Battlecry: Sten: Omnibus One (Sten Omnibus) Read Online Free PDF Page B

third sector, one Myal Thorkenson actually doubled his quota. Now, isn’t that an ideal worth emulating?’
    Sten looked at the machine and thought about kicking it. Last time he’d tried that, he’d limped for two days.
    Sten’s robot prodded him with its voice.
    ‘Hurry now. Another chair.’
    He picked up another seat from the pile in front of the long silver tube. Then he carried it back to where the robot squatted, waiting.
    Sten and his robot were at the tail end of a long assembly line of movers, the capsules used in the pneumatic transit systems common to most industrial worlds.
    The robot was the technician. Sten was the dot-and-carry man. His job was to pick up a seat from the pile, lug it inside the tube to the properly marked slot, and then position it while the robot heat-sealed the seat to the frame. It was a mind-numbing job that he never seemed to do quite right for his mechanical straw boss.
    ‘Not there,’ the robot said. ‘You always do it wrong. The position is clearly marked. Slide it up now. Slide it up.’
    The robot’s heatgun flashed.
    ‘Quickly, now. Another.’
    Sten lumbered back down the aisle, where he was met by a worker whose name he couldn’t remember. ‘Hey. You hear? I just got promoted!’
    ‘Congratulations.’
    The man was beaming. ‘Thanks. I’m throwing a big bash after shift. Everyone’s invited. All on me.’
    Sten looked up at the fellow. ‘Uh, won’t that set you back – I mean, put you even with the promotion?’
    The man shrugged.
    ‘So I card it. It’ll only add another six months or so to my contract.’
    Sten considered asking him why it was so important to rush right out and spend every credit – and then some – of his raise. How he could throw away another six months of his life on … He already knew the answer. So he didn’t bother.
    ‘That’s right,’ he sighed. ‘You can card it.’
    The Mig rushed on.
    Leta was about the only bright spot in Sten’s life those days.
    In many ways, she was the typical joygirl. Hired on the same kind of backwater planet Sten’s parents had come from, Leta just knew that when her contract ran out and she immigrated to one of the Empire’s leisure worlds, she’d meet and sign a life-contract with a member of the royal family. Or at least a merchant prince.
    Even though Sten knew better than to believe in the whore with the heart of gold, he felt that she got real pleasure from their talk and sex.
    Sten lay silently on the far side of the bed.
    The girl slid over to him and stroked his body slowly with her fingertips.
    Sten rolled over and looked up at her.
    Leta’s face was gentle, her pupils wide with pleasure drugs.
    ‘Ssswrong,’ she muttered.
    ‘Contracts. Contracts and quotas and Migs.’
    She giggled.
    ‘Nothin’ wrong with you. An’ you’re a Mig.’
    Sten sat up.
    ‘I won’t be forever. When my contract’s up, I’ll get off this clottin’ world and learn what it is to be a free man.’
    Leta laughed.
    ‘I mean it. No carding it. No contract extensions. No more nights on the dome drinking. I’m just gonna put in my time. Period.’
    Leta shook her head and got up.
    She took several deep breaths, trying to clear her mind.
    ‘You can’t do it.’
    ‘Why not?’ Sten asked. ‘Hell. Even nineteen years isn’t forever.’
    ‘You can’t do it because its rigged. The whole thing. Controlled. Like your job. Like the games. Like … like even this. They set it up so you never get off … so you’re always tied down to them. And they do it any way they can.’
    Sten was puzzled.
    ‘But if it’s rigged, and nobody ever gets off Vulcan, what about you?’
    ‘What about me?’
    ‘You’re always talking about what you’ll do when you leave, and the planets you want to see and the men you want to meet who don’t smell like machine oil and sweat and … and all that.’
    Leta put a hand over Sten’s mouth.
    ‘That’s me, Sten. Not you. I’m leaving. I’ve got a contract, and that gives