Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) Read Online Free Page A

The word crawled out of Sten’s mind: brainburn.
    He told his father about what he’d seen. Amos grimaced. ‘That’s the secret you gotta learn, boy. You got to zig when they zag.’
    ‘What’d I tell you about zigging, son?’
    ‘I couldn’t, pa. There were four of them, and they was all bigger than me.’
    ‘Too bad, boy. But there’s gonna be a lot of things bigger than you come along. How you gonna handle this one?’
    Sten thought for a minute.
    ‘They won’t look nigh as big from the back, would they, dad?’
    ‘That’s a terrible thought, Karl. Terrible. Especially since it’s true.’
    Sten got up.
    ‘Where you headed?’
    ‘I’m … gonna go play.’
    ‘Naw. First you’re gonna let that black eye go away. And let people forget.’
    Two weeks later, one of the four boys was shinnying up a rope in exercise period when it broke and dropped him twenty feet to the steel deck.
    Three days after that, two more of the group were exploring an unfinished corridor. It was probably just their bad luck to be standing under a wallslab when the fasteners broke. After the boys were released from the hospital, the Counselor reprimanded their parents.
    The leader of Sten’s attackers was just as unfortunate. Out after curfew, he was jumped from behind and battered into unconsciousness. After an investigation, the Counselor said it had probably been a Delinq – a member of one of the wild gangs that roamed the abandoned sectors of Vulcan, one step ahead of brainburn.
    Despite the explanations, Sten was left pretty much alone after that.
    ‘Karl. Gotta have a word with you.’
    ‘Uh … yeah, dad?’
    ‘Me and the other folks been to a meeting with the Counselor.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘You wonderin’ what he wanted?’
    ‘Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sure I am.’
    ‘Don’t have any idea, do you?’
    ‘Nossir.’
    ‘Didn’t think you did. Seems that some Mig’s kid went and invented something. Some kinda spray. You don’t know anything about that, do you, boy?’
    ‘Nossir.’
    ‘Uh-huh. This spray smells just like … well, like when the sewage recycler blew up down on Corridor Eighteen-forty-five. Remember that?’
    ‘Yessir.’
    ‘Kinda quiet tonight, aren’t we? Anyway. So somebody went and sprayed this on the Counselor and four of those aides he’s got. Sprayed on their pants where they sit down. Is that a laugh you’re hidin’?’
    ‘Nossir.’
    ‘Didn’t think so. The Counselor wanted all of us parents to find out who’s got themselves an antisocial kid and turn him in.’
    ‘What’re you gonna do, dad?’
    ‘Already done it. Dropped by the microfiles. Your ma talked to the librarian, while I sort of looked at who’s been reading books on chemistry.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Yeah. Oh. Unfortunately, I went and forgot to give them records back.’
    Sten didn’t say anything.
    ‘My pa told me once – before you go setting a man’s foot on fire, you best make sure there’s at least six other people with torches in their tool kits. You follow what I mean?’
    ‘Yessir.’
    ‘Thought you might.’
    One of the best times was what Sten always thought of as the Off-shift Xypaca.
    Xypacas were incredibly nasty little carnivores that had been discovered on some hellworld by the Company’s probeships. Nobody knew why the crew had brought back specimens of the psychopathic little reptiles. But they did.
    Measuring barely twenty centimeters in height, the Xypaca had a willingness to use its claws and teeth on anything up to a hundred times its own height. One of Sten’s teachers, originally from Prime World, said Xypacas looked like mini-tyrannosaurs, whatever they were.
    If the Xypaca hated almost everything equally, it had a special hard place in what passed for its heart for its own species. Except during the brief breeding cycle, the Xypaca loved nothing more than tearing its fellow Xypaca apart. Which made them ideal pit-fighting animals.
    Amos had just been rewarded by the Company for figuring out his