STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS (19 page)

“C
aptain,” Dansen Jitt said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I really must speak with you.”

The voice filtered through the intercom of the captain’s cabin.

Northern, freed for a while from the
Starbow’s
continual surveillance of his drinking, had poured himself hefty tumbler of brandy and was lying pleasantly semicomatose upon his bunk. He roused himself and let the slight man in.

“Yes, Jitt?” he said blearily, only half noticing the man’s frazzled, gaunt look.

“It’s about what happened on the bridge, sir. About the psychic broadcast from the Jaxdron.”

“You set the course, didn’t you?”

For whatever reason, the
Jaxdron
had notified the
Starbow
of the next stage of their quest: a planet called Snar’shill, clear to the other side of the Fault, on the fringe of the spiral arm holding Terra and most of the human-inhabited worlds.

“Yes, but Captain, why should they give us their destination unless it’s some sort of trap?” Jitt said nervously.

“Most likely it is, Jitt. So what? We took that chance on this little jaunt, and we’re just going to have to take that chance again.”

“There’s more, Captain. What I saw …. You know I’ve a small amount of psi ability.”

“Jitt, can’t I read this on your report?”

Jitt brushed past him and poured himself a drink, something that the man seldom did. He downed it with an unsteady hand.

“Northern, I’m not a strong talent at all; maybe the odd flash, you know, and an intuitive grasp of mathematics, odds, and navigation. My premonitions have always been weak little squiggles in my head, which I … tend to amplify.

“But, Captain, up there on that bridge … that surge of thought … that vision I got. That was strong stuff.”

“Okay, Dansen,” the captain said softly and respectfully. “I’ll bite. Shoot.”

“It wasn’t anything literal or linear. A succession of images, a mélange of emotions, a feeling of … I don’t know, Captain—the unknown.” Jitt stared off into empty space. “I experienced alien life I never imagined existed. Whole cycles of life and death in just a breath. I saw suns being born and suns dying. And then I saw the planet, and I recognized it. Snar’shill, in the Dominus cluster. And I heard a voice saying, ‘This is where we’ll be.’ And the tone was taunting, as though it were saying, ‘Follow us if you dare.’”

“Yes, that is the direction they seem to be headed.”

“But Captain, there was more. I saw … felt … blood … and destruction … upheaval. I saw fleets battling. Thousands of ships, Captain, locked in deadly battle, in atmosphere, on seas, on land, and in space. And it was a conflict that went on forever, Captain. An eternal battle.”

“Go on, Jitt.”

“Captain, I’m not sure I should.”

“Please.”

“Very well. Three images that troubled me the most. I saw Pilot Laura Shemzak, smiling. I saw you lying on the ground, quite dead. And I saw the explosive destruction of the
Starbow
. And the weird voice that was the voice of the Jaxdron seemed to whisper to me. ‘Yes, come, follow, and experience all this fun, all these games.’”

“That’s quite a plateful, Dansen,” said the captain.

“Captain, I urge you to reconsider our involvement in this affair. Believe me, the portents are not good.”

“We can release you from your enlistment here, Dansen. There must be some world, somewhere, that will have you.”

Dansen Jitt sighed. “You know that I can’t—no, won’t do that. This is my family, my home, Whatever its destiny, that is a destiny I must share.”

Captain Northern placed his hand on the navigator’s shoulder. “That is good to know, Dansen. You are like a brother to me.”

“Then you’re going to stay on course? You intend to follow the Jaxdron and Cal Shemzak?”

Captain Northern nodded. “This is more than trying to reunite a feisty, bad-tempered young woman and her snot-nosed brother. This involves more, even, than the safety and alliance of the Free Worlds.” He looked into his glass and swirled the last of the brandy. “We’re dealing, Dansen, with a threat to the very fabric of reality that we call our universe.”

Northern clinked his glass against Dansen Jitt’s and then gulped down its contents.

O
n the planet Nocturnus, the darkness itself seemed to wail with the voice of winds.

The man’s personal starship—a sleek and expensive model that shone more like the jewels of royalty than anything utilitarian—had landed by the settlement as though on wings of flame. He descended on the extended ramp to the icy ground, flanked by a pair of robot bodyguards. A group of creatures awaited him with a reverent silence due to a celestial messenger.

Humanoid, his welcoming committee all wore furs with hoods that concealed their features. The man wore a thermal suit, and was quite comfortable despite the chill of the swirling winds that cut through the mountainous landscape. Past the icy field where the starship had landed lay a scatter of Quonset huts.

“You are expected,” a gravelly-voided alien said in standard Galactic. “Please accompany us.”

The man agreed and followed the silent party. Their boots crunched through the snow. The robots to either side were alert, sensors wide open for possible danger.

At the edge of the settlement, where the snow gave way to warm, wet pavement, one of the aliens turned.

“Please leave all weapons at this checkpoint.”

Lamps revealed hints of a cluster of eyes, a round protruding mouth.

The robots gripped the handles of their pistols, ready to use them.

“It’s all right,” said the man. “Obey the request.”

The robots handed over the weapons.

“This way.”

The man and the robots followed the aliens to a central hut, larger than the rest.

The door cycled open.

Warmth gushed out. The interior was dimly lit. A fishy, oily smell was immediately discernible.

The man took a deep breath. This was the crucial step. Upon this meeting rested the fate of years of planning.

He stepped into the room, which seemed swathed in rich, light-spattered cloth, a section of starry night sky scissored from the firmament.

