REGARDING STEN #5:
REVENGE OF THE DAMNED
Chris said, “Colditz.”
I said, “I don’t have anything like that in the medicine
cabinet, Chris. But if you think you’re coming down with something, how about a
nice tequila and orange juice.”
“No, no,” Chris said. “I meant Colditz Castle. The one the
Germans turned into a POW camp.”
Light dawned. “You’re thinking of a likely place where the
Tahn stash Sten and Alex.”
“I’ve been reading up on it,” Chris said. “And it’s perfect.
A thousand-year-old fortres set on a hill. Cellars and warrens and turrets and
huge walls and even some by-God catacombs. The Germans kept all their high
security risk prisoners there.”
“Ah, like The Great Escape,” I said, referring to the
fact-based movie starring Steve McQueen.
“But better,” Chris said. “The Colditz prisoners made the
Great Escape guys look like pussies. They were incredible escape artists. Drove
the Germans crazy with all their escapes. They even built a glider in an attic
and were within a couple of days of flying over the walls when the Allies
liberated the camp.”
I shook my head in wonderment. “Shit, a glider,” I said.
“We can make Sten like ‘Big X’ in the movie,” Chris said.
“He and Alex can organize a dozen escape plans at once to cover their own
breakout. And then once out, they can mount an underground war against the
enemy.”
“I’ve been thinking about ways they might set up an Imperial
invasion,” I said. “Political dirty tricks. Undermine the confidence of the
enemy, and so on and so clotting forth.”
“Perfect,” Chris said. “I’ll bring the Colditz books over
tomorrow so you can come up to speed.”
He pulled out a yellow notepad. “Now we can start making
lists of possible allies for Sten,” he said. “With some cool aliens to keep Del
Rey happy.”
At the time, Del Rey required science fiction authors to
include aliens of some sort in ever book. A rule that had been established by
science fiction master Lester del Rey when he founded the Random House
speculative fiction line.
I said, “I’ve been thinking of some mole people types to be
Sten’s tunnel kings.”
Chris nodded. Then frowned. “But why would they be
imprisoned by the Tahn?” he asked. “The Tahn are assholes and all, but not
particularly bigoted assholes.”
“I was toying with the idea of making them sort of like
Seven Day Adventists,” I said. “They distrust all governments. So the Tahn lock
them up to keep them from poisoning the minds of the populace. You know, the
usual excuses tyrants make for oppressing people.”
“Done and done. Anarchy rules,” Chris said. “Seven Day
Adventist mole people it is.”
He started to scrawl notes. Then looked up. Put an
experimental palm to his forehead as if checking for a temperature. Gave a
little cough.
“You know,” he said, “I think I’m maybe coming down with
something after all.”
I laughed and climbed to my feet. “One Mexican screwdriver
coming up,” I said.
NOTE #1: In order to introduce the castle, which we called
Kolditz, I’m using the second chapter of the book, instead of the first.
NOTE #2: The ending of the previous book – Fleet Of The
Damned – which sets up this novel, was inspired by C.S. Forester’s “Ship Of The
Line” from his Hornblower series.
*****
REVENGE OF THE DAMNED
BY ALLAN COLE &
CHRIS BUNCH
CHAPTER TWO
TWO EMACIATED, SHAVEN-headed men crouched, motionless, in
the thigh-deep muck.
One of them had been Commander Sten, formerly commanding
officer of the now-destroyed Imperial Cruiser Swampscott. Sten had
assumed command of the obsolete rust-bucket in the final retreat from Cavite
and had fought a desperate rearguard action against an entire Tahn fleet. One
ultramodern Tahn battleship had been destroyed by the Swampscott's
missiles and a second had been crippled beyond repair, even as the Tahn blasts
shattered the cruiser.
In the final moments, Sten had opened his com and sent a
surrender signal. He had collapsed long before the Tahn boarded the hulk that
had been a fighting ship. That almost certainly had saved his life.
Seconds after Sten went out, Warrant Officer Alex Kilgour, a
heavy-world thug, ex-Mantis Section assassin, and Sten's best friend, struggled
back to consciousness.
