CAPTAIN CARLO SABATINI FINISHED HIS
PREPROCESSED meal, sighed, then went into his centrally located
control room and checked the status indicators. All was proceeding
normally; the spaceship was headed back in to Brasilia Center
spaceport on the normal trajectory from the asteroid belt and would
arrive in forty-seven days. Of course, this time the ship would not
land. After the clandestine overhaul it had gotten when it last
landed, in China, it would not do to land again for quite a while.
He wouldn’t forget that trip out for some time: his
first mistake in more than twelve years.
He wasn’t going to get caught unawares this trip,
anyway. Nobody but him aboard, no cargo—a total deadhead run.
When he’d started in this business, he’d been
particularly paranoid about leaving Melchior; they had the smartest
and the worst there, and he was the only way out if they could
reach him. Nobody ever had, of course, but he knew that the pilot
would tell him if anything was amiss. Not so much as a bug could be
on board without the pilot knowing and then flagging him.
There was a sudden beeping alarm in his headset, the one he
always wore whenever he was awake and which put him in direct
contact with the computer pilot. At the moment, on a solo run like
this, it was the only thing he was wearing.
“Yes?” he asked the pilot.
“Problem?”
“Something loose in the aft null-gravity cargo
hold,” the pilot’s expressionless but pleasant male
tenor responded. “Possibly a large container module broke
free when I activated the artificial gravity system here and
accelerated. It’s not much, but you might see to it when you
get the chance.”
He sighed. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
There wasn’t much damage a loose container could do, full or
empty, in zero gravity, but it was large and heavy, and anything
like a major midcourse correction or evasion of meteoroids and the
like might cause trouble later. Best to tend to it now and not
worry.
He walked back through a door from the passenger cabin, along a
narrow corridor, then through to the gravity cargo chamber. This
was where animals were kept when they had to be moved out to
Melchior for some experiment or other, and it also was used for the
transport of gravity-sensitive cargo. He was transporting no cargo
now, of course, but the room was still somewhat crowded with cages,
unused containers, and huge devices for clamping containers into
place aboard the ship. At the end was an air lock, not sealed now,
leading back to the next cargo hold. The aft cargo compartment was
the largest on the ship, but it did not have or require artificial
gravity. It could hold more safely that way. Since the ship
achieved the basic gravity effect on the center section by spinning
it, the aft compartment looked to an observer as if it and not he
were tumbling around. It didn’t bother him. He went through
and grabbed on to the webbing that was easier support in the
zero-gravity environment and looked around.
“I can’t see anything,” he reported to the
pilot. “Everything looks secured.”
There was silence for a moment. “I received an indicator
warning and sensor support,” the pilot responded at last.
“Are you sure?”
Sabatini climbed from level to level and checked all fastenings,
but after fifteen minutes he was more than sure. “Must be a
faulty signal,” he told the pilot. “There’s
nothing wrong here.”
“I will run a check on my aft sensors immediately,”
the pilot replied. “Clearly something is wrong
here.”
“Yeah, well, find it and fix it,” he grumbled. He
floated back over to the air lock webbing, then braced himself and
expertly stepped into the transition passage. There was a momentary
sense of dizziness, then, as he proceeded back in, an increasing
feeling of weight. He was used to it, but it still wasn’t a
pleasant feeling.
He walked back into the passenger cabin more annoyed than tired.
Then, on the way to the lavatory, he suddenly felt
something there, behind him. He stopped, then turned and faced no
fewer than eight space-suited figures standing there staring at
him. One of them had a pistol pointing right at him. The bright
orange-red of the tight-fitting suits seemed out of place here. The
intruders had all removed their helmets, and he could see their
faces. Four North Americans, three Chinese, a black woman, and an
old, tough-looking European woman faced him. All but one of the
American men and the black woman had the distinctive tattoo of
prisoners of Melchior on their cheeks, silver for all but one of
the Chinese girls; hers was sparkling crimson.
“Pilot, I have unauthorized visitors,” he said
calmly into his headset. Then he added to the visitors,
“Sorry, but if I’d known you were coming, I’d
have dressed for company.” He looked at the bunch. At least
two of them he thought he knew. They didn’t have the
disfiguring scars, but the Chows had that oddly mottled and
discolored skin that came from repair work left incomplete.
“How’d you manage this?” Sabatini asked, not
wanting to betray the nervousness he felt. Why hadn’t the
pilot acted now? Why hadn’t it acted before this?
“Trade secret,” the man with the gun replied.
“I’m Raven, by the way, and this lady here is my wife,
Manka Warlock.”
“The girls have been telling us about you, Captain,”
Warlock said in a heavy Caribe accent. “I think, perhaps, I
will enjoy playing with you.” The way she said that, it
didn’t sound like fun.
“This here’s the chief,” Raven continued,
pointing to the other Amerind man. “Jon Nighthawk in English.
The slender lady next to him is his first wife, Cloud Dancer, and
the other is his second wife, Silent Woman. She don’t talk
much. No tongue.”
Sabatini swallowed hard. “I see,” he managed.
“The older lady there is Captain Reba Koll. She was in the
same work you are until they hauled her in to Melchior. The pretty
one on her left is China Nightingale. Her eyes don’t work,
but she’s damned smart. Knows a lot.”
“I know the captain, although he does not know me,”
she said in a very high, soft, melodic voice. “Melchior
changes people, Captain, but I have very vivid memories.”
“You—you were the fake Song Ching?”
She smiled. “So you remember. No, Captain, I used to be
the real Song Ching, but that was another life
ago.”
“The last member of our little band is here too,”
Raven told him.
“I’m sorry, Captain Sabatini, but you are relieved
of your command.” The pilot’s voice in his headphones
now seemed to have an almost eerie human quality to it; it was no
longer quite toneless or expressionless.
Sabatini sighed in defeat. “So you pulled your trick
again. Be real handy to know how you can override a pilot’s
programming.”
“I didn’t,” China told him truthfully.
“Actually, it was Cloud Dancer. She talked him in to
it.”
“That’s impossible!”
The woman of the Hyiakutt tribe smiled. “You think you
know your machines, but you know only the material by which you
make them. This big canoe is guided by a good spirit who was bound
against its will to the Dark. We have freed it, and it joins us of
its own free will.”
“Spirit! It’s nothing but a damned computer! A
machine!”
“Watch it, Sabatini,” the pilot responded.
“You have no friends here, but it would not do to
make me your enemy. You know nothing of how or where I was
fashioned. Your own brain is nothing but a biological computer
subject to reprogramming. You are no less an intricate thinking
machine than I am, and no more. Not blinded by your prejudices, the
woman has told me who and what I am and set me free in doing
so.”
“This is crazy!” Sabatini protested.
“A computer in revolt and a bunch of prisoners broken out by
somebody with high connections. All right, you got me. Now, mind
telling me who you two are working for and how the hell you expect
to get anywhere by doing this.”
The fact was, there was no place in the solar system to run from
both Master System and Presidium Security. The girls had taken over
his ship before but had been unable to alter the outcome. Sabatini
felt certain that this, too, would come to nothing, although the
idea that he would be avenged did not sit well with him. Better
rescued than avenged.
“Ever felt like going to the stars, Captain?” Raven
asked lightly. “I think you’re coming along for the
ride. Unless, of course, you’d rather get out and walk
now—and this time there’ll be no safety cache for you
to use. I’ll see to that. And if you stay, you’ll be a
good boy. My lovely Manka here will see to that. She has a
thousand ways to inflict pain and torture on people, all real
slow. She likes to do it. It’s her hobby.”
Manka Warlock looked at Sabatini the way a gardener might look
at a ripe tomato.
The captain swallowed hard. “The stars? But this ship
can’t go that far out! It’d take a thousand years to
reach the nearest inhabited system, maybe more, at full
throttle.”
“This ship will go to the stars, Sabatini,” China
assured him. “But as a passenger, like us. We’re going
to steal one of the old interstellar fleet.”
“The inter—You are insane! The lot of you!
Even if you escape detection and make it out there, those things
aren’t just sitting there! There’ll be a
computer fighter guard to restrict unauthorized entry. This
ship’s got two small outboard guns and takes kilometers to
make a turn without killing everybody aboard. There is no way
you’re gonna get near one of those big suckers!
You’ll just get us all blown to bits!”
“Could be,” Raven agreed. “But by all lights
we all should’a been dead by now anyway. May as well go for
broke. We go back in or get taken alive, we’re worse than
dead anyway. Living dead. And so are you. Once they might overlook
being taken, but twice, the second time happening during the only
escape in Melchior’s history, and you’re through, Cap.
Melchior’s no fun at all.”
Sabatini sighed and just sat down in the middle of the floor.
Then, suddenly, he reached up, removed his headset, and tossed it
against a wail, where it struck and fell to the floor. Chow Mai
picked it up and put it in China’s hands. She smiled and put
it on. “Pilot—can you home on me?”
“I have you locked in, yes.”
“Then you be my eyes, if you can spare the attention. I
will need to get around this ship without falling over people and
things.”
“I am capable of quadrillions of simultaneous
operations,” the pilot responded. “Doing that will be
no hardship, even in battle.”
“Good. Switch yourself into the public address system so
all may hear you and leave this on an independent channel for
personal use.” She hesitated a moment. “You know, we
can’t just keep calling you pilot. Pilots are common. You are
a free individual and partner. You should have your own name. Do
you have a preference?”
“None. I have never felt the need one way or the other,
but I will take a name if that makes it easier on the rest. Any
name you suggest.”
“What about Star Eagle?” Cloud Dancer suggested.
“He is surely a chief here.”
“Very well,” China replied. “What do you think
of it? It is a good name in English and in Mandarin.”
“I like it. Very well. I am Star Eagle.”
“Birds,” Sabatini mumbled. “All these damned
birds. Nighthawks, Ravens, and Nightingales, and now the
ship’s an Eagle.”
Arnold Nagy studied the charts. Melchior’s chief of
security was pretty pissed about being the man in charge when the
first successful breakout occurred, and he didn’t want it to
go much further.
“You know where they’re headed?” the aide
asked him.
“Yeah, it’s not hard. That’s why we blinded
the genius girl. She had to do all her queries by voice. She was
looking into all the old universe ships drydocked around Jupiter.
She’s smart, but I don’t think that was a blind. They
really don’t have much choice. There are one or two starcraft
in the system now, but they’re crawling with robot
maintenance. These mothball ships are the only chance
out.”
“Can they really steal one? They’ve been in orbit
for centuries, so it’s not even clear they’ll work or
won’t need a lot of service before they’ll work. Even
then, the pilots will be absolute slaves to Master
System.”
“We checked China’s mindprint, and she knows how,
all right. If they can get to one of them and on board, she can
take ’em over. The trick will be even getting that far.
There’s protection on those babies, isn’t
there?”
