Starhammer

by Christopher Rowley

  Eblis Bey sipped coffee, considered his words. "The batrachians had been a slow people. Their cities were low and quite unremarkable, built in harmony with the estuaries and tidal mud flats that they preferred, none of the glories of human or laowon architecture. But then they rose up and welded the entire resources of their planet together in a crash program of defense."

  "Did they manage it?"

  "Not quite, they were unversed in war. The Vang advance forces arrived and swept aside their defenses with contemptuous ease. The batrachians had completely underestimated the ferocity of combat. Their losses were dreadful, but certain methods of Vang warfare helped them to rethink. They swung to the opposite extreme, the ruthlessness of the weak. During their great program they had discovered a physics of supergravity that is still far beyond us. They turned to it to forge a weapon with which to destroy the Vang fleets and Vang homeworlds. But even as they did so, Vang lifeforms were dropping onto their planet. The batrachians realized they were doomed. They had wasted most of the useful mass in their solar system as gravity potential for their weapons. All they could turn to then was their own sun, which they used to transport what was left of them into the flow of time and, I believe, to the remote future."

  "But what happened to their planet?"

  "Its sun gone, it was flung into the interstellar void at orbital speed and drifted there for a billion years or more."

  "How do we know of it then?"

  "It was captured by a young blue-giant star, some time in the last few thousand years. More recently it has been colonized by human beings." The Bey stood up. "Come with me and I will show you."

  A few floors above they came to a small room that Eblis Bey had appropriated as an office. They entered after he had carefully checked the corridor.

  "No one we cannot trust completely may know this until we get there. Not even the young acolytes of Elchis."

  Eblis Bey took a small holocaster from his sleeve and set it on the table. A sharp little hologram sprang into place, a star system.

  "The primary is Pleione, one of the seven sisters of the Pleides. She is hot and she is young."

  The star was tinged blue-white. The representation made it seem tiny and far away, a hot speck of fury.

  "Of course she is much too young to have planets of her own. In fact, it is doubtful that she will burn stably long enough for planets even to form from what is left of the nebula that surrounds her."

  Nevertheless, outside the ring of gas and dust particles a small brown planet rolled past in the projection.

  "But, you see, she has a planet, a captured wanderer, a most interesting little world that we humans call BRF, or colloquially Baraf."

  Jon stared at him. "Baraf," he sputtered, and pointed at the resting mote. "Where the mote was found!"

  "Indeed. And it is there that we will find the Hammer."

  "The Hammer?"

  "That smashes stars, the ancient weapon of the batrachians. With it, we can free humanity of the laowon yoke."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Baada drives functioned perfectly for the last two enormous jumps across the stars, but when at last the great battleship hung on the fringes of the Pleione system the left drive broke down with an appalling howl of tortured metal. A few moments later the computer shut everything down except the auxiliary power supply and left them shaking in their seats with their fingers stuffed in their ears.

  They crowded around the astronomical screen on the bridge. Not far away a small dark planet orbited. A pall of dust hung over most of the northern hemisphere, but here and there narrow strips of blue water laced the surface.

  A conference was held. No one was prepared to stay aboard the crippled Churchill, and thus the spaceboat would be heavily crowded on the short hop to the planetary surface.

  The great Testamenter battleship would be left to float on in solar orbit, a near hulk.

  Eblis Bey pointed to the small planet on the screen. "Behold the planet called Baraf, wherein resides our last hope for human freedom.

  "As you can see, the oceans are greatly reduced. Most of the ancient seabeds are now exposed. The dust belts are one result, since the primordial oozes have dried and been taken into the upper atmosphere."

  "What happened to make the oceans shrink so much?" Jon asked.

  "A sad side effect of the little planet's salvation from eternal freezing. Baraf was plucked from the interstellar void about twenty thousand yeas ago. For most of that time the planet was safe. It warmed up, the ice melted, the oceans circulated once again, and in time life might have returned. But the orbit is eccentric. About two thousand years ago Baraf passed close to Pleione and was scorched. The oceans largely boiled away."

  "How did anyone ever come to discover this planet?" Officer Bergen said. "Who would want to colonize here, surrounded by these giant white stars? There's too much radiation."

  "True, and indeed it was only by the remotest chance that Baraf was discovered at all. Just another aspect of the case that gives encouragement to the view that there really is a God of the humans, or at the very least a merciful God that looks upon our struggle for freedom with favor."

  He smiled at them. "But the fact remains that it was discovered by three survivors of a shipwreck long ago."

  "Way out here?" exclaimed Jon. "We're far beyond the outer limits of human exploration."

  "Their ship was the Stapledon, one of the earliest High Corporate exploration vessels. Very fast NAFAL, the crew were kept in hibernation. But the computer malfunctioned, accelerated to maximum speed, and kept it up for centuries."

  "I wonder why?"

  "Apparently it had formulated the 'Two God' problem for itself, a noted hazard with some early generations of advanced computers, especially the so-called tenth generation. It was a mathematical black hole from which they hardly ever recovered, becoming obsessed with the need to prove that they were, or were not, God incarnate.

