THE GROUND SEEMED TO VIBRATE, AS IF SOME DISTANT rockslide had
rumbled down the side of the hills. A few minutes later it began to
shake harder, then harder yet, and they began to be concerned.
“What is that?” Ikira Sukotae asked.
“I don’t know,” Vulture replied, “but I
don’t like it.”
“Could be one last trick to drive us out,” Sabir
suggested.
“I’m going out to see.” Ikira said. “I
know this hill pretty well now—they won’t see me. Wait
here.” And, with that, she scampered past them and out the
passage.
The vibrations continued, getting a little stronger each time,
and they waited for a report. Vulture had already decided that if
the captain wasn’t back in five minutes he was going after
her.
She ran back in, out of breath. “They’re going along
both sides of the ridge in squads and tossing explosives into the
caves they find. Then they look inside and go on to the next.
They’ll be here in maybe ten minutes.”
“Roll back the mats and open the escape route!”
Vulture ordered sharply. He got his gun and tossed another to
Sabir. “How far into the caves are they coming?” he
asked the captain.
“Not far. They’re moving too fast. I think this is
just a routine exercise. If we’re in one they’ll either
stun or kill us or scratch it off their list. They aren’t
taking enough time to do more than shine a light in when the dust
clears.”
He thought furiously for a moment. “We should stick it
out. When the explosions get very close everybody open their mouths
and cover their ears and keep quiet! I’ll cover the passage
just in case—Sabir, you cover the escape tunnel. If I shoot,
everybody get down there as fast as you can and keep going.
I’ll catch up—but they won’t.”
They waited, agonizingly, as the vibrations and the sounds of
explosions came to them, the vibrations much stronger than the
sounds. Finally they heard the distant voices of troopers shouting
to one another, then there was a silence, quickly broken by three
very loud explosions. The air moved forcefully down the passage and
brought with it dust and dirt, and it was all they could do to keep
from coughing, but they managed. The troops evidently waited for
the dust to settle and then shined floodlights into the cave itself
but did not enter. Everyone inside the inner cave held their
breath, and then there was the sound of more men shouting and then
an explosion a bit more distant and on the other side. Within
minutes it was clear that the force had moved on, but they kept
quiet and on guard until all sounds ceased.
Some of the crates had been knocked over and a few gourd dishes
had been disturbed and cracked but nothing else seemed damaged.
Finally Ikira whispered, “I’m going to
check.”
“But you’re unarmed! If they left a
guard . . . ” Vulture left it
unfinished.
“I can take care of myself. I’m a lot less obvious
than any of you. They don’t even know a creature like me
exists.”
She wasn’t out very long. “It’s getting close
to sundown and I think they were just in a hurry to get it done. It
sounds like they’re running flyers up and down the ridge,
probably with sophisticated infrared and other detectors to see if
anyone pops out, but they can’t keep that up for
long.”
Vulture nodded. “It’s their last gasp, I
think.”
“Then—we will finally be moving out of this
hole?” Chow Dai asked hopefully.
“Yes. I think it is time. I had several different plans
for escape and set up a number of pickup points. I also have some
elaborate disguises that would probably work. Twenty percent of the
young females on this world are pregnant anyway. But I hadn’t
counted on having Captain Sukotae with us.”
“You’d be surprised how well I can stay
hidden,” she assured him. “I have no natural weapons,
but you would be surprised how well my defenses work. They were
bred on a far more hostile world than this one, and they have
served through the worst of occasions.”
“Admirable, and probably true,” he admitted,
“but it isn’t Janipur I’m worried about, nor
those troopers, although they’re more of a problem with their
sophisticated devices and sensors. You wouldn’t fool a Val
for a moment—it knows all the colonial races and
automatically senses them, or so I’m assured, and having
gotten this far, a Val will come whenever we are spotted. Even I am
powerless against a Val unless I can get the drop on it.”
“No one can take a Val one on one,” Sabir asserted.
“It just isn’t possible. Everybody knows that. A whole
group with the best of weapons could, certainly, but as soon as the
loss was sensed by Master System, there would be two Vals
following, and more after that, with whatever added forces and
weapons were needed.”
Vulture smiled. “If I had a Val with its back to me,
ignorant of my presence, and I had a common military laser like
those here, I think I could take it. As for the loss sensors, it
seems to be some kind of small device with its own punch power and
capable of independent action and great speed. Nagy and I saw the
module exit when we blew the Val ship. I don’t know what sort
of tiny mechanism it is, but it’s at least the size of a fist
and must power up and exit the Val when it’s dead.”
The idea was unnerving. “A Val soul,” Sabir
whispered.
