Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End (18 page)

The lighter rocked and shuddered, braking in. BenRabi staggered back to his men.

There was barely time for him to hit his couch before, with a bone-jarring smack, the ship set down. Moyshe sprang up and turned to the opening hatch, lase-rifle in hand. Behind him came two men with grenade-launchers, then the rest of the team.

Moyshe jumped out, dodged aside. Two hundred meters away Mouse hit tarmac at virtually the same instant. His pathfinders spread out to place the target markers for vessels yet to arrive.

The thing became anticlimactic. No one was home. The field was naked of ships and people.

Then a stiff-necked, thin old man in a bubble-top, The Broken Wings swamper’s outsuit, stepped from a utility shed. “Beautiful landing, Thomas,” he said on radio. “Ah. And Mouse, too. You’ve taught well, boys. But you had the best teachers yourselves.”

“Beckhart!” Mouse gasped.

“You were expecting St. Nick, son?”

“You said you smelled him,” benRabi snapped. “Mouse, raise
Danion.
Tell them to stand by on the main batteries. General alarm. Have Jarl come close circle with the air support.”

“Thomas, Thomas, what are you doing?”

“The question is, what are
you
doing?” He covered Beckhart while Mouse handled the communications chores. Kindervoort came up on the suit frequency, chattering wildly. He wanted an explanation for the panic.

“I just came out to welcome you,” Beckhart said. “I wanted to see my boys.” All operatives were “son” or “my boys” to Beckhart. He treated them like family—when he was not trying to get them killed. BenRabi had strong love-hate feelings for the man.

He stifled his emotions. For the moment Beckhart had to be considered the most dangerous enemy around. His presence altered everything.

“What is all this?” the Admiral demanded. “An invasion? This is a free planet, Thomas.”

BenRabi foresaw a sorry, sad old man act. The act that so often won the Admiral his way. One means of beating it was to throw him a hard slider. What the hell was his first name? Using it would rattle him.

“We heard there was some dust getting kicked up here,” Mouse said. “Nicolas! Will you get those men deployed? What the hell do you think this is?” The Seiners were standing around gawking, stricken motionless by the sheer hugeness of the planet. How could you be military the first time you saw open spaces and an infinite sky? “We don’t take chances, Admiral.”

Beckhart chuckled. “There was a spot of trouble. I’ve got it under control.”

“We heard something about martial law,” benRabi said. “How does that fit with your standards of neutrality?”

“We pick on everyone separately but equally.” Beckhart chuckled again. He glanced around at the Starfisher landing parties, then at the sky. “There’s no violation in spirit, Thomas. I need what you’re selling. You’ll sell it in peace if I have to break every head on the planet. That’s why I elected myself your welcoming committee. Now then, I think I’ve got everything ready for you. Why don’t you ride in with me and tell me about your adventures?”

Mouse and benRabi exchanged glances. This was not what they had expected. It stank of Beckhart scheming. But . . . if the Old Man said things were under control, they were. He rarely lied, though he enjoyed razzle-dazzling you from the other room.

“Right,” Moyshe said, making a snap decision. “Nicolas. Kiski. Pack up your weapons and get over here. Admiral, what’s the transportation picture?” The spaceport, like any built with an eye to safety, was well removed from the city it served.

“Excellent. It should be arriving . . . Ah. Here it is.”

A column of Marine personnel carriers rumbled onto the field.

“Did you bring the Guinness?” Mouse asked. “We might as well be sociable.”

“A shipload,” Beckhart replied. “And with any luck von Drachau will show up and share a few before we close up shop.”

“Jupp?” benRabi asked. “Really?” He looked forward to that. Jupp was still a friend, though he was on the other side now.

He and Mouse shuffled their men into the first few carriers, advised Kindervoort of the altered situation, and left for Angel City as the second wave began rumbling down the sky.

Fourteen: 3050 AD
The Main Sequence

Beckhart’s word proved good. Angel City was quiet. Central Park, a recreational area at the city’s heart, had been equipped with field tents, trailers, and miscellany the Admiral had borrowed from the Corps. Storm and benRabi set up for business before noon.

“Mouse,” benRabi said, “you get the feeling we’re being rushed?”

“It’s not a feeling, Moyshe. It’s a fact.”

