Starhammer (18 page)

When Jon tried to comfort her she shrank away from him with fluting little cries of terror, so he grimly injected a sedative into her, watching until it took effect. Then he left her and floated over to concentrate on the news programs he had windowed around the screen.

Melissa Baltitude was staring at the coverage with horrified eyes. The noises coming from that woman were awful, disgusting; they made Melissa's skin crawl.

Jon said nothing, but flicked around on minor channels for additional scraps on the story.

"Jon what is it? Who is this woman? What's happened to her?"

He took a breath.

"Her name's Meg, she's an old buddy of mine. We were on this case for the laowon. Tracking a fugitive Panhumanist from out-system. She broke some of the laowon rules; they took her to the Room for it."

Melissa's eyes widened. Meg's gargling sobs were terribly loud and close by. "What happened?" she breathed.

"I went in and broke her out. Killed a lot of laowon—every one of them that I found in there."

Her eyes popped in alarm. "Killed?" It sounded as if she was in trouble. Daddy had warned her! She felt an instant pang of guilt.

Jon continued monitoring the radio spectrum with feverish intentness.

They'd been in flight for another twenty-five minutes before there was a definite identification of "Jon Iehard" as the wanted fugitive. But by then the Dove B was in secondary burn, a remote speck from Hyperion Grandee and fast receding from it. Just one in a galaxy of similar small craft.

An embargo on all departures from Hyperion Grandee finally went into effect. Even a few commuter ships that had put out for nearby megahabs were ordered back.

"How long do you think it will be before your father discovers you're missing, Melissa?"

"He won't, I already told him I was going to take a winter break on the Splendor. He hasn't even called me; he can't be worried. Perhaps he just hasn't connected the two things in his mind yet."

Jon mulled it over. Would they have enough time before the laowon set out to track the Dove? It was impossible to say. He imagined they were turning Hyperion Grandee upside down for him. When that proved futile they would consider less likely possibilities, like Jon and Meg's escaping in a space yacht.

"Meg and I would love to come with you all the way to the Splendor. But we've got business at a little way station, not too far out of your way. I have the new course coordinates here. If you'll signature them, I'll feed them into the computer now."

"Where are you taking us, Jon?"

"Meg and I have a date with some very important people. We have a message for them and humanity's last hope is riding on their mission."

Something in his voice choked off her urge to reply. She initialized the new course coordinates.

The trip to Sooner was uneventful but rather long, taking two days to complete after a long burn that severely depleted the Dove's fuel stocks. Jon told Melissa what he could of the events in which he was caught up. After a while she grew quiet and withdrawn and they didn't converse much. Then, at last, a bright speck in the forward sky began to fatten and bulge and the Dove began to decelerate hard.

Jon's chief concern was Meg's continuing disorientation. At times she crooned softly to herself, then slept deeply but awoke screaming with pain and fear. She sucked on the straw when he offered her nutrisoup and when she was awake he'd attempted to explain what had happened, but she remained generally unresponsive.

"Shock, that's all it is, Melissa. Happens to most people in the Brutality Room. Only about eight percent fail to recover, but this sort of appearance spreads the fear. That's all the blues want."

As the comet's big ablation shield resolved on their screen into a ring and then a disk, Jon had the computer tuck the Dove into the long lines of robot tanker ships lined up for access to Sooner's refinery.

Behind the ablation shield they could see the seven-kilometer torus that was the Sooner habitat.

By trading both sides of their long orbital pathway, belt manufactures for watermoon gas and water, the inhabitants had done very well for themselves.

Soon the Dove floated into the immense tanker docking bay. Lines of tankers were connected to the nozzles on the habitat bulkhead at one end. With computer assistance Jon guided the Dove to a gentle halt beside the bulkhead. The space was vacuum and barely illuminated, but with the Dove's headlights they could see a small airlock, presumably for the occasional maintenance worker who had to enter this domain of robots.

"If you just line up around the other side of this refinery, you can refuel the Dove. We've taken you about three hours out of your way, if you intend to go on to the Splendor. There's a good chance they'll never even connect you to us. If they do—well, you'll be protected, your father is Jason Baltitude."