“A Val is a thing of metals and plastics and other
artificial parts. It is a machine, nothing more, although a great
one and a thinking one. Its soul, as you call it, is also just a
mechanical device, a recorder with whatever power it needs to get
it to where it can report, nothing more. I can not see or sense
your soul, if such a thing exists, but this is solid, material, and
manufactured. What is solid and tangible can be
destroyed.”
“So? And if you do? What then? There is still the SPF, and
that Val might not be the only one in the area, considering what we
did.”
He nodded. “There are two Vals. One has been alternating
between the command ship and Cochin Center ever since the Troopers
arrived. The other is acting as a sort of messenger boy and
consultant going among SPF General Staff, the Janipur command ship,
and Master System itself. So, that’s two Vals, the command
ship, and the two automated fighters—a hell of a good force,
even against us. We can assume they have a few other automated
pieces of nastiness waiting for the signal to come in as well. The
troopers here are the Janipurian Division, racially the same as us
and therefore of only marginal use elsewhere. They can stay here
forever if they have to, and SPF won’t miss them. The Vals and
fighters are machines, and machines have infinite patience. They
will simply wait for us to be drawn into a fight.”
“What you are saying,” put in Ikira Sukotae,
“is that the only way we can get out is by playing their
game, doing exactly what they want in the first place—forcing
all of us into a head-to-head battle. That’s fine
planning!”
“If we didn’t get the ring, the rest didn’t
matter,” he responded defensively. “Frankly, we knew
it’d be tough getting out, but we didn’t really think
it was a problem we couldn’t solve when we saw the forces
against us. Now I am considering the alternatives. We can go on as
planned to Pickup Two, Three, and so on, until we tire of it or
settle down and rot—or get desperate and call for that
battle. Or we can have the fight sooner and eliminate all that
wasted time.”
“And lose,” Sabir commented gloomily.
“Perhaps, but we have a few things on our side. We will
pick the time. If we are willing to take some risks, we can also
even the odds a bit.”
“Risks,” Sabir repeated. “What sort of
risks?”
“Capture. Imprisonment, perhaps. They would not
interrogate you here, you realize. We all know too much about the
rings and their purpose. They would remove you to the command ship.
The local Val and the local commander, a fellow named Colonel
Privi, would handle it personally. They would have
to . . . ”
“I don’t mind risks, but I don’t like that
‘you’ stuff,” Ikira said. “Us, not
you?”
“Oh, I would be there with you all the way. That’s
the beauty of it. The problem is, I would have to have extensive
communications with Thunder for it to work, and I
don’t think even now that I can risk any long-term
transmissions from here. It is less than a day’s trot from
here to the edges of civilization. Two days southwest of here I
have another hideout, better situated and more comfortable. With a
bit of disguising, I think we can all make it to that one. I have
the materials here for the disguises and the necessary maps, even
some currency.”
“There’s bound to be a hue and cry over us,”
Chow Dai pointed out. “Wanted—two men traveling with
identical twin sisters, both pregnant.”
“We will not travel together. We are two males and two
females so we pair up naturally, and no one will notice identical
twins if they are not next to each other. Each pair will take a
slightly different route to avoid any smart people getting wrong
thoughts. I am unconcerned about the pregnancy aspect; there are
close to a billion and a quarter people on this continent and
growing rapidly in spite of a fairly high infant mortality rate.
Maybe one in six women are pregnant at any one time on the average.
Once we are in some sort of civilization, we will blend in and the
searchers know it. If we make the real world from here, they
won’t get us. They will wait for us to make a move.
Come—Sabir, help me with this black barrel. The applicators
are over in that box.”
They got out the barrel and the box, and the lids were removed.
Sabir shook his head and sighed. “Vaisya. Must you step us
down so much?” The dye color was a reddish brown.
“We can’t go as Brahman. That would be like
transmitting our presence and we could never move unobtrusively.
Ksatriyas, as the political and professional leaders, have friends,
higher education, and they stand out. They will be expecting us to
use Ksatriya, and so it won’t be long until the first slip
brings them down on us. Sudra is simply too low and lacks mobility,
although it’s the largest caste and would provide the
greatest invisibility. Captain Sukotae, you will travel with me but
you’ll have to forage and fend for yourself. We will work
something out. Chow Dai, you will go with Sabir; Chow Mai with me.
We will go separately at intervals as soon as we seem
ready.”
Sabir stared at Vulture. “You are enjoying this,
aren’t you? You are really enjoying this.”
“It is the most fun I have had in my whole life,” he
admitted unapologetically.
