The Starkahn of Rhada

by Robert Cham Gilman

  That I found interesting. My battlefield opponent had let slip a bit of possibly pertinent information. “Why is that, Lady?”

  “Is she aboard, Ariane?”

  So the information wasn’t offered gratis. A bit for a bit.

  Fair enough. It was like a skirmish by patrols ahead of the main force. The authorities must already know the girl was aboard. What I wanted to know was whether or not they were aware that she was from the Cloud and from the past.

  “She is here,” I said.

  “The girl is a mutation,” Lady Nora said, and I could see her shiver with xenophobia. “Apparently, she has a way of turning pain or pressure back on anyone who touches her. I gather some impatient warlocks got rather badly shocked. That was why she was being put into isolation when you took her. The precautions were not complete.”

  Well, that was a near evaluation of Marissa Tran Wyeth’s peculiar powers. Close enough.

  Lady Nora made a sudden flanking attack. “The Royalists have been sending messengers ever since yesterday, Kier. If you brought the girl here, to Rhada, and turned her over to the Rhadan priesthood--you’d put a fly in the eye of Sokolovsky. Our people would love you for it.”

  “I don’t think you understand the danger, Mother. I can’t explain it to you if you keep trying to turn what is happening into some sort of political coup for the family.”

  I sub vocalized a question to Ariane, asking her how she and Marissa were coming with their effort to synthesize from the Magellanic girl’s memory the attack plan for Death Three. Ariane beamed back an irritated reply that they were going as swiftly as the girl’s “practically human” brain could function. (Maybe Ariane had a touch of racial prejudice, too?)

  “And Erit?” I asked.

  Ariane said, “She is in present isolation. She wished it so.”

  Knowing the habits of the Vulk, I surmised that Erit, now secluded in one of our auxiliary pods, would resume the mourning pose and remain so for hours, perhaps even days. During this time she would indulge in meditation, self-renewal, and a pattern of “prayer” so deep as to be almost coma-inducing. Regardless of the urgency of our need, she could do nothing else. Nor could we establish a Triad with Marissa to plumb the depths of her subconscious memory. Two Vulk were vital to the experience. So we were effectively handicapped as well as grieved by the death of the old Vulk on the planet’s surface. When Gret’s great heart stopped, much of our power to act was lost.

  Lady Nora was still speaking from the holograph. “--disappointment to me and to our family’s supporters here on Rhada--”

  This was nothing but a holding action. I began to grow suspicious. Lady Nora was never wordy or repetitious without a reason. But I was too firmly schooled and gently reared to break off a conversation with a noblewoman of the Empire--who also happened to be my mother and the hereditary first lady of Rhada.

  “--I see that doesn’t move you. Well, I am at the end of my resources, trying to make you see reason. If Erit is with you, I am shamed for what you have made her do and for what is worse, the thing you are making her do now--keeping her from Gret--”

  “Gret is dead, Mother,” I said in a flat voice. “And Erit is in mourning. There is no point in going on with this--”

  “Wait. You were always a good boy, Kier, a faithful son and a Rhad. If you won’t listen to me, then listen to someone wiser than I--” That false humility had to be a last resort, I thought. But I knew what would come next. The appeal to conscience, respect for a dear friend, ambition, and patriotism having failed, there remained only the church.

  As an historian I have always had deep respect for the Order of Navigators. They kept knowledge alive through the Dark Time and piloted the starships when men imagined they could throw a stone across the galaxy. But the Order had outlived its usefulness--that was my inner conviction. The group that once guarded the guttering flame of science with their lives against the darkness had served its purpose. We no longer needed the Theocracy of Algol and its cloisters. Science was, or should be, open to all. We no longer needed the spiritual guidance and psychological guile of an isolated priesthood. Just as space navigation was no longer a monopoly of the Order’s, so must all monopolies be broken. We had no use in our time for a priestly elite or for an Inquisition. The noble Order of Navigators, like all institutions that outlive their own time, was in danger of becoming rigid, destructive, and fanatical as its power diminished.

