Starhammer (20 page)

Birthamb's mood was bleak. He lived because he was tubed into several medical peripherals built into the bed. He might never leave it again. But he also realized, with a cold clarity that made him feel infuriatingly helpless, that he would still go to the Chair of Expiation in front of the Imperial Court. He had failed so totally and abysmally that the Imperiom could only respond by rending him to pieces for the TV cameras.

The Morgooze of Blue Seygfan was not dead. The Lady Blasilab was. Which was the worst thing to happen was entirely unclear to Padzn Birthamb, but the net result was plain. Further humiliations abounded. The man Iehard had virtually wiped out the central Superior Buro post. Of the twenty-three operatives only four had escaped injury, because they were off shift and asleep. Only three others had survived. The antipersonnel weaponry of the Mass Murder Squad had advanced the science of ammunition to a dreadful point of efficiency. In most cases operatives hit just once with those exploding bullets had died instantly. Padzn Birthamb was unique, a survivor of two shots.

Birthamb's throat caused him considerable pain as he explained all this to Petrie.

"So, I will go to the Chair of Expiation, Petrie. You know what that means?"

Petrie nodded.

"They will tear me apart, shred by shred."

"So I have heard." Petrie seemed to take the news calmly enough.

"A new section of the Buro will be arriving within hours to take over here at Hyperion Grandee. You will be expected to give them your complete cooperation."

"Of course."

Birthamb seethed with hate for humans. The subrace had destroyed him after a career that had been so promising. It was with pleasure that he pronounced Petrie's death sentence.

"I want you to know that I have seconded your name to the Fleet Sector Command for immediate termination, preferably in public with the full application of lao military law. Your incompetence in selecting that maniac has allowed the Elchite fugitive to escape."

"Incompetence?" Petrie barked hotly. "I was asked to get the best sensing, psi-able operative on the Mass Murder Squad. I did that. He even got a contact with the people you seek. An incredible feat considering how you worked to undercut him from the first!

"In addition, has it occurred to you that had I been told that the Superior Buro intended to seize his colleague, the woman, and put her through the Brutality Room, I might have counseled you to forego the use of someone like Jon Iehard, who already has his own reasons for disliking the laowon!"

Birthamb almost choked in rage. "Out! Get out of here, out of my sight. Soon you will receive your orders, very soon. Did you know the whole sector fleet is in motion? Admiral Booeej himself is coming here. Blue Seygfan is in utter turmoil. The cult is howling for revenge on this entire system. Now get out!"

Birthamb's body convulsed on the pad.

Petrie stumbled out, afraid now for all Nocanicus. Admiral Booeej himself was coming!

The outer system of Nocanicus contained five gas giant planets—Abdul, William, Ingrid, Shala, Hideo. Of them, the last four were relatively small and cool. In addition, they had an abundance of perfect watermoons, like William's half-dozen jewels, rich in hydrocarbons, water ice, ammonia, nitrogen, everything that was required for a high cultural civilization, except metal.

The existence of those moons, as much as the major asteroid belt, had been the prime reason for the colonization of Nocanicus. It had no habitable planets, only two airless rocks the size of Mercury orbited inside the enormous asteroid belt.

Between the moons and the asteroid belt were the natural strings of trade, metals for gases, skills developed in different settings, essences, entertainments. Their populations swelled, with a billion or more in the belt and about half as many on the moons.

Hyperion Grandee rode near the center of the main belt. Currently it was in conjunction with William and in opposition to Abdul.

The
Orn
now floated on the fringe of the opposite side of the main belt. Abdul rode a few degrees behind, brightest star even at one hundred fifty million kilometers distance. The nearest known habitat was the Camleopard Al Kuds and that was twenty million kilometers away. Drones were released at once to scour the neighborhood. An astronomical probe was fired out of the equatorial solar plane to search for laowon battlejumpers.

The roids close by were all small rocks of interest only to prospectors. The
Orn
detected no spacecraft in the vicinity.

Aboard the
Orn
, Jon Iehard faced his questioners across the aisle of the main passenger compartment. On the big screen above their heads was a computer-enhanced image of the system.

Meg had been placed in a bunk in sickbay, under sedation.

