Star Risk - 04 The Dog From Hell (27 page)

"Let us go on home, troops," von Baldur 'cast, "and prepare snooks to be cast at our allies."

Riss obeyed the command.

She felt no particular sense of wild victory. She decided that automated battle wasn't her style�and, anyway, generic hammering wasn't very satisfactory.

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FIFTY-TWO � ^ � Chas Goodnight was not a man who believed in overwork, particularly when it came to dirty deeds.

Assassinating almost anyone isn't a terribly difficult job, even the most carefully guarded. The problem comes if the assassinator has the slightest interest in living in freedom after his or her gun goes bang.

Goodnight wasn't a strong believer in one-way trips, and had decided long before that he made a rotten fanatic.

He had himself inserted onto Khazia by a fairly reliable agent, broke contact with the agent's network, and went to ground. He stayed in the People's ghetto even though people might talk, since he figured that was somewhat safer than trying to innocently swim among the Alsaoud as one of them.

He had a full evaluation of the palace, which now included Nowotny's quarters. His first plan was the easy one, just using a large bang. But a variant of that had been done before, and if it failed Cerberus would certainly know a plot was in the works.

Besides, Goodnight valued a bit of subtlety when he got bloody-handed.

The palace was, of course, constantly hiring people in various categories.

The best, for his purposes, would be in the security division.

Goodnight slightly darkened his skin, enough that he could pass for an Alsaoud, and applied for a job.

But Cerberus had that rather well covered�a new hire would spend some time in outlying areas before being trusted in the heart of the great mansion.

Also, at least initially, he would be paired with a more experienced guard.

Chas didn't have time to spare, so he looked at other openings.

He found one as a kitchen scullery type, figuring that no one would be interested in a pot-walloper.

He was right�no one was, particularly since the shift supervisor made sure none of the scut-workers got out of the kitchen, even on a break.

Three shifts of being the low man in the kitchen, and becoming most familiar with arcane kitchen tasks like cleaning the grease trap and polishing steam tables, and he moved on. If he'd wanted a career like that, he could have stayed with the Alliance.

Goodnight thought of another method that he'd used with great success on other worlds�to leave the Alsaoud System, apply for work as a mercenary, reenter the system, and then start being nefarious.

He used the rather exotic com he'd brought with him, which bounced both outgoing and incoming signals through several relay points, to have Jasmine check on the possibilities of that plan.

There really weren't any�Cerberus was tightly screening applicants for any job that sounded like it would get near the palace, and Goodnight wasn't about to join Rasmussen's now somewhat humbled Raiders and bash a square.

Very well, he decided. If I can't do it up close, I'll do it from a distance. Even though he wasn't a huge fan of long-range touches, he didn't consider himself too proud for that option.

The problem there was that Walter Nowotny damned near didn't go out of the palace. When he did, it was to duck into a heavily guarded craft and vanish into the stratosphere, together with a lot of escort ships.

Chas Goodnight was starting to get irked, and understand why the whispery-voiced bastard had lived so long.

He decided, most reluctantly, to go for the obvious, and so he set up a missile and a control station a kilometer away.

Goodnight had a sort of itinerary of Nowotny's, gotten from the still-undiscovered cameras studded around the palace, and knew that Nowotny left his bombproof quarters for his equally bombproof command center just about noon each day, returning at dawn.

That gave Goodnight a route where the man wouldn't be in the open, but would be moving along an evidently unshielded hallway, then through a garden.

It was the best option that he could find.

Grok set up a blurp signal that would alert Goodnight when someone was moving in the garden, which should, at that time of day, only be Nowotny and his immediate bodyguards.

Goodnight let two days pass, making dry runs, thought he had a pretty good chance of success, and determined to go for it.

On the third day, his receiver blurped at the correct time, and Goodnight launched the slender missile. It was no bigger than a man, and the size of a double fist in diameter.

Its launch point was about half a kilometer from the palace�Goodnight couldn't figure a closer secure point.

The missile did just what it was supposed to do, homing precisely on those steps that led out into the garden. It would detonate with a blast that should shred the area, and that would be that.

That was very definitely not that�sensors picked up the missile as it reached the palace walls, predicted its impact point, and, as alarms screamed, a skein of slender magnetic wires shot up from hidden automated launchers around the garden.

The missile touched a wire, was told it had reached that impact point, and exploded.

The blast over the palace walls was fairly spectacular, and gave Nowotny a start.

But no more.

And now the man knew he was a target.

"I'm getting old," Chas Goodnight gloomed as he touched self-destruct buttons and slid out of his launch center.

"Either that, or murder isn't as easy as it used to be."

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FIFTY-THREE � ^ � Even over a com, with a synthed, neutralized voice, Goodnight sounded most piteous.

M'chel thought about the problem, then a flash of sorts came. It had a slightly malevolent quality for all hands that she sort of liked.

She commed Goodnight back at once.

"Now, Chas," she said, grateful for the luxury of being able to grind it in through a lengthy transmission, since the com was being bounced between a dozen relays, "don't give up. You merely need some guidance. We learned in the marines how to give that kind of help to lesser soldiery."

The synthesizer couldn't handle his rather outraged splutter. M'chel ignored the burst of static.

"And we're more than willing to help out our fellows when their strategic planning falls short."

"You realize," Goodnight came back, "that one of these years I'll get you for this, Riss."

"I never worry beyond the next chow call," M'chel said. "Now, stand by, and I should be back to you within the day with an idea or so."

She signed off, actually having had the thrust of an idea, coming from the memory of Grok playing monster on another world for another contract.

M'chel talked to him about it.

"I love this," he rumbled. "I was starting to think I was no more than another damned technician. Nobody seems to be aware I have certain� needs of my own."