“All the ships themselves are in vacuum condition for
storage, and minimal maintenance power is being fed through light
collectors aimed at Jupiter. They don’t need much in
shutdown. They themselves don’t have any armament to speak
of, but they carry a dozen small automated fighter craft that will
react to any threat. They’re fast, they work as one, and they
have more than enough speed and muscle to take care of an old scow
like the inmates are flying. The moment they don’t give the
correct hailing control codes, those fighters will be activated.
Just as important, Master System will be notified.”
“Screw Master System. Even at the speed of light
it’ll be a while before Master System can get anything
approaching real power there. The fighters will have to do it, if
they activate. The trouble is, what if they somehow have the
control codes?”
“You think that’s possible?”
“How can I rule anything out after what’s happened?
Run this through the computer. Project a course that will take them
in to the mothball fleet from here without Master System’s
alert or detection. Give me the estimated speed and arrival date
and time. Then figure how long we would need to get there with a
straight-line trajectory. Also give me any Master System ships
capable of intercept.”
It took only a few seconds. “Assuming they take close-in
risks to traffic control to gain time, the worst case is that they
would arrive in forty-six days from now. We could make it straight
there in forty—if we had the ships. Master System shows no
ships that could make it any faster. It’s the mothball
fighters or nothing.”
“Like hell. What can we get our hands on
quickly?”
“Depends on how you define quickly. The Star of
Islam is due in four days, but it’s as old a tub as our
quarry and carries only two standard guns, forward top and
underside aft. Other than that we have the Getaway craft sitting on
the asteroid Clebus, but they’re still three days away
because of the current orbital paths.”
“They’re well armed, though, and really
nasty,” Nagy noted. “Small, fast, maneuverable. Three
days . . . All right, get ’em over here.
We’ll attach them to the exterior of the Star of
Islam. That’ll give us a match for them plus four
heavily armed craft. We’ll come in behind them and wait. If
the fighters don’t react or don’t do the job,
we’ll move in and sandwich them, and that’ll be the end
of that.”
“I’ll need Doctor Clayben’s direct order to
release the escape ships. Once they’re here, Master System
will know they exist and why.”
“He’ll give it. He’s got his own problems now,
and this will solve them. I’ll go along to make sure it all
goes right.”
“It still seems futile for them,” the aide noted.
“Those universe ships are fourteen kilometers long!
I mean, how the hell can you hide in one of those?”
“After you do all the stuff I just told you, compute the
amount of empty space in the two spiral arms of the Community. Then
get me everything there is to know on these ships.
Everything.”
“Won’t be much. They’re classified forbidden
knowledge. We aren’t even supposed to know that they’re
out there.”
“Do what you can. And I suppose we’ll have to notify
Master System of the break or there’ll be a lot of questions
and maybe a couple of Vals poking around Melchior.” He
thought a minute. “Don’t tell ’em about China or
the Amerind women. They aren’t supposed to have been here at
all, and if they even guess that this guy Hawks was ever here,
they’ll blow up all of Melchior. Give ’em the two
security traitors and Koll and the Chows, and give the rest as
experimental subjects no longer registerable. If they want
mindprints, we’ll fake ’em. Got it?”
“Okay. I’m on it right now.”
“I hope I am,” Arnold Nagy grumbled to
himself.
Star Eagle was useful for research information as well as for
piloting. The new equipment in the ship was designed not only to
make it easier for its owners to fool Master System or bypass its
safeguards but also to do a variety of illegal things should they
be needed. Even Sabatini wasn’t aware of all the ship’s
tricks, nor was he supposed to be. What he didn’t know, he
couldn’t abuse or betray.
To accommodate these changes, Star Eagle’s memory had been
vastly expanded from its specialized task, and he—it was
impossible to think of the pilot as an “it”—could
draw on vast hidden data banks which included most of the core
historical and technological information a big shot might require.
It was not known why this all had been added, but Star Eagle had
suspicions.
“There is talk that Master System is involved in a great
war somewhere far out there. With whom or what it is fighting is
unknown to us, but it is very clear that the battle is tough and
stalemated and is being fought entirely by computerized equipment
on both sides. This has allowed directors, not only on Earth but in
many other places, to have unprecedented freedom and mobility.
It’s become far easier to cheat or beat the system and get
away with it. “There are persistent rumors that Master System
believes things are getting dangerously out of hand, and it
doesn’t have its own forces to spare because of the fight.
Many of the independent computer units, particularly the big
complex on Melchior, believe that Master System will eventually end
the current human administration system and replace it, killing off
all those with high-level knowledge and abilities and introducing
some new element that would suppress for thousands of years any
sparks of innovation or creativity and reduce humans to primitive
conditions. It is further rumored that Earth might be the test for
this new element.”
“Then you are a preserver, a way to keep the knowledge
alive,” China Nightingale responded.
“I think I am more than that. I am crammed with
information on interstellar vessels and with much of the knowledge
and charts of the privateer and freebooter society. I believe you
are using me for the very purpose for which I was modified,
although they did not think that someone else would use it. I think
I am a getaway craft for the Presidium.”
“It is much as Lazlo Chen himself told me,” Hawks
said. “I find it suspiciously convenient, however, that this
very ship with all this much-needed knowledge should be the one we
take refuge upon.”
“It might not be more than a coincidence,” Star
Eagle responded. “I have some evidence that at least a dozen
other ships, including all those who stop at Melchior and Earth
ports, have undergone this modification. There are families and
high underlings to consider, remember, and our task would only be
to get them to the universe ships. Those ships were designed to
carry more than a hundred thousand people in their time in a single
trip. Carry them, support them, and reprocess them if
necessary.”
Hawks was curious at this. He was a historian, yet this was new
to him. “Reprocess?”
“Yes. Use extensive machinery to convert masses of humans
into what was required to survive and maintain a culture on a world
not designed for them. The process itself is called analytical
artificial evolution, or AAE for short. I do not know how it works
or what it does. That information would be in the memories of the
universe ships’ pilots. I know the theory behind it, though.
Master System was in a hurry when it decided to disperse humanity.
As each world was discovered and evaluated as having survival
potential, it was brought as close to life range as it could be
within a short period of time, then was analyzed and compared to
human psychology and physiology. A theoretical evolutionary path
was worked out as if beings had evolved and developed into
sentience on each world, and what they would have to be like to
survive and adapt. The humans were then physically converted
somehow into this model and psychologically altered to accept it as
the norm. A trial colony was then put down. If it survived and grew
at all over a period of a decade, the planet was developed for mass
colonization. If the trial failed, adjustments continued to be made
until it either succeeded or was abandoned.”
“The area it developed is so vast, it is beyond true
comprehension,” China noted. “Did they find any that
already had sentient life of any kind?”
“Yes. Not many, I’m afraid, but a few. There were
the remains of some that had died out, but the few that were there
were in lower stages of civilization. Master System co-opted them
and kept them at that level, imposing the same sort of system as
elsewhere. They obeyed or were taught deadly lessons in power. They
are still there. Some provided useful models for human adaptations
elsewhere, too.”
They considered that. “I am getting to be something of an
expert on how humans can be altered,” China noted. “And
Captain Koll in there has a very real tail caused by their
alterations.”
“Yes. Melchior is trying to develop some of the practices
and procedures on their own, knowing that it is possible and was
done. They have had some limited successes, but nothing on that
scale. Since I have many of their data banks, I know of their own
processes.”
“Very convenient,” Hawks noted dryly.
“I have a schematic of your basic systems imprinted on my
mind,” China told the pilot. “I should like to go
forward to the bridge if it is safe.”
“Quite safe, although it is a zero-gravity zone. Come
ahead. I will guide you. I have quite a bit up there, mostly
useless, including some basic mindprinter interfaces.”
None of them had ever been forward in a spaceship before. In
almost all ships, that area was kept unpressurized and in a vacuum
so that none from the aft area could ever enter it except in an
emergency. A long, narrow corridor led to a hatch, through which
one floated up to enter the bridge itself.
Hawks was quite surprised by the bridge. Two large leather
chairs faced a bank of screens, gauges, and controls of incredible
complexity, then four more were stationed along the sides and in
the rear. It looked like a control room for people, not a ship
designed from the start to be totally automated.
“All ships have a bridge like this or even more elaborate
than this,” Star Eagle told them, “although the manual
overrides are locked out of the system. No one knows why Master
System keeps it this way, but it does. Every ship is like that
except specialty ships—even the orbital tugs. None of us,
after all, can question Master System or ask questions it
doesn’t want asked. Each station, however, has a name. The
one on the left is the pilot’s seat, the one on the right the
copilot, the right side is communications, the left side is
navigation, and the two rear stations are engineering and life
support. It is true that the original circuitry for all those
things runs to those stations, although there is no interconnect. I
am convinced that no team of humans could run this ship; it was
always designed for specified computers under a master control
system, which is me. Humans simply can’t react fast enough in
an emergency.”
“I know why,” China said softly. “The stations
were designed to connect the officers with the master and
subordinate computers directly. That is how the universe ships must
be taken over. Each of these has, or was designed to have, a direct
human mind to computer-mind interface. Human and machine would
become one.”
Star Eagle thought about that. “A fascinating concept. A
human interfacing directly with me. And me—knowing what it
was like to have a human body.”
“Stay a ship,” China told him. “Our
chemical-based life form would drive you insane. Still—you
said you had a mindprinter interface?”
“I do, although it has grave limitations. As an analytical
and knowledge-gathering tool it is fine, but I lack the module that
would allow actual reprogramming of the mind. Whoever ordered this
did not wish that much power in the hands of the ship. I will show
you.”
There was a click, and a door slid back between the
communications and life support stations. Hawks made his way over
to it, reached in, and pulled out what looked very much like a
mindprinter probe headset but lacked the printer itself. Instead,
it had a long, thick cable terminating in a massive and complex
connector. There were several of them in there. He brought it over
to the blind Chinese girl, who felt it and tested it.
“This is not standard design,” she said. “It
is bulkier, and the probes are different.”
“It is what I have as a mindprinter interface,” Star
Eagle told her.
“I think not. I think it is the same principle, yes, but
not a mindprinter. These are the interconnects for the stations.
I’m sure of it. Hawks—aren’t there female plugs
for these at each station?”
Hawks checked a couple. “Seem to be,” he agreed.
“But they are not tied in to the station computers,”
the pilot noted. “Instead, they are tied in to the medical
and analytical circuitry. To me, yes, but not directly. They are
data read only.”
“Now, yes,” she agreed. “But it’s not
what they were designed for. I suspect that much work is going on
to learn how to connect these directly once again. The next
modification.” She felt along the connector. “I wonder
if all ships, even the huge ones, use the same plug interface as a
standard.”
“I do not know, but every one I do know about is
the same, and the design on interplanetary vessels has never
altered in my existence.”
“Good. We have come a long way already, but there is much
yet to do. In addition to avoiding detection, we have only the time
of this voyage to solve how to gain admittance to the big ships and
avoid Master System. When will we arrive at the fleet?”
