Revenge of the Damned by Chris Bunch; Allan Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

gave Derzhin backup.
    His backup was Security Major Avrenti. Avrenti, too, was not a warden—experienced prison administrators were in high demand. Avrenti was one of the Tahn Empire's most skilled countersabotage specialists. Anyone who could prevent the planting of a minuscule bomb or the contamination of a war material or who could identify a potential saboteur long before he became active should have had no trouble keeping known malcontents imprisoned within a known and heavily guarded area.
    Avrenti was physically unremarkable. Anyone who met him casually would forget his face minutes after his departure.
    He would have made an excellent spy. He was soft-spoken and nonargumentative, preferring to win through reason and persistence. His one affectation was his wearing of archaic eyeglasses. When anyone asked why he had never had corrective surgery, implants, or replacements, he professed a dislike for medicos. Actually, he had vision very close to normal. He used his glasses as a stall, giving him time to consider the proper answer or policy, just as other beings used fingering devices, writing instruments, or the careful preparation and consumption of stimulants.
    The two men looked down at their charges.
    "I imagine," Derzhin said finally, "that I am expected to make some kind of speech."
    "That seems to be requisite for a warden," Avrenti agreed.
    Derzhin smiled slightly. "You know, Major, that part of business requires an ability to speak publicly."
    "One of the many reasons I preferred to remain what I am," Avrenti said.
    "Yes. I have spoken to lords and drunken roustabouts, but I cannot recollect ever having addressed war prisoners."
    Avrenti did not comment.
    "Actually," Derzhin mused, "it should be quite simple. All I need to do is suggest that they are here to work for the greater glory of the Tahn. If they perform, they shall be rewarded with seeing the next sunrise. If they resist, or attempt to escape… even an Imperial should see the logic in that."
    Again Avrenti was silent.
    "Do you agree, Major? Is that the correct approach? You are more familiar with military thinking than I."
    "I can be of little assistance," the major said. "I do not understand the mind of a soldier who can find himself in the hands of the enemy and not seek self-extinction at the first opportunity."
    Derzhin kept his expression and tone of voice quite neutral. "There is that, of course."
    And he opened the balcony doors and stepped out.

    Police Major Genrikh slammed back into his quarters, wanting to feel out of control.
    He held the solid wood door ready to crash closed—then caught himself. He pushed it shut softly. Then he tore off his Sam Browne belt, intending to hurl it. Again he stopped.
    He had just witnessed a nightmare.
    But should he give in to it? What was the likelihood that his quarters were not bugged? None. Genrikh would have bugged himself.
    Instead, he carefully hung his harness over a chair, opened a cabinet, extracted a bottle, checked the bottle to see whether its level had been marked, drank deeply, and sank back on his bunk.
    This was going to be a disaster.
    Then he cheered himself. Hadn't he been warned? Hadn't he been told, first by Lord Wichman's cutout, then when he was duly if privately honored by a presence with the lord himself?
    But still.
    Genrikh ground his teeth against his bottleneck, producing a singularly unpleasant noise. He had spent half a lifetime as an expert penologist. He knew the way to handle the subbeings that committed crimes. Crime to him was anything that contradicted the Way of the Tahn, which he defined as anything that his current superior ordered.
    Genrikh's mother was a whore; his father was a question mark. He had fantasized, growing up, that his father was a rising officer whose forced marriage had made him seek happiness in other quarters. That did not mean that he saw his mother as a fairy princess—but Genrikh's dreams were never very coherent.
    Genrikh grew up feeling