Starfishers - Starfishers Triology Book 2

by Glen Cook

  "Whatever it is, it's dangerous," Mouse said. "They're all scared green."

  "The shark packs are collecting. Like ten times thicker than they've ever seen."

  "I watched one of the Service Ship crews come in this morning. They rotated with an alternate crew."

  "Fighting?"

  "Just exhausted, I think. I didn't see any stretchers. But Kindervoort's thugs ran me off before I could find out anything."

  Despite Kindervoort they gleaned their bits of information. "They're in a race against time," benRabi told Mouse. "I heard one guy say they wouldn't get a chance to gamble if the sharks hit aggressive mass before they finish their experiments."

  "What did he mean? Are they working on some new weapon?"

  BenRabi shrugged. "I didn't ask. But I sure wouldn't mind knowing what they're risking my life for."

  One evening, after a workday spent within taunting distance of the Sangaree woman, benRabi and Mouse tried to relax over a chessboard.

  "You're shook up again," Mouse observed while staring at his pieces. "What's up? Trouble with Amy?"

  "That's part of it. I've only seen her twice all week. She just comes in long enough to shower and change."

  "So? She's not sitting on the only one in the universe. The little redhead, Penny something, from New Earth... "

  "She's young enough to be my kid, Mouse. Only a couple of years older than Greta."

  Mouse flung his hands up in mock exasperation. "What's that got to do with it? She's willing, isn't she?"

  "Maybe. But I think I'm more a father image... "

  "So indulge in a little incest."

  "It doesn't matter anyway. Sex isn't the problem."

  "What? It's always a problem. One way or another." Mouse chuckled. He chuckled again as he ambushed Moyshe's queen. Moyshe could not keep his mind on his game. The want had returned, mildly, along with that damned thing with the gun. "What is the problem, then?"

  "The way people are treating us? I guess. They're so scared they won't have anything to do with us."

  "Check. Check there too. Part of it's the Sangaree woman, Moyshe. She's telling stories on us again. Trying to isolate us. I wonder why? One move to mate."

  They batted possibilities around. Moyshe so loathed the one that occurred to him that he refused to mention it right away.

  His game grew increasingly poor. He became irritable. The I want grew stronger, louder, mocking him, telling him that he was on the threshold of its fulfillment and was too blind to see it.

  "I can't hold off much longer," Mouse said, taking a pawn with a savage grab. "Next time she gouges me, or the next, I'll bend her, and damned be the consequences."

  "Please don't. We're almost home. We've only got five weeks to go."

  Mouse slaughtered a knight. "You think we should let her set us up?"

  BenRabi glanced at Mouse's emotionless face, back to the disaster already developing on the chessboard. "I yield." The more he reflected, the more he was sure he knew what Marya was planning. He stood abruptly, scattering chessmen. "We may have to."

  "Have to what?"

  "Bend her. For our own good. I know what she's doing. We ignored the obvious. Suppose she has the same kind of tracer we did? They've got the technology. And suppose she has control and didn't turn it on till after the Seiners stopped worrying about things like that?"

  "Got you. Let's not bend her. Let's just chop the tracer out." Mouse returned his chessmen to their box with loving care, then recovered a wicked homemade plastic knife from beneath his mattress. "Let's go."

  BenRabi thought of a dozen reasons for putting it off, but could not articulate a one. It was time Marya was put out of the game. She was too dangerous.

  They were halfway to her cabin when he stopped, struck by a sudden thought. "Mouse, what if she's expecting us?"

  "Doesn't seem likely."

  "You can't overlook anything in this business."

  "That's true. Let me think a minute."

  For months they had known that the Seiners sometimes listened in on them. When they did not want to be overheard they carefully lipread one another, never verbalizing anything that might excite an eavesdropper.

  "I think I made a mistake bringing this up in your cabin."

  "Yeah. Maybe. But it's too late to cry. If she bugged us, she bugged us."

  "What're you going to do?"

  "I'm thinking. I don't got a whole lot of use for Pyrrhic victories, you know."

  They continued talking quietly, ten meters from Marya's door.

