The Stellar Death Plan (Masters of Space Book 1)

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “A war fleet?” Kinsolving mused. The idea of interstellar war had been one hotly debated when he’d been in college. The logistics presented problems no race could overcome. The distances were too great, the physics of the stardrive too cumbersome to move enough troops and material — and why lay waste to an entire planet? Wars were not simply killing your enemy. Something had to be gained.

  Could Ala and Humbolt and the others at IM be so hostile toward all aliens that they’d consider planetary bombardment and genocide? Kinsolving found that difficult to believe. Stargoing races weren’t clustered on single planets. To destroy all aliens would require resources far exceeding anything Earth could hope to muster.

  Kinsolving snorted in disgust. Earth barely fed its own people. Jobs were scarce and many scholars pointed to this century as a new Dark Ages. This wasn’t the time to raise the banner for a new crusade against aliens.

  Or was it?

  He rose and peered out the rear of the truck when it began to slow. Kinsolving didn’t hesitate. He jumped and rolled to the side of the road rather than wait for eventual discovery. Rising up, he looked around. The truck had come to the Lorr sanitary torch where debris was fed into a plasma jet. The resulting increase in heat helped power the unit, making it partially self-sustaining.

  “Garbage. I almost ended up as garbage.”

  He made his way across the gently rolling hills, taking a few minutes’ break every hour to rest. Kinsolving had no idea where he went. Just getting away from the Lorr topped the list of priorities.

  After he had found a secure hideout, he could worry about IM and Humbolt and the rest of the puzzle.

  Standing atop a low hill, he looked toward the sunset. Dust had risen earlier in the day as a brisk wind came up, making the sunset gorgeous. He remembered the days he and Ala had watched the sunsets. A lump rose in his throat.

  Those days were gone.

  Kinsolving had no hint that anyone was closer than a hundred kilometers to him when a slight scraping sound caused him to turn. He then heard the hum from the robot as its repulsor field drove it up the hillside and bowled him over. He fought but the robot body had been electrified. The lightest touch made him wince. The robot powered down atop him. The shock he received stunned him.

  Through a haze he saw Cameron and two Lorr standing over him. Cameron laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Barton Kinsolving passed out.

  *

  “There is no honor in this sentence,” the agent-general intoned. “Usual court procedure is for three officers to sit in final judgment.” Kinsolving noted that seven were on the court. That made the matter even more serious.

  He looked around the small room. Ala Markken sat with her hands folded in her lap, eyes straight ahead. He tried to catch her gaze and failed. On either side of her sat Cameron and Kenneth Humbolt. Both men looked satisfied with themselves.

  Kinsolving wished he could free himself of the bonds holding him to the floor long enough to strangle both men. His mind turned over different ways of killing them, of which to kill first. He couldn’t decide who would die first. Humbolt had betrayed him. The plot to fake the murder and turn the Lorr on his trail reeked of Humbolt’s political manipulations. But Cameron had actually slain the Lorr officer. The expression of sheer delight on the man’s face had told Kinsolving that Cameron was a psychopathic killer, the likes of which he had only heard of roaming about in the worst sections of Earth cities.

  “We have reached a unanimous decision,” the agent-general said. “Normal crimes are punishable by local imprisonment. This is no ordinary crime.” The Lorr shivered delicately. “You are sentenced to life imprisonment on the world with no name.”

  Kinsolving frowned. He had no idea what this meant. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that Humbolt rose from his seat to protest. Cameron reached across and tugged on the director’s sleeve and whispered for several seconds.

  Kinsolving had no idea what they discussed, but it had to be the severity of his sentence. Humbolt had wanted the death penalty to remove all problems posed by Kinsolving’s existence. But Cameron had convinced him that this sentence was as good.

  Kinsolving shuddered at the idea of imprisonment worse than that the Lorr used on Ala Markken and the others.

  “Agent-General,” he spoke up. “What is the world with no name?”

