Sten 5: Revenge of the Damned by Chris Bunch; Allan Cole

Author:Chris Bunch; Allan Cole
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781841490809
Publisher: Orbit Book Co.
Published: 1996-11-30T13:00:00+00:00

It did not—or so, at least, the various star riches he consulted suggested.

The world's name was Smallbridge. About .87 E-size, commensurate gravity, E-normal atmosphere, three AU from a dying yellow star. Climate tropical to subarctic. Flora/Fauna…

The slender report from the Imperial Survey Mission that said that there was nothing particularly interesting about the world of Smallbridge—then called Survey World XM-Y-1134 and many other numerals and letters—other than extensive members of the Orchidae family, giant specimens of Polypodiosida… blur… blur… insect life… blur… blur… nonmalevolent… water potable, with following blur blur presences… following water-dwelling species found edible, worthy of possible commercial exploration… fauna… nothing that would try to eat Sten, with the exception of a small, rather shy catlike creature that might try to nail him if he were passed out in front of its den—maybe. Nothing else of interest—which meant, to the survey crew, that nothing had tried to kill them, no beings of higher development OBSERVED.

Sten appeared to be owner of an eight-tenths-scale Eden, if one that seemed never to have progressed very far.

Now, what had man done to screw it up after discovery? After all, somebody had given Survey World Whatever-it-was a name. Sten fed in the fiche from his own files.

The answer was—nobody. It had been acquired by an entrepreneur who had made his fortune doing something that nobody had ever thought of and had then decided he had a corner on entrepreneuring. He had named the world, built himself and, Sten gathered, his paid companions in joy a rather wonderful mansion, added a state-of-the-art spaceport, and then gone bankrupt trying to make a second, third, and so on fortune.

Once again—an Eden.

Sten swore a rather surprised oath in Low Tahn, suggesting that the hearer's mother had private parts that could accommodate a battalion—and jerked away from the screen, hearing a giggle.

The giggle came from a very young, very tall, very blond woman sitting at the computer table next to him.

"You understood?" he asked.

"I understood."

Sten, all too aware that his somewhat limited social graces probably had not been improved by his time as a POW, made himself blush and apologized.

The woman, who introduced herself as Kim Lavransdotter, explained. She spoke High, Low, Medium, and War Tahn.

She was a researcher and historian, doctor of this in Tahn culture and that in Tahn history, and very pleased that her studies had been honored by a request to come to Prime World and work with Imperial Social Analysis.

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you this," she said, looking worried. "I guess we've got some kind of feed into Intelligence, even though they never say anything."

Sten reassured her.

He had clearances. Right up to and including "Eyes Only—Imperial Staff," although he did not tell her quite that much.

She was very beautiful.

And Sten was very lonely.

He offered to buy her a caff.

She stayed very beautiful.

Sten bought her dinner.

The next day, he took her with him to look up some old friends—Marr and Senn, in their crystal light tower.

She charmed them.

She continued to charm Sten.

And she was very beautiful, he noted the next morning as he studied her, lying naked beside him.

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