The Sky is Filled With Ships

by Richard C. Meredith

  Behind the battle cruisers came the destroyers, smaller, lighter craft, but no less deadly in their awesome weaponry. The destroyers swept through Non-space, spread out like an inverted cone, led by the famed North Carolina.

  Following the cruisers and destroyers were the huge behemoths of space, the interceptor carriers, great spherical ships filled with small, fast, deadly interceptors. Out of Earth came the carriers, came the Republic of Genoa and the Kingdom of France, the Commonwealth of South Asia and the United States of America, and two dozen others named for the ancient states of Earth. Trailing behind the armada came the tenders and tugs, the repair and hospital ships, the great flotilla that kept a war fleet moving.

  Outward went the armada, out to meet the enemy and determine the future of mankind.

  Chapter V

  Refusing to hand his attaché case over to the hat check girl, Janas quickly told the head waiter that he was to meet Citizen Jarl Emmett there. That worthy smiled politely, bowed, and said, “Certainly, Captain Janas, Citizen Emmett is expecting you,” and led him across the crowded floor to a dark corner where sat Jarl Emmett and three other men.

  Off in the distance, moving among the tables, followed by a spot of illumination that seemed to have no place of origin other than herself, was a singer. She was wearing a bit of fog, sparkling as though diamonds hung within it. The mist clung to the rich contours of her body, not quite revealing but never actually concealing, either. Her greenish-white hair, as long as she was tall, climbed conically above her head, reached a peak perhaps half a meter high, then broke and spilled down across her shoulders, cascaded down her back, mingling with the mist that half-clothed her. A small stringed instrument, something like a harp, was in her hands, and she plucked its strings as she walked. The song she sang was one that Janas had heard before, sometime, somewhere, long ago and far away.

  “We be among the dwindling stars,

  And Earth is far behind us;

  We jump across the universe,

  But none will do us kindness;

  We ply the trades and wares of space,

  And cry from pain and blindness.

  We have given you tomorrow,

  And given up ourselves…”

  Janas thought he recognized two of the three men with Emmett, though he could not remember their names at once. They looked up, smiled, and Emmett spoke.

  “It’s good to see you, Bob,” he said, rising and extending his hand, “in the flesh, I mean.”

  Incongruously enough, Janas momentarily felt like laughing. There was something almost funny about the four darkly-clad men who sat around the small, oval table. Each had a partially empty glass before him and three were smoking. In the center of the table, virtually the only source of light in that corner, was an ancient, wax-encrusted wine bottle holding a burning candle. For an instant Janas was reminded of a scene from a 3-V production about bearded revolutionaries during the Crazy Years of the twentieth century, old style, but he did not laugh. Perhaps the analogy was too close for comfort.

  Janas seated himself in the single empty chair, seeing, as he did so, out of the corner of his eye, the man whom he had suspected of following him on the street. He sat so that he could watch the stranger.

  The smoke-clad singer had shifted to another song, a mysterious, free-verse thing with a melody that was not quite music to human ears:

  “The grass was brown as winter wind could make it.

  The trees were a blunt gray-green against the bitter sky.

  The remains of a snowfall littered the earth’s face,

  And the air was a crisp, crackling cold when it stirred—

  As the cold air stirred against his face and I listened,

  And I heard the world whistle as it turned.”

  “You remember Hal Danser, don’t you?” Emmett, who was dressed in a less gaudy edition of current terrestrial fashions, asked him.

  “Hello, Hal,” Janas said, shaking his hand across the table. “You’re in operations too, aren’t you?”

  “I’m Jarl’s assistant now,” Danser said. “It’s good to meet you again, sir.” Slightly overweight, Danser’s yellow and orange costume made Janas think of a huge, partially deflated beach ball.

  Janas turned to the short, thin man on his right.

  “Juan Kai,” the other said. “Operations Chief Engineer.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Citizen Kai,” Janas said.

  Kai flashed a quick, toothy smile. “I hope it wasn’t all bad, Captain.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Janas answered, then turned to greet the soberly clad man on his left. “Mr. Paul D’Lugan, isn’t it?” Even though he wore civilian clothes, there was a harsh, military cut to them.

  A darkness crossed the face of the short, stocky, curly-haired young man. He nodded.

  “You were first mate of the STCSS City of Florence,” Janas said. “You brought two of her lifeboats back to Isis after the Battle of '77. You were something of a Celebrity.”

  D’Lugan nodded again. “Not much heroism in that, captain. Federation ships claimed they mistook us for rebels. Cut us down before we had a chance to respond. Twenty-eight of us got out.”

  “I know,” Janas said. “It was a terrible accident.”

  D’Lugan smiled coldly, seeming to question the accidental nature of the event, but did not speak.

  The singer had vanished and now light began to glow at one end of the large room, gradually coming up to illuminate a low stage backed by a shimmering, golden curtain. When the white light had reached its maximum, casting a soft, shadowless radiance across the stage, a hidden band began to play a melody unknown to Janas. A small man dressed in a bright red and gold harlequin’s costume pushed the curtains aside and stepped out onto the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said as a hush fell over the crowd, “Eddie’s is proud to have with us tonight one of the most exciting dance teams in the known galaxy.” He paused dramatically. “Straight from Odin itself—let’s give them a big hand—Rinni and Gray, the Moondog Dancers.”

