Читать книгу Revenge of the Damned (Sten #5) - Allan Cole - Страница 12

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE HUGE TAHN prison transport ship hissed down onto Heath, the capital world of the Tahn systems. After proper security was set, ports whined open and the prisoners debarked.

Sten and Alex marveled as they clanked down a gangway wearing heavy, archaic, and useless leg and arm irons, with weighted plas chains between them. They had expected to be unloaded onto the Tahn mining deathworld. Instead—

“W’ been here before,” Alex whispered, using that motionless mouth and jaw whisper that all professional prisoners learn.

“Yeah.”

Lord Pastour’s dictate might have come from the all-highest, but the Tahn bureaucrats still found a way to take their half kilo of flesh. A single Tahn transport was dispatched to all the prison worlds to pick up those incorrigible war prisoners who were to be purged into the new prison. It was a slow, filthy transport.

Therefore, when the transport unloaded, the best and the sneakiest did not appear such as they clanked out, smelling like drakh, unbathed, uncombed, surly, and snarling.

The only measure of respect they had, although none of the prisoners realized it, was that armed Tahn soldiers flanked their passage through the streets of Heath at five-meter intervals. Those guards were the combat element of an entire Tahn assault division whose deployment to a combat zone had been delayed by three weeks merely so that a motley 1,000 scruffy men, women, and beings could be led to their new prison.

Sten clanked forward, head down, hands down, shuffling as the chains clanked—the perfect picture of a properly programmed prisoner. But his eyes flicked from side to side, observing as subtly as Alex’s commentary had been delivered.

“Clottin’ Heath,” he whispered.

“Na,” Alex whispered back. “Th’ last time we bein’t on this world thae were gladdins an’ parties.”

“Try war, you clot.”

And Alex observed the city with new eyes.

The last—and only—time they had been on Heath had been under cover, with instructions to find a murderer and extract him. But that had been years before, and just as Sten had suggested, war had ground Heath into grayness.

There were few vehicles to be seen—fuel was restricted to necessary military movements. The streets were deserted. Shops were boarded up or, worse, had few items in their windows. The rare Tahn civilian they saw either disappeared quickly from the streets or, seeing the soldiery, raised one ragged, whining cheer into the cold air and then scurried on about his or her business.

Their route led them through narrow streets, the streets climbing upward.

Sten’s psywar mind analyzed: If you have the worst enemy scum in your hands, would you not arrange a triumphal parade? With all your citizens spitting and cheering because we have the barbarians in our hands? With full livie coverage? Of course you would. Why haven’t the Tahn done that?

Exploratory thinking: They don’t think like I do. Possible.

They can’t muster the citizens on call. Wrong—any totalitarian state can do that. Maybe they don’t want to show how badly the war is hurting them if they are presenting Heath as being the proud center of their culture and don’t want off-worlders to see the reality. Most interesting, and worth considering— Sten’s analysis was cut off as the column of prisoners was shouted to a halt and screaming Tahn soldiers ordered them to attention. Sten expected to see a float of combat cars move across the street in front of him. Instead, there was one cloaked officer, with flanking guards on foot, riding some kind of animal transport.

“What’s that?”

“Clottin’ hell,” Alex whispered. “A bleedin’t horse.”

“Horse?”

“Aye. A Earth critter, w’ nae th’ brains ae a Campbell, tha’ bites you an’ is best used ae pet chow.”

Sten was about to inquire further, but the officer in charge of the column ordered them forward again, and for the first time he looked up the cobbled narrow street.

His guts clamped shut.

At the top of the rise was a huge stone building. It sat atop the hill like a great gray monster, its towering walls reaching upward, capped by a ruined octagonal pinnacle that still reached some 200 meters toward the overcast sky.

Alex, too, was staring.

“Lad,” he managed. “Ah dinnae think’t th’ Tahn are takin’ us to church. Tha’ be’t our new home!”