  Three Seiners on a flying scooter squealed round a corner and skidded to a stop at Marya's door. They wore Security patches. One moved toward Mouse and benRabi, hand on his weapon, then stood easy. They tried to look like curious bystanders. The other Security men eyed the door.

  "Looks like we get it done for us, Mouse."

  "They're not thinking!" Mouse growled. BenRabi's heart pounded out a flamenco. These guys were too sure of themselves.

  They overrode the door closure. A pair of explosions greeted them. One man fell in the doorway. The other flung himself inside.

  The one facing Mouse and benRabi whirled, charged into the cabin too. His face had gone grey.

  They heard grunts and a cry of pain. "Homemade gunpowder weapons!" benRabi gasped. "Nice welcome she had for us."

  Mouse looked up and down the passageway. "Come on. Before we draw a crowd."

  BenRabi did not know what Mouse planned, but he followed. Mouse went in the door low, scooping the weapon from the hand of the dying Seiner. BenRabi scrambled after him, seizing another fallen handgun.

  The Sangaree woman had her back to the door. She was struggling with the last Security man. Her left hand darted past his guard, smashing his windpipe. He gagged. She followed up with a bone-breaking blow over his heart.

  BenRabi's grunt of sympathy warned her of enemies to her rear.

  "Slowly," Mouse said as she started for the Seiner's weapon. "I'd hate to shoot."

  For once she had no instantaneous retort. Mouse's tone made it clear there was nothing he would hate less than killing her. Emotional pain twisted her face when she turned. Once again, from her viewpoint, they had out-maneuvered her—and this time might be fatal.

  Her agony turned into a strained smile after a moment. "You're too late." The smile broadened. It became anticipatory. "They're on their way by now."

  "Moyshe, get that man in here and close the door. How bad is he?"

  "He's gone."

  "Better be nice," Marya said as benRabi forced the door shut. She had the sense to keep her voice neutral. To survive, to enjoy her victory, she had to overcome the obstacle she had made of Mouse. "They'll be here soon. You won't want them mad at you."

  "This one's gone too," benRabi said. "The other one might make it. Marya, don't think the Seiners will hand over a harvestfleet because a few raidships turn up."

  She smiled that gunmetal smile.

  He remembered ruined merchantmen left in the wake of Sangaree raiders. They would come with enough gunpower. There would be no survivors.

  An alarm began hooting. It was a forlorn call to arms.

  "General quarters, Mouse. She's for real." The borrowed weapon seemed to swell painfully in his hand. A part of him was telling him it was time he finished what he had started on The Broken Wings.

  Sixteen: 3049 AD

  Operation Dragon, Combat

  Time telescoped, then coiled around itself like some mad snake trying to crush itself. It detached Marya's battlefield cabin from the macro-universe, establishing an independent timeline. Ten seconds became an eternal instant.

  BenRabi was afraid.

  Something clicked inside Mouse. He slipped into assassin's mind. BenRabi vacillated between answering the alarm and staying to restrain the organic killing machine.

  Danion shivered. Moyshe recognized the feel of service ships launching.

  "I'm going on station, Mouse. Keep her here till Jarl's people come. And keep her alive.
"

  Mouse nodded mechanically. He was easily guided while in assassin's mind—if Psych had keyed him to accept your direction. He would be upset later. He wanted to show the woman the death of a thousand cuts, or something equally grisly.

  He was on his way back to the real universe already. "Take the guns, Moyshe. Hide them."

  "What about?... "

  "This." He tapped the plastic knife thrust through a tool loop on his jumpsuit.

  "All right." BenRabi collected the weapons. He hid them in Mouse's cabin, then headed for Damage Control South.

  "What's up?" he asked one of his teammates when he arrived.

  "Sangaree raidships. They say there's at least fifty of them. That's scary."

  "In more ways than one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "That their show is being put on by a consortium. No one Family has that kind of muscle. The last time they put that many ships together was for the Helga's World thing during the Shadowline War."

  The Seiner regarded benRabi with a puzzled fearful frown. Moyshe was talking foreign history.

