Stardogs (11 page)

Liton stood along with the other fifteen inmates of the compound out on the exercise-ground and shivered and waited. Somebody would be leaving today. So, as usual, they’d all been left to stand, waiting. The morning porridge would be congealed and cold in their wooden bowls when they were allowed to go. That was a matter of no concern to the compound guards. It was only the riders’ time, and to the compound guards, the time of the 2300-odd riders whose on-planet lives they ruled was irrelevant.

Once there had been far more riders than Stardogs. Once there had been 3762 Stardogs. Now there were less than 2500… the exact number was a well-kept League secret. And now there were too few riders… Even here at the center of the Empire there were only fifteen riders in the compound and not in use. Rest periods, for both dogs and riders, seemed to be getting shorter and shorter.

In a few minutes… or a few hours, depending on when the League men arrived, some of them would be sent out again, told to leave at a moment’s notice. It didn’t really matter. Riders had no possessions to pack. And in space they were back with their dogs. Here, on-planet, they were only half alive, surviving poor food and punishing gravity-acclimatization and bone-structure maintenance exercises until they went to space again.

The inner steel door of the compound slid open. Even the machine-gun armed guards in the watchtowers saluted the two men in the maroon uniform of League officers who entered. The sector system, the ban on communication, the jails, the locked cabins on shipboard, the guards, were part of the Wienan paranoia, and their total failure to understand the psychology of their rider-chattels. Leaguesmen would have taken to violence and escape, but not the riders… Riders hated Leaguesmen, but the level of empathy needed to communicate with Stardogs precluded the easy hurting of others. And killing would destroy the killer. Besides… the League held their Stardogs hostage. The Stardogs were not mistreated, but they could be.

The two Leaguesmen wore identical uniforms, but that was all they had in common. Liton recognised the shorter blond man as a pureblood-Wienan. His facial lines had been cursed and hated by thousands and thousands of riders for more than four centuries. Yet, it was when the aging rider looked at the other leaguesman that his blood ran cold. The angular face with its harsh planes and deep-set cold intolerant eyes was something out of his childhood. Something terrible. A face he’d tried desperately hard to forget, but that still recurred in his nightmares, time and again. He shivered now with something more than just the cold. He prayed hard that he would go with the Wienan.

The two Leaguesmen walked forward. To his relief Liton saw the young Wienan point to him. Then, to his horror, he saw the other man go to the slight young girl. The new one. The Leaguesman smiled. A cold, hungry, feral smile full of teeth and unpleasant intent. He beckoned, his hand like a talon.

The gaunt girl started, as she realized it was she who was being summonsed. She took an involuntary step backwards. The Leaguesman licked his thin lips, relishing her obvious fear. He beckoned again. She stood frozen. The fleshy compound guard who had been bringing their shackles stormed towards her. She shied and whimpered, holding up her thin arms to ward off the expected blow.

“I,I,I will go with him inst,t,tead,” stuttered Liton, knowing it was futile. He could see others in the courtyard volunteering too.

The guard and the angular League man ignored him, and the others. The Wienan’s hand wove in rapid handspeech however “Behave yourselves, or we’ll have your dogs whipped.” Most of the riders could lip-read to some extent, but it had long ago been decided to isolate the riders as much as possible. Therefore League agents used an ancient code of hand-signs, not known outside of the League.

The other riders in the courtyard were stilled. She would be tranquillized soon and going to her own Stardog. After that they would never hurt her again. They didn’t physically abuse riders once they had actually bonded with a Stardog. The dogs simply wouldn’t tolerate it. But in the exercise yard the hatred for the Wienan was so thick in the air you could taste it.

Liton and the girl were shackled and guard-escorted to the waiting groundcar. It was a long, elegant-looking vehicle, with real gold trim gleaming amid the polished maroon paint work. The League men were bowed into their seats by a chauffeur who held the door for them. In the less-well-upholstered seat behind them sat a girl who was plainly a servant. She didn’t even look at the riders, but sat rigid, staring straight ahead.

The riders were shoved into a bare expanded-mesh compartment at the back. Stowed like luggage they began their journey to the waiting shuttle-craft. The vehicle stuttered and burped and smoked, belying its elegant appearance.

The new girl wept quietly in the corner of the baggage compartment, repulsing Liton’s efforts to comfort her, hiding her face in her hands. So the older rider thought about Shahjah instead. The too-thin frightened girl looked up from her crying. Plainly he was projecting the love and happiness. Her red-rimmed eyes showed disbelief, and just the faintest trace of hope. He smiled at her. She looked warily at him, and then allowed a weak, unaccustomed smile to touch her lips too. But his own mind was full of confused emotions. He was going back to his beloved. But they would make him fly his darling between the stars, and Shahjah was too old… too old…

The groundcar bumped across to the shuttle. Soon the riders were struggling up the steps in their hobbling shackles. It was a relief to reach their places in the acceleration seats next to the open door. Usually this was the signal for the shuttle to lift, as the other less important passengers would have been waiting for the League-man. But now they sat, waiting. The shuttle was empty of other passengers, except for seven liveried servants, obviously also destined for the waiting ship.

Then through the doorway Lit saw an ornately gilded flyer land. Two men in blue and gold, the Imperial colors, leapt out, unfolded the stairs and held the door open. The party that emerged looked like odd exotic butterflies against the stark dun colors of the landing field. They sauntered slowly across the intervening space, giving the two riders, who were openly staring, ample time to study them.

There were the blue and gold-uniformed two, who walked the outside edges of the party with wary, catlike tread, eyes roving, hands never that far from side-arms. Between them walked a handsome gentleman with a lady on his arm. He wore an elegantly tailored blue-black Imperial Space-navy uniform ribboned with gold braid. She wore a gem-glistening tiara, perched in a carefully curled elegant nest of grey hair. Her coiffeuse secretly despaired about the color. He’d never been asked to tint hair grey before. Her clothes were the height of current fashion, in metallic-finish amber and chartreuse.