He bloodily registered, on the Swampscott's single
functioning screen, Tahn tacships closing in. He foggily thought that the Tahn,
barbarians, "ae th' Campbell class," would not properly honor the man
who had destroyed the nucleus of a Tahn fleet.
More likely, Sten would be pitched out the nearest lock into
space.
"Tha' dinnae be braw nor kosher," he muttered.
Kilgour wove his way to a sprawled body, unsealed the suit, and tore away the
corpse's ID tags. He checked a wall-mounted pressure readout. There were still
a few pounds of atmosphere remaining in the CIC.
Sten's suit came open, air hissing out, and his ID tags were
replaced. Kilgour heard/felt the crashing as the Tahn blew a lock open and
decided that it might be expedient for him to be unconscious as well.
Fewer than thirty gore-spattered, shocked Imperial sailors
were transferred from the wreck of the Swampscott to the hold of a Tahn
assault transport. Among them was one Firecontrolman 1st Class Samuel Horatio.
Sten.
Fed and watered only as an afterthought, their wounds left
untreated, twenty-seven survived to be unloaded on a swamp-world that the Tahn
had grudgingly decided would be a war prisoner planet.
The Tahn believed that the highest death a being could find
was in a battle. Cowardice or surrender were unthinkable. According to their
belief, any Imperial soldier or sailor unlucky enough to be captured should
have begged for instant death. But they were also sophisticated enough to
realize grudgingly that other cultures felt differently and that such
assistance to the dishonored might be misinterpreted. And so they let their
captives live. For a while.
The Tahn saw no reason why, if prisoners were a burden to
the Tahn, that burden should not be repaid. Repaid in sweat: slave labor.
Medical care: If the prisoners included med personnel, they
had a medic. No supplies were provided. Any Imperial medical supplies captured
were confiscated.
Shelter: Prisoners were permitted, on their own time, using
any nonessential items permitted by the camp officers, to build shelter.
Working hours: At any task assigned, no limitations on hours
or numbers of shifts.
Food: For humans, a tasteless slab that purported to provide
the necessary nutrients. Except that a hardworking human needed about 3,600
calories per day. Prisoners were provided less than 1,000. Similar ratios and
lack of taste were followed for the ET prisoners.
Since the prisoners were shamed beings, of course their
guards were also soldiers in disgrace. Some of them were the crafty, who
reasoned that shame in a guard unit was better than death in an assault
regiment. There were a few, including guards who had previously been trusties
on one of the Tahn's own prison worlds.
The rules for prisoners were simple: Stand at attention when
any guard talks to you, even if you were a general and he or she was a private.
Run to obey any order. Failure to obey: death. Failure to complete a task in
the time and manner assigned: death. Minor infractions: beatings, solitary
confinement, starvation.
In the Tahn POW camps, only the hard survived.
Sten and Alex had been prisoners for over three years.
Their rules were simple:
Never forget that the war cannot last forever.
Never forget you are a soldier.
Always help your fellow prisoner.
Always eat anything offered.
Both of them wished they had been brought up religious —
faith in any or all gods kept prisoners alive. They had seen what happened to
other prisoners, those who had given up hope, those who thought they could not
filter through animal excrement for bits of grain, those who rebelled, and
those who thought they could lone-wolf it.
After three years, all of them were long dead.
Sten and Alex had survived.
Their previous training in the supersecret, survive-anything
Mantis Section of the Empire's Mercury Corps might have helped. Sten also knew
clotting well that having Alex to back his act had saved him. Kilgour privately
felt the same. And there was a third item: Sten was armed.
Years earlier, before he had entered Imperial service, Sten
had constructed a weapon—a tiny knife. Double-edged and needle-sharp,
hand-formed from an exotic crystal, its edge would cut through any known metal
or mineral. The knife was sheathed in Sten's arm, its release
muscle-controlled. It was a very deadly weapon—although, in their captivity, it
had been used mostly as a tool.
That night it would assist in their escape.
