THE NICE THING ABOUT BEING DEAD WAS THAT YOU
could, without any fear or guilt, do all those things that were
dangerous or unacceptable when one was alive. The problem was, they
really didn’t have the same effect.
Arnold Nagy was definitely dead. His body had been crushed under
the tremendous forces he had unleashed in a fight with a Val death
ship. He’d beaten Master System’s killers—robots
with the minds and memories of their human quarries—and had
been the only casualty. The crew had determined him dead and then
buried him in space by shooting his lifeless body out an airlock,
there to drift forever around some lonely sun.
Now he sat in his domed, velvet-lined base of exile, far from
the battle yet surrounded by all the comforts anyone could wish
except, of course, companionship. That came rarely, and when it did
come the company was less than joyous and convivial.
He longed for human company, for real people who talked and
laughed and cried and did all the things people did. That was the
ultimate curse he had to bear. It was why he called his luxurious
hideaway hell, in spite of all the comforts it provided. Hell was
wherever he was, regardless of the surroundings, even with people
about. Humans just made hell more bearable. There was a line from
Faust that said it; a line spoken by Mephistopheles, chief
agent of Satan, when asked in Faust’s cozy study what hell
was like.
“Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of
it.”
Nagy went over and sat down at his data screen and punched up
the progress report. He’d read it a million times, but he
still needed to read it again for his own sake. Item: Master System—which ruled over Earth and
more than four hundred and fifty worlds to which humans had been
forcibly transported and then altered to fit the
environments—could be turned off only because of a safety
mechanism designed into it by its makers. Five ornate gold rings
hid the tiny and complex microcircuits that were required by the
master program’s core instructions to always be in the
possession of humans with authority. Master System scattered the
rings throughout the galaxy to make any attempt at uniting them
next to impossible, since it alone controlled commerce and trade
and space flight. To find all five would be improbable. To get all
five was even less likely. To then get them to the master interface
where they could be used, and to use them in the correct order,
unthinkable. Humanity was ignorant of the rings’ existence,
let alone their use. Item: More than nine hundred years after Master System
assumed control, knowledge of the rings was unearthed in the papers
of an illegal cult of independent scientists in the South American
jungles on Earth. Ambitious humans who had learned to beat some of
the system managed to get copies and make a deal with the only
possessor of a ring on Earth: Lazlo Chen, the chief
administrator. Item: The courier taking the papers to Chen was
intercepted by Vals and shot down over the North American plains,
falling into the hands of a Plains Indian, Jon Nighthawk, or more
simply Hawks, on leave with his primitive people from his job as a
historian at North America Center. He and wife, Cloud Dancer, found
themselves pursued by the Vals, the great robot agents of Master
System, and by Chen’s agents, including a Crow Indian named
Raven. Raven caught them first and transported them first to Chen,
then to Melchior, an asteroid penal colony controlled by Doctor
Isaac Clayben, regarded by most as a human incarnation of Master
System even though he, too, hated the computer. Item: At almost the same time, Song Ching, daughter of
the chief administrator of China Center, discovered in another
illegal tech cult’s papers that for some unknown reason
Master System had built a human interface into all its spaceships.
The recovered documents and research showed just how to tap into
that interface and control virtually any spaceship built by Master
System. A product of a long-term genetic breeding experiment by her
emotionally cold father, she fled China Center rather than become
yet another breeder in his grand design and wound up on Melchior,
as well. Item: Nagy, as chief security officer of Melchior, had
been playing a double game as the agent of the enemy Master System
said it was at war with—a stalemated war no one knew anything
about, including the nature and location of either the enemy or the
battleground. He had placed the Indians and the Chinese together,
along with others already on Melchior—all selected for a
possible attempt to locate and steal the rings—and allowed
them to escape to an interplanetary ship whose computer
intelligence was independent of Master System. Song Ching, blinded
by Clayben and turned into a biological breeding machine to keep
her father’s experiment going, was allowed to discover the
existence of a mothballed fleet of giant ships once used to take
millions of humans to other worlds and there to transform them into
whatever form necessary to survive on a particular planet. Before
Master System raided Melchior and shut it down, Nagy and Clayben
also escaped in a smaller interstellar craft prepared for just that
purpose. Eventually, Nagy and Clayben joined the group as uneasy
allies. Item: Along with the escapees, there is one who is not
at all human but rather a creature of Clayben’s design, a
creature capable of absorbing and then mentally and physically
duplicating any other organic being. Bred originally as the first
of a synthetic army that could bypass Master System’s
defenses, it proved impossible to control and had been kept sedated
and contained for many years on Melchior. Once free, it agreed for
its own reasons to join them—as Nagy and his bosses counted
on from the start. Because the leader of the expedition is the
Amerind historian Hawks, the security man is Raven, and the
ship’s computer who has joined them as an independent ally is
called Star Eagle, the creature names itself Vulture.