"How can you expect us to believe this?" Finn M'Nee snarled. "You are a laowon spy. You have been sent to betray our ultimate destination. Nothing you say can change this."

Jon shrugged. It was clear to all that he was never going to be accepted by M'Nee, an intense young man with harsh, elitist views.

Owlcurl Dahn however was another story. She was the coordinator of the group, someone from Luft Line's administration, not regular spacecrew. It was clear that she was the Bey's chief supporter. Others were less enthusiastic. Jon detected several currents at work. M'Nee, Flynn, Chacks—all young men with intense expressions who were contemptuous of the captain and the woman Dahn. The rest of the crew—Bergen, Hargen, Wauk, and Kolod—seemed to ignore those three and were ignored in turn.

Toward the Bey, the three young men were formalistically obedient, like soldiers of lesser rank with an officer. But there seemed little real friendliness in their relations.

Jon had to admit his own confusion, but he suspected they were Elchites. Around their minds he found a roar of anger and sharp stabs of fear. He hesitated to press deeper.

The other crew members treated the Bey with either exaggerated deference or a paradoxical anger.

Officer Dahn now gave Jon another appraising look, "On Ornholme we were warned that laowon spies would be everywhere on this side of the Hyades. I think they were right, but I cannot believe the laowon would truly sacrifice so many of their own for one spy."

"Foolish woman!" M'Nee said witheringly. "The laowon are completely unconcerned about such things. If it suited the High Command's purposes they would overlook many more casualties."

"You Elchites are of that mind, but I doubt that even the laowon could be so heartless with their own personnel," she retorted.

Jon looked at M'Nee more carefully. So he'd been correct. There seemed a world of difference between M'Nee and the Bey. Perhaps they were in different sects.

He noticed Captain Hawkstone, eyes vacant, lost in gloomy introspection. A husk of a man, caught up by accident in terrible events beyond his control. He was desperately treading water, trying not to let his fear become cowardice. He was only there because he had had the misfortune to be the only active space captain aboard Ornholme when Eblis Bey came to the habitat to demand payment of the old, old debt.

"Nonsense, nonsense," the Bey broke in. "It is entirely possible that the laowon would sacrifice numbers of lower-echelon personnel in advance of their interests. However, young M'Nee is in error in thinking that the Superior Buro, in active pursuit of us, would allow itself to be destroyed. But for Iehard's massacre of their operatives, they would have seized us long before you'd finished bargaining with Porox. So, in my mind it is settled—Jon is with us. The unfortunate Ms. Vance is perhaps more of a paradox, except that I believe she has just been swept up in the tide of history that accompanies our passage. Can you not feel it? We bring the blade of salvation toward the neck of the tyrant race."

M'Nee snorted disgustedly. "Put them to the Hypnogen. Then we'll know for certain."

"There isn't time for that—we must get to the connection soon. Do you think the laowon won't reinforce the fleet here?"

"Tell me one thing," Jon interrupted.

"What?" Dahn said.

"Why do you need to go to William?"

"Because..." She trailed off.

"But the aliens are out in the distant starfields. How can we get to them if we go to William, where the laowon are waiting?"

Hawkstone intervened. "We have to go to William first, in order to go on to the stars. The
Orn
doesn't have the fuel to reach our ultimate destination. We'd have to refuel at laowon systems several times. They'd be waiting for us eventually."

"Then how will we reach the aliens, to get help?"

Eblis Bey laughed. "I fear you have been laboring under a misunderstanding. We shall have to explain things more fully."

He paused. Something was happening on the astronav holo. A group of red blips had sprung into existence in the watermoon system around William.

Officer Bergen on the bridge reported, "Captain, we have an arrival trace in William system—ten, no, eleven battlejumpers. More coming in all the time. Looks like the whole sector fleet is on its way to Nocanicus."

"I have arrivals in the belt," another voice said. "They must be on combat footing; they're just popping out in midbelt and damn the consequences. Hyperion Grandee is center of activity but smaller ships are turning up in other sectors."

The Bey noticed the proliferating red dots scattered about William and the main belt. "Admiral Booeej is on the move then. The game is set, Captain. I would imagine that Booeej has been given some inkling of the true nature of our mission."

