Ghost Riders in the Sky

by Timothy Zahn

  Skoda’s guide waited until he’d had time to take it all in. Then, it angled off to the righthand section of cylinders. Warily, Skoda followed.

  He was still five steps away from his stargull’s target when he suddenly realized that each of the cylinders had a body inside.

  At least he assumed they were bodies. It was hard to get details through the darkened plastic, but the creatures inside seemed to have wolf-like snouts, triangular heads, and long, slender arms. As he got a couple of steps closer he could see there were brow ridges over sunken and closed eyes, and that while their heads seemed furry their torsos were strangely smooth.

  He shivered. The term Final Solution had evoked memories of the horrific mass slaughters that had stained far too much of Earth’s history. Apparently, when Meerians committed genocide they kept souvenirs.

  The stargull moved past the first two lines of cylinders and took up position over one of the coffins on the third tier. Skoda continued to follow, walking up the low steps to the cylinder, and peered inside.

  The creature was similar to the others he’d glimpsed: warped wolf head, long arms, narrow torso. Now that he was closer, though, he could see that the smoothness of the torso was due to the full-length tunic the creature was wearing. The stargull hovering overhead moved down, pausing again beside the line of buttons.

  Skoda frowned, eyeing the buttons. They looked identical, but he could see now that there was a set of unfamiliar symbols etched into the metal beneath each one. A quick look through the translator goggles did nothing—the script was apparently not Meerian.

  But if these were coffins, why did they have all those cables…?

  And then, belatedly, he got it.

  They weren’t coffins. They were suspended animation tubes.

  He looked at the stargulls hovering over selected cylinders. Not ghosts.

  Disassociates.

  The Meerian’s final solution hadn’t been death. It had, instead, been to condemn their enemies to a hellish half-life.

  Well, that was about to change. “Run me through it,” he muttered to the stargull as he poised one finger over the leftmost stud on the control panel. “This one?”

  With a human navigator, being this close to his body would allow the disassociate to hear. But there was no guarantee it worked that same way with Oessitahs. Especially with the thick plastic of the cylinder; even more especially given that the creature was hardly likely to understand English.

  Fortunately, the stargull got the message. It hovered motionless as Skoda shifted his finger from the first control to the second, then to the third, then to the fourth.

  On the fifth, the stargull suddenly moved, making little circles like a dog chasing its tail. “This one?” Skoda asked, wanting to be sure.

  The stargull continued to circle. “Okay,” Skoda said. Mentally crossing his fingers, he pressed the stud.

  A set of soft lights appeared in the metal above the buttons: one set pink, the other green. As Skoda watched the pink lights turned to blue, then to orange. The green lights pulsed slowly, the frequency starting at about one every two seconds, then slowly increased their tempo. Skoda stepped back off the riser, watching the stargull out of the corner of his eye, hoping to see the exact moment when its body would be awakened far enough for reunification. The green lights were pulsing faster…the orange light did a final change to purple…the stargull hovered unmoving over the cylinder…

  Without warning, the creature inside gave a violent spasm, its arms jerking up from its sides, its hands slapping at the cylinder roof above it.

  The stargull gave a violent jerk of its own, bouncing back and forth as if to get Skoda’s attention. “Yeah, I’m on it,” Skoda snapped, stepping back up onto the riser and again holding a finger over one of the controls. “This one?”

  The creature was pounding weakly on the plastic by the time Skoda established that it was the control farthest to the left he needed to activate. He punched it, then again stepped back and down as the cylinder cracked along its long axis and the top swung up and back. The creature made one final weak flailing into the air, then collapsed back into the cylinder, its chest heaving as it sucked in lungful after lungful of air. On the display, all the lights again went out. The navigator was apparently alive and well.

  Only the stargull was still there, still disassociated from its body.

  Skoda frowned, looking between the creature and the stargull, trying to figure it out. If the stargull wasn’t the creature’s disassociate, what the hell was it? Servant? Friend?

  Pet?

  “And so ijt ends.”