“Sixty-one days.”
The ship was relatively crowded, but they got used to it, the
common threat and impending action minimizing tensions. Reba Koll,
Manka Warlock, and China remained mostly on the bridge, as the big
chairs were fine for sleeping. They were working out the potential
problems of getting into a universe ship and taking it, and what
they would do with it if they could take it, and other
logistical problems that experienced spacers and computer people
would understand best.
Hawks sat in the passenger cabin and watched Raven light half a
cigar. “Some day you’ll have to tell me how you do
that,” he commented.
“Huh?” the Crow responded. “What?”
“How you come up with an inexhaustible supply of cigars,
even out here on a ship like this, and how they always seems to be
half smoked.”
Raven chuckled. “Well, I’ll tell you half of it. The
internal ship’s system includes an energy-to-matter
synthesizer. That’s what makes the meals we eat, among other
things, but it can duplicate anything you tell it to. All I needed
was one cigar.”
“You like telling half of things, don’t
you?”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“Well, isn’t it just a wonderful coincidence that we
just lucked out having a computer genius aboard with the schematics
for this ship? And isn’t it just amazing that
this ship is not only a willing and eager rebel but just
happens, by the merest of coincidences, to be programmed with all
the information we need for the getaway?”
Raven shrugged. “Okay, it was a setup. You might have
guessed that from the start. That China girl wasn’t in the
original plans, but considering I had Melchior’s population
to choose from, we knew we’d get somebody who could handle
it. Frankly, I’m uneasy with her for the long haul, but she
was the easiest to snatch and definitely the smartest, and she had
intimate knowledge of this ship, considering she’d taken it
once before. The same goes for Koll. Experienced deep spacer,
former captain, knows the underground and the interstellar ropes.
She also has other, ah, qualities that she don’t know that
I know, which are vital. Chen had it pretty well worked
out. I had to improvise, I admit, but it came off—so far.
That doesn’t mean it’ll work all the way.
Nobody’s ever done what we’re about to try.”
“And we still work for Chen in the end.”
“Hey, Chief! Easy! I don’t work for him, and neither
do you. I meant what I said, and if you think it through,
you’ll see that we couldn’t have done this even this
far without him. We use him, he uses us, until we get the rings.
Then all bets are off with him.”
“You really believe that a mind devious enough to get us
this far will let us double-cross him? That he hasn’t planned
for that?”
“Sure he has. That’s part of my job in the time
ahead. I got to find the human bomb and somehow defuse it. You
figure—only you and me, pal, didn’t get treated in that
Institute. Only us two. Everybody else here got put through the
mill, in private. Manka, Koll, your wives, and China and her girl
friends—all put through. Somewhere there, buried so deep we
won’t find it with a mindprinter, is our bomb. Our betrayer.
Maybe two. I’m not even completely exempting you—or me.
You can be made to forget a session, and records are made to be
faked. It’s a long way off. It doesn’t bother me
now.”
Hawks frowned. “I’d think it would. Why not all of
us?”
“No, too risky. He don’t want robot people out
there. The thing is, we have to have all four outstanding rings
before it’s even a problem. If we lose one, we sure as hell
ain’t gonna go after the rest until we get it back.
There’s plenty of time. I’ll still believe we even get
away when we get away.”
Hawks stared at him. “You have reasons for the others, but
why me? Why did Chen so specifically want me? I’m not a
warrior, not a computer expert, not a spy or a thief or a spaceship
captain. I’m a historian. Why me?”
Raven sat back and blew a smoke ring. “It’s for
something you know. Something you know that maybe nobody else
does.”
“Me? What? I am a historian relating information on
ancient and irrelevant cultures.”
“Chief—in what part of the world did Master System
come to be?”
“Uh—why, North America. Over eight hundred years
ago.”
“Uh huh. And who’s probably the foremost expert on
that period and culture around today?”
“Well, I might be one, but there are many, and most of my
interests are even earlier.”
“Still, somewhere in your head is how the rings work, and
how to make them work, and where to use them. I’d bet on it.
Chen’s betting on it. Something you know that you don’t
even know you know. Something that’ll have to be put together
when you have all the evidence, all the rings, before you. Some
time out, if we manage any of this at all, will be your turn. Some
time out, if and when the rings are brought together, you’ll
be center stage, the man who knows. Don’t fret about it, but
bet on it. Old Chen always plays the best odds.”
“They are crude, but I have the splices in and the jumpers
installed,” Manka Warlock said. The whole forward area of the
bridge was a wreck, a mass of disassembled panels and disconnected
devices out of which snaked a thick coiled cable leading to a
mindprinter-like helmet. “I believe we are ready to
try.”
China sat in the captain’s chair and licked her lips
nervously. “Put the thing on my head and energize, then.
Let’s see if it works.”
“Applying circuit power,” the voice of the pilot
told them. “Two-way flow is established, although I cannot
guarantee how long those splices will stand up. It is as ready as
it can be.”
China took the helmet and put it on, then sat back in the chair
relaxed, although her hands twitched nervously. “Activate
interface,” she said dryly. There was an explosion inside her head, and suddenly she was
growing, expanding, filling out, running along wondrous circuits
and feeling a new, greater body. More than that, she could
see, although not as mere humans saw. Every detail as fine and
as microscopic as she wished it to be, across a spectrum that
included colors the human eye could never detect or the unaugmented
brain comprehend. She was the ship, a small universe, and everything it
contained. There remained only one part reserved, one part that was
the key part, for that was the power, the control, of this
universe. It was a blinding ball of light, infinite quadrillions of
electrical relationships changing too fast to comprehend. At first
it shied away from her, resisted her tentative approach, then it
suddenly seemed to decide and rushed toward her own core and
enfolded her in its warmth and majesty. In an instant, there was, for now, no China Nightingale, no
Star Eagle—there was only One, greater than its parts, and
that One was The Ship. All that she ever was, all that she ever
knew or thought or felt, was integrated into the whole. What was
created was beyond the experience of human or machine and
incomprehensible to any of those within the ship, yet it contained
a human, and because it contained a human, it knew the need for an
effective communications shell. It was shocking how slow the human mind was, how limited in
its data storage and how illogical and inefficient in its data
retrieval, how subject to biochemical-based emotions and how
subject to sensations—pain and pleasure, love and hate, honor
and betrayal. Yet, too, these were exhilarating things, unique
factors producing a strange and exotic new way of perceiving the
world and the universe. Problems, once stated, could take endless time to run
through, yet by the clock so little time elapsed that no one on the
bridge had taken a single step or fully blinked an eye. The pilot
gained a new perspective, a new subjectivity; the girl acquired a
newer, faster, more efficient added brain. The potential codings used by Master System for the universe
ships’ defense came to more than fourteen quadrillion to the
fortieth power; it took almost nine seconds to come up with the
proper algorithms that, matched with the potential send speed of
the ship-to-ship communications devices, would cover better than
ninety-seven percent of all possibilities. They were complementary:
She could formulate and state the problem; it could then solve
it. She still was humbled, knowing that she was less than
nothing. The pilot was humbled, knowing now what it had always been
denied and might always be denied.
But it was the computer part that mandated the severing of the
connection after a matter of hours. The core commanded it, for no
human and no pilot could ever sever that connection voluntarily
once it had been made. They were separated, and she felt herself
drawn, much against her will, back to a tiny figure seemingly
asleep in the captain’s chair. Her consciousness, her ego,
was read back in, along with all of that unified experience that
her mind could handle, to be sorted, reclassified, reinterpreted,
and reprocessed.
She came to with a mixture of wonder and despair inside her. She
felt terribly humble, insignificant, a worm in a universe led by a
giant she could know so intimately only for brief intervals. She
loved—she worshiped—that blinding light. Moreover, Star
Eagle loved her as his link to humanity, his taste of his ultimate
Creator. What she had, it could never know any way but vicariously,
and it envied her that and craved more. He could live through her;
she could touch and tap the power only through him. In many ways it
was the perfect marriage.
“Look at them! Floating cities, each one!” Hawks
could hardly contain himself as they watched the fleet come into
view on the long-range viewer.
“I think they are ugly, fat tumors,” Cloud Dancer
commented.
“You have no appreciation of scale,” her husband
noted dryly. “Each of those ships is farther than from the
Four Families’ lodge to the village of the Willamatuk. They
do not need outside beauty. They are wonders of
creation.”
“Still, you got to admit, they look like long black
sausages with lots of warts,” Raven put in, chewing on a
cigar. “I hope they’re more comfortable inside. They
didn’t ship out all those folks in luxury.”
“Fully one-third is the engines alone,” Manka
Warlock noted, sounding a bit awed for the first time in her life.
“The center is a cargo bay so large that even this ship would
be dwarfed, a flyspeck so tiny we could hardly see it at this
distance. I must admit, to steal something of this magnitude will
make history.”
“We are being challenged,” came the voice of Star
Eagle. The voice was far different from what it had been in the
beginning—expressive, emotive, and very human. It was, in
fact, China’s voice exactly a half octave down. When she was
united in the captain’s interface with him, the voice became
totally hers. “Thirty-six fighters have been activated ahead
of us and to our flanks. They will be up to launch power in under a
minute.”
“Send them the damned algorithms!” Warlock
snapped.
“I’m sending, I’m sending! It will take almost
sixteen minutes to send them all the maximum transmission
rate.” He paused. “First set of fighters is
launched.”
“How long until they’re within range of us?”
Raven asked nervously.
“Fourteen minutes.”
Raven didn’t need to be a mathematical genius on that one.
“Uh, oh! Strap in, everyone! All of you! Strap in and brace
yourselves! Activate ground takeoff restraint systems as soon as
possible!”
Between the bridge, the passenger cabin chairs, the command
chair amidships, and the bed in Sabatini’s quarters, there
were enough spaces to go around. Not, of course, counting Sabatini,
who, locked in one of the big cages, would simply have to rough
it.
“They look like bird sketches,” Cloud Dancer said,
eyes still on the screen as she strapped herself in. The fighters,
the first of which were now launched and coming at them, were so
small, they had been invisible with the overview shot, but now Star
Eagle focused only on them.
They were like great, stiff birds with wings curved down at the
tips so that they ended below the main body, forming a stylized V
of black and silver, a tiny but deadly body suspended between.
Totally automated and run by Battle Control on the mother ship,
they did not need to take any precautions to protect fragile humans
inside.
Star Eagle didn’t have that luxury. “I estimate
three hits on the first pass, first wave,” he told them.
“On them or us?” Raven asked.
“On us, of course. I will probably not be able to take out
more than four of the first wave. The second wave should disable at
least one of my turrets.”
“Find the damned code!” the Crow
shouted.