  My mother knew this as well as, or possibly better than, I did. After all, I learned it from her. Therefore, I was aghast to see her joined in the holographic sphere by a cowled Navigator. But not just any Navigator, or even a Rhadan priest. The stone face that appeared beside Lady Nora belonged to Nav Peter, whom I had left lying in an undignified sprawl amid the ruins of Marissa Tran Wyeth’s hospital room in Gonlanburg.

  The Navigator made a sign of the Star and pierced me with the burning eyes of a fanatic. His face was granite-gray, and even his robes seemed to be dusted with gray, so that he seemed carved from common rock, the embodiment of his Zealot creed.

  “My son,” he intoned. “You have been guilty of grievous sin.”

  I had not heard anyone say the word “sin” like that since my childhood. It wasn’t just wrong-doing that was implied there, but sin in the ancient sense: the crime of knowledge-seeking, of building in the darkness, of striving to raise the curtain on life a bit and search out the stars. That was the sort of sin the early Navigators talked about during the terrible time of the Interregnum, and that was exactly the sort Nav Peter meant now.

  “I regret having struck you, Nav,” I said respectfully. “It was without personal animosity, believe me.”

  “The indignities heaped on my person do not matter, Starkahn,” the priest said. “The peril to your immortal soul does.”

  I had reached the degree of enlightenment that questions the existence of such things as immortal souls, but the fire-eyed Navigator was very convincing.

  “The female you found in the void is an abomination and must be put to the Question, Starkahn. The Order is her proper guardian--”

  The way he spoke of the Question made one think of the rack and the boot; what would actually happen to Marissa if she fell into the hands of the clergy would be far less physically violent than that. But if they questioned her and angered her or frightened her, and if the Magellanic Mutation (as it surely would) projected her emotions to them, their precarious hold on secular objectivity would shatter, and they would treat her as “an abomination.”

  This would be a sorry enough happening for me to contemplate (for I was swiftly growing rather fond of the alien girl); but more importantly it would be fatal in the search for knowledge about the machine we had taken to calling by its Magellanic name--too appropriate!--of Death Three.

  It was, in fact, what all this was about. And, therefore, I thought suddenly, why am I being harangued by a Navigator in this way? We can’t possibly agree on anything, and surely everyone down on Rhada knows this. Then why am I standing here listening to talk about abominations, and immortal souls and whether or not Algol (or more likely a grim monastery in Syrtis Major on Mars) was the proper place for Marissa? They knew I wouldn’t surrender her now, not after defying my family, the Grand Fleet, and all common sense to get her. They why all this? Why?

  A tiny cold bead formed in the pit of my stomach. It grew very swiftly, together with a surpassing contempt for my gullibility and empty-headedness.

  I subvocalized to Ariane, “Check the interference along the commo beam. Are we being tracked by our transmissions?”

  Instantly (or at least very swiftly, for Ariane was doing three things at once now, while maintaining our high orbit), the holograph image divided. In one section my mother and Nav Peter could still be seen and heard. In the other I had a view of space along the curving path of an orbital injection trajectory that roughly followed our line of sight transmissions to Rhada.

  Coming fast was the unmistakable bulk of an Imperial starshi
p of the Fleet.

  General Nora Veg-Rhad’s main force, wholly committed, was coming on, while idiot Sublieutenant Kier Veg-Rhad (who should be broken to private or lower if possible) stood babbling like a nitwit to a fanatic Navigator.

  I burned with shame and anger, but I managed to say politely to Lady Nora over the shoulders of Nav Peter’s holographic image, “Forgive me, honorable Lady, for interrupting the priest. But we are leaving now!” To Ariane I shouted, “Break us out of orbit, fast!”