Captain Hawkstone struggled with it. Finally he gave in. "All right, we'll continue the mission."

Jon read the shiver on Eblis Bey's face. He'd feared that Hawkstone might crack.

"We will continue as planned," Hawkstone said quite calmly. "However, I would like it logged, which record I shall request be ejected before connection, that I protest the wanton misuse of this Luft Lines' vessel. I think we are all going to our deaths."

"The
Orn
is your ship, Captain. I thank you for your most heroic offer," the Bey replied with a gracious smile.

"This is a mad business..."

"We have no choice, Captain, despite the cost of the ship. We must go to William." Administrator Dahn tried vainly to bolster the captain.

"Besides, the ship will be controlled by the software developed by the Elchite brethren. They have worked on it for a long time, haven't you, M'Nee?"

"The software will do the job. If the connection can be made, we will make it."

Jon's forehead furrowed. "I don't understand.
Why
are we still in Nocanicus system? Why is the fleet concentrating around the watermoons of William?"

"Because we must go to the very heart of the William system, and this name is one that the laowon have managed to pry from the musings of a traitor far behind us, on Earth. We have been keeping a few jumps ahead of them until now, but they have caught up again."

"The laowon told me that they captured you but you escaped."

The Elchite turned angry eyes on him. "As always, the laowon exaggerate in these matters. They came close, but we knew of their approach." He sighed.

Officer Wauk on the bridge cut in on the PA.

"We have a laowon vessel, cruiser-class jumper, in vicinity of El Zanzahab." A winking red dot had sprung into existence on the outer fringe of the belt, in the same quadrant that hid the
Orn
.

Eblis Bey eyed the dot with obvious distaste. "They're getting closer, but since we're sitting still at low energy levels and they're arriving at high ones we can see them and they can't see us. Yet. Of course, eventually a probe will find us, so we will move soon, on the
Orn's
final journey."

"On our own final journey, more likely," Hawkstone muttered.

"Where are we going?" Jon said.

"Mr. Iehard, have you ever heard a little piece of doggerel called the 'Testamenter Lament'?"

"You mean, 'In the depths of the ocean where all hope sank...'?"

"Yes, 'We laid him down, Where the gravity's no feather and the light will never reach.'"

"Well, I've heard it all right."

"But have you heard the third verse, the hidden verse?"

Jon looked up with a puzzled frown.

"It's the verse that begins, 'In the depths of the ocean where our hope sank, we laid him down,' just like the popular verse, but it goes thus:

In stormy midlatitudes we secured him, and laid him down,
Tucked close to Nemo's Piston a million fathoms round, where we laid him down,
So don't look for us in sun's light lest the laowon hunt us down,
To Hope and Nemo's Piston, a million fathoms round.

"Nemo's Piston?" Jon repeated.

"What would you say if I told you we're taking the
Orn
directly to the resting place of the Testamenter Battleship
Winston Churchill
?"

Jon was rocked. Then he exploded. "Meg was right, she was right again, damn it!"

Admiral Booeej was coming. The Nocanicus System Governing Authority had assembled hurriedly to greet him. Members from the outer systems had been ferried, without warning, to Hyperion Grandee aboard swift jumpships.

Laowon were everywhere. Petrie's section, the entire Military Intelligence building, was swarming with Superior Buro laowon in black tunics. For convenience, the meeting was to be held there, in Commander Petrie's very own office.

Among them were still a few of the other things, the cyborgs, with human faces and power-graphite bones. Petrie had never felt such a chill in his heart as when the three shock troopers had burst into the section. They moved impossibly quickly, like the flickering of insects. Things that married human genetic material, like cloth, to machines. The eyes were so obviously artificial. The plate armor so convincing. It was hard to even see them unless they stood still or moved unusually slowly.

Now Admiral Booeej himself was coming. His huge jumper, the
Conqueror
, had docked. Security teams lined the route.

The admiral was tall, threatening, his purple face filled with fury. The door closed behind him with a cyborg guard on either side of it. The admiral moved across the room and sat at Petrie's desk, almost pushing the commander out of his way.