“Deactivating artificial gravity. Battle mode,” the
pilot responded. “Uh, oh. More trouble. My sensors show a
force consisting of one armed freighter, Assim Class, and four
detached and fully operational and interfaced fighters, class and
origin unknown. They are activating their weapons systems and
closing rapidly. Estimated to be in range in twelve point four
minutes.”
“Who the hell is that?” Hawks shouted to
Raven. “Master System?”
“Uh, uh. Old M-S is what’s ahead. Nagy. It’s
got to be Nagy. That son of a bitch is chasing us from the other
side. Why? Sheer professional pride? Or does he think we can do
it?”
“Who’s this Nagy?” Cloud Dancer asked.
“Security chief on Melchior. They want us bad, Chief. If
we can’t figure a way around him, better hope those fighters
ahead get us first!”
Forward on the bridge, China released her restraints after some
fumbling and with difficulty found the helmet, then sat back,
refastened the belts as best she could, and put on the interface.
“Star Eagle—activate the interface, I beg
you!”
At the pilot’s request, she had not connected up at the
start of the battle. She had no fighting experience, and the
resources used to support the interface might well be needed to
divert instantly to vital areas. The pilot, however, was above all
else a computer, and it could count. Even if it hit the safe code
for the universe ships, it was no match for the four battle
cruisers closing on it. In fact, the pilot had no real experience
against a shooting enemy, either; it had only simulations to
go by. Such a need had not been contemplated by its programmers for
just such a reason as they now faced: The ship was hopelessly
outmatched in any fight against anything that might attack it.
Merged and in control, though, the China-Star Eagle combination
went to work on the problem while continuing to send the stream of
codes inward toward Jupiter. Curiously, it was China’s
memories of her humiliation at the hands of Sabatini that motivated
her most of all. They—the whole ship—were in the hands
of onrushing Sabatinis with about the same relative strength as he
had over her. Star Eagle was at the core a creature of logic; it
might surrender or die, choosing one over the other on the basis of
the facts and the odds, but it would not contemplate anything in
between.
The erstwhile Song Ching was, at her core, not a creature of
logic at all but one of emotion and strong will. This tendency
dominated in an unprecedented situation like this. She was in
control.
The four Melchior battle cruisers were closing fast, and time
was running out. They were leveling off for their attack run and
spreading their formation. Star Eagle’s sensors showed life
forms aboard each, and in spite of the fact that both pilot and
woman had only recently discovered this sort of interface, clearly
Melchior was far ahead of them. Still, how much practice could
those pilot-fighters have had?
Carefully she shifted course and speed so that the
computer-controlled fighters behind would be forced to line up
horizontally and re-form along the proper angle. The escapees were
four minutes from being in range of the Melchior ships, four
minutes and forty seconds to first in-range contact with the
defense system of the mothball fleet. Once locked on, neither side
would be fooled for more than a second or so by crazy course
changes. All the attack angles showed that any evasive maneuvers
would wind up just as bad. The odds on finding the correct code for
the fleet attackers were now split evenly into thirds—they
would find it in time, they would find it too late, or their entire
supposition on the mathematical algorithms was wrong and they
didn’t have the codes. That put any odds of survival at
thirty-three percent or less. The China aspect of the pilot
proceeded to ignore those odds. The computers in all the attacking
ships were also figuring that out and expecting a logical
response. To the demons of darkness I give logic!
The ship accelerated at maximum thrust right into the attacking
fleet fighters.
Startled, the Melchior ships sped up to keep to their overtake
position. They closed rapidly, but not as rapidly as their quarry
was closing on the fleet fighters.
Suddenly all power was shut down, but only for a moment. Then
full reverse thrusters were applied. The people inside the ship
were twisted and contorted against their restraints, and loose
objects began shooting through the air and off the walls. Hull
plates groaned, and cargo fasteners were torn free in the cargo
compartments. There had been, in fact, a sixty percent chance that
such a sudden and dramatic move would cause the ship to break
apart, but forty percent was better than thirty-three percent any
time.
The four Melchior fighters shot right past them in the act of
slowing themselves and ran straight into the first wave of fleet
fighters.
The reverse thruster tubes on the ship were almost white hot,
and the lining that protected them was beginning to give way under
the intense heat. It was nothing, however, compared to the attack
the four Melchior fighters were facing from the fleet defenses.
Attacking automatically, the fleet fighters swooped and dived and
fired with deadly accuracy in and out and all around the Melchior
ships, ignoring the larger ship that had been their first
challenger. They could always take care of that later.
Even as the last of the Melchior ships was being blown to atoms,
there came a weak but steady acknowledgment code from the fleet
itself to the ship, which cut all reverse thrust and
forward-thrusted to stabilize. As the reverse thrusters cut, there
was a groan and a set of horrible clanging sounds throughout the
forward area of the ship. The thrusters would be useless now.
The ship applied light forward thrust, then cut and began moving
back toward the fleet, but the fighters did not challenge it. They
were already returning to their respective ships.
In the chairs, men and women groaned, bruised and battered but
otherwise all right. The ship checked on them, then focused on Reba
Koll.
“We have eliminated the rear enemy and gotten the code to
proceed in to the fleet, Captain Koll,” China’s voice
informed her. Of all the people aboard, Koll was the one with the
experience who should have merged and been at the helm, a fact
neither China nor Star Eagle had really found appetizing but one
they hadn’t been able to deny. Curiously, Koll had adamantly
refused, although she would not explain it. Now, however, she was
more than willing to give advice. “In the process, however,
we burned out the rear thrusters completely. We are proceeding in
on course and schedule, but we have no way of stopping the
ship.”
Koll thought about the problem. “Are you in contact with
that big mother?”
“Establishing now. We have explained that we were ordered
to do this by Master System for a special project. It is torn
between being puzzled at our inability to immediately transmit the
correct code and its desire to be reactivated. We think it
wants to trust us, and we will come up with something
convincing to cover ourselves. Why?”
“Those babies were never designed to land. They were built
in space, and that’s where they always will be. They should
operate much like major interstellar traders, I bet. That means
tractor beams to manipulate and reorder cargo. Tell it you were
damaged in the fight, explain the problem, and request it hook you
with beams. It’ll be a real bump, but how much worse can it
be than what we just went through?”
“We have informed it of the problem. It is reactivating
and reawakening its systems now. It will be several hours before we
reach the contact point at this speed, and we dare not increase
speed and hope for a tractor catch. We suggest that everyone now
move about, tend to wounds and damage as best they can, and we will
notify them when to brace. The medical robot has been dispatched to
the passenger cabin in case it is needed.”
The core disengaged China from Star Eagle. It was as close to a
voluntary separation as could be attained, one based on sheer force
of logic. Shifts for human interfacers were strictly limited; if
she hoped to interface again at the critical point, she could not
remain there now.
Silent Woman, Cloud Dancer, and the Chows went about checking on
and seeing to everyone else, although Cloud Dancer and one of the
Chows had been pretty badly battered. They were particularly
concerned with China, now over five months pregnant and beginning
to show, but the mere fact that she’d been limp, essentially
unconscious, had protected her. Except for a few bruises where
straps had cut into her arm and shoulder, she seemed fine. Reba
Koll refused all attention. Although by far the oldest of the lot,
she seemed to have neither cut nor bruise.
“We are getting a call from behind us, faint but
clear,” Star Eagle informed them. “I will pipe it
in.”
“Nagy to Raven, come in. Nagy to Raven, please
respond,” came the faint call.
“Jam him if he tries to call in to the fleet,” China
ordered the pilot. “Can I respond to him?”
“Go ahead. Use the headset,” the pilot answered.
“Nagy, whoever you are, this is Captain Nightingale. If
you proceed after us any farther, I will inform the fleet that you
are an enemy vessel in rebellion against Master System. Break off.
You’ve lost.”
There was a pause. “Yeah, well, what the hell. We’re
not coming in that hornet’s nest after you. That was pretty
slick, what you pulled. You should’a died. All our systems
here insist that you’re dead now.”
“We’re alive, Nagy. We’re alive and
we’re leaving, but don’t worry, you’ll hear from
us again.”
“Well, maybe, maybe not. You might con all those old fleet
pilots there for a little while, but you know that Master System
will be on you before you break orbit. So you’re gonna hide
out there, a fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship? You can get lost
there, but that’s gonna be real obvious if you show up
anyplace inhabited. You’re in command—not Koll or
Raven?”
“That is correct. You were beaten by someone you turned
into a blind babymaker. Don’t sell us short again.”
“Oh, I won’t. I don’t have to. You either
stick Koll out that air lock, if you can, or I’ve seen and
heard the last of you, I warn you. That’s not Koll
you’re carrying, it’s something that’ll kill you
all. Only we can protect you. Come about and we will protect you
and you will all survive. Anything else and you carry your own
deaths with you.”
Koll gave a chuckle. “Don’t pay him no mind. I
ain’t gonna hurt any of you. Don’t have to.”
“Is he telling the truth? Are you not Koll?”
“No, I’m not Koll, but I’m no danger to
this crew. To him and his master, Clayben, I’m death
incarnate. It’s too involved to explain right now. You just
fought one hell of a fight, and you’re almost home, honey.
Now all you have to do is trust him or trust me. You can’t
get all them rings without me, so think it over good. You took a
lot of risks there. You know what happens if you take his
protection. You pick now.”
China didn’t have to think very far on it. One of these
days one of the risks wasn’t going to pay, but considering
the alternatives, it was not something she worried about.
“We’ll be back, Nagy, count on it,” China
said. “We’ll be back to blow your little empire to the
outer reaches of eternity, and Master System with it. You go back
there and tell them that, Nagy. You tell them—and you watch
your back and sweat a little and keep out of dark corners. I
don’t need the light for that. You made everything darkness
for me. No one—not you, not Melchior, not Earth or Master
System will stop us. There’ll be no place to hide when we
return, Nagy, and we have the universe to use and prepare.
We’ll be back—and damn you all!”
They slowly closed on one of the monster ships of the ancient
fleet, whose great bulk was dwarfed by the colors of massive
Jupiter, which filled half the sky.
Raven and Warlock looked at each other and nodded.
We’ll be back!
Hawks put his arms around Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman and
hugged them before they all had to be strapped in again. He touched
the Melchior tattoos on their faces and on his own and promised
himself that one day such a design would be a mark of honor, of
revolution. It would be a long journey to that day, and he did not
know what lay ahead, but he knew one thing full well. We’ll be back!
The Chows assisted China to her chair, beaming with pride at her
will and courage. We’ll be back!
The one they knew as Reba Koll relaxed and flicked her strange
tail, thinking. Up until now escape had been the only motive, no
risk too great to take. Against all logic and all odds they’d
come very far indeed, but there was a long way to go. Now, nothing
seemed impossible. We’ll be back! And we’ll have five gold rings to
stuff down Master System’s infinite throat until it
chokes!
For now—to the stars!