She struggled for her reply for a moment. "And you seriously believe that you're going to escape this system and go to the stars? The laowon are sure to catch you."

He shrugged. "I guess we don't have any other choice. If I'm wrong and if Meg was wrong, then we're probably dead. I know they'll want me to expiate at the least. But I don't think we're wrong, so don't worry too much about us. Just make the best time you can to the Splendor. When I get back I'll send you a message. Maybe we can get together somewhere."

She stared at him, speechless. He was crazy! The laowon would take him and he would die, screaming his lungs out, somewhere far away.

He started fitting Meg into a spacesuit. Then he put on one of his own, inflated the Dove's little airlock, and piled into it with Meg and the wheelchair. As the door closed he blew Melissa a kiss. She stared back, wondering why she felt such a strong impulse to cry.

Most people, of course, came onboard Sooner through the arrivals terminal, two docking bays above Jon and Meg. But the function box at the refinery airlock was the normal type and Meg's supercode had an easy time of it, fooling the immigration and bank auditor programming. In a moment they received a green flash and the hatch opened.

Just inside the small airlock was an elevator, with another function box beside it. Jon took a minute to run a swift address check and then to book a hotel room under an assumed name.

When they emerged into gravity again, it was to a wide plaza space inside the light well of an enormous building. Around the plaza were restaurants, shops, and office entrances. Towering above were the four corner prongs of the building, a tower that rose halfway to the roof of the habitat.

In the far distance, glimpsed through the space between the corner towers, was another tower of similar shape. Above and beyond were a blue sky illusion and a vista to an impossibly distant horizon. The land was flat, patched with dark-green splotches of forest. Rivers glinted silver in the sunlight. It was virtually impossible to tell where the reality ended and the illusion took over.

They checked into a modest hotel suite and showered and ate a fast hot meal. Jon wolfed down eggs, freefburgers, and fries. The food smells finally broke Meg's spell for a while. She consumed soy nuggets and eggs and fries. They drank copious amounts of fruit juice.

He checked the TV and radio channels. Sooner was far from excited about the case, it seemed. The hot pursuit he'd been expecting had simply not materialized, which surprised Jon. A system-wide hunt had been announced and the
Illustrious
had moved over to Nostramedes on the second day. But that seemed the limit of the laowon activity, at least so far.

Meg's code would have left very little trace in all the computers it had violated, but Jon reasoned that full auditing programs might eventually open the Superior Buro's eyes. However, he had underestimated the degree to which his massacre of the Buro had disrupted their operations and the search.

But he knew it couldn't be long before the Buro caught up. There was no time for sleep, on a bed with sheets and gravity. Instead he fortified himself with hot coffee. Meg had lapsed into sleep following the food. Jon gave her a swift inspection. The medipacks were working on the worst scrapes, no bones were broken that he could find. If her mind came back into focus, she would recover.

As soon as he was ready, they slipped out of the hotel and rode an elevator to a high suite on the southeast corner.

On the door was a sign that read POROX GAS CO. in small black letters. Jon knocked, entered, pushing Meg ahead of him.

Inside was a small reception room with walls covered in brown natufibers. A young man in a dark-blue suit sat behind the desk; behind him was another door.

Jon wasted no time. He leveled the Taw Taw at the young man's head. "Up, and go ahead of me, through the door. No tricks or you won't even have time to be sorry."

The young man left his seat hurriedly, almost fell down in his eagerness to comply.

There were several rooms, all decorated in natural earthtones. In the biggest room, behind a glossy realwood desk, a fleshy brown-skinned man wearing a white silk suit was engaged in furious argument with several blond people in gray spacecrew wear.

They looked up in horror.

"Nobody move!" said Jon sharply. The gun swung back and forth to cover them.

"It's the Buro!" screamed the woman he'd pursued to Nostramedes.

Hurriedly Jon contradicted her. "No, it's not the Buro. You're wrong, I'm here to help you. I have a message for you."