  Skoda spun around, his stomach twisting into a knot. Standing in the middle of a hatchway fifty meters around the chamber from the one Skoda had come in through was His Grace. His left hand gripped the edge of the hatchway as if for support, and there was a vicious expression on his face. His lower left leg was wrapped in some kind of cast, but otherwise he showed no effects from his fall down the shaft on Bashan Station.

  In his right hand, almost inevitably, was a knife.

  A real, genuine, nasty-looking knife.

  “Ij told them ijt was lijkely a trijck,” His Grace continued, starting across the chamber.

  But not quickly. He had picked up a limp since their last encounter, his wrapped leg dragging a little beside him. If it came to a race, Skoda had no doubt he could outrun him.

  Only the Meerian was armed…and there was a freshly awakened alien here, still recovering from its ordeal. If Skoda left, he also had no doubt that the creature would die on His Grace’s knife.

  Skoda hissed softly. That shouldn’t even be part of the equation. This wasn’t Skoda’s fight, after all, or even humanity’s fight. Whatever problems the Meerians and Oessitahs had, they weren’t something Skoda needed to get involved with.

  More than that, there was a strong possibility that anything Skoda did here would make no difference anyway. The Oessitahs and Skoda could all die, or Skoda could run and find someplace to hide until Chandra came back, and only the Oessitahs would die.

  The logic was clear. Chandra had been right: Skoda didn’t want a Meerian dictating where and how he died.

  And yet, for some reason, he was still standing here.

  “How dijd you fijnd thijs place?” His Grace asked as he continued to limp forward.

  “You mean the site of your Final Solution?” Skoda countered.

  His Grace’s irregular stride faltered. “So you know.”

  “I know enough,” Skoda said. “And what you said earlier? I’m pretty sure it’s not the end.”

  “You mijsunderstand,” His Grace said. “Ij meant ijt was the end of the Oessijtahs.” He hefted his knife a couple of centimeters. “And the end of you.”

  Once again, Skoda knew he should run.

  But suddenly his own safety was no longer the part driving his decisions and actions. Whether he could do anything effective or not, this was something important, something that could change everything humanity knew about the Meerians.

  Skoda could still run. He probably should run. He probably would run.

  But not before he got some answers to take back with him.

  “You’re welcome to try,” he said, trying to sound braver than he felt. “But you might be surprised at how hard navigators are to kill.” He waved a hand at the tiers of cylinders. “Case in point.”

  His Grace’s mouth split open in a Meerian laugh. “Really, Navijgator Skoda. You have no ijdea what’s goijng on here, do you?”

  “Maybe you should tell me,” Skoda suggested. “If I’m going to die anyway, what do you care what I know?” He pointed to the gasping creature. “These were your navigators, right? Before you found Earth and conned us into flying your damn ships for you?”

  His Grace continued forward. But on his face Skoda could see the conflict between the need to keep Meerian secrets and the desire to tell the foolish human exactly how and where he was wrong. “You are mijstaken,” he said. “These are not
navijgators. They are merely navijgator creators.”

  “They’re—what?”

  “These are the females able to breed new navijgators for the Oessijtahs,” His Grace said, clearly enjoying Skoda’s bewilderment. “They served us for many centurijes. But ijn the end they revolted agaijnst our rule, and had to be dealt wijth.”

  Skoda stared at him. “And so you took away their women and locked them into Sue Ann pods? What the hell?”

  “You humans do not understand true mercy,” His Grace said with a contemptuous huff. “You do not understand the faijr choijce we gave them. Theijr females are alijve and healthy. The Oessijtahs needed only return to theijr servijtude and dutijes and the lost would have been returned to them. Ijn theijr prijde, they chose to contijnue theijr defijance.”

  “Of course they did,” Skoda said, tasting stomach acid. Hold it together, he told himself firmly. Find out everything you can. “So who are these?” he asked, waving at the stargulls.

  “So you do truly see them,” His Grace said, nodding. “Ij told them ijt could only be Oessijtah navijgators.”

  “And you just let them roam the galaxy? Seems kind of sloppy.”