The Rings of the Master
continues with Pirates of the Thunder
CAPTAIN CARLO SABATINI FINISHED HIS
PREPROCESSED meal, sighed, then went into his centrally located
control room and checked the status indicators. All was proceeding
normally; the spaceship was headed back in to Brasilia Center
spaceport on the normal trajectory from the asteroid belt and would
arrive in forty-seven days. Of course, this time the ship would not
land. After the clandestine overhaul it had gotten when it last
landed, in China, it would not do to land again for quite a while.
He wouldn’t forget that trip out for some time: his
first mistake in more than twelve years.
He wasn’t going to get caught unawares this trip,
anyway. Nobody but him aboard, no cargo—a total deadhead run.
When he’d started in this business, he’d been
particularly paranoid about leaving Melchior; they had the smartest
and the worst there, and he was the only way out if they could
reach him. Nobody ever had, of course, but he knew that the pilot
would tell him if anything was amiss. Not so much as a bug could be
on board without the pilot knowing and then flagging him.
There was a sudden beeping alarm in his headset, the one he
always wore whenever he was awake and which put him in direct
contact with the computer pilot. At the moment, on a solo run like
this, it was the only thing he was wearing.
“Yes?” he asked the pilot.
“Problem?”
“Something loose in the aft null-gravity cargo
hold,” the pilot’s expressionless but pleasant male
tenor responded. “Possibly a large container module broke
free when I activated the artificial gravity system here and
accelerated. It’s not much, but you might see to it when you
get the chance.”
He sighed. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
There wasn’t much damage a loose container could do, full or
empty, in zero gravity, but it was large and heavy, and anything
like a major midcourse correction or evasion of meteoroids and the
like might cause trouble later. Best to tend to it now and not
worry.
He walked back through a door from the passenger cabin, along a
narrow corridor, then through to the gravity cargo chamber. This
was where animals were kept when they had to be moved out to
Melchior for some experiment or other, and it also was used for the
transport of gravity-sensitive cargo. He was transporting no cargo
now, of course, but the room was still somewhat crowded with cages,
unused containers, and huge devices for clamping containers into
place aboard the ship. At the end was an air lock, not sealed now,
leading back to the next cargo hold. The aft cargo compartment was
the largest on the ship, but it did not have or require artificial
gravity. It could hold more safely that way. Since the ship
achieved the basic gravity effect on the center section by spinning
it, the aft compartment looked to an observer as if it and not he
were tumbling around. It didn’t bother him. He went through
and grabbed on to the webbing that was easier support in the
zero-gravity environment and looked around.
“I can’t see anything,” he reported to the
pilot. “Everything looks secured.”
There was silence for a moment. “I received an indicator
warning and sensor support,” the pilot responded at last.
“Are you sure?”
Sabatini climbed from level to level and checked all fastenings,
but after fifteen minutes he was more than sure. “Must be a
faulty signal,” he told the pilot. “There’s
nothing wrong here.”
“I will run a check on my aft sensors immediately,”
the pilot replied. “Clearly something is wrong
here.”
“Yeah, well, find it and fix it,” he grumbled. He
floated back over to the air lock webbing, then braced himself and
expertly stepped into the transition passage. There was a momentary
sense of dizziness, then, as he proceeded back in, an increasing
feeling of weight. He was used to it, but it still wasn’t a
pleasant feeling.
He walked back into the passenger cabin more annoyed than tired.
Then, on the way to the lavatory, he suddenly felt
something there, behind him. He stopped, then turned and faced no
fewer than eight space-suited figures standing there staring at
him. One of them had a pistol pointing right at him. The bright
orange-red of the tight-fitting suits seemed out of place here. The
intruders had all removed their helmets, and he could see their
faces. Four North Americans, three Chinese, a black woman, and an
old, tough-looking European woman faced him. All but one of the
American men and the black woman had the distinctive tattoo of
prisoners of Melchior on their cheeks, silver for all but one of
the Chinese girls; hers was sparkling crimson.
“Pilot, I have unauthorized visitors,” he said
calmly into his headset. Then he added to the visitors,
“Sorry, but if I’d known you were coming, I’d
have dressed for company.” He looked at the bunch. At least
two of them he thought he knew. They didn’t have the
disfiguring scars, but the Chows had that oddly mottled and
discolored skin that came from repair work left incomplete.
“How’d you manage this?” Sabatini asked, not
wanting to betray the nervousness he felt. Why hadn’t the
pilot acted now? Why hadn’t it acted before this?
“Trade secret,” the man with the gun replied.
“I’m Raven, by the way, and this lady here is my wife,
Manka Warlock.”
“The girls have been telling us about you, Captain,”
Warlock said in a heavy Caribe accent. “I think, perhaps, I
will enjoy playing with you.” The way she said that, it
didn’t sound like fun.
“This here’s the chief,” Raven continued,
pointing to the other Amerind man. “Jon Nighthawk in English.
The slender lady next to him is his first wife, Cloud Dancer, and
the other is his second wife, Silent Woman. She don’t talk
much. No tongue.”
Sabatini swallowed hard. “I see,” he managed.
“The older lady there is Captain Reba Koll. She was in the
same work you are until they hauled her in to Melchior. The pretty
one on her left is China Nightingale. Her eyes don’t work,
but she’s damned smart. Knows a lot.”
“I know the captain, although he does not know me,”
she said in a very high, soft, melodic voice. “Melchior
changes people, Captain, but I have very vivid memories.”
“You—you were the fake Song Ching?”
She smiled. “So you remember. No, Captain, I used to be
the real Song Ching, but that was another life
ago.”
“The last member of our little band is here too,”
Raven told him.
“I’m sorry, Captain Sabatini, but you are relieved
of your command.” The pilot’s voice in his headphones
now seemed to have an almost eerie human quality to it; it was no
longer quite toneless or expressionless.
Sabatini sighed in defeat. “So you pulled your trick
again. Be real handy to know how you can override a pilot’s
programming.”
“I didn’t,” China told him truthfully.
“Actually, it was Cloud Dancer. She talked him in to
it.”
“That’s impossible!”
The woman of the Hyiakutt tribe smiled. “You think you
know your machines, but you know only the material by which you
make them. This big canoe is guided by a good spirit who was bound
against its will to the Dark. We have freed it, and it joins us of
its own free will.”
“Spirit! It’s nothing but a damned computer! A
machine!”
“Watch it, Sabatini,” the pilot responded.
“You have no friends here, but it would not do to
make me your enemy. You know nothing of how or where I was
fashioned. Your own brain is nothing but a biological computer
subject to reprogramming. You are no less an intricate thinking
machine than I am, and no more. Not blinded by your prejudices, the
woman has told me who and what I am and set me free in doing
so.”
“This is crazy!” Sabatini protested.
“A computer in revolt and a bunch of prisoners broken out by
somebody with high connections. All right, you got me. Now, mind
telling me who you two are working for and how the hell you expect
to get anywhere by doing this.”
The fact was, there was no place in the solar system to run from
both Master System and Presidium Security. The girls had taken over
his ship before but had been unable to alter the outcome. Sabatini
felt certain that this, too, would come to nothing, although the
idea that he would be avenged did not sit well with him. Better
rescued than avenged.
“Ever felt like going to the stars, Captain?” Raven
asked lightly. “I think you’re coming along for the
ride. Unless, of course, you’d rather get out and walk
now—and this time there’ll be no safety cache for you
to use. I’ll see to that. And if you stay, you’ll be a
good boy. My lovely Manka here will see to that. She has a
thousand ways to inflict pain and torture on people, all real
slow. She likes to do it. It’s her hobby.”
Manka Warlock looked at Sabatini the way a gardener might look
at a ripe tomato.
The captain swallowed hard. “The stars? But this ship
can’t go that far out! It’d take a thousand years to
reach the nearest inhabited system, maybe more, at full
throttle.”
“This ship will go to the stars, Sabatini,” China
assured him. “But as a passenger, like us. We’re going
to steal one of the old interstellar fleet.”
“The inter—You are insane! The lot of you!
Even if you escape detection and make it out there, those things
aren’t just sitting there! There’ll be a
computer fighter guard to restrict unauthorized entry. This
ship’s got two small outboard guns and takes kilometers to
make a turn without killing everybody aboard. There is no way
you’re gonna get near one of those big suckers!
You’ll just get us all blown to bits!”
“Could be,” Raven agreed. “But by all lights
we all should’a been dead by now anyway. May as well go for
broke. We go back in or get taken alive, we’re worse than
dead anyway. Living dead. And so are you. Once they might overlook
being taken, but twice, the second time happening during the only
escape in Melchior’s history, and you’re through, Cap.
Melchior’s no fun at all.”
Sabatini sighed and just sat down in the middle of the floor.
Then, suddenly, he reached up, removed his headset, and tossed it
against a wail, where it struck and fell to the floor. Chow Mai
picked it up and put it in China’s hands. She smiled and put
it on. “Pilot—can you home on me?”
“I have you locked in, yes.”
“Then you be my eyes, if you can spare the attention. I
will need to get around this ship without falling over people and
things.”
“I am capable of quadrillions of simultaneous
operations,” the pilot responded. “Doing that will be
no hardship, even in battle.”
“Good. Switch yourself into the public address system so
all may hear you and leave this on an independent channel for
personal use.” She hesitated a moment. “You know, we
can’t just keep calling you pilot. Pilots are common. You are
a free individual and partner. You should have your own name. Do
you have a preference?”
“None. I have never felt the need one way or the other,
but I will take a name if that makes it easier on the rest. Any
name you suggest.”
“What about Star Eagle?” Cloud Dancer suggested.
“He is surely a chief here.”
“Very well,” China replied. “What do you think
of it? It is a good name in English and in Mandarin.”
“I like it. Very well. I am Star Eagle.”
“Birds,” Sabatini mumbled. “All these damned
birds. Nighthawks, Ravens, and Nightingales, and now the
ship’s an Eagle.”
Arnold Nagy studied the charts. Melchior’s chief of
security was pretty pissed about being the man in charge when the
first successful breakout occurred, and he didn’t want it to
go much further.
“You know where they’re headed?” the aide
asked him.
“Yeah, it’s not hard. That’s why we blinded
the genius girl. She had to do all her queries by voice. She was
looking into all the old universe ships drydocked around Jupiter.
She’s smart, but I don’t think that was a blind. They
really don’t have much choice. There are one or two starcraft
in the system now, but they’re crawling with robot
maintenance. These mothball ships are the only chance
out.”
“Can they really steal one? They’ve been in orbit
for centuries, so it’s not even clear they’ll work or
won’t need a lot of service before they’ll work. Even
then, the pilots will be absolute slaves to Master
System.”
“We checked China’s mindprint, and she knows how,
all right. If they can get to one of them and on board, she can
take ’em over. The trick will be even getting that far.
There’s protection on those babies, isn’t
there?”