  The Lorr made a hand-whipping gesture. When he spoke it was to Humbolt and not to Kinsolving. “The world with no name is a planet used by many starfaring races. Only a select few know its location. Exile to this world is permanent. Starships land prisoners. No one ever leaves the world. Ever.”

  Kinsolving had never heard of such a planet. He tried to protest but Lorr guards unfastened the chains binding him to the floor and dragged him out of the room. For a brief instant, his eyes locked with Ala’s.

  Tears welled and ran down her cheeks. Other than this, she betrayed no emotion.

  In shock, Kinsolving allowed his captors to shove him into a vehicle. In twenty minutes he was on a Lorr shuttle lifting for orbit. In forty, the starship shifted for the world with no name.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Barton Kinsolving allowed the Lorr to do with him as they desired. The shock he felt at the repeated betrayals robbed him of all will until the alien starship shifted into orbit around the planet they refused to name.

  Kinsolving experienced the gut-wrenching hyperspace transition and struggled to keep from vomiting. With his hands securely chained and another loop of chain around his waist fastened to a deck plate he wasn’t able to move easily.

  “Please,” he called weakly from between chapped lips. The Lorr hadn’t fed him or given him a drop of water since the sentence had been passed on Deep-dig. Kinsolving tried to guess how long ago that had been and could only estimate four days. “Where are we?”

  “Your home,” snapped his guard. The alien sat in a comfortable couch and stared suspiciously at him, as if he’d get up and run away. Even if he could manage such a feat, as weak and battered emotionally as he was, Kinsolving had nowhere to go.

  Interstellar Materials was no longer his employer. Kenneth Humbolt had betrayed him. His lover Ala Markken had forsaken him. The mysterious, murderous Cameron had made it seem that he’d committed a crime that had resulted in his exile. Kinsolving had nowhere to turn.

  “What is it? Where is it?”

  “The planet with no name,” the guard said. “Only a few know its location. We use it for our … debris.”

  Kinsolving started to protest his innocence, then stopped. It would do no good. Even if the guard believed him — and there was no reason that he would — Kinsolving gained nothing. Every beat of his heart took a little more strength. He slumped back to the cold metal deck plate and curled up in the fetal position he had assumed throughout the four-day trip.

  Four days. The alien starships were more efficient than those built on Earth. Somehow they escaped what, for Earth scientists, were “speed limits” in hyperspace, much as the speed of light limited travel in four-space. Kinsolving tried to decide if they’d come a hundred light years or a thousand from Deepdig.

  In the end he came to the sorry conclusion that it no longer mattered. He believed the guard when he said that the location of the prison planet was a secret. And who would want to rescue Barton Kinsolving? Everything was tied up in such a neat, presentable package with him rotting on some forsaken planet tucked away at the edge of the universe.

  Interstellar Materials maintained its rare earth mines on Deepdig. Ala and the others were cleared of the felony charges. And the Lorr believed they had brought the guilty party to justice, not only for killing an agent-captain but also for the heinous crime of tax evasion and stealing oxide ores.

  And it was all part of what Ala Markken had called the Plan. Like the prison planet below the orbiting starship, this, too, was a secret, a mystery, something Kinsolving would never discover before he died.

  “Out,” came the guard’s rough command. Tentaclel
ike fingers circled Kinsolving’s wrists and pulled him erect. Try as he might, Kinsolving couldn’t get his muscles to obey. He sank back to the deck. Resolve not to show weakness in the face of such adversity made him stand on shaking legs. This time he did not collapse. The guard shoved him roughly through a passageway to a shuttle. When Kinsolving could no longer walk, the guard grabbed the chains and dragged him.

  By the time the shuttle touched down on the planet’s surface, Kinsolving was more dead than alive.

  “Your new home. May you live long and suffer horribly.” The guard heaved Kinsolving out the small hatchway and slammed it behind immediately. The man pulled himself up to a sitting position. The world swung in crazy circles around him. He heard fuel pumps working to feed the ignition chambers in the tiny shuttle.