A figure separated itself from the darkness at the far end, a thing clearly not at all humanoid.

“I am here,” said the man.

The creature spoke a guttural gurgling language, which was translated by a mechanism dangling from the ceiling.

“Greetings, Overfriend Zarpfrin,” said the Jaxdron Master General. “Please rest yourself. We have much to speak about.”

Zarpfrin smiled and nodded. “Yes, we do.”

O
verfriend Zarpfrin was seated in a Quonset hut on the thick fur of some animal. Outside, the winds of Nocturnus howled against this protecting metal hull. Zarpfrin found himself shivering slightly despite the thermal suit he wore. Curious, he thought. I was perfectly warm on my way here.

Perhaps this was what came of dealing with a Jaxdron ….

“Now that we have decided the probable fate of your human worlds, Zarpfrin,” said the alien leader, “perhaps you would care to indulge me in a small board game of my own devising.”

“I wish I had your confidence concerning this matter,” said Overfriend Zarpfrin, his mind still overwhelmed by the enormity of the past negotiations.

A robot cart wheeled out. On its several surfaces geometric shapes were blinking out light sequences grouped peculiarly in an array of connected circles.

Zarpfrin sipped at his tea, regarding the game before him. Natives of this world—grim, multi-eyed humanoid beings—stood in the shadowy recesses. Overfriend Zarpfrin’s robot bodyguards stood by the door.

Zarpfrin used his examination of the board game as a delaying tactic. He had no intention of playing; it would no doubt take much too long, and might give the alien a better idea of how he thought. The Jaxdron, swathed in a robe, squatted across from Zarpfrin, awaiting his answer. This alien, not at all human in appearance, was a member of the first star-traveling intelligent race encountered by humanity in its push toward the stars—a race that mankind now fought a strange war with.

This alien was Overfriend Zarpfrin’s hope.

The fate of the human worlds hung in the balance, but thanks to Zarpfrin’s machinations, there was hope as long as everything worked according to plan.

“Well?” The Jaxdron’s actual word was a garbled crunch of sound. Speakers hanging from webwork translated the indication of impatience into Standard Galactic so that Zarpfrin could understand.

Zarpfrin held up a hand and looked down again at the board. “I am grateful to you for providing for my entertainment, but each moment I spend here is a risk to my control of the situation within my home worlds.”

“As you wish, spoilsport.”

Zarpfrin suspected that the alien was pouting. He got to his feet. “I apologize, but our talk has been long and arduous, and as you know, there are many matters for me to prepare for. I trust that our communications will continue in the normal manner?”

“Yes,” replied the alien. It turned to the board, lifted a long multi-jointed digit, and touched a light-nub.

With crackles and explosions of smoke, the holographic pieces self-destructed then melted, puddling off the game board.

“But be aware, Zarpfrin,” said the Jaxdron. “Ours is a game that cannot be so refused.”

For the first time during the entire session, Overfriend Zarpfrin of the Federation smiled, albeit grimly.

“Oh, do not worry,” he said. “This is a game that I think I am going to enjoy.”

Gesturing for his robot bodyguards to follow, Zarpfrin walked out into the windy cold toward his starship. Before he stepped onto the ramp, he gazed up at the winking stars.

Soon, Captain Tars Northern, he thought. Very soon I shall have you, the
Starbow
, your crew … and my dream!

S
he dreamed she flew through space, and the stars hated her. The very stars through which she cruised seemed to taunt her, red giants and white dwarves equally cold in the silent starscape.

O be a Fine Girl and Give us a Kill! You are our demon princess, blippie. Yo are the missionary of gloom, our emissary to life with this message. Though of star-stuff you are made, O life, to star-stuff you will return, and we shall mock your silent grave with our eternal furnaces.

She seemed imprisoned within this grim galaxy—no, not the Milky Way with its serene and graceful spirals like a dancing starfish, but a squat, stunted clustering of trillions of stars like some deep-sea creature, scuttling its phosphorescent way in the darkness. She rode her blip-ship—her new one, the XT Mark Nine—within this maze of baleful jewels, for once tripping over stellar gravity wells rather than skating them. Feeling pain from the radiation all about her compact ship, rather than thriving on the energies moving through space like invisible rainbows.

Her connections—the biotech jacks connecting her neural centers and her cybernetic components with the complex but dumb mechanical beast she flew—seemed to itch, and she could not scratch!

The stars, planets, asteroids, and all their attendant interstellar debris seemed to chuckle with one icy voice at the dilemma of this intruder within their midst.

Her sensors, previously displaying a complete holographic reading upon her environs, suddenly shut off, replaced with a skewed two-dimensional view of this dream-corner of the universe, like an old-time movie screen showing those antique “flicks” which Cal would dredge up from forgotten basement archives. On that screen she could not close her eyes to, came a series of snapshot images, spearing her brain with vivid pain:

—identity melding with a Conglomerate on the planet Walthor …

—the instant of panic and unsureness at the
Starbow’s
attack upon the
Ezekiel
, fearing she would never see Cal again ….

On and on these images paraded, a scrapbook of sensations that had led her here to this dark galaxy, this dark dream ….

Look upon your kindred, the stars seemed to say. This is the heritage of life—and the only meaning granted by those who have spawned you is to serve them by killing and killing ….

No!
cried Laura.
I serve them no more! I am not their pawn! I have thrown my lot in with another cause.

But the dark stars simply laughed.

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!

L
aura 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 ….

W
hat 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.