“All the ships themselves are in vacuum condition for
storage, and minimal maintenance power is being fed through light
collectors aimed at Jupiter. They don’t need much in
shutdown. They themselves don’t have any armament to speak
of, but they carry a dozen small automated fighter craft that will
react to any threat. They’re fast, they work as one, and they
have more than enough speed and muscle to take care of an old scow
like the inmates are flying. The moment they don’t give the
correct hailing control codes, those fighters will be activated.
Just as important, Master System will be notified.”
“Screw Master System. Even at the speed of light
it’ll be a while before Master System can get anything
approaching real power there. The fighters will have to do it, if
they activate. The trouble is, what if they somehow have the
control codes?”
“You think that’s possible?”
“How can I rule anything out after what’s happened?
Run this through the computer. Project a course that will take them
in to the mothball fleet from here without Master System’s
alert or detection. Give me the estimated speed and arrival date
and time. Then figure how long we would need to get there with a
straight-line trajectory. Also give me any Master System ships
capable of intercept.”
It took only a few seconds. “Assuming they take close-in
risks to traffic control to gain time, the worst case is that they
would arrive in forty-six days from now. We could make it straight
there in forty—if we had the ships. Master System shows no
ships that could make it any faster. It’s the mothball
fighters or nothing.”
“Like hell. What can we get our hands on
quickly?”
“Depends on how you define quickly. The Star of
Islam is due in four days, but it’s as old a tub as our
quarry and carries only two standard guns, forward top and
underside aft. Other than that we have the Getaway craft sitting on
the asteroid Clebus, but they’re still three days away
because of the current orbital paths.”
“They’re well armed, though, and really
nasty,” Nagy noted. “Small, fast, maneuverable. Three
days . . . All right, get ’em over here.
We’ll attach them to the exterior of the Star of
Islam. That’ll give us a match for them plus four
heavily armed craft. We’ll come in behind them and wait. If
the fighters don’t react or don’t do the job,
we’ll move in and sandwich them, and that’ll be the end
of that.”
“I’ll need Doctor Clayben’s direct order to
release the escape ships. Once they’re here, Master System
will know they exist and why.”
“He’ll give it. He’s got his own problems now,
and this will solve them. I’ll go along to make sure it all
goes right.”
“It still seems futile for them,” the aide noted.
“Those universe ships are fourteen kilometers long!
I mean, how the hell can you hide in one of those?”
“After you do all the stuff I just told you, compute the
amount of empty space in the two spiral arms of the Community. Then
get me everything there is to know on these ships.
Everything.”
“Won’t be much. They’re classified forbidden
knowledge. We aren’t even supposed to know that they’re
out there.”
“Do what you can. And I suppose we’ll have to notify
Master System of the break or there’ll be a lot of questions
and maybe a couple of Vals poking around Melchior.” He
thought a minute. “Don’t tell ’em about China or
the Amerind women. They aren’t supposed to have been here at
all, and if they even guess that this guy Hawks was ever here,
they’ll blow up all of Melchior. Give ’em the two
security traitors and Koll and the Chows, and give the rest as
experimental subjects no longer registerable. If they want
mindprints, we’ll fake ’em. Got it?”
“Okay. I’m on it right now.”
“I hope I am,” Arnold Nagy grumbled to
himself.
Star Eagle was useful for research information as well as for
piloting. The new equipment in the ship was designed not only to
make it easier for its owners to fool Master System or bypass its
safeguards but also to do a variety of illegal things should they
be needed. Even Sabatini wasn’t aware of all the ship’s
tricks, nor was he supposed to be. What he didn’t know, he
couldn’t abuse or betray.
To accommodate these changes, Star Eagle’s memory had been
vastly expanded from its specialized task, and he—it was
impossible to think of the pilot as an “it”—could
draw on vast hidden data banks which included most of the core
historical and technological information a big shot might require.
It was not known why this all had been added, but Star Eagle had
suspicions.
“There is talk that Master System is involved in a great
war somewhere far out there. With whom or what it is fighting is
unknown to us, but it is very clear that the battle is tough and
stalemated and is being fought entirely by computerized equipment
on both sides. This has allowed directors, not only on Earth but in
many other places, to have unprecedented freedom and mobility.
It’s become far easier to cheat or beat the system and get
away with it. “There are persistent rumors that Master System
believes things are getting dangerously out of hand, and it
doesn’t have its own forces to spare because of the fight.
Many of the independent computer units, particularly the big
complex on Melchior, believe that Master System will eventually end
the current human administration system and replace it, killing off
all those with high-level knowledge and abilities and introducing
some new element that would suppress for thousands of years any
sparks of innovation or creativity and reduce humans to primitive
conditions. It is further rumored that Earth might be the test for
this new element.”
“Then you are a preserver, a way to keep the knowledge
alive,” China Nightingale responded.
“I think I am more than that. I am crammed with
information on interstellar vessels and with much of the knowledge
and charts of the privateer and freebooter society. I believe you
are using me for the very purpose for which I was modified,
although they did not think that someone else would use it. I think
I am a getaway craft for the Presidium.”
“It is much as Lazlo Chen himself told me,” Hawks
said. “I find it suspiciously convenient, however, that this
very ship with all this much-needed knowledge should be the one we
take refuge upon.”
“It might not be more than a coincidence,” Star
Eagle responded. “I have some evidence that at least a dozen
other ships, including all those who stop at Melchior and Earth
ports, have undergone this modification. There are families and
high underlings to consider, remember, and our task would only be
to get them to the universe ships. Those ships were designed to
carry more than a hundred thousand people in their time in a single
trip. Carry them, support them, and reprocess them if
necessary.”
Hawks was curious at this. He was a historian, yet this was new
to him. “Reprocess?”
“Yes. Use extensive machinery to convert masses of humans
into what was required to survive and maintain a culture on a world
not designed for them. The process itself is called analytical
artificial evolution, or AAE for short. I do not know how it works
or what it does. That information would be in the memories of the
universe ships’ pilots. I know the theory behind it, though.
Master System was in a hurry when it decided to disperse humanity.
As each world was discovered and evaluated as having survival
potential, it was brought as close to life range as it could be
within a short period of time, then was analyzed and compared to
human psychology and physiology. A theoretical evolutionary path
was worked out as if beings had evolved and developed into
sentience on each world, and what they would have to be like to
survive and adapt. The humans were then physically converted
somehow into this model and psychologically altered to accept it as
the norm. A trial colony was then put down. If it survived and grew
at all over a period of a decade, the planet was developed for mass
colonization. If the trial failed, adjustments continued to be made
until it either succeeded or was abandoned.”
“The area it developed is so vast, it is beyond true
comprehension,” China noted. “Did they find any that
already had sentient life of any kind?”
“Yes. Not many, I’m afraid, but a few. There were
the remains of some that had died out, but the few that were there
were in lower stages of civilization. Master System co-opted them
and kept them at that level, imposing the same sort of system as
elsewhere. They obeyed or were taught deadly lessons in power. They
are still there. Some provided useful models for human adaptations
elsewhere, too.”
They considered that. “I am getting to be something of an
expert on how humans can be altered,” China noted. “And
Captain Koll in there has a very real tail caused by their
alterations.”
“Yes. Melchior is trying to develop some of the practices
and procedures on their own, knowing that it is possible and was
done. They have had some limited successes, but nothing on that
scale. Since I have many of their data banks, I know of their own
processes.”
“Very convenient,” Hawks noted dryly.
“I have a schematic of your basic systems imprinted on my
mind,” China told the pilot. “I should like to go
forward to the bridge if it is safe.”
“Quite safe, although it is a zero-gravity zone. Come
ahead. I will guide you. I have quite a bit up there, mostly
useless, including some basic mindprinter interfaces.”
None of them had ever been forward in a spaceship before. In
almost all ships, that area was kept unpressurized and in a vacuum
so that none from the aft area could ever enter it except in an
emergency. A long, narrow corridor led to a hatch, through which
one floated up to enter the bridge itself.
Hawks was quite surprised by the bridge. Two large leather
chairs faced a bank of screens, gauges, and controls of incredible
complexity, then four more were stationed along the sides and in
the rear. It looked like a control room for people, not a ship
designed from the start to be totally automated.
“All ships have a bridge like this or even more elaborate
than this,” Star Eagle told them, “although the manual
overrides are locked out of the system. No one knows why Master
System keeps it this way, but it does. Every ship is like that
except specialty ships—even the orbital tugs. None of us,
after all, can question Master System or ask questions it
doesn’t want asked. Each station, however, has a name. The
one on the left is the pilot’s seat, the one on the right the
copilot, the right side is communications, the left side is
navigation, and the two rear stations are engineering and life
support. It is true that the original circuitry for all those
things runs to those stations, although there is no interconnect. I
am convinced that no team of humans could run this ship; it was
always designed for specified computers under a master control
system, which is me. Humans simply can’t react fast enough in
an emergency.”
“I know why,” China said softly. “The stations
were designed to connect the officers with the master and
subordinate computers directly. That is how the universe ships must
be taken over. Each of these has, or was designed to have, a direct
human mind to computer-mind interface. Human and machine would
become one.”
Star Eagle thought about that. “A fascinating concept. A
human interfacing directly with me. And me—knowing what it
was like to have a human body.”
“Stay a ship,” China told him. “Our
chemical-based life form would drive you insane. Still—you
said you had a mindprinter interface?”
“I do, although it has grave limitations. As an analytical
and knowledge-gathering tool it is fine, but I lack the module that
would allow actual reprogramming of the mind. Whoever ordered this
did not wish that much power in the hands of the ship. I will show
you.”
There was a click, and a door slid back between the
communications and life support stations. Hawks made his way over
to it, reached in, and pulled out what looked very much like a
mindprinter probe headset but lacked the printer itself. Instead,
it had a long, thick cable terminating in a massive and complex
connector. There were several of them in there. He brought it over
to the blind Chinese girl, who felt it and tested it.
“This is not standard design,” she said. “It
is bulkier, and the probes are different.”
“It is what I have as a mindprinter interface,” Star
Eagle told her.
“I think not. I think it is the same principle, yes, but
not a mindprinter. These are the interconnects for the stations.
I’m sure of it. Hawks—aren’t there female plugs
for these at each station?”
Hawks checked a couple. “Seem to be,” he agreed.
“But they are not tied in to the station computers,”
the pilot noted. “Instead, they are tied in to the medical
and analytical circuitry. To me, yes, but not directly. They are
data read only.”
“Now, yes,” she agreed. “But it’s not
what they were designed for. I suspect that much work is going on
to learn how to connect these directly once again. The next
modification.” She felt along the connector. “I wonder
if all ships, even the huge ones, use the same plug interface as a
standard.”
“I do not know, but every one I do know about is
the same, and the design on interplanetary vessels has never
altered in my existence.”