  "However, after several centuries it decided the problem was just an irrelevancy and made a rare recovery. It began to decelerate and to wake the crew, but already the ship was on the verge of a dense interstellar dust cloud. They abandoned the ship just before it blew up in the cloud.

  "As a result there were only three survivors: Anatol Bolgol, the expedition's biologist; Levia Razevkoy, the astronav; and Lotte Fernica, the medic. Theirs was the only lifeboat that escaped the wreck. They also survived the subsequent seven-year voyage to reach this habitable little planet.

  "Their radio broadcasts were identified a century later and a rescue mission was sent by laowon jumper, but there were already thousands of their descendants here and they had discovered amazing artifacts of their lost world."

  They all looked at Rhapsodical Stardimple, where it was floating, optics glued to the planet in the skyplate.

  "The vast machines, the boneyard cities where the ancient Barafi populations died en masse, and the odd remnants of their culture, the motes, the templates, the pops and snaps. Of course once these things became known, there was a constant stream of people from all over the known Galaxy. Even a few laowon adventurers come here, overcoming their pathological fear of radiation."

  "But you say 'thousands' of their descendants were here?" Jon voiced his puzzlement. "How could there have been thousands of them in such a short time?"

  "It was remarkably simple. Old Bolgol was a biologist and a medical doctor, Lotte Fernica was a geneticist and although Lotte was far beyond childbearing years they did have Levia Razevkoy. They decided to produce a large family with her eggs and Bolgol's sperm. It was a natural response to their situation. They were alone on a strange and hostile world. They knew that Pleione's radiation was dangerous and so they colonized the extensive caves at Quism on the North Pole. In a remarkably brief time they overcame the difficulties and produced a crop of one hundred and twelve viable fetuses, mostly female. They also produced the mutated beans and rice that grow on the north polar patch, which, like the South Pole, is the only part of the p
lanet that has anything like reasonable climate."

  Jon stared in wonder at the planet below.

  "The next generation was much easier, of course, and after that it got out of hand. At the last count there were four distinctly different mutant species running wild in the northern deserts, robbing archeologists and prospectors. They've become quite a menace. Most are cannibals. They maintain herds of meat people. The tales that are told of them are quite horrible."

  "How can they survive Pleione's radiation?"

  "The mutants live underground in the day, they infest the surface at night. Especially in the northern machine belts and the ancient city sites. It is said they have made genetics their religion and Anatol Bolgol their god. There are rumors that clones of Bolgol and Razevkoy continue to live out there, among the wildest tribes like the Bluegrain Hardscabbies."

  "It sounds like a savage place," Officer Bergen commented.

  "It is. And the city of Quism is just as savage as the desolate wastes. It is a city ruled by force, not law, and that is something you must all remember while we are here. At any moment violence may strike. You must all be on your guard for the duration of your stay."

  After course corrections for the chemfuel boosters were fed into the Churchill's computer to ensure the great ship maintained a stable, distant, orbit about Pleione, they crowded into the spaceboat, but the journey to the planetary surface was uneventful and, with the main parachutes deployed, they floated down onto the spaceport at Quism.

  Dimly visible around the port were long rectangular fields, dark with vegetation.

  Hundreds of kilometers away, a wall of mountains was made visible by a line of white snow that dappled its peaks.

  Eblis Bey had briefed them but still the reality of Quism was rather intimidating.

  The boat was met by a convoy of small armored vehicles. Tense-looking young men appeared from within. They made the sign of Elchis, a cross in the air with the left hand.

  Eblis Bey went out to meet them in a thin, warm wind, with the mote floating at his shoulders. The leaders kissed his hand, the rest waved weapons and saluted the Bey with a roar.

  Watching at the edge of the spaceboat's airlock, Jon noticed an odd expression on Finn M'Nee's face; eyes narrowed, lips pinched in disapproval. M'Nee caught him looking at him and flashed him a glance of unrelieved hatred, then turned back into the cabin.

  They quickly disembarked while an armed group from the spaceport docking authority rode out an electric trolley to tow the spaceboat into the cliffcut hangars.

  With the four armored cars as escort, they would ride a bus into the city itself and take lodgings in a centrally located hotel. Meg and the injured Riley would be taken from there to the Elchite shelter where a small hospital was maintained.

  Quism was an old, underground city. In its warren of limestone caves seethed a population that survived principally by supplying, protecting, and robbing treasure hunters and archeologists.

  At the side of the concrete spaceport apron was a line of barkers for the rival bus owners. They set up a raging din at the sight of six travelers with luggage.

  "My bus is the most comfortable in this system!" screamed one garlic-scented driver with a belly that protruded well over his trouser tops.

  "His bus stinks of the Scurmachers he just carried in. All that boilweed fume!"

  "My bus is best bus!"

  "You will boil in hell alongside your ancestor's liver!"

  "Your ancestor was my ancestor so who the hell cares!"

  "You will be defiled by my dog!"

  While they argued, swift-fingered accomplices attempted to pick the travelers' pockets and steal anything remotely valuable that might present itself.