  After an appropriate amount of applause the golden curtains opened to reveal a crude imitation—to Janas, at least—of the rugged, starkly beautiful Odinese Craterlands. The backdrop of myriads of bright, glittering stars was a fair replica of Odin’s night sky, all the brilliance of the Cluster. The hidden band played louder still, swinging into a much modified version of one of the traditional songs of the rebellious, unconventional Odinese Moondoggers. A few moments later a troupe of a dozen nearly nude girls, wearing just enough to give an impression of the unorthodox costumes of the Moondoggers, danced out onto the stage and began an elaborate routine that had little to do with the planet Odin—now or ever.

  Janas looked back at the men seated at the table. The three with Jarl Emmett were fellow “conspirators,” and he distrusted them for it, as he unconsciously, unwillingly distrusted most of the men whom Emmett had recruited in his campaign to maintain STC neutrality, though Janas knew very few of them personally. Oh, of course, he told himself, I’m one of them too—I started it—but, dammit, I still can’t trust them, not until I know their motives. There are always too many men running around, ready to join any kind of revolutionary movement, men who feel that they could do better if the old way were destroyed and a new one established—oh, how rarely they were right!

  Jarl’s an excellent judge of men, though, he told himself. There’s a good chance that these fellows are not innate revolutionaries but men who coldly and rationally understand that this is the only way that we can hope for anything to survive.

  Janas glanced again at the man who sat a few tables away and seemed to be observing them in only the most casual, impersonal way. Who, what did he represent?

  Seeming to sense Janas’ uneasiness, Emmett opened his coat and briefly showed him a small, rectangular box suspended by a leather band under his arm. Janas recognized the device, called a noiser, an electronic scrambler designed to disrupt listening equipment that the str
anger, or anyone else, might have trained on the five men at the table. Janas nodded.

  “What’s this all about, Jarl?” he asked after a waiter had taken his order and returned with a chilled glass of Brajen whiskey.

  Emmett cleared his throat, looked around uncomfortably, then spoke: “Everything’s changed, Bob,” he said. “Now that Franken’s committed the STC to the Federation without waiting for your reports, we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do. That’s why I wanted you to come here. I wanted you to meet the top men in the ‘Committee’ so that we can try to make some preliminary plans.” Emmett paused for a moment, took a sip from his own glass, then looked at the others.

  “I’m still more or less the chairman of the ‘Committee,’” he said, then looked at Danser on his right. “Hal’s my assistant in this as well as just about everything else. He’s also our chief liaison man between Operations and the other departments.” He gestured toward Kai. “Juan’s in charge of keeping track of what’s going on in space. As of this afternoon he’s responsible for knowing where all STC ships are, how quickly they can aid the Federation, and how quickly we can contact them if we can get a countermanding order to Franken’s commitment.”

  “Then the orders have gone out?” Janas asked.

  “A little while after I talked to you,” Emmett told him. “I did everything I could to stop them or hold them up but it wasn’t any use.”

  “Did you talk with Altho?” Janas asked.

  Emmett shook his head. “I could only get as far as his personal secretary, a young snot named Milt Anchor. Anchor ran me around Robin Hood’s barn and then gave me a story about Franken being in conference and would call me when he got finished.”

  “And he never called,” Janas said, only half a question.

  “Never,” Emmett answered, shaking his head again.

  “He won’t, either,” Paul D’Lugan said.

  When Janas turned to face him the younger man returned his gaze, stare for stare.

  “I’m head of the action department, Captain, rough and tumble stuff,” D’Lugan said in answer to Janas’ unspoken question. “I’m the black sheep of the outfit. I’m not too popular with my friends here.”

  “That isn’t so, Paul,” Danser said quickly.

  “Yes, it is,” D’Lugan responded. “I’m advocating force, Captain,” he said to Janas. “If Franken won’t listen to reason, and he’s shown no indication of doing so thus far, I figure we’re going to have to shove a gun in his belly and make him listen.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. It was obvious to Janas that the others did not agree with D’Lugan, nor did he, not if he could help it.

  Turning his head, Janas glanced at the stage to see that a new couple had appeared and the twelve chorus girls had retreated to the background. He assumed that the newcomers, bathed in a cold, blue light, surrounded by dissipating mists, were the headliners of the show, Rinni and Gray, the Odinese Moondoggers. They could have been from Odin—or any other planet in the Spiral Arm—for they did not wear enough clothing to identify their place of origin.

  Rinni was a tall, long-limbed blonde, graceful and very pretty in the exotic way of so many of the star worlds. Her long yellow-white hair swirled around her bare shoulders, across her naked breasts, billowed out behind her as she leaped and spun in a sensual dance with her partner. Gray was as handsome as Rinni was pretty—young, dark, muscular. Each wore nothing but a pale blue breechcloth decorated with a symbol in darker blue. Janas identified the sign as being something significant to the Moondog cult but could not remember its exact meaning.