Item: Spotted by Vals in the freebooter trading post
run by Fernando Savaphoong, an oily crook whose greed is surpassed
only by his deceit, the renegades were attacked by Master System
and the freebooter base was destroyed. Savaphoong escaped by the
skin of his teeth and linked up with some refugee freebooter ships
with no place left to go. Contacted by Hawks, they joined together
to form a pirate fleet named after the huge ship at its
center—the Pirates of the Thunder. But during a
fight with the Val ships, Nagy was killed and his body disposed of
in deep space. Item: Using Vulture to duplicate a native and scout the
target planet, several members of the Thunder band
infiltrated the Hindu world of Janipur—where one of the rings
lay in a guarded museum—after first being changed into the
strange Janipurian form by the same devices that created the
original Janipurians. The devices, called transmuters, were
deliberately designed so that a being could be changed only once; a
second attempt would kill. Together, the infiltrators and Vulture
were able to steal the ring and elude pursuit by Vals and members
of Master System’s human shock troops, the System
Peacekeeping Forces, or SPF. However, to extricate their people and
the ring requires the pirates to fight a space battle with the
Vals, automated fighters, and the SPF, and this is accomplished
only at great cost—and served to put Master System on full
alert. Item: A second group infiltrates the planet Matriyeh
the same way: by becoming natives, with Vulture leading the way and
spying from the inside. This world is so primitive Master System
depends on the limited society and harshness of life there to
defend the ring. It is a herculean task to get it, particularly
since it is guarded by a semihuman Val in the guise of a beautiful
goddess. If the ring or its guardian is removed, all the forces of
Master System would be alerted, forcing another battle Master
System can well afford but the pirates can’t. They manage to
steal the ring and replace the Val with one of their own crew
transformed into an exact replica of the guardian—all so
quickly and covertly that none of the SPF or automated alarms on
this world are aware that the ring is missing. Again, however,
there is cost, as they lose some of their number in the
attempt and others must stay behind to maintain the secrecy of
their success. Item: The pirates of the Thunder are well down
in strength, even more so in the number of people who can still be
transmuted and still have no idea as to the location of the
interface or how the rings must be used. They still have two rings
to steal and know the approximate location of only one of them. The
impossible odds faced throughout are growing astronomic with the
passage of time, and the vast forces arrayed against them become
stronger all the time. And as always, Master System waits to pounce
on their smallest error.
Arnold Nagy sighed and gulped down the rest of his drink. So far, so good, he thought nervously.
THE NICE THING ABOUT BEING DEAD WAS THAT YOU
could, without any fear or guilt, do all those things that were
dangerous or unacceptable when one was alive. The problem was, they
really didn’t have the same effect.
Arnold Nagy was definitely dead. His body had been crushed under
the tremendous forces he had unleashed in a fight with a Val death
ship. He’d beaten Master System’s killers—robots
with the minds and memories of their human quarries—and had
been the only casualty. The crew had determined him dead and then
buried him in space by shooting his lifeless body out an airlock,
there to drift forever around some lonely sun.
Now he sat in his domed, velvet-lined base of exile, far from
the battle yet surrounded by all the comforts anyone could wish
except, of course, companionship. That came rarely, and when it did
come the company was less than joyous and convivial.
He longed for human company, for real people who talked and
laughed and cried and did all the things people did. That was the
ultimate curse he had to bear. It was why he called his luxurious
hideaway hell, in spite of all the comforts it provided. Hell was
wherever he was, regardless of the surroundings, even with people
about. Humans just made hell more bearable. There was a line from
Faust that said it; a line spoken by Mephistopheles, chief
agent of Satan, when asked in Faust’s cozy study what hell
was like.
“Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of
it.”
Nagy went over and sat down at his data screen and punched up
the progress report. He’d read it a million times, but he
still needed to read it again for his own sake. Item: Master System—which ruled over Earth and
more than four hundred and fifty worlds to which humans had been
forcibly transported and then altered to fit the
environments—could be turned off only because of a safety
mechanism designed into it by its makers. Five ornate gold rings
hid the tiny and complex microcircuits that were required by the
master program’s core instructions to always be in the
possession of humans with authority. Master System scattered the
rings throughout the galaxy to make any attempt at uniting them
next to impossible, since it alone controlled commerce and trade
and space flight. To find all five would be improbable. To get all
five was even less likely. To then get them to the master interface
where they could be used, and to use them in the correct order,
unthinkable. Humanity was ignorant of the rings’ existence,
let alone their use. Item: More than nine hundred years after Master System
assumed control, knowledge of the rings was unearthed in the papers
of an illegal cult of independent scientists in the South American
jungles on Earth. Ambitious humans who had learned to beat some of
the system managed to get copies and make a deal with the only
possessor of a ring on Earth: Lazlo Chen, the chief
administrator. Item: The courier taking the papers to Chen was
intercepted by Vals and shot down over the North American plains,
falling into the hands of a Plains Indian, Jon Nighthawk, or more
simply Hawks, on leave with his primitive people from his job as a
historian at North America Center. He and wife, Cloud Dancer, found
themselves pursued by the Vals, the great robot agents of Master
System, and by Chen’s agents, including a Crow Indian named
Raven. Raven caught them first and transported them first to Chen,
then to Melchior, an asteroid penal colony controlled by Doctor
Isaac Clayben, regarded by most as a human incarnation of Master
System even though he, too, hated the computer. Item: At almost the same time, Song Ching, daughter of
the chief administrator of China Center, discovered in another
illegal tech cult’s papers that for some unknown reason
Master System had built a human interface into all its spaceships.