An atmosphere of hysterical tension rose in the room.

"What do you mean?" the tall, stooped captain said. "You are the one who almost destroyed us."

"Nevertheless I'm not the Buro. I have a message and in return for delivering it, I want to book passage with you, for both of us. We cannot stay in this system, the laowon will kill us."

There was an explosion of rage from a man wearing a heavy cast on his right arm. It was the one named M'Nee.

"You murderous swine, I'll kill you." He twisted to his feet, eyes flashing in fury and a small gun trembling in his good hand.

Jon didn't hesitate. His foot lashed out and the gun flew across the office and bounced off the window. His own weapon continued to cover them.

The woman was beside herself. "I told you we should have killed him, you wouldn't listen to me, oh no, not you!"

"There's no need for anyone to get killed. If you'll listen to my story I think you'll agree. It won't take long."

He sensed vast unhappiness in them.

Nathan Porox spoke up from behind his desk. "Before anybody books passage for anybody, somebody's got to settle for the cost of the fuel. I'm sitting here looking at a docket that will impound your ship unless I receive payment. All this gunplay won't mean exhaust to a robot without that!"

Jon chuckled. "And how much is required?"

"Twenty-six thousand credit units." Jon produced a card, snapped it into the function box on Porox's phone computer, and dialed the credit through from Hyperion Grandee Centabank. Meg's code supplied the bank computer with perfectly tailored analogs in place of true account number codes. The bank computer stuttered over them for a few moments but then accepted them. Meg's code had passed its stiffest test. But a major bank's auditing programs would soon pick up an error of this magnitude.

Porox watched expressionless.

"Fuel the ship, you've been paid."

The captain was plainly stunned. "What do you want?" he said weakly.

"We want to come with you, to the stars. I can't stay here—I killed laowon to get to you, you see. So we must hurry, we can't afford to wait."

Porox's face was several shades darker. "Did I hear you correctly? You killed laowon to get here?"

"You did. And I'll kill you, too, if you don't get that fuel moving soon."

Porox made urgent motions to his assistant, who dialed the docks.

"You want to come with us?" said the woman named Dahn.

"Right."

"Why?"

"Because I understand, I know why you're going."

"You do?"

"Look, I'll explain the details later. Just tell me whether you'll deal. My message for two births on the Bird." He ventured a little hunch of his own.

Once again their faces were stricken with horror and he knew he'd been correct.

"How can you know these things and not be Superior Buro?" the captain said indignantly. Jon detected a faint whine in the man's voice. It was a sign of strain, of worry. Around the captain was a blanket of psychic panic. He was clearly terrified for his life. Jon wondered briefly why such a man was dicing with the Superior Buro for the fate of the human race. He didn't seem the type for that sort of thing.

"This is my friend Meg. She worked it all out, you see. While I was chasing you for them. She went to the Brutality Room as a result." They stared, unnerved, at Meg's slack face which peered at them from her blanket.

"Look, it's complicated. I know. But all you really have to understand is that I've changed sides."

It took them a long moment to digest this. They conversed furiously among themselves, finally looked up.

"All right, what is this message?"

"With Porox in the room?"

"It's all right, Porox is with us."

Jon took a breath. "The laowon expect you to head for the William system. They have stationed a ship there to intercept you."

"How did you come by this message?" Captain Hawkstone asked.

"My colleague penetrated the computer aboard
Illustrious
, the battlejumper." They nodded, they knew the ship. "She must have found the information there."

"Interesting."

"Interesting to the Superior Buro. They took her to the Brutality Room for it."

Hawkstone blanched. "And?"

"I broke her out. I killed a lot of them to do so."

Porox groaned. "You killed the Superior Buro?"

"As many as I could. Should slow them up a bit."

"Good god, man, that will stir them up."

"It already has, I should think. This was two days ago now."

"We will have to use the direct route approach." Hawkstone spoke in an ominous tone. "If this message is correct, we can't wait for an exploratory orbit. We'll have to emerge on the dark side and initiate atmospheric descent immediately."