“How do we stall?”

Men with briefcases were lining up to obtain the little catalogs Moyshe’s team had brought along. “Buy time,” Jarl had said. It did not look like they would be given a chance. The various purchasing agents, impelled by the war scare, wanted the bidding to begin right away.

The Marines proved to be perfect policemen. They helped immeasurably. They showed favoritism only to Starfisher tourists. The Admiral seemed determined to avoid a significant incident, and to help the local shopkeepers relieve the Seiner sightseers of all their hard currency.

Storm lost his first tourist their second day on The Broken Wings. The man turned up again before Mouse learned that he had been taken. He was none the worse for wear. He was a mess cook from
Danion
who knew nothing anyone wanted to know.

“It’s started,” Mouse told benRabi when Moyshe relieved him. “Make sure everybody checks in before they wander off. Check their passes. The ones we have to watch have been given a red one.”

“You know who grabbed the man?”

“No. I didn’t try to find out. I just passed it to Beckhart. I figure we might as well let his people do it. We’ll have more people to watch our criticals.”

Moyshe lost several people on his shift. There was only one incident with anyone who mattered. His people handled it perfectly, and presented the would-be kidnapper to Beckhart’s Marines.

The man turned out to be a frustrated newshawk trying to get around Seiner and Confederation censors. Beckhart booted him off planet.

Days ground by, producing no insoluble problems. The auction bidding was wild. Prime ambergris nodes repeatedly brought record prices. There were rumors that Confederation meant to get a stranglehold on the trade. Outsiders and private industry wanted to grab while the grabbing was good.

That rumor made Moyshe nervous. The way the Admiral shrugged it off, he suspected the Bureau had an angle.

The war scare, if not genuine, was convincing. Confederation and Ulantonid forces were marshaling on the boundaries of the March of Ulant. People were getting scared.

Did they mean to fight one another? Or some third party? The news people were wondering too. Luna Command had been leaking one line of news one week, another the next.

News snoops became Moyshe’s biggest problem. They used every trick to capitalize on an opportunity to approach real Seiners. Moyshe did three interviews himself. Someone had tipped the media that he was a former Bureau agent.

He refused interviews after someone discovered that he and Mouse had been responsible for Jupp von Drachau’s famous raid in the Hell Stars.

Then Seiners ceased to be newsworthy. The sword-rattling on the frontier faded away.

Luna Command had admitted that a secret research station and its entire solar system had been destroyed. The hitherto hypothetical nova bomb had been developed there, and proven in unfortunate circumstances.

Maybe there is a God, Moyshe thought. A loving God willing to turn an insane weapon on its creators.

There was a tape of the disaster. Navy claimed it had been shot by a supply vessel entering the system by happenstance. It got hours of air play.

It was awesome, but there was something odd about it. Moyshe could not shake the feeling that it had been faked.

Beckhart seemed to be amused by the whole thing. That was not his style. Not in the face of a genuine disaster.

Moyshe was using a free minute to try digesting sixteen months of back news when Amy walked into his trailer-office. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

“That’s some greeting from a husband.” She pouted. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.” She pulled his rolling chair from behind his desk, spun him, and plopped into his lap.

“I’m not. It’s too damned dangerous.”

“You must’ve found yourself a girlfriend. Yeah. I know all about you Navy men.”

“The danger . . . All right. I give up.” He hugged her. “Let me knosh on your neck, woman.”

There was a knock. “Up, girl. Enter.”

A harassed and apologetic youth bustled in. “Messages and mail,” he said. “Looks like some real excitement starting.”

“How so?”

“Read. Read.” The messenger folded his receipt and left.

The top flimsy was a copy of a terse communique from Gruber. He had sent a strong probing force toward Stars’ End. It had been driven away by a combined force of Sangaree and McGraw pirates. “Amy! Read that.”

She did. “What?”

“An alliance between the Sangaree and pirates?” He initialed the copy, flipped it into Mouse’s In box.

The next flimsy was intriguing. Freehauler merchantmen off Carson’s and Sierra reported that the Navy squadrons there had taken hyper. He passed the copy to Amy.

“All Naval personnel here have had their liberties cancelled. Two of the squadrons up top have been told to make ready to space. What do you think?”