  Moyshe found his fellow landsmen in a low-grade panic. They had no faith in Seiner arms. And they were sure the Starfishers would fight. He did not understand till he heard the Seiners themselves second-guessing Payne.

  Fleet Commander Payne had refused to negotiate or back down. He had told the Sangaree that he would fight to the last harvestship.

  "What're we fighting about?" Moyshe asked plaintively.

  His Seiner companions refused to enlighten him.

  He felt that touch of panic himself. He never had wanted to die with his boots on. Not since he had given up boyhood daydreams. He had no interest in dying at all. Not for several thousand years.

  Time moved with the haste of pouring treacle. He knew the Sangaree ships were maneuvering in the darkness outside. Outgunned service ships were moving to meet them. The death dance had begun.

  Moyshe stood facing the dark gate with all the unanswerable questions still banging around in his mind. The nature of his want remained the biggest, closely followed by the meaning of the gun thing.

  He started worrying about Amy. Where was she? Would she be safe? "Stupid question," he muttered. Of course she was not safe. Nobody was safe today.

  Then he saw her standing at the tool crib. What was she doing here? She spotted him, started his way.

  "Where's Mouse?" she asked.

  He explained quickly.

  "Good," she said when he finished. She tried to remain cool, but a tear formed in the corner of one eye. She brushed at it irritably. She had caught some of the groundside uninvolvement disease from him, he thought. Why else would a Seiner hide her emotions? Three men had died. It was a sad affair.

  She said, "I'll call Jarl. He may not have sent anyone else down."

  Moyshe resumed his seat, stared at the deck tensely, counting rivets and welds. When would the Sangaree missiles arrive?

  The attack, when it came, was not Sangaree. The dull-witted sharks, confused and distressed by the sudden appearance of so many more ships, reached emotional critical mass. They attacked in all directions.

  Scraps of news filtered in from Operations Sector. Some were good, some bad. The Sangaree were having a hard time. But the sharks attacking the harvestfleet were concentrating on Danion.

  In the sea of nothing the service ships were killing, and sometimes being killed by, sharks. The Sangaree vainly fought an enemy invisible to their equipment while, foolishly, continuing to try for a position of vantage against the harvestfleet. There was a wan hope in that, Moyshe thought. The sharks might take care of them. But, then, who would take care of the sharks?

  Danion shivered continuously. All her weaponry was in action, firing on Sangaree and sharks alike. BenRabi grimaced as he wondered just what the monster ship mounted.

  He waited with his team in the heart of the great mobile, he smelling their fear and they his. Amy quivered like a frightened rabbit in the crook of his arm. Alarms screamed each time the sharks penetrated the defenses, but DC South received no emergency calls.

  Courage brewed beneath the fear. There was no tension between landsman and Seiner now. They were united in defiance of an unprejudiced death.

  Danion rocked. Sirens raked their wicked nails over a million blackboards. Officers shouted into the confusion. A damage-control team piled aboard an electric truck and hurtled off to aid technicians in the stricken sector. Behind them the mood gradually turned grim as the fear, unable to sustain itself indefinitely, faded into a lower key, an abiding dread. Each technician sat quietly alone with his or her thoughts.

  The damage reports began arriving. Nearly ten percent of Danion's population were either dead or cut off from the main life-support systems. More trucks left. Survivors had to be brought out before the emergency systems failed.

  And there Moyshe sat, doing nothing, awaiting his dying turn.

  Somewhere in the big nothing the Sangaree raidmaster decided he had had enough. His fleet took hyper, bequeathing the Starfishers his share of ghostly foes.

  "Suits," said the blank-faced Fisher directing DC ops when the news arrived. He foresaw the end.

  They drew spacesuits from the emergency lockers. BenRabi donned his while thinking that this was the first time he had worn one seriously. Always before it had been for training or fun.

  He wondered why Mouse had not yet shown. Was he in the sector cut off? He asked Amy.

  "No. There's no damage there yet. Jarl probably hasn't had a chance to do anything. Our people should all be manning weapons."

