Don’t you remember Laura Shemzak? You are our Angel of Death.
No! Laura thought, foreseeing the inevitable image that would come to her. No, I can’t take it … not again!
But follow it did, relentlessly, and a moving image too—slow motion: Cal’s young face, smiling before her; then the, sudden compulsion, the lifting of her gun, the pulling of the trigger, the expression on Cal’s face just before he died—
No! she screamed, flailing at the image. No! she yelled at these dark, alien stars. Suddenly the wires within the snug cockpit drifted up like weightless snakes. They began coiling about her neck … coiling and constricting and strangling.
And the stars seemed to laugh, and they said. This is not yet the worst, Laura Shemzak. You shall later curse us for not killing you now!
Laura Shemzak awoke, sweating.
Her sheets were kicked and sprawled all about her, and she clutched her pillow desperately. Her hair was matted to her face by the sweat, the silken pajamas issued her by the Starbow commissary clinging all over her well-muscled body.
—Cal, her brother, being sucked aboard a Jaxdron ship on Mulliphen even as she was doing the Federation’s dirty work ….
What a dream, she thought. She hadn’t had a doozie like that one since she received her cybernetic implants over four years ago. She lay on the mattressed bunk of her compartment aboard the pirate/mercenary ship Starbow, feeling again the stark sense of aloneness and despair that had flooded her in that first terrible week of operations funded by the Federation: alone, unloved, comfort behind her and nothing but a dreadful unknown in the future, waiting for her like a cowled creature, face hidden.
Like then, she wanted to vomit, but she did not. Like then, she wished she was dead—but she hung on to survival. When her trials had registered years ago on esoteric medical vu-screens, they had rushed her to another room, and biochemical and biotechnical analyses were taken. She had sweated then, too, almost sweated away her very life it seemed, amidst the worried murmurs of the doctors.
And finally, as she lay in her room, her body seemingly nothing but newly bonded rearrangements of stitches and tissue—impregnated now with all manner of alien machinery and nano laced circuitry—they had come to her and said take this, it will make you feel better. Take it sparingly, for you will not need it often, but you will need it regularly to quell this experience when it arises.
They showed Laura Shemzak how to take the drug, and it seemed very simple. They had issued her a supply, along with painkillers, and it had simply seemed a part of being a blip-ship pilot.
She went and poured herself a glass of water, shuddering as the cool stuff slid down her throat, still feeling the despair encircling her in a swaddling of nothingness. Every cell in her body seemed to call out in need.
How odd, she thought with what rationality remained to her. I only took the drug just before this whole affair began. Generally, it lasted much longer.
She put the water glass down, sat unsteadily in a chair, pulled the right silk pants leg up from shin to knee and waited a moment for her hands to stop shaking. Then she struggled to remember the code. What the hell was wrong with her, anyway? Had all this Starbow business devastated her brain so much?
Then it came to her. She tapped her fingernails on the appropriate pressure spots, in the necessary order. A small servomotor hummed faintly, and a section of skin opened up to reveal a small compartment. She pulled Out a small plastic bag holding about three grams of blue powder.
Zernin.
It was fortunate that the organic nature of the substance blended with the rest of her, or Dr. Mish would surely have spotted the narcotic. And even pi-mercs might not approve.
But she needed it, she thought. She deserved it. It gave her just the right edge necessary for blip-ship piloting. It made her cells resonate with just the right notes to blend in with the songs of interstellar space. She was no addict, she reminded herself. How could you be an addict if you take only a very tiny bit perhaps once in a standard month? It was a necessary thing for blip-ship pilots, the Federation scientists had discovered. And so, they had given it to her, and it had kept her going, this wonderful substance.
As carefully as she could, she measured out a fraction of the powder then put the rest away, noting to herself that she couldn’t risk going through another examination with Dr. Mish while carrying the bag. She would have to hide it somewhere.
The biotechs had designed the dispenser for this drug into her cybernetic system; it was usually very simple to take her allotted amount, tap open another cavity in her abdomen, then slip the blue powder into a receptacle which in turn would slowly dispense it into her system at the appropriate times. But this time her unsteadiness made the process difficult. All the frenetic activity of late—the chases, the terrors, the emotional drain—must have stepped up the need for the stuff. And she’d forgotten, what with all the excitement, that she needed a refill.
Finally the cavity was open, the dispenser unsnapped.
Shivering a bit, she lifted the paper, creased in the center, tapped the drug into place, and closed herself up. By the time she had her main supply secreted back in her calf, the drug was already kicking in. She leaned back in the chair, feeling the tension ebb away like an angry tide falling back into a calm sea. Things are not so bad after all, she thought.
She now felt peaceful and serene, yet magnificently alert on that private beach of hers, the zephyrs of the universe sweetly sighing her name, all its smells just for her. She yearned once more for the excitement of sailing the starlanes in her blip-ship, but knew that lying by this inner sea of hers would be enough for now.
And the stars above this tuneful surf inside a spaceship … those stars were laughing again.
Only this time, Laura Shemzak laughed with them.
