Читать книгу Fleet of the Damned (Sten #4) - Allan Cole - Страница 21

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“… SO THEN WE told this Imperial piece of drakh to put his back taxes where the star don’t shine and get the clot out of our county.”

The big Tahn woman howled with laughter at Mahoney’s story and pounded him on the back.

“Only way to deal with them,” she said. She gave a huge beery belch and peered out into the night. “Turn here.”

Mahoney did as directed, and soon he was topping a rise. Just before them was the glow of the Tahn communal farm that his companion was headwoman of. Mahoney had met her at a local watering hole. Frehda was a big middle-aged woman who had spent most of her years managing the fortunes of a large Tahn enclave. Over vast quantities of beer, chased by a dozen bottles of his cider, they had become fast friends.

Mahoney had readily accepted her invitation to spend a few days at her enclave “to see how we do things in these parts.” She assured him it would be an education. Mahoney had other reasons to believe her; little prickles of rumor and bar talk had led him in this direction.

Even at night the enclave was impressive. As they approached, Mahoney could see many large steel barracks surrounded by what seemed to be a fairly sophisticated security system and nasty razor-wire fencing. As he approached the gated main entrance, the figures of two heavily armed Tahn farmers loomed out.

Frehda shouted a few friendly obscenities at them by way of greeting.

“Who’s the fella, boss?” one of them wanted to know.

“Salesman pal,” Frehda said. “Good man. Drink anybody ’cept maybe me under the table.”

There were chuckles at this. Mahoney gathered that alcohol consumption was just one of many things Frehda was noted for. He had secretly used up nearly half of his ready supply of sobriety pills during the evening to keep even vaguely straight.

“I’ll put him up at my place,” Frehda went on. “Maybe one of you can give him a look-see around in the ayem.”

“Anything in particular you wanna see, mister?” one of the Tahn asked. Mahoney caught an undertone of suspicion. Frehda might be the boss lady, but she was way too drunk for someone to take her at her word on a stranger.

“Got any pigs?” he asked.

“’Course we got pigs. What do you think we are, sharecroppers?”

Mahoney snorted. “No,” he said. “Just that I got a soft spot for pigs. Been studying all my life. I could write volumes on pigs.”

“He can talk them, too,” Frehda said. “Just about wore my ear out till I got him drunk enough to go on to somethin’ else.”

The two Tahn guards relaxed. They chuckled among themselves and waved the gravcar through.

* * * *

Mahoney came awake to blinding sunlight piercing the barred windows of his room, and loud, barked shouts. His head was thumping from last night’s excess—he hadn’t been able to get away from bending elbows with Frehda for hours.

There were more shouts. They had a peculiar quality to them. Like commands? Giving an automatic snort that burned his delicate nose membranes, Mahoney got out of his cot and started dressing. Let us see, Ian, what we can see.

Mahoney blinked out of Frehda’s portion of the barracks. And the first thing he noted surprised even him. Several men were putting twenty or more teenage Tahn through what seemed to be a very militarylike obstacle course. Ho, ho, Mahoney, me lad. Ho, clotting ho.

He wandered over by one of the men and watched the kids go at it. Whenever any of them slowed or got tangled in an obstacle, there were immediate shouts of derision from the adults.

“Whatcha got here, friend?”

The man looked at him. “Oh, you the salesman guy staying with Frehda, right?”

Mahoney snorted an affirmative.

“To answer your question, mister, we’re just givin’ the kids a little physical training. Whittle off some of the baby fat.”

Riiight, Mahoney thought.

“Good idea,” Mahoney said. “Kids these days are lazy little devils. Gotta keep the boot up.”

He looked over at a coiled barbed-wire fence that a large farm boy was vaulting over.

“What’s that contraption?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s a hedgehog. About the same size as all the fencing around here.”

Mahoney had to grab himself by the throat to keep from reacting in some obvious way. So, you call it a hedgehog, do you, mate? Mahoney knew that the man standing next to him was no poor Tahn farmhand. He was a professional soldier sent out by the Tahn military to train young meat for the slaughter to come.

“Must be hell on the britches,” Mahoney joked, rubbing an imaginary sore spot on his behind.

The man thought this was pretty funny. “Least you can sew up pants,” he said.

* * * *

Mahoney spent the next two days lazily touring the farm—which was well off even by Imperial settler standards—making casual talk and casual friends and wolfing down the enormous meals the communal farm kitchen shoveled out.

Except for that first obvious soldier he had met and possibly one or two others, everyone 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.