The recovered documents and research showed just how to tap into
that interface and control virtually any spaceship built by Master
System. A product of a long-term genetic breeding experiment by her
emotionally cold father, she fled China Center rather than become
yet another breeder in his grand design and wound up on Melchior,
as well. Item: Nagy, as chief security officer of Melchior, had
been playing a double game as the agent of the enemy Master System
said it was at war with—a stalemated war no one knew anything
about, including the nature and location of either the enemy or the
battleground. He had placed the Indians and the Chinese together,
along with others already on Melchior—all selected for a
possible attempt to locate and steal the rings—and allowed
them to escape to an interplanetary ship whose computer
intelligence was independent of Master System. Song Ching, blinded
by Clayben and turned into a biological breeding machine to keep
her father’s experiment going, was allowed to discover the
existence of a mothballed fleet of giant ships once used to take
millions of humans to other worlds and there to transform them into
whatever form necessary to survive on a particular planet. Before
Master System raided Melchior and shut it down, Nagy and Clayben
also escaped in a smaller interstellar craft prepared for just that
purpose. Eventually, Nagy and Clayben joined the group as uneasy
allies. Item: Along with the escapees, there is one who is not
at all human but rather a creature of Clayben’s design, a
creature capable of absorbing and then mentally and physically
duplicating any other organic being. Bred originally as the first
of a synthetic army that could bypass Master System’s
defenses, it proved impossible to control and had been kept sedated
and contained for many years on Melchior. Once free, it agreed for
its own reasons to join them—as Nagy and his bosses counted
on from the start. Because the leader of the expedition is the
Amerind historian Hawks, the security man is Raven, and the
ship’s computer who has joined them as an independent ally is
called Star Eagle, the creature names itself Vulture. Item: Spotted by Vals in the freebooter trading post
run by Fernando Savaphoong, an oily crook whose greed is surpassed
only by his deceit, the renegades were attacked by Master System
and the freebooter base was destroyed. Savaphoong escaped by the
skin of his teeth and linked up with some refugee freebooter ships
with no place left to go. Contacted by Hawks, they joined together
to form a pirate fleet named after the huge ship at its
center—the Pirates of the Thunder. But during a
fight with the Val ships, Nagy was killed and his body disposed of
in deep space. Item: Using Vulture to duplicate a native and scout the
target planet, several members of the Thunder band
infiltrated the Hindu world of Janipur—where one of the rings
lay in a guarded museum—after first being changed into the
strange Janipurian form by the same devices that created the
original Janipurians. The devices, called transmuters, were
deliberately designed so that a being could be changed only once; a
second attempt would kill. Together, the infiltrators and Vulture
were able to steal the ring and elude pursuit by Vals and members
of Master System’s human shock troops, the System
Peacekeeping Forces, or SPF. However, to extricate their people and
the ring requires the pirates to fight a space battle with the
Vals, automated fighters, and the SPF, and this is accomplished
only at great cost—and served to put Master System on full
alert. Item: A second group infiltrates the planet Matriyeh
the same way: by becoming natives, with Vulture leading the way and
spying from the inside. This world is so primitive Master System
depends on the limited society and harshness of life there to
defend the ring. It is a herculean task to get it, particularly
since it is guarded by a semihuman Val in the guise of a beautiful
goddess. If the ring or its guardian is removed, all the forces of
Master System would be alerted, forcing another battle Master
System can well afford but the pirates can’t. They manage to
steal the ring and replace the Val with one of their own crew
transformed into an exact replica of the guardian—all so
quickly and covertly that none of the SPF or automated alarms on
this world are aware that the ring is missing. Again, however,
there is cost, as they lose some of their number in the
attempt and others must stay behind to maintain the secrecy of
their success. Item: The pirates of the Thunder are well down
in strength, even more so in the number of people who can still be
transmuted and still have no idea as to the location of the
interface or how the rings must be used. They still have two rings
to steal and know the approximate location of only one of them. The
impossible odds faced throughout are growing astronomic with the
passage of time, and the vast forces arrayed against them become
stronger all the time. And as always, Master System waits to pounce
on their smallest error.
Arnold Nagy sighed and gulped down the rest of his drink. So far, so good, he thought nervously.