Chapter Two
There were only five of the long cylindrical ships studded with protuberances—a foreshadow of the vast armadas the aliens were known to command. They slashed through the Kendrick’s Vision second line of defense, diving through the atmosphere and laying waste to the city’s capital, Shiva, on the coast of its largest continent, Raj.
President Freeman Jonst was just finishing his breakfast when the proton beams began their strafing runs. From his view atop a hill overlooking the harbor, he saw the swords of light rip through his beloved home. By the time he had reached his comm-unit to command defensive measures, the ships were gone, thankfully leaving just a moderate amount of wreckage, with few lives lost.
The Vision’s sensors, however, indicated that during their brief raid powerful scanning rays had been in use—the destruction was apparently but a ruse to disguise enemy reconnaissance.
Freeman Jonst was not the kind of man one took lightly. Over two meters tall, with grizzled gray hair which looked like a well-trimmed scouring pad, Jonst was from Chedrow’s World, 1.4 Standard Earth’s gravity; his chosen home was only .9. And if you spat upon his planet, Kendrick’s Vision, you spat on Freeman Jonst and were lucky to retain your salivary glands. Under Jonst’s leadership, for two decades the colony he had founded thrived on the reputation for harboring no galactic riffraff, maintaining only marginal relations with the Federation, and trading with other Free Worlds only for the Vision’s vital necessities. He kept his planet’s integrity and ecology as clean as possible, for that was his dream, his people’s dream.
Far from the center of Federation power, with plenty of well-armed Free Worlds between it and Terra, it enjoyed a peace and tranquillity unusual in the annals of human colonization of the galaxy.
That was, until that fateful morning.
Later that same day, Jonst received his ministers. Their reports, which showed just how easily those Jaxdron whip-ships had dealt with second-hand fighters and rudimentary defense screens, were hard to swallow. And the conclusion, as much as Freeman Jonst despised it, was inevitable.
He took his c
igar, its end chewed to pieces, from his mouth and made the pronouncement that all of his ministers had expected to hear: “Gentlemen, when we settled this proud gem of a planet far from other Free Worlds, farther still from the Federation, we did so with a dream for a solitude. However, with the menace of a warlike alien civilization so apparently intent on conquering us, we have no choice but to seek help. Military help, for as long as these wretched beings are a threat to our peace.”
He turned to a communications officer. “Bill, would you come to my office tonight? I’ll have my request for military aid to Federation Central ready for transmission by then.”
The eyes of the others were lowered.
“Merely a temporary measure, gentlemen,” grumbled Jonst. “But I promise you that I will keep Kendrick’s Vision a safe place to raise our children and fulfill our dreams …. And, at the end of all this, I promise you a Jaxdron head to hang over every mantelpiece.”
“But no one knows what they look like!” objected one of the men.
A slow, humorless grin moved over the great man’s thick face. “When they’re over the mantelpieces, my friend, they’re gonna look dead. No one messes with Freeman Jonst’s planet! I’d make a deal with the devil to keep her safe!”
Not a soul at the table dared say it, but they all knew that they were about to do just that.
Chapter Three
Cal Shemzak leaped for his life.
A ragged burst of fire exploded in the place he’d been, its heat singeing the young man on his left arm. He hit the sand and rolled, scraping himself on an occasional rock, turning his roll into a scramble for the cover of a large boulder.
The proton beam screamed through the air again, kicking up stinging bits of desert at Cal’s ruined shoes. Forty meters away the robot grated slowly toward its quarry, withdrawing one weapon rod for recharging, extending another, aiming.
With a burst of effort, the lithe, brown-haired young man got to his feet and sprinted the last few yards to the boulder at the base of the hill.
Shaded for the moment from the glare of this planet’s huge yellow sun, Cal sucked in a gasp of dry air and leaned against the rock.
What the hell was he doing here? The thought rang in his brain, an echo of its initial occurrence a mere hour before, when he had woken up in the middle of an alien desert with only a canteen of water, clutching a ragged map which seemed, at first glance, indecipherable.
How had a simple predoc quantum mechanic landed in a place like this? He’d searched his memory and found it as dry as this toasted piece of hell where he now lay.
Bizarrely colored cactus blossoms were scattered on the parched landscape like tapers of frozen flame. Only an occasional stir of cloud appeared in the azure sky. In the distance were some hills.
He knew his name and he knew his profession. But when he’d awoken in the midday heat, everything else seemed to be fried from his brain.
He was given only a short time to puzzle the matter over, take a few sips of the tepid water from the canteen, and scrutinize the map—alien hieroglyphics bird-tracked across what seemed a representation of this land, including the hills—before the juggernaut rose from behind a grouping of rocks and in a monotone announced its intention.
“I shall kill you, Calspar Shemzak.”
A simple enough mission. And the damned four-meter-high robot looked quite capable of doing it too. Funny thing, though. In an era when anthropomorphized mechanicals were at first sight indistinguishable from a human being, and battle machines were simply unornamented mechanisms, this thing was an anomaly.
In fact, Cal Shemzak thought, his memory percolating, this thing resembled a robot from one of those hilarious old movies.
It was gray and black, the color of gunmetal. Parts of its thick body shone in the sun while other parts were dull. Glass? Plastics? Hard to say, but it was a big thing with awkward movements, steam shovel treads and—
And on its chest were painted concentric circles of alternating red and white.
