to have to do some serious backtracking.”
He slid out of his heavy pack, nearly falling on the steep icy slope. Backtracking? He glanced behind him.
Way, way, way down below, he could see the double herringbone tracks of their skis, leading up the slopes toward this clotting excuse for a mountain they were stuck on. About two kilometers before, the gradient had become too steep, and they had strapped their skis to their packs and put on crampons. A klick after that, the two of them had roped up as the grade grew steeper still.
Two klicks… one kilometer… that was the distance in a direct, near-vertical line. In actual travel, they had been off their skis since just after dawn, and the day was getting late. And they had better reach a decision on what to do next quickly—Sten would rather not spend the night in a sleeping bag that he would have to anchor to keep from sliding off the mountain.
If for no other reason than that he had designs on Cind’s virtue…
Sten had arrived at his planned base of operations—the Bhor home worlds in the Lupus Cluster—without encountering any Imperial warships. Next, he would prepare his specific campaign and go to war.
He still had to get approval for using their worlds from the Bhor Council. But at least he had been greeted with cheers, invitations to drunken feasts, and volunteers who wanted to join him killing someone, anyone.
However, it took time for the Bhor elders to assemble, and even longer for them to reach a decision, given the Bhor tendency to endlessly explore any aspect of anything—all spokesBhor welcome. Which was probably a legacy from the severe lack of entertainment in their primitive days during long arctic nights.
Rykor herself had wanted some time and privacy to consider what could be done, from her perspective, against the Empire.
Neither set of Sten’s potential allies had materialized. Not that there was any guarantee they would—both the Rom and Wild’s smugglers might have realized an alliance with Sten was more likely to produce death than freedom.
And Sten’s troopies—from his embassy assistants to his Bhor and Gurkha heavies to the Imperial sailors—had suffered through a very long tour. Essentially no one had had any time off since they had arrived in the Altaics. Even the Gurkhas were tired and weary of blood.
Tired beings make mistakes, and Sten could afford none.
He spread his four ships out among the Wolf Worlds, hid them well on rural airports, and gave his troops some R&R. Sten worried his presence among the Bhor would be discovered by the inevitable Imperial agents, but Kilgour had told him not to fash. He already had a Plot, and would take care of that little matter before his own vacation. Which involved Otho, vast amounts of stregg, and whatever trouble he could get into.
Cind had the op order for Operation Vacation already drafted. A conventional lover might have looked for tropical oceans and romantic islands with ten-star resorts and twenty bow-n‘-scrapers for each guest But Cind was a descendant of the Jann, had grown up among the Bhor, and was a hard, experienced field soldier. To her, vacations meant the wilderness—and Sten’s own ideas weren’t that different.
The Bhor home planet was still glacial, even though the Bhor had reluctantly removed some of the glaciers as civilization and the birthrate increased. Scattered across the world were volcanic “islands”—oases in the midst of freeze. Most of them had been settled aeons ago by the Bhor, but there were still a few that were unpopulated.
Cind had planned on kidnapping Sten and taking him to one of those, and had been trying to figure out which of the possible areas could provide the best skiing and even some winter climbing. Sten had taught Cind rock scrambling, and she was determined to become at least his equal and, she hoped, his master.
She had found something better on a recent aerial photo-mosaic. Not on any map. Completely unknown. All that
He slid out of his heavy pack, nearly falling on the steep icy slope. Backtracking? He glanced behind him.
Way, way, way down below, he could see the double herringbone tracks of their skis, leading up the slopes toward this clotting excuse for a mountain they were stuck on. About two kilometers before, the gradient had become too steep, and they had strapped their skis to their packs and put on crampons. A klick after that, the two of them had roped up as the grade grew steeper still.
Two klicks… one kilometer… that was the distance in a direct, near-vertical line. In actual travel, they had been off their skis since just after dawn, and the day was getting late. And they had better reach a decision on what to do next quickly—Sten would rather not spend the night in a sleeping bag that he would have to anchor to keep from sliding off the mountain.
If for no other reason than that he had designs on Cind’s virtue…
Sten had arrived at his planned base of operations—the Bhor home worlds in the Lupus Cluster—without encountering any Imperial warships. Next, he would prepare his specific campaign and go to war.
He still had to get approval for using their worlds from the Bhor Council. But at least he had been greeted with cheers, invitations to drunken feasts, and volunteers who wanted to join him killing someone, anyone.
However, it took time for the Bhor elders to assemble, and even longer for them to reach a decision, given the Bhor tendency to endlessly explore any aspect of anything—all spokesBhor welcome. Which was probably a legacy from the severe lack of entertainment in their primitive days during long arctic nights.
Rykor herself had wanted some time and privacy to consider what could be done, from her perspective, against the Empire.
Neither set of Sten’s potential allies had materialized. Not that there was any guarantee they would—both the Rom and Wild’s smugglers might have realized an alliance with Sten was more likely to produce death than freedom.
And Sten’s troopies—from his embassy assistants to his Bhor and Gurkha heavies to the Imperial sailors—had suffered through a very long tour. Essentially no one had had any time off since they had arrived in the Altaics. Even the Gurkhas were tired and weary of blood.
Tired beings make mistakes, and Sten could afford none.
He spread his four ships out among the Wolf Worlds, hid them well on rural airports, and gave his troops some R&R. Sten worried his presence among the Bhor would be discovered by the inevitable Imperial agents, but Kilgour had told him not to fash. He already had a Plot, and would take care of that little matter before his own vacation. Which involved Otho, vast amounts of stregg, and whatever trouble he could get into.
Cind had the op order for Operation Vacation already drafted. A conventional lover might have looked for tropical oceans and romantic islands with ten-star resorts and twenty bow-n‘-scrapers for each guest But Cind was a descendant of the Jann, had grown up among the Bhor, and was a hard, experienced field soldier. To her, vacations meant the wilderness—and Sten’s own ideas weren’t that different.
The Bhor home planet was still glacial, even though the Bhor had reluctantly removed some of the glaciers as civilization and the birthrate increased. Scattered across the world were volcanic “islands”—oases in the midst of freeze. Most of them had been settled aeons ago by the Bhor, but there were still a few that were unpopulated.
Cind had planned on kidnapping Sten and taking him to one of those, and had been trying to figure out which of the possible areas could provide the best skiing and even some winter climbing. Sten had taught Cind rock scrambling, and she was determined to become at least his equal and, she hoped, his master.
She had found something better on a recent aerial photo-mosaic. Not on any map. Completely unknown. All that
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