CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Sten wanted a little R&R. Badly. He knew he had reason enough to feel brain-, body-and nerve-damaged, but guilt kept whispering in his ear. He ought to be sitting in the back of the courtroom, listening to the careful work of the Tribunal as it moved toward its conclusion.

This was a moment in history. What would he tell his grandchildren? "Yeah, I was around. But was off gettin' drunk and tryin' to get laid, so I can't tell you a whole lot."

Kilgour seized the logical high ground. "Clot th' gran-babes y' nae hae, an' likely ne'er sire. Gie y'self off. Thae'll be bloody work't'come. Gore aye up't' our stockin' tops."

Mahoney backed him, telling Sten that he did not think there was any likelihood that the Tribunal would want any evidence submitted of the blown murder run on Earth. "Still, Admiral. I'd prefer you were out of town if they start callin' witnesses. Get going. Enjoy yourself. I'll send if I need you.

"Which will be soon. Not surprisingly, the privy council is planning a response.

With moils and toils, they've put together a fleet of their bullyboys. Most loyal, most dedicated, and all that drakh. Translation—those who got their fingers the dirtiest proving their loyalty during the purge.

"When they arrive, we should have a proper welcome. Otho's shaking out a strike element from his ships. He thinks nothing could be finer than to put you on the bridge." Mahoney laughed. "See how fascinatin' a career in the military is? One day a police spy, the next an admiral again."

Sten kept to himself his feelings about the military in any configuration, retired to his quarters, and thought about his vacation. Go to some tourist town and troll for company? No, he thought not. Not that he was suffering the pangs of lost love—at least he didn't think so. But no, it didn't feel right.

Cities? Not that, either. He had heard the yammer of the ugly throngs on Prime, and right now any city reminded him of that.

Stop brooding. Hit the fiche. You'll find something that jumps out at you.

He did.

Rock climbing—the hard way.

It was possible to climb anything using artificial aids-climbing thread, piton guns, chocks, jumars. So, of course, the "pure" climbers revolted and climbed with no aids whatsoever.

Sten thought that could be mildly suicidal. He was not that depressed. But there was a bit of appealing madness there.

He picked a climb—a vertical needle deep in one of Newton's wilderness areas—and equipped himself with a minor climbing outfit that included enough artificial aids to be able to belay himself as he climbed. He bought a tent and supplies and cursed when he realized he would have to carry a com and a miniwillygun. Most Wanted, remember, boy.

He found Alex and told him he was off. Kilgour, far, far too busy minding security on the Tribunal, barely had time for a farewell grunt and an arm around the shoulders.

Sten found his rented gravcar—and something else. He had forgotten that the word

"solitary" was banned, at least until the present emergency was over and the council safely in their graves or prison cells. Waiting was his seven-Bhor-strong bodyguard and Cind, equipped similarly to Sten. He thought of protesting, but realized he would lose.

If not to them then to Kilgour or Mahoney. It was not worth the battle.

But he issued strict orders.

They were to pitch camp separately from his, at least a quarter klick away. He didn't want their company—sorry to be rude—and he certainly did not want them on the rock with him.

"I don't think the council's assassins—if they have any tailing me, which I don't believe—will go boulder-swarming to make the touch."

The Bhor agreed. Cind just nodded.

"Easy order to follow, Admiral," one Bhor rumbled. "The only record my race has of climbing is when we were chased by streggan."

So Sten's R&R began on a somewhat less than idyllic note. That slightly off-key note continued to sound. The pinnacle was everything it had looked on the vid, punching straight up for almost a thousand meters through the low clouds. It was at the end of a small, rising alpine meadow with its own spring and bone-breakingly cold pond. The meadow was surrounded by the pinnacle's sky-touching big brothers. No one lived in the meadow, except for some small tree-dwelling marsupials, some long-wild bovines, and, Sten thought, a small night-loving predator he never saw.

He pitched his tent, and his bodyguard followed orders, pitching their camp one quarter kilometer, to the exact pace, away, semihidden behind brush on the other side of the pond.

Sten cooked, ate, and went to bed just after dusk. He slept dreamlessly, then rose, collected his climbing pack, and headed for the rock.

For a few hours he lost himself in the rhythm of the climb, the feel of the rock under his palms, and the attention to balance. He wedged a nut into a crack, tied himself off, and dug into his day pack for a snack. He looked up. Not bad. He was almost 250 meters up. Maybe he could spot a bivvy site farther up, do a one-man siege later on, and actually get to the summit before his vacation ended. He had already spotted at least six other fascinating routes he wanted to try.

Then he looked down.

Eight faces looked up at him. His bodyguards were sitting in a semicircle near the base of the pillar, doing their job. Hell. Climbing was not a spectator sport.

He thought of throwing a piton or shouting something. Come on, Sten, he told himself. Aren't you being a little childish? However, he found himself climbing down a couple of hours before he had planned, and the descent was not nearly as mind-absorbing as going up had been.