A target?
Its target, however, was clearly Cal Shemzak. A rod extracted and started firing energy pulses, barely missing Cal. Then, at a relentless pace, it started toward him.
Cal could outrun the thing in a race, no question. A short race, though. For while Cal had to slow occasionally, or even stop and rest when he felt he was out of the thing’s firing range, the robot continued rolling along at a steady ten kilometers an hour.
Squinting up now behind the boulder, Cal examined the climb before him, taking precious seconds to regain his breath. He had struck out immediately for the hills, almost instinctively. But as he huffed along, he snatched anxious glances at the map.
It seemed to indicate something of importance on one of the hills. Something he was supposed to get to, he thought. Safety, freedom ….
The target on the robot seemed to indicate that it was a weapon. Which meant that this was some kind of test.
Test.
Immediately, even as he struck out up the slope, the word and associated memories struggled up to his awareness …
Jaxdron.
He was a prisoner of the Jaxdron! Now he remembered! Now—
A bolt of energy slammed into a cactus just meters below him. He didn’t even bother to turn around and look, knowing that the robot was still behind him, knowing that this grade wouldn’t stop it.
From somewhere he tapped inner resources and increased his pace. Just a few minutes … just a few minutes more and he would reach the summit of this hill and know why the map seemed to want him there.
And while he ran, memory struggled piecemeal through the dank fog that was his mind.
Cal Shemzak remembered the Jaxdron raid on the Project on Mulliphen; Dr. Ornix’s traitor prosthetic hand; his capture by the weird alien ship. He recalled vaguely his time aboard the Jaxdron starship with not even a glimpse of his captors; the strange paces the aliens put him through, the mazes, the puzzles. And finally, a planet … but not this planet ….
The echoes and images of experience were swallowed by the roar of the robot’s motors as they worked harder to deal with the slope. The air was hot in Cal’s lungs. His leg muscles felt as though they were being torn apart, but a quick glance back showed that he had gained some ground over his pursuer. Sweat stung his eyes as he directed them upward and saw the top of the hill, the plateau flat, seemingly just as bare as the rest of this godforsaken country.
What if there was nothing there? What if he had the wrong hill?
He swallowed back his despair.
No. Impossible. He’d figured out the map; that was part of the test. And it was a test—just one of the many given him by the Jaxdron for their own inscrutable reasons. He’d pass this one just like he’d passed all the others.
He hoped.
As though to increase his doubts, another blast of fire dug a quick hole paces behind him. That goddamned robot wasn’t giving up, that was for sure.
Cal Shemzak slogged upward, wondering if all this really wasn’t a Federation hell reserved for naughty and rebellious schoolboys.
When he topped the hill, practically wheezing with exhaustion, he instantly saw the rifle.
It lay propped on a rock.
He ran for it, the sounds of the climbing robot growing louder behind him. Just two meters away he stopped cold in his tracks. There was a glass case around the thing, one angle of it shining in the sun.
If I ever actually meet a Jaxdron, Cal thought, I swear with my bare hands I’ll ….
He did not pause for fantasy, instead checking the case, which proved to be some sort of plastic. It completely enclosed the rifle—which appeared to be a standard-issue Federation 50 gigawatt blaster, energy node glowing with a full charge—and would not budge.
A rock, thought Cal. Maybe I’m supposed to break it. Maybe—His eyes swept along the ground and insta
ntly he saw the puzzle.
It was a rectangular variation on Rubik’s Cube. It was clear that if the puzzle were solved, the glass case would open.
However, there was a definite deadline involved.
Cal did not take the leisure to rail at the perpetrators of this madness. He picked up the puzzle and surveyed it, his sharp mind instantly taking in the arrangement of triangular colors to be unified into blocks. In a moment he analyzed the thousands of possible permutations and combinations, and computed the proper method for solving the puzzle.
Certainly was easier than running, he thought as he solved the problem with a few quick twists of his fingers.
With a whirring noise one of the panels of the plastic case opened. Cal reached in and pulled out the energy rifle.
Not much time to go, he thought as he rubbed the perspiration off his palm. He searched his mind for the memory of how to operate one of these things. He never had, of course. Unlike his sister Laura, he’d never joined the military, though he had read books featuring blasters, and seen movies ….
Yes. There was the safety. He thumbed it off. The weapon seemed to throb in response, crystalline strips fading into a bright red.
Even as the ragged top of the robot’s head bobbed into view, Cal’s finger searched for the trigger. By the time the target on the metal chest was visible, Cal was aiming.
The stream of energy caught the mechanical creature dead on, drilling a hole through its chest. It toppled, crashing out of sight. An explosion rocked the hill, and thick black smoke began to swirl up.
Cal picked himself up from the ground, where he’d been felled by the recoil of the blaster. Cautiously, he peered over the side of the hill. The stench of burnt insulation from an electrical fire was acrid. The robot was quite out of commission, bits and pieces strewn in a trail down the slope.
Then the skyline rolled open, like a matte painting mistakenly moved in a film. Fog rolled in.
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