There had been very few escapes from the Tahn POW camps. At
first those who had tried had been executed after recapture, and recaptured
they almost always were. The first problem—getting out of a camp or fleeing
from a work gang—was not that hard.
Getting off the world itself was almost insurmountable. Some
had made it as stowaways—or at least the prisoners hoped the escapees had
succeeded. Others escaped and went to ground, living an outlaw existence only
marginally better than life in the camps, hoping that the war would eventually
end and they would be rescued.
Within the last year there had been a policy
change—prisoners attempting an escape were not immediately murdered. Instead
they were purged to a mining world, a world where, the guards gleefully told
them, a prisoner's life span was measured in hours.
Sten and Alex had made four escape attempts in the three
years they had been prisoners. Two tunnels had been discovered in the digging,
a third attempt to go over the camp wire had been aborted when their ladder was
found, and the most recent had been abandoned when no one could come up with
what to do once they were beyond the wire.
This one, however, would succeed.
There was movement in the reeds nearby. Alex pounced and
came up with a muddy, squirming, squealing rodent. Instantly Sten had the small
box he held open, and the water animal was popped inside and closed into
darkness. Very good.
"You two! Up!" a guard's voice boomed.
Sten and Alex came to attention.
"Making love? Sloughing?"
"Nossir. We're hunting, sir."
"Hunting? For reeks?"
"Yessir."
"We shoulda killed you all," the guard observed,
and spat accurately and automatically in Sten's face. "Form up."
Sten didn't bother to wipe the spittle. He and Alex waded
out of the paddy to the dike and into line with ten other prisoners. The column
stumbled into motion, heading back toward the camp.
There were three guards, only one of whom was carrying a
projectile weapon; they knew that none of those walking dead were a threat.
Sten held the box as steady as possible and made soothing noises. He did not
want his new pet to go off before it was time.
The reek—an odoriferous water animal with unusable fur, rank
flesh, and spray musk glands below its tail—was the final tool for their escape.
NEXT: STEN #6 – RETURN OF THE EMPEROR.
*****
*****
A NATION AT WAR WITH ITSELF: In Book Three Of The Shannon Trilogy, young Patrick Shannon is the heir-apparent to the Shannon fortune, but murder and betrayal at a family gathering send him fleeing into the American frontier, with only the last words of a wise old woman to arm him against what would come. And when the outbreak of the Civil War comes he finds himself fighting on the opposite side of those he loves the most. In The Wars Of The Shannons we see the conflict, both on the battlefield and the homefront, through the eyes of Patrick and the members of his extended Irish-American family as they struggle to survive the conflict that ripped the new nation apart, and yet, offered a dim beacon of hope.
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
NEW: THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION OF
THE HATE PARALLAX
THE HATE PARALLAX: What if the Cold War never ended -- but continued for a thousand years? Best-selling authors Allan Cole (an American) and Nick Perumov (a Russian) spin a mesmerizing "what if?" tale set a thousand years in the future, as an American and a Russian super-soldier -- together with a beautiful American detective working for the United Worlds Police -- must combine forces to defeat a secret cabal ... and prevent a galactic disaster! This is the first - and only - collaboration between American and Russian novelists. Narrated by John Hough. Click the title links below for the trade paperback and kindle editions. (Also available at iTunes.)
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.
BASED ON THE CLASSIC STEN SERIES by Allan Cole & Chris Bunch: Fresh from their mission to pacify the Wolf Worlds, Sten and his Mantis Team encounter a mysterious ship that has been lost among the stars for thousands of years. At first, everyone aboard appears to be long dead. Then a strange Being beckons, pleading for help. More disturbing: the presence of AM2, a strategically vital fuel tightly controlled by their boss - The Eternal Emperor. They are ordered to retrieve the remaining AM2 "at all costs." But once Sten and his heavy worlder sidekick, Alex Kilgour, board the ship they must dare an out of control defense system that attacks without warning as they move through dark warrens filled with unimaginable horrors. When they reach their goal they find that in the midst of all that death are the "seeds" of a lost civilization.
*****
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
 |
Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
|
In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
*****