  “Ijt was not our ijntent or wijthijn our knowledge,” His Grace said stiffly. “Sometijme ijn the past few years, they clearly found a way to recreate the suspended anijmatijon necessary for them to sojourn from theijr world. What ijs more surprijsijng ijs that they not only located your kijnd, but found a way to communijcate wijth you. But none belijeved me.”

  “Let me talk to them,” Skoda offered. “I’d be happy to tell them you were right.”

  “Ij am certaijn you would,” His Grace said with a thin smile. “The Oessijtahs brought you here, dijd they not?”

  “After a short stopover to pull the records from one of your library caches,” Skoda said. “Must have been maddening to know where to find out where you’d hidden their women, but not be able to physically open the book to get the location.”

  “Ij am certaijn ijt was,” His Grace agreed. “Where ijs the book now?”

  “Aboard the Pathfinder,” Skoda said. “Chandra will make sure it gets to the right people.”

  His Grace shook his head. “A futijle effort. Once the Oessijtah females are gone, the vague references ijn the hijstorijes can easijly be dijsmijssed or explaijned away.”

  “So you’re going to kill all of them?” Skoda asked, trying to keep his voice steady. His Grace might be a little battered up, but he had a weapon, and he knew how to use it. Unless Skoda could come up with another trick, the coming fight wasn’t likely to last long. His only option was to run.

  Leaving the Oessitahs to die.

  And His Grace wouldn’t even have to knife them. All he needed to do was go down the line, pushing the buttons out of order, while the stargulls stood by helplessly and watched as he murdered them.

  “So where are they?” he asked.

  “Where are who?”

  “The navigators,” Skoda said. “The ones whose disassociates are flitting around. Are they on a ship somewhere?”

  “As Ij saijd, they are on theijr world,” His Grace said. “They were thought to be well and truly trapped there. Clearly, they were not.”

  “And they had a navigational distance limit?” Skoda pressed, feeling sweat gathering around his collar. The Meerian was no more than ten steps away now, and the knife was bigger than he’d realized. “Like our thousand light-year range, only smaller?”

  “Three hundred lijght-years,” His Grace said. “The greater speed of a tunnelshijp durijng longer passage dijsorijented them.” He waved his free hand. “And as you see, theijr recovery tijme ijs sijgnijfijcantly longer than yours.”

  “Three hundred light-years is still better than the ten you were stuck with after you fired them.”

  “Ijndeed,” His Grace said. “Ijt was a boon to us when we found your Earth. A boon to us, and a fijnal end to any Oessijtah bargaijnijng position.”

  “That was fifty years ago,” Skoda reminded him. “So what was the plan? Leave the females here until the Oessitahs buckled?”

  “The Oessijtahs offered no sijgn of remorse or change,” His Grace said. “Fortunately, even wijth theijr new-found abijlijty to travel, the problem was always poijsed to solve ijtself. A few more years, and the current generatijon of navijgators would dije, leaving the Oessijtahs lijke all other races. They would then be truly trapped, and soon forgotten.”

  Skoda stared, the Meerian and even the knife momentarily forgotten. “So we were right the first time,” he said between stiff lips. “It was a kind of genocide.”

  “The punijshment was theijr own choijce,” His Grace said calmly. “They could have returned to us. They dijd not. Now, that opportunijty wijll be forever lost. We cannot rijsk humans findijng them and hearijng theijr story. I wijll kijll them, and Ij wijll kijll you, and ijt wijll be over.”

  Skoda’s pulse was pounding in his neck. The Meerian was steadily limping closer, the knife rock-solid in his hand. There was no way out.

  Unless he ran. With His Grace’s injured leg he didn’t have a chance in hell of catching him, not in a station this size. All Skoda had to do was evade him until Chandra finished the ten-hour round-trip and came back for him. All it would cost would be the lives of all the Oessitahs in this room.

  But then, they were dead whether he ran or not.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see the stargulls still hovering over their selected cylinders. Were those the ones they’d hoped he would revive first? Were they just gawking at their lost people, the ones their leaders had sent them out to find?