  One sometimes forgets how fast is fast to an ADSPS cyborg. The sudden G-load sent me spinning against the edge of the manual control console. The stars in the holograph blurred, shifted, streaked, and grouped in their familiar sphere as we went instantly translight. Then the stars mingled with another kind of exploding stars as I caromed off the console, across the floor to the hydraulic stanchion holding my pod, which I encountered squarely with the top of my thick skull. After that, there was peaceful darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  A lifetime devoted to war has taught me that while terror and destruction have their place in successful conquest, total terror and total destruction do not. When war is waged simply for the sake of revenge, it becomes meaningless.

  Attributed to Glamiss of Vyka, circa 6000 GE

  (founder of the Second Stellar Empire)

  History has often times failed to record the anomalous fact that its course is regularly changed by the actions of a small, relatively powerless group of individuals. It has happened many times in the past; it surely will happen many times again in the future.

  Nav Julianus Mullerium, The Age of the Star Kings,

  middle Second Stellar Empire period

  I awoke in the slightly gelatinous air of my pod that indicated Ariane was under heavy acceleration. In the thick fluid around me, I could smell the faintest strange odor of perfume--no, not that, nothing so artificial. It was the scent of a woman’s skin and the clean smell of her hair. I drifted in a limbo of pleasure. My head was throbbing a bit, but I scarcely felt it. Someone was stroking my forehead with infinite gentleness. It was as though my body were drifting through a warm universe from planet to pink planet.

  I opened my eyes and saw the silver-eyed girl leaning over me. “Good,” she said softly. “You are all right.”

  I caught her hand and held the back of it against my cheek. Yes, it was she. Delicious. I had never felt so warm and tender and loving toward--

  Ariane’s voice exploded out of the encephalophone contacts at my head. “Kier! Wake up!”

  Startled, I glanced at the instrument telltales on the rise of the pod before my eyes. Our speed was four kilolights: very nearly Ariane’s max. Our direction was on course for Sagittarius through Delphinus, and we were taking full evasive action, dropping false target drones, radiating almost not at all, and carrying a full charge in all offensive and defensive weapons. Ariane was on full battle alert with her sensors extended to the very limit of their range. It would take time to track us by following her ionization trail. But track us they would.

  I looked at Marissa and asked, “How long have I been out?”

  “You were only unconscious for a short time. A mild concussion when you struck your head. You should have been inside the pod before you gave the order to leave orbit.” Did I detect a slightly chiding note in her speech? With her old-fashioned Anglic accent, it was hard to be sure. But it sounded to me as though she were, indeed, telling me (with a patient shake of her pretty head) that I had behaved recklessly.

  I squinted at the chronometer. It showed that nearly a full ES day had passed since I spoke to my mother from orbit around Rhada. I sat up and mentioned that.

  The Magellanic girl assumed an expression that was, God help me, as familiar as my own in a mirror. I had never seen it on her face, of course, but I had on my mother’s and on the face of almost every woman I have ever known--even including Ariane, who strictly speaking doesn’t even have a face. It was the expression a female assumes when she begins to manage a hapless male’s existence because, dear and brave boy that he may be, he is, after all, only a man.

  She said, “We thought it best you get some rest. You are overtired, and when we find the Death, you will need all your strength. So Ariane--” It was “Ariane” now. No horror and shock at dealing with a fifteen-ton cyborg. No wonder the captain of the Magellanic communes chose women to be Watchers on the great ships. They were so adaptable.

  Marissa went on. “Ariane let you sleep until we had something for you to do.”

  That bland assumption of female power left me speechless. I had begun recently to worry about whether or not there was something about me that caused this power hunger among females. After this awakening, I was sadly certain of it.

  “Did you reconstruct the attack plan?” I asked.

  “As well as may be. There could be many errors. No one dreamed, when the Deaths were launched, that the Watcher would have any reason to study the attack plan. Erit has touched my mind with hers. How can they do that, Kier? It is so clean and clear, so much more controlled than the way of the Cloud people.” She didn’t wait for an answer: perhaps knowing I could give none, being only an ordinary human male. She said, “Erit has left off grieving.”

  At least in that, I knew she was wrong. The Vulk, might be awake and functioning. But her grief would never leave her--not until the day she joined Gret in that stone sepulcher on the lands of the Rhad.