  It came to him through the thick mist of confusion and abuse that he would be fried unless he avoided the shuttle’s rocket blast. No laser powered this ship into orbit. There wasn’t even a formal landing field. Some grass had been scorched off a patch of dirt in the prairie. This appeared to be the only hint that anyone existed — or had ever existed — on the face of the planet.

  Kinsolving struggled to drag himself away from the shuttle. The hot exhaust gases scorched his back and set tiny fires burning in his clothing when the shuttle launched. Rolling over and over put out the fires and left Kinsolving staring up at a heavily overcast sky. The leaden clouds billowed and gathered directly above. The rains, when they came, brought Kinsolving much needed water and the surcease of unconsciousness.

  *

  “You’re looking better,” came the voice speaking in a guttural mangling of Interspace, the lingua franca used by a score of spacefaring races. Kinsolving tried to blink and experienced a surge of panic. “Calm, now, calm. You’re not blind. Here.” A rag was taken from Kinsolving’s eyes. He squinted at the tiny fire blazing merrily. He reached up to rub his temples. For a moment, he worried that something was wrong.

  “My chains. They’re gone!” Kinsolving repeated it in Interspace, when his first words produced no response.

  “Of course they are. There’s no need of your going around with them, now is there? Unless you want them back? But that’s not possible. Sold them. Metal’s scarce.”

  “You sold them?” Although weak, Kinsolving felt better than he had since leaving Deepdig. He sat up and turned to face his benefactor. Kinsolving almost yelped in surprise. The creature sitting across the fire from him could hardly be described as human or even humanoid.

  “Got a fair price. Wanted to split it with you, we did, but you owed, so we took your part. Only fair, only fair.”

  Kinsolving rubbed his wrists and reveled in the freedom he’d thought he would never again experience. And the hollowness in his belly seemed filled.

  “You fed me?”

  “That we did,” the toad-like creature said. Long, powerful hind legs moved it around and tiny hands more human than those of the Lorr worked at a dish and spoon carved from wood. The food in the bowl vanished into a huge mouth lined with dual rows of sharp, wicked teeth. The forward-looking eyes and those needlelike teeth told Kinsolving that his rescuer was a predator and a carnivore by evolution.

  “Thanks.”

  “Nothing on this world’s free,” the creature said. The sharp eyes fixed on Kinsolving and bored into his soul. “You don’t think a few links of chain are enough repayment, do you?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. I need to know something.”

  “Information’s costly. Know things and you can do things.”

  “You can’t eat information,” said Kinsolving. “When they put me here — ”

  “Who is this ‘they’?” asked the creature. It bobbed up and down on its strong hind legs. Kinsolving tried not to think of frog legs. His stomach rumbled at the thought of Earth food.

  “The Lorr. Aren’t they the ones who sent you here, too?”

  “Don’t know any Lorr. Might have heard of them but forgot. Too many damn races out there with their fancy laws and ways. The Rua’Kinth convicted me and sent me here. May their legs turn weak!”

  “I’m Barton Kinsolving.”

  “Never heard of that race, either,” the creature said. Kinsolving explained that this was his name, a concept the creature had obviously encountered before but hadn’t successfully mastered.

  “Can’t understand why individual names are needed,” the creature said. “We come from Sus-sonssa. Great hunting, good people. No rules like out there.” A tiny hand pointed upward.

  “Is it always overcast?” asked Kinsolving, trying to find a wink of starlight and failing.

  “Always. Never seen clear skies once in more than a year on-planet. No one else has, either. One reason they chose it, maybe.”

  “What are we supposed to do? Report to a jailer?” The creature laughed heartily at this — at least Kinsolving hoped the strange croaking noises were laughter.

  “We go and come as we please. Eat, live, not eat, die. It matters nothing to them. We are free to roam the planet for the rest of our lives.”

  Kinsolving turned cold inside. He had harbored some faint hope of reprieve, of bribing a guard, of escape. Now it evaporated like mist in a sun he would never see. The Lorr and the other alien races simply dropped their prisoners onto this planet and let them survive or not. If only a handful of navigators knew the location of the world, rescue attempts would be impossible.

