrist would be on a humanoid. And he levered down. The being scrawked in pain and collapsed down on what were maybe knees, just as gracelessly as an Earth camel. Kilgour, still holding the being’s “wrists,” stepped forward — and the quadruped collapsed back into a sprawled, seated position.

      “Noo,” Alex said. “Y’ see how easy pacifism is, when y’ put y’r mind t’ it?”

      “If you’re through playing, Mr. Kilgour?”

      “Ah’m through, Admiral. But Ah hae t’ buy m’ friend his round. As Ah promis’t.”

      Kilgour, an upright and honorable man from the high-gee world of Edinburgh, Sten’s long-time aide and accomplice and one of the Empire’s most highly trained elite commandos, did keep his word — and bought the now quiescent monster a balloon before they left for their inspection tour of the Imperial battle cruiser Victory.

      “ Tis all i’ th’ the leverage,” was his only explanation to Sten. “Like tearin’ a phone book apart.”

      “What’s a phone book?”

      * * * *

      “ ‘Tis quite a ship,” Alex said, three hours later.

      “Aye,” Sten agreed. He took off the sensor hood he had been wearing and stopped his run through of the Victory’s tertiary and redundant TA systems.

      Alex’s eyes swept the room before he spoke. There weren’t any crewmen within earshot, and the com box wasn’t picking up. “Perhaps Ah’m gettin’ old,” he went on, still tentatively, “but the way this scow’s set up’s noo like it would have been back in the — the old days.”

      “You mean before the Emperor’s assassination.”

      “Aye,” Kilgour said. “Thae’s a bit too much flash ae filigree fr this to suit th’ old Emp. Or am I rememberin’t th’ past ae better’n it wae?”

      “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Sten said. He touched keys, and the computer obediently threw a three-meter hologram of the Victory into the air over the mess table they were sitting at. Another key combination, and the computer began peeling the hologram, displaying the new battle cruiser from all angles and deck by deck.

      “Ah’d heard this wae t’ be a ‘maphrodite,” Alex said. “But it looks more like a three-way or four-way arrangement t’me.”

      Sten nodded agreement. He wasn’t happy, on a number of levels. First was the entirely pragmatic consideration of the Victory as a warship. Sten had experience with tools, vehicles, and ships that were ostensibly dual- or multiple-purpose. Almost without exception that meant that the tool did quite a number of things badly, and nothing well.

      Battle cruisers, for instance, were based on aeons-old designs of ships that had enough muscle to beat up almost anything — except battleships or monitors — and enough power to run away from the biggies. Quite frequently, though, it worked out that the class was too slow to be able to catch and destroy smaller ships, and played hell getting away from the monsters. Plus, once the ship was caught, its armament, quite capable of bashing a stray destroyer or such, was too light to damage a battleship, and its defensive systems, active or passive, were too weak.

      Sten had gone through the builder-promised specs on the Victory, cross-correlating them with the actual performance the battle cruiser produced during its trials. Unless the Imperial procurement people were on the take — not an impossibility, but not very likely — it looked as if the Victory might be an effective weapon.

      The problem was this tacship capability the Emperor had evidently decided was vital. The Victory’s rear third was dedicated to hangar/weapons/quarters for a complete tacship flotilla — three squadrons of four ships each. The tacships were Bulkeley-II class ships, developed and refined during the Tahn war. They were just-over-hundred-meter-long needles of destruction. They were built to get in at speed, hit hard, and get out. Anything else — crew comfort, defensive capabilities, armor — was secondary or nonexistent. Sane pilots hated the tacships — they required constant hands-on pilot response and were unforgiving, as in kill you, of the slightest error. Sten loved them.

      So on one hand the Victory’s added capability was something Sten appreciated. But it also meant that the rear spaces were flying time bombs, packed with sensitive explosives, fuels, and weaponry. The large hangar and maintenance areas meant any hit in those spaces might destroy the battle cruiser. Plus the Victory was more than a bit blind and defenseless around the stern. “Thae’ll be a problem,” Kilgour had observed. “Means thae i’ we cannae break an’ run, we’ll hae t’ retreat backwards, clutchin’ our bustle an’ flailin’ wi’ our wee ladylike brolly.”

      That image of Earth Victorian times brought up the Victory’s final oddity: complete luxury. Sten already knew the ship had been outfitted for luxury — even the lowest-rank wiper had his own tiny compartment. Paneling appeared to be wood and stone on many of the passageways. The kitchens could efficiently prepare and serve Imperial conference banquets with no strain.

      Sten appreciated this to a degree. A lean, clean fighting machine might sound good in the livies, but Sten knew from his tacship experience that after three or four weeks into a mission, one thing not appreciated was a fresher one had to squeeze oneself into to degrease the body. Especially if that fresher just happened to have a sharp corner cleverly located where elbows and knees went.

      But then there was the Imperial Suite, which included living quarters large enough, it seemed, for an entire Imperial court, plus guest area and troop support sectors, including armories and gymnasiums. Sten was glad to see the latter — he was still aware of the smallish handles he had previously noted in the Imperial mirror.

      The Imperial Suite — if that was