“The war thing about the break?”

He shrugged.

The only other item was a magazine,
Literati
, with attached envelope hand-addressed to a Thomas McClennon, Captain, CN.

It baffled Moyshe.

“I see you’ve been promoted,” Amy said. Suspicion edged her voice. He glanced at her, surprised. Anger and fear colored her face in turn.

“What the hell?” He set the envelope aside and turned to the magazine’s contents page. Halfway down he encountered the title, “All Who Were Before Me In Jerusalem,” followed by the promoted name. “No,” murmured, and, “I don’t understand this.”

“What is it?” Amy looked over his shoulder. “Am I supposed to congratulate you? I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I don’t either, love. Believe me, I don’t.” He slipped one arm around her waist, turned to the story.

It was the version he had written aboard
Danion
, before deciding to become a Seiner. How had the magazine obtained it?

He threw his thought train into reverse.

He had not packed the manuscript in any of the bags he had lost when his gear had gone back to Confederation without him. Though he had not seen the manuscript since then, he was sure it was in his cabin. He had not moved it. He was absolutely certain he had not.

“Amy, remember my story? The one you never could understand? You know what happened to the manuscript?”

“No. I figured you trashed it. I didn’t ask because I thought you’d get mad. I never gave you any time to write, and I know you wanted to.”

He made a call to Security aboard
Danion.
Fifteen minutes later he knew. The manuscript was not in his cabin.

Thinking it safely stowed away, he had not worried about it before. He worried now.

Everything he and Mouse had learned about the Starfishers had been in that manuscript, penned between the lines and on the backs of sheets in invisible ink. If that had reached the Bureau . . . 

“Amy, that business with the Sangaree failsafer . . . Come on. We’ve got to talk to Jarl.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her. He snatched the flimsies from Mouse’s In tray.

“What are you mad about?” she asked. “Slow down, Moyshe. You’re hurting me.”

“Hurry up. This’s important.”

They found Kindervoort at a place called Pagliacci’s. It was a dusky, scenty, park-facing restaurant where both Seiner and Confederation luminaries dined and amused themselves by pumping one another over pasta and wine. BenRabi pushed past the carabinier doorman, overran a spiffy maître de, stalked across a darkly decorated main dining room, through garlicy smells, to a small, private room in the rear. Admiral Beckhart held court there these days.

He and Kindervoort were playing a game of fence-with-words. Kindervoort was losing. He was relieved by Moyshe’s appearance.

Moyshe slapped the papers down in front of Kindervoort. “We’ve been had.”

Kindervoort scanned the top flimsy. “Where’re your ships headed?” he asked Beckhart.

The Admiral chuckled. “I don’t ask you questions like that. But not to worry, my friends. It doesn’t involve your people. Not directly.” He chuckled again, like an old man remembering some prank of his youth.

Kindervoort read the second flimsy, then thumbed through the magazine. “I suppose you want me to congratulate you, Moyshe. So congratulations.”

“Jarl, I didn’t finish that story till a couple days before the landsmen went home. And I came into this mess graded Commander. Someone had to put the story on the ship to Carson’s.”

“And?”

“It wasn’t me that did. I left it out of my stuff because it carried the notes I’d kept for
him.
”

“Ah. I see.” Kindervoort considered Beckhart.

The Admiral smiled, asked, “This lovely lady your bride, Thomas?”

Amy favored him with an uncertain smile.

“Watch him, honey. He’s another Mouse. He can charm a cobra.”

Kindervoort stared and thought. Finally, he asked, “Did they get anything critical?”

“I can’t remember. I think it was mostly social observations. Like that. Impressions. Guesswork.”

“Sit down, Thomas,” Beckhart said. “Mrs. McClennon. Drinks? Something to eat?”

“It’s benRabi now. Moyshe benRabi,” benRabi grumbled.

“I’m used to McClennon, you know. Surely you can’t expect an old dog to learn new tricks.” He rang for service. “Mrs. McClennon, you’ve caught yourself a pretty special man. I consider my men my boys. Like sons, so to speak. And Thomas and Mouse are two of my favorites.” BenRabi frowned. What was the man up to? “So, though he defected and it hurts, I try to understand. I’m glad he finally found someone. He needs you, Missy, so be good to him.”