  Emmett’s voice brought his attention back to the table.

  “There’s one more person I wanted you to meet,” he was saying. “Syble Dian. She’s our lawyer and head of our 'legal department,' if you want to call it that.” Janas nodded. “She couldn’t make it tonight,” Emmett went on, “but she wants to meet you as soon as she can. She’s something of an admirer of yours.”

  “Oh,” Janas said, attempting a smile.

  Emmett did not seem to hear his reply. His mind had gone on to something else, something that brought a dark scowl with it.

  “An agent of the rebels contacted me this afternoon,” he said at last.

  “What did he want?” Janas asked.

  “It was a she,” Emmett said. “Called me on 3-V but had the visual blanked out so I don’t know what she looked like. Anyway, they have a ‘cell’ here in Flagstaff. She offered me their help.”

  “Help?” Janas wondered aloud.

  “Offered to help us in whatever we decide to do,” Emmett explained.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Good,” Janas said. “We’d do better if we stayed clear of them. Their motives aren’t the same as ours. We’ll have enough problems without the ‘help’ of an outside group.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Emmett replied. “This is a family matter for the STC alone. We take care of our own.” There was an almost sinister sound to his last words—and Paul D’Lugan smiled at them.

  Emmett was silent for a moment, as if thinking carefully before he spoke again. “Bob,” he said at last, “will you tell them exactly why you’re here?” His gesture included the other three men at the table.

  After taking a sip of his Brajen whiskey, Janas said: “I’ve brought two reports to show to Altho Franken. They’re both on computer tapes, and typewritten. One is an analysis of the damage done to Federation worlds over the past decade or so.”

  “Don’t you think that Chairman Herrera has informed him of the situation?” Hal Danser asked.

  “No, not really,” Janas said. “I doubt that Herrera told him any more than he was forced to if he really expected to get STC help, which he’s gotten. I don’t believe that Altho has any idea how bad things are out there or, at least, didn’t know it when he agreed to let the Federation use STC ships and men.”

  “How bad is it?” Danser asked softly.

  “Real damned bad!” D’Lugan snapped.

  Janas glanced at D’Lugan. “Far worse for the Federation than they’ve been willing to admit. The rebels all but control the Rim. Federation forces always were spread too thin out there to really be effective. The Cluster’s split wide open. The rebels certainly don’t control it, but neither does the Federation. Right now the Cluster is fair game for anyone strong enough to hold it.”

  “What’s left of it,” D’Lugan added darkly.

  Janas nodded. “The Cluster isn’t the same place it was ten years ago. I hardly recognize it myself. Several planets that were inhabited aren’t any longer.”

  “Antigone,” D’Lugan said as if the word were almost sacred.

  “That’s one.” Janas did not want to think of Antigone as he had last seen her, burning forests, seared plains, smoldering cities, all but wiped clean of life. “There are several others. I was on Odin for three years and I still find it hard to believe what’s happened there. Earth and the Solar planets are the only ones that have escaped major destruction so far.”

  D’Lugan did not speak again but Janas saw a great depth of pain and sorrow in his eyes. He did not ask the younger man’s reason for his grief. Danser sat quietly peering into the murkiness of his drink. Juan Kai fumbled another cigarette into his mouth while Emmett leaned forward across the table.

  “The other report, Bob?”

  “Okay,” Janas answered, glancing down at the attaché case that sat on the floor beside him. Then he looked back at the others. “I won’t even try to tell you how I got the information that I have or what it cost me. Just let me say that I’d stake my life on its accuracy.”

  “What is it?” Danser asked suddenly.

  Janas glanced at the stranger who sat a few tables away. His left hand had gone to his ear and his face wore a puzzled expression. Janas smiled to himself and caught a similar smile in Emmett’s eyes.

  “A breakdown of General Kantralas’ forces,” Janas answered slow
ly, turning back to Danser. “A count of his men, his ships, his weapon strength. It’s probably

  the most accurate information on the planet outside of Federation headquarters in Geneva.

  “Part of this report is a psychological study’ of Kantralas and each of his lieutenants,” Janas went on. “I don’t imagine it’s any secret on Earth that Kantralas’ force is held together by little more than the strength of his personality. There are just too many divergent forces, both personal and national, to make his army a really unified force. The only thing they have in common is a desire to beat the Federation.”

  “That’s no secret,” Emmett said. “Herrera’s pushing it for all he’s worth.”

  “Go on, captain,” D’Lugan said, lighting his second cigarette.

  Janas accepted a cigarette offered by Danser, sat back in his chair, took a sip of Brajen, and let his attention go briefly back to the lighted stage where the dance was rising toward a savage, sensual climax. He thought that Rinni and Gray had probably been to Odin at one time, or had at least studied the dances of the Moondoggers, for there was something in their motions that reminded him of Odin—but it was artificial, not quite genuine. They were good, Rinni and Gray; they made your pulse pound faster and caused a stirring inside you, but they were not Moondoggers—and in a strange way Janas was relieved that they were not. He turned back to his companions.