  Danion screamed, whirled beneath them. Moyshe fell. His suit servoes hummed and forced him to his feet. The gravity misbehaved. He floated into the air, then came down hard. The lights weakened, died, returned as emergency power entered the lines.

  A shark had hit Danion's main power and drives.

  Somebody was yelling at him. Amy. "What?" He was too upset to listen closely, heard only that his team was going out. He jumped at the truck as it started rolling. Seiner hands dragged him aboard.

  Twenty minutes later, in an odd part of the ship devoted to fusion plant, his team captain set him to securing broken piping systems. Whole passageways had been ripped apart. Gaps opened on the night. Sometimes he saw it, starless, as he worked, but thought nothing of it. He was too busy.

  Hours later, when the pipes no longer bled and he had time for sloth, he noticed a vacuum-ruined corpse tangled in a mass of wiring, dark against an outer glow. That gave him pause. Space. It was what he was not supposed to see, so of course he had to look. He walked to the hole, saw nothing. He pushed the corpse aside, leaned out. Still nothing. No stars, no constellations, no Milky Way. Nothing but a tangle of harvestship limned by a sourceless glow.

  He stood there, frozen in disbelief, for he knew not how long. No stars. Where were they that there were no stars?

  The harvestship rotated slowly. Something gradually appeared beyond tubing, spars, and folded silver sails—the source of the glow. He recognized it, but did not want to believe it. It was the galaxy, edge on, seen from beyond its rim. His premonitions returned to haunt him. What, outside the galaxy, was near enough to be reached by ship?

  Far away, another harvestship coruscated under shark attack. Danion had shuddered to several while he worked, but none had been bad. There was an explosion aboard the other vessel. Gases spewed from her broken hull. But his eyes fled her, hurrying on to the coin-sized brightness rising in the direction of rotation.

  It was a planet. Self-illuminating, no sun. There was only one such place...

  Stars' End.

  Certain destruction for all who went near.

  What were the Seiners doing? Were they mad? Suicidal?

  Something broke, something blossomed across the face of the galaxy, a hundred times brighter, a fire like that of an exploding star. A harvestship was burning in a flame only a multidimensional shark could have ignited. They were growing more cunning, were spraying antimat
ter gases that totally devoured. In a corner of his mind a little voice asked, as a Fisher would, if that vessel's death had served the fleet. Were sharks dying there too?

  His gaze returned to Stars' End. All his myths were hemming him in. He did not doubt that the Sangaree would return. It was not their style to back down when the stakes were high, and there was more on the line now than a source of ambergris.

  He knew why the Seiners had come here. As did all who sought Stars' End, they wanted the fortress world's fabulous weapons. For centuries opportunists had tried to master the planet. Whoever possessed its timeless might became dictator to The Arm. No modern defense could withstand the power of Stars' End weaponry. Nor could sharks. The weapons were the salvation for which Payne had dared hope.

  What a faint hope! BenRabi knew there was no way to penetrate the planet's defenses. Battle fleets had failed.

  A hand touched his shoulder. A helmet met his. A voice came by conduction. "We're pulling out. Danion's been hit inboard of us. We don't want to get trapped here." In those words Moyshe imagined great sadness, but little of the fear he felt himself.

  They managed to reach D.C. South again only by trekking several kilometers afoot through regions of ship that looked like they had been mauled by naval weaponry. Moyshe found it hard to believe that the wrecking had been done by a creature he could not see.

  A room had been prepared for them to relax in, with snacks and drinks, and secure enough so they dared shed their suits.

  Mouse was there, wounded and bleeding.

  "Mouse! What the hell!... "

  "I should've bent her straight off, Moyshe. She got to me. Tricked me. Now she's into it somewhere."

  It was a big and confused ship. She could disappear easily. "How?" Moyshe examined Mouse's left arm. It was angled. Mouse had gotten a tourniquet on somehow.

  "Thing like a hatchet." Mouse's face was drawn and bloodless, but he did not protest benRabi's rough hands.

  "She must've caught you napping. That don't sound like you."

  "Yeah. We were playing chess... "

  "Chess? For Christ's sake... "

  "She's pretty good. For a woman. Nailed me when I was moving in for a mate."