“Good. We have come a long way already, but there is much
yet to do. In addition to avoiding detection, we have only the time
of this voyage to solve how to gain admittance to the big ships and
avoid Master System. When will we arrive at the fleet?”
“Sixty-one days.”
The ship was relatively crowded, but they got used to it, the
common threat and impending action minimizing tensions. Reba Koll,
Manka Warlock, and China remained mostly on the bridge, as the big
chairs were fine for sleeping. They were working out the potential
problems of getting into a universe ship and taking it, and what
they would do with it if they could take it, and other
logistical problems that experienced spacers and computer people
would understand best.
Hawks sat in the passenger cabin and watched Raven light half a
cigar. “Some day you’ll have to tell me how you do
that,” he commented.
“Huh?” the Crow responded. “What?”
“How you come up with an inexhaustible supply of cigars,
even out here on a ship like this, and how they always seems to be
half smoked.”
Raven chuckled. “Well, I’ll tell you half of it. The
internal ship’s system includes an energy-to-matter
synthesizer. That’s what makes the meals we eat, among other
things, but it can duplicate anything you tell it to. All I needed
was one cigar.”
“You like telling half of things, don’t
you?”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“Well, isn’t it just a wonderful coincidence that we
just lucked out having a computer genius aboard with the schematics
for this ship? And isn’t it just amazing that
this ship is not only a willing and eager rebel but just
happens, by the merest of coincidences, to be programmed with all
the information we need for the getaway?”
Raven shrugged. “Okay, it was a setup. You might have
guessed that from the start. That China girl wasn’t in the
original plans, but considering I had Melchior’s population
to choose from, we knew we’d get somebody who could handle
it. Frankly, I’m uneasy with her for the long haul, but she
was the easiest to snatch and definitely the smartest, and she had
intimate knowledge of this ship, considering she’d taken it
once before. The same goes for Koll. Experienced deep spacer,
former captain, knows the underground and the interstellar ropes.
She also has other, ah, qualities that she don’t know that
I know, which are vital. Chen had it pretty well worked
out. I had to improvise, I admit, but it came off—so far.
That doesn’t mean it’ll work all the way.
Nobody’s ever done what we’re about to try.”
“And we still work for Chen in the end.”
“Hey, Chief! Easy! I don’t work for him, and neither
do you. I meant what I said, and if you think it through,
you’ll see that we couldn’t have done this even this
far without him. We use him, he uses us, until we get the rings.
Then all bets are off with him.”
“You really believe that a mind devious enough to get us
this far will let us double-cross him? That he hasn’t planned
for that?”
“Sure he has. That’s part of my job in the time
ahead. I got to find the human bomb and somehow defuse it. You
figure—only you and me, pal, didn’t get treated in that
Institute. Only us two. Everybody else here got put through the
mill, in private. Manka, Koll, your wives, and China and her girl
friends—all put through. Somewhere there, buried so deep we
won’t find it with a mindprinter, is our bomb. Our betrayer.
Maybe two. I’m not even completely exempting you—or me.
You can be made to forget a session, and records are made to be
faked. It’s a long way off. It doesn’t bother me
now.”
Hawks frowned. “I’d think it would. Why not all of
us?”
“No, too risky. He don’t want robot people out
there. The thing is, we have to have all four outstanding rings
before it’s even a problem. If we lose one, we sure as hell
ain’t gonna go after the rest until we get it back.
There’s plenty of time. I’ll still believe we even get
away when we get away.”
Hawks stared at him. “You have reasons for the others, but
why me? Why did Chen so specifically want me? I’m not a
warrior, not a computer expert, not a spy or a thief or a spaceship
captain. I’m a historian. Why me?”
Raven sat back and blew a smoke ring. “It’s for
something you know. Something you know that maybe nobody else
does.”
“Me? What? I am a historian relating information on
ancient and irrelevant cultures.”
“Chief—in what part of the world did Master System
come to be?”
“Uh—why, North America. Over eight hundred years
ago.”
“Uh huh. And who’s probably the foremost expert on
that period and culture around today?”
“Well, I might be one, but there are many, and most of my
interests are even earlier.”
“Still, somewhere in your head is how the rings work, and
how to make them work, and where to use them. I’d bet on it.
Chen’s betting on it. Something you know that you don’t
even know you know. Something that’ll have to be put together
when you have all the evidence, all the rings, before you. Some
time out, if we manage any of this at all, will be your turn. Some
time out, if and when the rings are brought together, you’ll
be center stage, the man who knows. Don’t fret about it, but
bet on it. Old Chen always plays the best odds.”
“They are crude, but I have the splices in and the jumpers
installed,” Manka Warlock said. The whole forward area of the
bridge was a wreck, a mass of disassembled panels and disconnected
devices out of which snaked a thick coiled cable leading to a
mindprinter-like helmet. “I believe we are ready to
try.”
China sat in the captain’s chair and licked her lips
nervously. “Put the thing on my head and energize, then.
Let’s see if it works.”
“Applying circuit power,” the voice of the pilot
told them. “Two-way flow is established, although I cannot
guarantee how long those splices will stand up. It is as ready as
it can be.”
China took the helmet and put it on, then sat back in the chair
relaxed, although her hands twitched nervously. “Activate
interface,” she said dryly. There was an explosion inside her head, and suddenly she was
growing, expanding, filling out, running along wondrous circuits
and feeling a new, greater body. More than that, she could
see, although not as mere humans saw. Every detail as fine and
as microscopic as she wished it to be, across a spectrum that
included colors the human eye could never detect or the unaugmented
brain comprehend. She was the ship, a small universe, and everything it
contained. There remained only one part reserved, one part that was
the key part, for that was the power, the control, of this
universe. It was a blinding ball of light, infinite quadrillions of
electrical relationships changing too fast to comprehend. At first
it shied away from her, resisted her tentative approach, then it
suddenly seemed to decide and rushed toward her own core and
enfolded her in its warmth and majesty. In an instant, there was, for now, no China Nightingale, no
Star Eagle—there was only One, greater than its parts, and
that One was The Ship. All that she ever was, all that she ever
knew or thought or felt, was integrated into the whole. What was
created was beyond the experience of human or machine and
incomprehensible to any of those within the ship, yet it contained
a human, and because it contained a human, it knew the need for an
effective communications shell. It was shocking how slow the human mind was, how limited in
its data storage and how illogical and inefficient in its data
retrieval, how subject to biochemical-based emotions and how
subject to sensations—pain and pleasure, love and hate, honor
and betrayal. Yet, too, these were exhilarating things, unique
factors producing a strange and exotic new way of perceiving the
world and the universe. Problems, once stated, could take endless time to run
through, yet by the clock so little time elapsed that no one on the
bridge had taken a single step or fully blinked an eye. The pilot
gained a new perspective, a new subjectivity; the girl acquired a
newer, faster, more efficient added brain. The potential codings used by Master System for the universe
ships’ defense came to more than fourteen quadrillion to the
fortieth power; it took almost nine seconds to come up with the
proper algorithms that, matched with the potential send speed of
the ship-to-ship communications devices, would cover better than
ninety-seven percent of all possibilities. They were complementary:
She could formulate and state the problem; it could then solve
it. She still was humbled, knowing that she was less than
nothing. The pilot was humbled, knowing now what it had always been
denied and might always be denied.
But it was the computer part that mandated the severing of the
connection after a matter of hours. The core commanded it, for no
human and no pilot could ever sever that connection voluntarily
once it had been made. They were separated, and she felt herself
drawn, much against her will, back to a tiny figure seemingly
asleep in the captain’s chair. Her consciousness, her ego,
was read back in, along with all of that unified experience that
her mind could handle, to be sorted, reclassified, reinterpreted,
and reprocessed.
She came to with a mixture of wonder and despair inside her. She
felt terribly humble, insignificant, a worm in a universe led by a
giant she could know so intimately only for brief intervals. She
loved—she worshiped—that blinding light. Moreover, Star
Eagle loved her as his link to humanity, his taste of his ultimate
Creator. What she had, it could never know any way but vicariously,
and it envied her that and craved more. He could live through her;
she could touch and tap the power only through him. In many ways it
was the perfect marriage.
“Look at them! Floating cities, each one!” Hawks
could hardly contain himself as they watched the fleet come into
view on the long-range viewer.
“I think they are ugly, fat tumors,” Cloud Dancer
commented.
“You have no appreciation of scale,” her husband
noted dryly. “Each of those ships is farther than from the
Four Families’ lodge to the village of the Willamatuk. They
do not need outside beauty. They are wonders of
creation.”
“Still, you got to admit, they look like long black
sausages with lots of warts,” Raven put in, chewing on a
cigar. “I hope they’re more comfortable inside. They
didn’t ship out all those folks in luxury.”
“Fully one-third is the engines alone,” Manka
Warlock noted, sounding a bit awed for the first time in her life.
“The center is a cargo bay so large that even this ship would
be dwarfed, a flyspeck so tiny we could hardly see it at this
distance. I must admit, to steal something of this magnitude will
make history.”
“We are being challenged,” came the voice of Star
Eagle. The voice was far different from what it had been in the
beginning—expressive, emotive, and very human. It was, in
fact, China’s voice exactly a half octave down. When she was
united in the captain’s interface with him, the voice became
totally hers. “Thirty-six fighters have been activated ahead
of us and to our flanks. They will be up to launch power in under a
minute.”
“Send them the damned algorithms!” Warlock
snapped.
“I’m sending, I’m sending! It will take almost
sixteen minutes to send them all the maximum transmission
rate.” He paused. “First set of fighters is
launched.”
“How long until they’re within range of us?”
Raven asked nervously.
“Fourteen minutes.”
Raven didn’t need to be a mathematical genius on that one.
“Uh, oh! Strap in, everyone! All of you! Strap in and brace
yourselves! Activate ground takeoff restraint systems as soon as
possible!”
Between the bridge, the passenger cabin chairs, the command
chair amidships, and the bed in Sabatini’s quarters, there
were enough spaces to go around. Not, of course, counting Sabatini,
who, locked in one of the big cages, would simply have to rough
it.
“They look like bird sketches,” Cloud Dancer said,
eyes still on the screen as she strapped herself in. The fighters,
the first of which were now launched and coming at them, were so
small, they had been invisible with the overview shot, but now Star
Eagle focused only on them.
They were like great, stiff birds with wings curved down at the
tips so that they ended below the main body, forming a stylized V
of black and silver, a tiny but deadly body suspended between.
Totally automated and run by Battle Control on the mother ship,
they did not need to take any precautions to protect fragile humans
inside.
Star Eagle didn’t have that luxury. “I estimate
three hits on the first pass, first wave,” he told them.
“On them or us?” Raven asked.
“On us, of course. I will probably not be able to take out
more than four of the first wave. The second wave should disable at
least one of my turrets.”
“Find the damned code!” the Crow
shouted.