  There were too many stars to search simply to find one planet. And Kinsolving knew of no one interested in finding him. He was written off, a null, a closed chapter in IM history.

  “Then there aren’t any laws?” asked Kinsolving.

  “Only what we make. Criminals are not good at enforcing laws. If you do not like the local laws, move. The planet is wide and big. Travel is by foot, but you have plenty of time. All the time left in your life!” Again the creature laughed.

  “You seem cheerful about it. Why?”

  “You laugh or you cry. We laugh.”

  Kinsolving glanced around. As far as he could tell, they were alone. “Why do you refer to yourself in the plural?”

  “Sussonssans are telepathic. Hard to be alone. Only fourteen of us on this world, but from time to time we join physically in harmony and community.”

  “Is there any chance you could communicate and when the next ship lands bringing — ”

  The creature’s harsh laughter cut off Kinsolving’s words. “Not possible. Not. Always they scan the ground with sensors before landing. And the landings might happen one-two-three soon or be years apart. And they land in different places. And — ”

  “I get the picture,” said Kinsolving, feeling glum. “How do you live?”

  “Poorly, but we live.”

  “What do you do? Farm?”

  “Hunter gatherer is all we can do. No metal, no hope of making more. Light metal planet, this one is. Your chains are valuable for what they can be made into. Why develop city? Most of us are thieves and we would only steal from each other.” This struck the creature as hilarious. Tiny hands held bulging mottled gray sides as it laughed.

  For the first time, Kinsolving had the sense of true desolation fall like a cloak around him. What crime had his benefactor committed? Murder? Worse? What would be worthy of lifelong exile? Tax evasion? Kinsolving didn’t think that was likely.

  “So we just survive as long as we can, then we die?” he asked.

  “Is that not the definition of life?”

  “I expect more.”

  “What a strange race yours is. You resemble several we have seen, but you are much uglier and stupider.”

  “The feeling’s mutual.”

  The creature made a choking noise, then hopped around to hunker down beside Kinsolving by the fire. “We can do well as a team, you and we. My brains and your height will go far on this world.”

  “How?”

  “The beast to whom we sold the chains. He has many links garnered over the years. He sharpens them and mounts t
hem as spear heads. Some knives. We can steal these from him.”

  “Is this the only way to live?” asked Kinsolving.

  “Why live any other? To scrabble for roots in this desolate place is difficult. The grains growing wild are poor fodder. What is not dusty and flat on this world is rocky and mountainous.”

  “Oceans?”

  “Who knows or cares?” Before the creature could utter another word, the sound of movement brought them both around.

  Kinsolving shrieked and rolled onto his back, feet going out. He caught a humanoid creature in the belly. A hand with a knife slashed for his throat; Kinsolving snared the wrist and pulled, using the humanoid’s momentum to pull it on over and land it in the fire.

  The creature screeched and tried to escape the flames. The Sussonssan’s tiny hands pinned it where it lay until its clothing caught fire. Only then did Kinsolving’s benefactor allow the creature to escape. It fled into the night, a living torch lighting a small dirt path.

  “We were careless, but your reflexes are good. Now, about the one with the metal.”

  “Wait,” said Kinsolving, confused. “Who was that? What was it?”

  “That?” The Sussonssan waved its tiny hands about in a gesture of dismissal. “A predator. But we are all predators here. It thought to find an easy meal, a new cloak, a weapon.”

  “A weapon!” The Sussonssan pounced on the ground near the fire and rooted through the dirt until it found the knife. Tiny fingers circling the hilt, it held up the weapon. “A knife! And a fine one. I will take this as payment for the blood debt you owe me.”

  “Done,” said Kinsolving, not wanting any more to do with the ugly creature.

  “Oh, we will make such a fine pair, you and we. Your ignorance will fade soon under our excellent tutelage. You will have nothing to fear and will prosper on this poor world. Wait to see if we do not speak the truth!”

  Barton Kinsolving worried that the Sussonssan might be right. He couldn’t simply give up and die. But what manner of life could he lead, preying on the other convicts, having them prey on him? That wasn’t a fit life.