  “Erit has looked into my memory. She says that without Triad she cannot be certain, for my memories are not truly hers. But she assumes that we have very nearly worked out an intercept.”

  I stood and rubbed my aching head. The pod instruments indicated a surging four kilolight speed and a helical search pattern. I shouted irritably for Ariane to make a holograph for me. I was ready to take command of my illegal mission now if the females didn’t mind.

  To her credit let it be said that Ariane knows when to be humble. At least she knows when to assume humility. She showed me the navigational holograph as ordered. With Marissa at my side, I studied the smoky sphere of space before me. The stars were more thickly found in this region. Our course was taking us across our own spiral arm of the galaxy toward the spiral that extended here into Sagittarius. Deep in the Archer’s sector lay a familiar type G star, Sol. The sun of Earth, cradle of the Empire. It was still far away, days’ travel at our present speed. But the silent implications of our location and our apparent course were chilling.

  If we were tracking Death Three by memory and deduction and we were right, I began to wish that the Imperial cruiser that Lady Nora’s friends had sent after us at Rhada, and which had very nearly caught us in orbit, had actually done so. Then the responsibility would cease to be mine, and I would have nothing but a court martial to worry about.

  I said, “I thought the Death would go from Delphinus deeper into the galactic center.”

  Marissa shook her head. I could feel that she had herself under rigid control. Very little of her emotional surge came through to me. But it was obvious she didn’t want to tell me the answer to the questions she knew were coming. “What was the projected course?” I asked.

  “I am not certain.”

  “Of course you aren’t certain. But you and Ariane plotted a hypothetical attack plan, and Erit probed you. What did the three of you decide the Death would do?”

  “We cannot be certain, Kier--”

  “I know that, Marissa. But answer the question.”

  “We think the Death will circle back into Sagittarius.”

  I felt a sinking sensation. “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “No, we can’t be. But we made some deductions, I remembered some things--and there has been another sighting.”

  “After Sigma Libra?”

  The girl nodded, her silver eyes lowered.

  “Where?” I asked, feeling sick.

  She raised her head and spoke softly to Ariane, who shifted the navigational holograph to the celestial north, above
the galactic ecliptic. A super-bright star burned in the darkness, expanding even as I watched, and showing--at this stellar distance--a distinctly spherical shape. Supernova.

  “Ariane,” I said. “Which is it?”

  “That’s the strange part of it, Kier. It hasn’t even a name, only a number in the New Galactic Catalogue. No planets. NGC 6698.”

  “Could it have been a natural phenomenon?”

  “No,” Ariane said flatly. “The star was recently surveyed. Eighteen ES months ago, in fact, by Lieutenant Commander Riso Bel-Koryzibsky and Deela Cyb-ADSPS 217. It showed not one characteristic of instability. The nova was triggered by a massive attack on the stellar photosphere. The Death Three without a doubt.”

  “You’ve made a plot projection?”

  “By helical extension, the Death can be in solar space within a week or, on the next sweep, in two and a half months. I don’t think we have to worry about the latter date, do you?”

  “Could it possibly be earlier?”

  “Not if the attack program included inhibitions against overusing the main propulsion systems.”

  Marissa said, “That’s true. The Deaths were all built to take the most economical orbits. Fighting range was important to the designers--and since they are practically impregnable, speed intra-galaxy isn’t.”

  “But the positronic controls are damaged.” I said.

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Marissa said.

  “Of course we do. Why else would it attack NGC 6698? There’s nothing there. There never has been. The farther the Death gets from its point of activation in Delphinus, the less rational--if we can use such a word in connection with a doomsday machine--it becomes.”

  “Nothing will impair its fighting capacities,” Marissa warned.

  I looked at the silvery eyes in that finely made, handsome face. I wondered if she were actually, in some perverse way, proud of the hell ship she had brought to the main galaxy? It was probably true--she was mostly human, and such self-destroying pride could be very much a part of our human makeup.