  Jon Iehard noticed the technique at once. He positioned himself close to Captain Hawkstone as two young, olive-skinned men lurched into him. Hands went for the small pack on Hawkstone's back and the loose pockets of his overall rain slicker.

  Jon rapped the hand in the pack with the butt of his Taw Taw and caught the hand lifting Hawkstone's Ornholme ID card from his pocket.

  The owners of the hands cursed furiously, but at the sight of the gun they moved away sharply.

  Officer Dahn shook her head gloomily, then gave a small scream. Jon looked up to see two boys were pushing Meg Vance away in her wheelchair. Jon sprinted after them and recovered her.

  "Cannibalism is a constant threat here. Women sell their own newborns to the butcher, the dead seldom need be buried or cremated. Be alert at all times," Eblis Bey chided.

  They chose a yellow-and-black bus that belched black smoke and rode on oversize tires down a corrugated roadbed into the city and, finally, to the forecourt of a hotel. The Travel Aires was dug into the solid rock. A wall of reinforced concrete blocks rose in front, and armed guards patrolled the blue-and-white forecourt. The guards wore stiff maroon-and-blue tunics and carried two-handed automatic pistols that looked to Jon like imitation Taw Taw .45s. He noticed the signs of body armor under the tunics.

  The guards on the forecourt and the young Elchites in the armored vehicles eyed each other with a mixture of disdain and contempt, but neither side spoke. One surly guard spat eloquently after sharing a comment with a colleague. The Elchites looked up along the barrels of their machine guns. The surly guards fell silent.

  After paying the bus drivers, Eblis Bey was forced to tip all the forecourt guards, who would accept only intersystem value vouchers or notes of Lao Mercantility.

  Hawkstone was quick to complain. "So again we must pay out credit! There is no end to it!"

  "It's essential if we don't want to lose people—have them stolen right off this forecourt. As I said, cannibalism, slavery, robbery, all are highly common here."

  The Orners groaned.

  Eblis Bey smiled. "I will personally explain the necessity behind it all to the Ornholme Financial Council."

  "You think that will be easy, don't you?" Hawkstone said derisively. "You'll be telling them after they've learned of the loss of the Orn."

  After considerable, ill-tempered haggling, Dahn finally agreed to book them all into the hotel under the special rate for ongoing expeditions, a hundred credit units per person per day, plus a percentage of eventual profits. Dahn paid over more intersystem value vouchers with ill grace.

  The interior of the Travel Aires was a startling blend of fortress and hotel. Whorled concrete ceilings, blast shields about all the main doors, a large, quiet interior courtyard with a fountain, and small trees populated by exotic songbirds.

  Outside the windows of Jon's room, the blue-and-white striped concrete forecourt opened onto the Grand Levee, a babbling thoroughfare jammed with traffic from the Meridian Gate to the Spaceport Gate right through the heart of the city.

  The rooms were of all sizes and shapes, cut from the native rock at intervals over four hundred years. The interiors offered comfortable enough beds, baths, and light that was filtered from overhead shafts.

  Jon dropped his small tote bag on the bed after extracting his gun and the small silver cube. Then he rejoined the Elchites and accompanied them to their shelter with Meg and Riley.

  The shelter was hidden beneath a tenement block in a densely crowded slum section of Razevkoy Precinct. To get in they entered a small basement doorway, crossed the cellar, and went down another narrow hole into a warren of underground rooms.

  Young men and women in blue robes came and took Meg and Riley into a small hospital ward.

  Jon explained what had happened to Meg and to Riley. The chief medic stared at him, emotions mixed, but sedated Meg. "She has served Elchis well. We shall care for her and when she wakes we will explain where she is and how she came to be here."

  Jon shook hands with Riley, promised to come back and see him as soon as the mission was completed.

  "All right, young sunboy, you do that. I'll not bear a grudge, but I warn you, be on your lookout for Finn M'Nee. Sharp as a sandsnake, worse than a spiny pfister is that one."

  Jon rod
e an armored vehicle to the hotel. The streets were thronged, and he saw innumerable mutations from the human norm. One of the most common forms was often seven feet tall, the skin thick and coarse and mottled with blue patches.

  Once back in the hotel he had barely time to grab a meal and use the bathroom facilities in his room before being called to a meeting in Eblis Bey's suite.

  When he got there, Owlcurl Dahn was arguing vehemently with several thin-faced young men with sun-bleached hair and heavily tanned skins. The young men shared that intensity, that "fire of Elchis" he'd observed before.

  "I tell you, I am coming, all the way to the south. I was appointed to this mission by the Ornholme Executive Council without whom none of this could have happened. Furthermore, I resent your attitudes. Since I'm paying for all this, I don't think it's unfair for me to be included in the planning!"

  The Elchites muttered among themselves, while the Bey conferred briefly with Jon. Then he drew him across the room to the Elchites.

  "Jon Iehard, meet some of my young brethren here. This is Aul, Karak, Yondon, and Gesme."

  "Well, Master Iehard, were you satisfied with our hospital in the shelter?" Aul was a hatchet-faced youth with a shaved head and unhealthy complexion. "The medics will take good care of her. It seems that she has given much to Elchis."