But her face could have come off an old coin. One of the ones that showed the Emperor Vespasia. The high, wide cheekbones and the aquiline nose were not pretty-pretty. Neither was the determined chin. Or the wide, sensual mouth. She looked every inch of an Imperial Princess. Liton had never seen her, or even a picture of her, but he decided that it
could
only possibly be the sister of the Emperor himself. He gaped. Looking at her, Liton decided that the clothes had simply failed to measure up to the person. The shapely curvaceous creature behind her, with her honey-blond hair and happy smile suited the frilly clothes. But the Princess, he thought, would have looked more at home in armor.

There were three other members to the party. Beside the elegant strawberry-blond trotted a short, frumpish lady with glasses perched on the end of her nose and several extraneous parcels, who managed to make the current fashions look like bizarre add-ons. Behind them all walked an unobtrusive man in unornamented grey. And in front of the party walked, or rather sniffed, a small, fluffy dog. It was for the benefit of the dog that the party sauntered. When the dog had finally relieved itself, the party entered the waiting shuttle. Knowing that to sit was to die, the entire crew stood up.

The Princess smiled. She smiled right to the eyes. It altered her face, taking it from the cold, powerful Imperial to the warm human. By definition, the aristocracy do not ever say that they are sorry. Whatever goes wrong is your fault, not theirs. She waved to all of them, and broke the rules. “My apologies to you all. Otto,” she pointed to the tail-wagging dog surveying them, “you understand, is prone to having little accidents, if he does not, er ‘go’ before lift-off. As he insists on sitting on my lap, I try to make sure he has the opportunity before we leave. Please sit. As I assume you will be my Crew for this tour, I want you to know that I don’t believe in protocol in flight. I will enjoy meeting all of you soon.” Her manners were legendary, even in the underclasses. It was a shock to discover the legend understated the truth.

She took her seat, and Otto took his with a bound. Lit wished he could have heard her voice, not just lip-read. But his mind was full of questions. Why was he, one of the more obstreperous of riders, being used to ferry the Imperial Princess? Why had the League decided to use an old Stardog like his Shahjah? Why was there a new, inexperienced Leaguesman going along? The thoughts jostled in his head as the gravscoops began to thrust the shuttle upward. His fellow rider-to-be, however, had no such thoughts. She was simply staring at the brown eyes of the princess’s fluff-ball. Her face ran the gamut of expressions from fear to a desperate yearning.

At the space station the Imperial party was split off from them, piped aboard with full military honors by the Imperial Military Unit stationed there to guard the missile stockpile that each station held for the Empire. With a handful of nuclear missiles hanging overhead, insurrection became unthinkable, except on a very minor scale. Space station duty, with its cramped quarters and non-existent recreational facilities, was an Imperial trooper’s idea of purgatory. The troopers weren’t even allowed to fraternize with the civilian stationers, to prevent any possibility of infiltration. It would appear that this suited the stationers very well.

The League also maintained quarters on each station. These were not as sybaritic as those of the planetside Dachas, but the wastefulness of both space and resources were still apparently a source of envy and immense irritation to the stationers. The League also kept a six by eight foot cell for riders, with four tiers of narrow bunks, a basin and a sluice. Liton looked forward to it. It was the one place that riders could meet and pass messages, other than in the communal showers in the compounds. This was better than the showers, for it was known that station-cells were totally and utterly spy-proof. The cell, being part of the station’s climate control, was warm and pleasant, also unlike the compound showers. Also, the stationers fed them, and the food was always good.

Besides, here in space, he was closer to Shahjah. She was out there, coming closer, aware that was back from the gravity-well. Soon they would ride on her back like fleas, bouncing between stars. Liton settled onto the bunk. It was narrow but upholstered to a degree of comfort he was unused to. Well, they were secure and safe for a few hours at least. He began to relax.

Then the apparently solid wall opposite him split aside. A stationer stepped into the rider’s little island of security. The woman made a sign. The sign of the moon. The new moon. The symbol of rebellion. Frozen and frightened the older rider watched. The girl on the lower bunk didn’t. She screamed, or Liton assumed she must have because the stationer put her hands to her ears, before hastily putting her finger to her lips.

The stationer reached for Liton. Despite the sign, and all it implied, the rider flinched. Then she placed something in his ear. He clawed frantically at the ear. The thing was burrowing into his head! “…on’t panic.”

The rider nearly fainted. He heard her. HE HEARD HER!

“What…?” his own voice sounded strange, fuzzy… but audible.

“It is a bone-induction hearing-aid. Please help me with the girl.”

The girl rider was lying in a fetal ball on the couch, eyes closed.

“Fainted,” said the stationer. “Probably easier.” She slipped the device into the ear of the girl. “I hope she doesn’t take too long to come around. I’d rather talk to both of you at once.”

“Is this the revolution come at last? Will my Stardog be safe?”

Station tech Karson smiled reasurringly at the poor little rider. “You riders all ask the same questions.” She shook her head and sighed, “No, I’m afraid this isn’t the revolution. You know that isn’t intended to be a bang, but a whimper when it does finally come. Nobody knows the date, for obvious reasons, but it must be a number of years off yet. Probably not in your lifetime, I’m afraid,” she lied. She knew the empire’s computed infall was less than ten years off, but there was no point in telling this poor man. “And, yes, hopefully your Stardog will be safe, after this.” She handed him a small glass vial. “I’m afraid you’ll have to hide it in your rectum. It won’t show on scan. Break the container onto the filaments, or if possible apply it directly onto the skin of your Stardog.”