Revenge of the Damned (Sten #5). Allan Cole
the shouting had stopped. Instead of heavy blows, she could hear muttering. What was going on?
* * * *
Chetwynd had heard the brouhaha clear across the hangar-sized factory. He quickly checked his guards and their work parties. Everything seemed okay. Wait. Something or someone was missing.
He maneuvered his enormous bulk around a chattering machine and took off at a dead run. Chetwynd dodged the waving jaws of a forklift, skittered around a corner, and came to a stop. It was Cloric—again. The man’s face was flushed with anger, and his eyes were bulging out from the intensity of his shouting. It was almost orgasmic. The object of his affection, Chetwynd noticed, was a much smaller man—an Imperial prisoner of war. The reason for Cloric’s anger was instantly apparent. The two men were standing in the middle of a large jumbled pile of hydraulic tubing that spilled across the floor. Behind them was the bank of doors to the test labs. On one lab a red light burned, showing that it was in use.
Chetwynd assumed a casual pose and strolled over. Whether he intervened would depend on only a few simple factors. On the one hand, the prisoner might have done something wrong or, even worse, sneaky. In which case Chetwynd would shrug his shoulders and abandon the prisoner to his fate. On the other hand, Cloric had a reputation even among the most callous of the guards as a person who lashed out for no apparent reason. Not that anyone really cared; it was just considered unprofessional. Chetwynd had a more important reason to be concerned. As he was the shift commander, the prisoners were ultimately his responsibility. And the word had come strongly down that there was a severe shortage of labor, and therefore the prisoners had suddenly gained value. They were not to be wasted. If Cloric were allowed to run amok, they would quickly run out of people for the work parties.
There was one other reason. Chetwynd knew firsthand what it was like to be a prisoner.
Cloric finally spotted him and went on the defensive without a pause.
“I can handle this, Chetwynd.”
“Snarl at me once more, Cloric, and I’ll show you what I can handle.”
Cloric took in the mastodon that was Chetwynd. Cloric was big but not that big. Chetwynd had at least fifty kilos on him, a great deal of which was muscle. And although as the boss of the work gangs he was not Cloric’s immediate superior, Chetwynd had a great deal of clout, even with the muckity-mucks of factory security. The source of the clout was a bit of a mystery, although talk was that Chetwynd was a dispenser of many favors. As for what he got in return, even Cloric was not dumb enough to ask.
All those thoughts took a great deal of time to lumber through the man’s mind. Chetwynd waited patiently and was rewarded with a slump of shoulders and a stubborn but still hangdog expression.
“He was tryin’ somethin’,” Cloric muttered, waving at the prisoner and the jumble of tubing. “See. He’s got all the good ones mixed up with the bad ones.”
Chetwynd did not bother letting Cloric finish explaining. It would take much too long and consist mostly of lies. The prisoner, he was sure, would be much more creative. He turned to the man, who had been looking back and forth as they talked, obviously wondering what was going to happen to him. The prisoner was Sten.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Chetwynd asked.
“It was sort of an accident,” Sten said. “See, I was moving the reject bin out of the way, and the officer grabbed my shoulder. Scared the clot out of me, I can tell you. Knocked over that bin and the other—”
“That’s a lie,” Cloric protested. “I was watchin’ him the whole time. He was gonna mix ‘em together. I could tell.”
“But sir,” Sten said. “Did you actually see me doing anything like that? Where were you standing?”
Cloric was so confused by Chetwynd’s presence that he found himself actually discussing the matter with the prisoner instead of smacking him for his insolence. He pointed to a position about twenty meters away; he had obviously been lurking behind a gravlift. Sten studied the indicated spot with great seriousness. After a moment, he shook his head.
“No, sir. I hate to disagree with you, but I don’t think you could have seen much over there. Those plascrates would have been in the way.”
“They were at first,” Cloric said, “but I moved some, see?” He pointed at a gap in a large stack of crates waiting for shipment.
“Gee, sir. That is pretty good,” Sten reluctantly admitted. “But wouldn’t my back have been turned to you, sir?”
Chetwynd waved them both to silence. The discussion was not getting them anywhere. Besides, there was something else preying on his mind. The prisoner looked very familiar. He could not quite put his finger on it, but he was sure he knew the man from someplace. And that someplace was cop!
“Don’t I know you?” he asked.
Sten peered up at him. He, too, saw a vague kind of familiarity, but he kept it hidden. “No, sir. The prisoner doesn’t believe so, sir.”
Chetwynd looked closer. He could not shake the feeling that somewhere, sometime he had seen the man in the uniform of a Tahn cop. But what was he doing there acting like an Imperial prisoner? If Chetwynd was right, then the man was a snoop, and he and Cloric could find themselves in deep drakh.
“What’s your name?”
“The prisoner’s name is Horatio, sir,” Sten said.
He was worried. Chetwynd’s face had finally clicked into position. It was when he and Alex had been on the trail of that little bomber, Dynsman. Sten remembered clearly the attack of the gurion. The thing had rushed through the surf at them on its six legs, its tooth-lined stomach reaching out of its body at them. And the whole time, the man in front of him had lolled laughing on the beach, surrounded by a score of lovely female prisoners. Sten and Alex had been posing as Tahn prison guards, so they really could not blame Chetwynd for his lack of concern for their fate. He wondered how Chetwynd had ever gotten off the prison planet. More importantly, how in the clot had he gone from prisoner to boss guard?
Wars produced strange things, Sten had noticed. He had also noticed that those things were rarely funny.
“Okay, Horatio. We’ll let this go. This time. Next time your butt is ground meat!”
“Thank you, sir,” Sten said with some amazement.
Before Cloric could protest, Chetwynd raised a hand to silence him.
“Get these parts loaded,” he told Sten. “We’ll run ‘em back through again.”
“Yessir. Right away, sir.”
Sten was a blur of eager motion as he began picking up the scattered tubing as Chetwynd and Cloric walked away.
“Whyn’t you let me thump him?” Cloric asked. “He deserved it.”
“Probably,” Chetwynd said. “But do us both a favor. Keep your eye on him. But your hands off. Got me?”
Cloric nodded. He did not know what was going on, and he was pretty sure he did not want to find out. As for Chetwynd, he still thought he recognized Sten. But the cop business was probably pure foolishness. Probably. Still, he was not taking any chances.
* * * *
L’n went at her rote tasks with new interest. She even hummed a Kerr lullaby to herself as she worked. She had been startled and badly frightened when the man Horatio had slipped into her lab. She almost had not flipped on the small blue light that was just barely comfortable to her eyes but would have allowed Horatio to see. For a moment she had almost let him bump around in the dark while she found a place to hide.
But the man had stayed perfectly still and whispered her name. Finally, she had responded. Without hesitation, the man walked directly to her, as if he could see in the dark as well as she could.
Horatio seemed to understand her right away: He made soothing