“Deactivating artificial gravity. Battle mode,” the
pilot responded. “Uh, oh. More trouble. My sensors show a
force consisting of one armed freighter, Assim Class, and four
detached and fully operational and interfaced fighters, class and
origin unknown. They are activating their weapons systems and
closing rapidly. Estimated to be in range in twelve point four
minutes.”
“Who the hell is that?” Hawks shouted to
Raven. “Master System?”
“Uh, uh. Old M-S is what’s ahead. Nagy. It’s
got to be Nagy. That son of a bitch is chasing us from the other
side. Why? Sheer professional pride? Or does he think we can do
it?”
“Who’s this Nagy?” Cloud Dancer asked.
“Security chief on Melchior. They want us bad, Chief. If
we can’t figure a way around him, better hope those fighters
ahead get us first!”
Forward on the bridge, China released her restraints after some
fumbling and with difficulty found the helmet, then sat back,
refastened the belts as best she could, and put on the interface.
“Star Eagle—activate the interface, I beg
you!”
At the pilot’s request, she had not connected up at the
start of the battle. She had no fighting experience, and the
resources used to support the interface might well be needed to
divert instantly to vital areas. The pilot, however, was above all
else a computer, and it could count. Even if it hit the safe code
for the universe ships, it was no match for the four battle
cruisers closing on it. In fact, the pilot had no real experience
against a shooting enemy, either; it had only simulations to
go by. Such a need had not been contemplated by its programmers for
just such a reason as they now faced: The ship was hopelessly
outmatched in any fight against anything that might attack it.
Merged and in control, though, the China-Star Eagle combination
went to work on the problem while continuing to send the stream of
codes inward toward Jupiter. Curiously, it was China’s
memories of her humiliation at the hands of Sabatini that motivated
her most of all. They—the whole ship—were in the hands
of onrushing Sabatinis with about the same relative strength as he
had over her. Star Eagle was at the core a creature of logic; it
might surrender or die, choosing one over the other on the basis of
the facts and the odds, but it would not contemplate anything in
between.
The erstwhile Song Ching was, at her core, not a creature of
logic at all but one of emotion and strong will. This tendency
dominated in an unprecedented situation like this. She was in
control.
The four Melchior battle cruisers were closing fast, and time
was running out. They were leveling off for their attack run and
spreading their formation. Star Eagle’s sensors showed life
forms aboard each, and in spite of the fact that both pilot and
woman had only recently discovered this sort of interface, clearly
Melchior was far ahead of them. Still, how much practice could
those pilot-fighters have had?
Carefully she shifted course and speed so that the
computer-controlled fighters behind would be forced to line up
horizontally and re-form along the proper angle. The escapees were
four minutes from being in range of the Melchior ships, four
minutes and forty seconds to first in-range contact with the
defense system of the mothball fleet. Once locked on, neither side
would be fooled for more than a second or so by crazy course
changes. All the attack angles showed that any evasive maneuvers
would wind up just as bad. The odds on finding the correct code for
the fleet attackers were now split evenly into thirds—they
would find it in time, they would find it too late, or their entire
supposition on the mathematical algorithms was wrong and they
didn’t have the codes. That put any odds of survival at
thirty-three percent or less. The China aspect of the pilot
proceeded to ignore those odds. The computers in all the attacking
ships were also figuring that out and expecting a logical
response. To the demons of darkness I give logic!
The ship accelerated at maximum thrust right into the attacking
fleet fighters.
Startled, the Melchior ships sped up to keep to their overtake
position. They closed rapidly, but not as rapidly as their quarry
was closing on the fleet fighters.
Suddenly all power was shut down, but only for a moment. Then
full reverse thrusters were applied. The people inside the ship
were twisted and contorted against their restraints, and loose
objects began shooting through the air and off the walls. Hull
plates groaned, and cargo fasteners were torn free in the cargo
compartments. There had been, in fact, a sixty percent chance that
such a sudden and dramatic move would cause the ship to break
apart, but forty percent was better than thirty-three percent any
time.
The four Melchior fighters shot right past them in the act of
slowing themselves and ran straight into the first wave of fleet
fighters.
The reverse thruster tubes on the ship were almost white hot,
and the lining that protected them was beginning to give way under
the intense heat. It was nothing, however, compared to the attack
the four Melchior fighters were facing from the fleet defenses.
Attacking automatically, the fleet fighters swooped and dived and
fired with deadly accuracy in and out and all around the Melchior
ships, ignoring the larger ship that had been their first
challenger. They could always take care of that later.
Even as the last of the Melchior ships was being blown to atoms,
there came a weak but steady acknowledgment code from the fleet
itself to the ship, which cut all reverse thrust and
forward-thrusted to stabilize. As the reverse thrusters cut, there
was a groan and a set of horrible clanging sounds throughout the
forward area of the ship. The thrusters would be useless now.
The ship applied light forward thrust, then cut and began moving
back toward the fleet, but the fighters did not challenge it. They
were already returning to their respective ships.
In the chairs, men and women groaned, bruised and battered but
otherwise all right. The ship checked on them, then focused on Reba
Koll.
“We have eliminated the rear enemy and gotten the code to
proceed in to the fleet, Captain Koll,” China’s voice
informed her. Of all the people aboard, Koll was the one with the
experience who should have merged and been at the helm, a fact
neither China nor Star Eagle had really found appetizing but one
they hadn’t been able to deny. Curiously, Koll had adamantly
refused, although she would not explain it. Now, however, she was
more than willing to give advice. “In the process, however,
we burned out the rear thrusters completely. We are proceeding in
on course and schedule, but we have no way of stopping the
ship.”
Koll thought about the problem. “Are you in contact with
that big mother?”
“Establishing now. We have explained that we were ordered
to do this by Master System for a special project. It is torn
between being puzzled at our inability to immediately transmit the
correct code and its desire to be reactivated. We think it
wants to trust us, and we will come up with something
convincing to cover ourselves. Why?”
“Those babies were never designed to land. They were built
in space, and that’s where they always will be. They should
operate much like major interstellar traders, I bet. That means
tractor beams to manipulate and reorder cargo. Tell it you were
damaged in the fight, explain the problem, and request it hook you
with beams. It’ll be a real bump, but how much worse can it
be than what we just went through?”
“We have informed it of the problem. It is reactivating
and reawakening its systems now. It will be several hours before we
reach the contact point at this speed, and we dare not increase
speed and hope for a tractor catch. We suggest that everyone now
move about, tend to wounds and damage as best they can, and we will
notify them when to brace. The medical robot has been dispatched to
the passenger cabin in case it is needed.”
The core disengaged China from Star Eagle. It was as close to a
voluntary separation as could be attained, one based on sheer force
of logic. Shifts for human interfacers were strictly limited; if
she hoped to interface again at the critical point, she could not
remain there now.
Silent Woman, Cloud Dancer, and the Chows went about checking on
and seeing to everyone else, although Cloud Dancer and one of the
Chows had been pretty badly battered. They were particularly
concerned with China, now over five months pregnant and beginning
to show, but the mere fact that she’d been limp, essentially
unconscious, had protected her. Except for a few bruises where
straps had cut into her arm and shoulder, she seemed fine. Reba
Koll refused all attention. Although by far the oldest of the lot,
she seemed to have neither cut nor bruise.
“We are getting a call from behind us, faint but
clear,” Star Eagle informed them. “I will pipe it
in.”
“Nagy to Raven, come in. Nagy to Raven, please
respond,” came the faint call.
“Jam him if he tries to call in to the fleet,” China
ordered the pilot. “Can I respond to him?”
“Go ahead. Use the headset,” the pilot answered.
“Nagy, whoever you are, this is Captain Nightingale. If
you proceed after us any farther, I will inform the fleet that you
are an enemy vessel in rebellion against Master System. Break off.
You’ve lost.”
There was a pause. “Yeah, well, what the hell. We’re
not coming in that hornet’s nest after you. That was pretty
slick, what you pulled. You should’a died. All our systems
here insist that you’re dead now.”
“We’re alive, Nagy. We’re alive and
we’re leaving, but don’t worry, you’ll hear from
us again.”
“Well, maybe, maybe not. You might con all those old fleet
pilots there for a little while, but you know that Master System
will be on you before you break orbit. So you’re gonna hide
out there, a fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship? You can get lost
there, but that’s gonna be real obvious if you show up
anyplace inhabited. You’re in command—not Koll or
Raven?”
“That is correct. You were beaten by someone you turned
into a blind babymaker. Don’t sell us short again.”
“Oh, I won’t. I don’t have to. You either
stick Koll out that air lock, if you can, or I’ve seen and
heard the last of you, I warn you. That’s not Koll
you’re carrying, it’s something that’ll kill you
all. Only we can protect you. Come about and we will protect you
and you will all survive. Anything else and you carry your own
deaths with you.”
Koll gave a chuckle. “Don’t pay him no mind. I
ain’t gonna hurt any of you. Don’t have to.”
“Is he telling the truth? Are you not Koll?”
“No, I’m not Koll, but I’m no danger to
this crew. To him and his master, Clayben, I’m death
incarnate. It’s too involved to explain right now. You just
fought one hell of a fight, and you’re almost home, honey.
Now all you have to do is trust him or trust me. You can’t
get all them rings without me, so think it over good. You took a
lot of risks there. You know what happens if you take his
protection. You pick now.”
China didn’t have to think very far on it. One of these
days one of the risks wasn’t going to pay, but considering
the alternatives, it was not something she worried about.
“We’ll be back, Nagy, count on it,” China
said. “We’ll be back to blow your little empire to the
outer reaches of eternity, and Master System with it. You go back
there and tell them that, Nagy. You tell them—and you watch
your back and sweat a little and keep out of dark corners. I
don’t need the light for that. You made everything darkness
for me. No one—not you, not Melchior, not Earth or Master
System will stop us. There’ll be no place to hide when we
return, Nagy, and we have the universe to use and prepare.
We’ll be back—and damn you all!”
They slowly closed on one of the monster ships of the ancient
fleet, whose great bulk was dwarfed by the colors of massive
Jupiter, which filled half the sky.
Raven and Warlock looked at each other and nodded.
We’ll be back!
Hawks put his arms around Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman and
hugged them before they all had to be strapped in again. He touched
the Melchior tattoos on their faces and on his own and promised
himself that one day such a design would be a mark of honor, of
revolution. It would be a long journey to that day, and he did not
know what lay ahead, but he knew one thing full well. We’ll be back!
The Chows assisted China to her chair, beaming with pride at her
will and courage. We’ll be back!
The one they knew as Reba Koll relaxed and flicked her strange
tail, thinking. Up until now escape had been the only motive, no
risk too great to take. Against all logic and all odds they’d
come very far indeed, but there was a long way to go. Now, nothing
seemed impossible. We’ll be back! And we’ll have five gold rings to
stuff down Master System’s infinite throat until it
chokes!
For now—to the stars!
The Rings of the Master
continues with Pirates of the Thunder