The next day, he tried another route, this one chosen not just for its interest, but because he did not think there was an observation point for his damnably faithful bodyguards.

They found one anyway. He forced himself to ignore them and climbed on. But his concentration, his ability to lose himself, was… not shattered. He still reveled in what he was doing. But he was… aware of other things.

That night, after he had cooked a rather unimaginative, underspiced curry and eaten solo, he found himself sleepless. Across the pond, he could see the low flicker from the Bhor's campsite. They must have found some dry wood and built a tiny fire.

He could almost, but not quite, hear voices. Almost, but not quite, hear the crystal chime of a laugh.

Sten swore to himself again. He hunted through his expedition pack and found a bottle. Then he put his boots back on and found his way around the pond to the firelight. There were only four bodyguards around the fire. He tapped the bottle against a tree and stepped forward. Cind and a Bhor came out of the blackness and lowered their weapons.

"What's wrong?" she snapped, eyes sweeping the night.

"Uh… nothing. I… just had trouble getting to sleep. I thought… if I wasn't intruding…"

They welcomed him to their campfire and politely sipped from the bottle of Imperially synthesized "Scotch" Sten had brought along until they could find an excuse to dig out their own supply. Stregg. The Eternal Emperor had once said that stregg was to triple-run moonshine—whatever that meant—as moonshine was to mother's milk.

Regardless, Sten and his bodyguard got royally potted. The quiet alpine meadow was broken by occasional shouts of "by my father's frozen buttocks" and other Bhor toasts. The evening was culminated when three Bhor threw Sten into the pond.

A very juvenile evening, Sten thought confusedly when he woke the next day. Then he hurt too badly to assess the adultness of his situation. He was still in the Bhor camp.

His head was pillowed on one Bhor's calf, and another Bhor was using his stomach for a pillow. Sten realized that he was being attacked by lethal air molecules, smashing into his body everywhere.

Cind and a Bhor walked—lopsidedly—into the camp.

"Wake up, you scrots," she snarled. "It's your shift. Oh, Christ, I hurt."

"Hurt quietly then," Sten whimpered. He found the bottle of Scotch that was still unfinished and chanced a swallow. No. No. His stomach tried to climb the distant pillar.

He got to his feet. His soles hurt. "I am going to die."

"Do it quietly, then. Sir. Admiral." Turnabout was fair and all that.

By rights, Sten should have proven his ability at command and taken everyone for a five-klick run or something equally Admirally-Heroic. He managed to strip off his coveralls and—clot decency—wade into the pond until the freeze told him that the molecules were not attacking. Then he pulled his coveralls back on and decided to eat something.

There was no climbing done that day.

But from that point, the R&R became something very different from Sten's original plans.

One of the Bhor asked about climbing. Sten showed him some of the tricks on a nearby boulder. Cind had already taken a basic climbing course, although the course had specialized in going up the sides of buildings.

And so it went. Climb during the day. Twice he just went for hill-scrambling around the mountain bases nearby. At night, they ate communally. Sten moved his tent into the Bhor campsite.

He spent a lot of time with Cind.

She was easy to talk to. Sten supposed this was some kind of breach of discipline.

What discipline? he asked himself. You aren't even an admiral any more—technically.

Even if you are, do you want to be? He managed to get Cind to stop calling him by his rank, and even to drop most of the "sir's" with which she salted her speech.

He told her

about

the

factory

hellworld he

had grown

on.

He

mentioned—briefly—his family. He told her about Alex Kilgour, and the many, many years they had adventured together.

He did not tell war stories.

Cind, at first, was disappointed. Here was a chance to learn from the greatest warrior of them all. But she found herself listening to other tales—of the strange beings he had encountered, some human, some otherwise, some friendly, some less than that.

Again, there was no gore to those stories.

The alpine meadow heard, many times, the chime of crystal.

Cind talked about how strange it had been, growing up as the daughter of the warrior sect of a jihad-prone religion, a religion not only shattered by war but one whose gods had been proven frauds and degenerates. It had seemed natural to her to gravitate toward the Bhor.

"Although now I wonder sometimes. Was I just, going from wanting one kind of belief-shelter"—she used the Talameic word—"to another?"

Sten raised an eyebrow. True or not, it was a sophisticated observation from someone as young as Cind.

He told her about the worlds he had seen. Tropic, arctic, vacuum. The redwoods of Earth. His own world of Smallbridge.

"Perhaps… I could show it to you. One day."

"Perhaps," Cind said, smiling very slightly, "I would like to see it. One day."

They did not sleep together. Cind might have gone to Sten's tent, if he had asked.

He did not.

A very odd R&R, Sten mused, as his self-alloted vacation time expired and they loaded the gravcar. Not what I expected…

But maybe what I needed.