  But really, why should Skoda care? They weren’t his people. He’d barely even met them. He’d already risked his life for them, and they hadn’t done a single damn thing to help him. Instead, they’d gotten him in trouble with the Meerians, all but ruined whatever life he might have had left, and now had left him waiting to lie bleeding on the deck of a long-abandoned station.

  And then, something odd struck him. The stargull that had been his guide throughout the station, likely the one who’d been leading him by the nose ever since Bashan, was no longer hovering over the slowly-waking Oessitah. In fact, it was nowhere to be seen.

  Where the hell had it gone?

  His Grace was still coming. Slowly, Skoda backed away, searching out of the corners of his eyes for the missing stargull.

  Then, with the point of the Meerian’s knife no more than three meters away, he finally spotted it. It had moved over to the hatchway where Skoda had first come into the chamber and was making more of its quick, urgent dog circles.

  And for the first time since he’d met McDerry, Skoda smiled. He inclined his head to His Grace…

  And turned abruptly and ran as fast as he could toward the exit.

  “Yes—run lijke a frijghtened prey anijmal!” the Meerian called after him. “Run as swijftly as you can! Belijeve you can save yourself! Let all others dije ijn your stead!”

  Skoda gave a snort of contempt. So was that just the Meerian crowing over his victory? Or was His Grace trying to use shame and pride to lure Skoda back, knowing that Skoda could outrun him until Chandra got back?

  It didn’t matter. His Grace could think whatever he wanted. Skoda knew what he was doing. He reached the hatch, the Meerian still shouting taunts.

  But he didn’t go through the opening into the darkened corridor beyond. Instead, he slapped the wall in the middle of the stargull’s circle.

  The wall, and the light switch. An instant later, the chamber was plunged into complete darkness.

  Complete for His Grace.

  But not for Skoda.

  The stargulls still didn’t give off any physical light. But they didn’t have to. However it was they communicated with each other, they were all already on the same page. Even as Skoda’s eyes began the adjustment to the darkness, the whole group left their cylinders and coalesced into a loose formation around the Meerian, showing Skoda exactly where he was.

 
And not only where he was, but two of them even marked the positions of His Grace’s arm and knife.

  Which still left the whole question of tackling him without getting stabbed, of course.

  For a long moment Skoda was still tempted. The hatch was right beside him, and unless Meerian ears were extraordinarily sensitive he could probably tiptoe away without His Grace being the wiser.

  Then, the clump of stargulls shifted position, and the two hanging on the Meerian’s knife hand swiveled around.

  His Grace had apparently decided to leave Skoda for later and had turned toward the awakened Oessitah.

  Skoda filled his lungs. “Hey!” he called. “You—Meerian! You ready to die?”

  It was a hollow threat, and Skoda was pretty sure His Grace knew it. But the Meerian couldn’t take that chance. The Oessitahs would keep; Skoda might conceivably be a threat. Again, the stargulls swung around and now began moving toward Skoda.

  Clenching his teeth, Skoda moved silently to his right. If he could sneak past His Grace and get around behind him, he might be able to tackle him without getting into range of his knife.

  No good. Skoda hadn’t gotten more than four steps when His Grace suddenly stopped. Skoda froze, his heart pounding, his breath coming in short, quick gasps. His Grace held position, then turned in Skoda’s direction.

  Once again, Skoda had to fight to keep from running. The Meerian was half lame, and Skoda knew exactly where he was. Skoda should have the advantage here.

  Only he didn’t. His Grace was trained and confident. Skoda was neither. And again, they both knew it.

  His Grace continued forward. Again, Skoda moved sideways, trying to get behind him or at least let him pass by. Again, he only got a couple of steps before the stalker figured out where he was.

  How in hell was he doing that? Was he hearing the footsteps, despite Skoda’s efforts to keep them quiet? Was he hearing Skoda’s breath? Was he smelling Skoda’s breath?

  All Skoda knew was that, with the Meerian moving toward him, he couldn’t stay put. Shielding his mouth with his hand, he moved away.

  Again, no good. His Grace stopped; Skoda stopped; His Grace pondered; His Grace shifted toward his prey.