Jasmine patted his hand, and Grok bared fangs in what he imagined to be a friendly manner.

The plan, designed to lure Walter Nowotny into the open, went into effect that day.

It took about a week to implement, during which time Chas stewed and watched holos of Walter Nowotny playing Imperator Rex, which hardly improved his mood.

The plan, M'chel admired, was most sneaky and left-handed, if she did say so herself.

She admitted that possibly she could admire generic mayhem if she were the puppetmaster.

Especially when, amazingly, things went perfectly, as they did in this case.

The plot began by picking a target.

That was fairly simple.

"Everyone" knew that, sooner or later, the Alsaoud would be forced to invade Ras and Locand�the fifth and sixth worlds in the system, held by the People�plus, of course, their "homeland"�the asteroids of the Maron Region.

The invasion force was already being created.

The first wave of whichever world Premier Toorman decided to invade, at the behest of Cerberus, would necessarily be an elite formation.

The cheapest way to make heroes, someone discovered a very long time ago, on Earth, was to hand out bits of metal and ribbon called medals. It wasn't necessary to create knights or lords, or grant land. People would cheerfully immolate themselves for one of these chest-hangings.

An even cheaper way to create an elite formation, without going to all the bother and expense of intensive training, selective recruiting or providing the best leaders merely required giving any formation an appropriately special title.

The sad thing, which spoke volumes about the inherent stupidity of mankind, was that sometimes it worked.

Of course, said flashily named formation might realize the fraud, but it wouldn't do them much good, since most of them would shortly become cannon fodder, and their morale, or lack of same, could be tsked over by unreadably dull military historians in the dim future.

Hence the Alsaoud Second Infantry Division, newly dubbed the Second "Guards" Division.

They were headquartered on Khazia itself, in a great, sprawling camp a couple of hours' flight time from the capital of Helleu.

There were two other units that had been named Guards, but the People just happened to have subverted five troops inside the Second, corrupted by that most trustworthy and dependable of causes�money.

That made them the pin-tailed donkey.

The Second was no better or worse than any other Alsaoud battle group, with its own transport, assault, and support units.

Intensive training was begun, and the troops knew they were doomed. It was only a matter of time before someone waved a saber and ordered them into the attack on some airless armpit of a world occupied by hateful people.

Suspicions were confirmed when they began training in space suits.

Some of the brighter members of the Second started reading up on the Maron Region.

Next step for M'chel was developing the problem.

Jasmine, working through the People's agents, had the subverted men and women within the Second start building a rumor.

They weren't to hang themselves out by actual defeatism, but, rather more subtly, to state firmly and patriotically that their designation as a Guards unit proved that the old story about the Second being a jinxed, doomed unit, wasn't true.

Of course, denial spreads the word faster than formal confirmation, and everybody wanted to know what this was about a jinx.

M'chel let those denials percolate for three or four days, while Spada and Grok prepared the next step.

This was the acquisition of a perfectly normal lifter cab.

It was packed with explosive, and had a simple autopilot installed.

At just midday meal the next day, the taxi went screaming over the Second's outer posts, and slammed into an enlisted mess hall just as it began serving.

Riss had coldly picked the lower ranks dining area, because they were the most innocent, and therefore the most likely to feel incredibly wronged and complain loudly.

The disaster killed eighty-three, wounded ninety. The disparity from the usual killed-wounded ratio was due to the sudden flash fire that shot through the debris after the explosion.

Now the rumors of the Second's hard luck spread more rapidly, particularly when one of their field grade officers had the insensitivity to shrug the deaths off as having affected "only nonvital personnel."

Grok was turned loose next.

Spada inserted him behind a hill about three kilometers beyond the main gate to the Second's base.

He didn't bother bamboozling the primitive security on the perimeter fences, but slipped through the gate itself, deep in the night, as the gate guards were blinded by an entering convoy of lifters.

It was very foolish, frequently lethal, to judge Grok's stealthiness by his bulk.

He knew, from studied aerial holos pirated from Khazia libraries, just where to go�the division commander's quarters.

There were two sentries in front.

They died, very quickly and silently, but messily.

Grok went through the front door, not bothering to unlock it, although that would have been simple. He thought it would be more impressive if the heavy, solid door was merely smashed in half.

He left as quickly as he'd entered.

Behind him, the division commander's body sprawled outside his bedroom, his head still rolling two meters away. In the bedroom, a distinctly underage officer cadet, squalled loudly.

Now the rumors of jinx spread more rapidly.

A pair of outside agents of the People, with access to the holos, made sure reports were carefully written and given prominent play, denying the existence of the Second's bad luck.

The new division commander snorted about the jinx nonsense, and was quite busy preparing the unit for a major war game, although no one could figure why such a game, which posited the invasion of Khazia by two divisions of the People, would have anything to do with the planned invasion of the People's worlds.

Nevertheless, the Second moved into the field, lock, stock and litter bag.

Division Commander II prided himself on being "one of the troops," and so had a small bubble shelter instead of the usual prefab palace most generals favored when they actually had to go into the boondocks and associate with their smelly underlings.

He also traveled by standard small lifter, with only a pair of aides and a single bodyguard/driver.

One of the People's agents put a beeper on that lifter so, on the second day of the problem, as confusion was beginning to settle toward normalcy, it was easy to track DCII as he hastened to solve the latest catastrophe which one of his previous brilliances had most likely caused.

His lifter was just outside a unit's position when it inexplicably grounded.

His driver had landed at the general's order when the commander saw what appeared to be a strange animal in the brush.

Grok had deliberately allowed himself to be seen by the man, just as he allowed himself to be seen by the line soldiers as he roared out from cover, slaughtering the driver and one aide in his onrush, and smashing the second aide as he tried to protect his leader.