Sabir and Chow Dai walked slowly down a road that was little
more than a dirt track between fields of grain planted across very
low rolling terrain. Here and there would be a small Sudra village,
its modest adobelike houses made from the inhabitants’ own
dung and baked and formed as bricks. The hordes of insects,
particularly flies, filled even a quiet time with a low buzz that
changed in pitch now and again. The villages were based around
communal wells, the wells usually being located in the center of
the settlement and creating a broad town square that was filled
with women getting water and often just talking as young children
romped and laughed and played all about, looking more like
four-footed animals with strange heads than anything else.
The odors were the hardest to get used to after the clean and
filtered air of the Center and, before that, the even more purified
air of the spaceships, but they were starting to adapt to it. The
peasant organization itself was quite familiar to Chow Dai,
although her people lived in small homes of bamboo, wood, and
straw. Her old people, she thought, almost longingly.
These were her people now.
Her primary thoughts were of the child within, which moved and
kicked from time to time. She had never really thought of becoming
a mother since she’d been fairly small, but now it seemed
very important to her, the most important thing in the world. She
could still stand if she had to, but she no longer wanted to do so
and feared that it would risk undue pressure on the child. She was
becoming more and more dependent on Sabir as a result, but this
didn’t really bother her. Other than giving the seed, the
only real purpose she saw for Janipurian males was to protect the
women during this period and through birth and the first month. She
did not think of it as being subordinate, but rather as her
due.
They had been given a bag of coins by Vulture that was more than
adequate for anything they might need; indeed, it was the
equivalent of a half a year’s average income for these
people. Sabir had more common sense than to show it or the pistol
around, and kept them in a backpack. He kept just two coins, medium
denominations with an incarnation of Vishnu on one side and a
stylized Janipurian hairy elephant on the other, in the waist pouch
for normal purchases. Many of the people in this small town were so
poor that any more than a small amount would be an open invitation
to thievery.
At first the proprietor had denied there were any rooms, but the
sight of both coins, worth about four times the regular rental
rate, caused her to change her mind and find something out back. It
was a small, dung-adobe one-room cottage with straw for a floor and
some well-worn mats for furnishings, but it was adequate. The
inn’s large outhouse was but a few meters away and the inn
had piped-in well water with a “guest pump” just out
back. A small alcohol lamp was the only illumination.
Sabir unpacked and removed the purse, removed two more coins,
then stuck the purse in his pack. “I’m going to have to
go out and get us something to eat,” he told her. “I
shouldn’t be long. I don’t like to leave the pack
unguarded and I think we should just relax here and get some rest
for the journey tomorrow. We are still far too close to take any
risks. You saw how they looked at us just because we were
strangers.”
Chow Dai nodded. “Go ahead. I will be all right
here.”
They had not started until midday and now it was close to
sundown in the town. The marketplace itself was officially closed
now, but there were still enough vendors open to assemble some
food. Although Sabir had had a harder time learning to be a
Janipurian than the sisters, he had almost completely assimilated
his thinking to the native culture in a way the sisters had not.
Also, he felt very comfortable as a male, something the Chows could
never comprehend. The Chows had been born peasants of peasant stock
in a Chinese village no higher in culture than this one; a society
that was protective, safe, and where everything was clearly
structured. Sabir had a rougher upbringing and had always envied
her brothers their freedom of movement and their confidence. Sabir
had always been small and somewhat frail and had always felt a
level of fear and vulnerability to those strange places and
practically naked and defenseless on a dark street. There was no
such feeling now.
There was more trouble getting change than finding things to eat
at the marketplace, even though it was shutting down. Few patrons
here used money; it was mostly a barter economy, with money
something out-of-towners brought now and again. For a five-rupee
coin, he was able to arrange not only to purchase decent food but
to have a local woman prepare it and then bring it to the cottage.
It was significant only that no one asked any questions, and that
no one seemed particularly interested in his features as if
comparing them to, say, a wanted poster.
The local dishes, when they arrived, were not the best cuisine,
but they would do, particularly when washed down with some rather
potent local Janipurian beer that eased fears, aches, and pains. It
most likely had some mild herbal drug mixed in that made one feel
happy and content after a hard day working the fields, but it was
not of great concern. If any alarms were raised, there was nothing
either of them could do about it, so there seemed little purpose in
worrying or standing guard. It made Chow Dai relaxed and somewhat
softer, gentler, even romantic. Sabir found himself fantasizing
about having a mindprinter to himself for just a little while and
removing Chow Dai’s rough past and making her like this
always. Deep down, he knew he should be ashamed of himself for
thinking that way, but the fact was that was his ideal way to live
the rest of his life. Chow Dai would probably have been appalled at
this had she known, but as she did not, both slept better than they
had since this whole business started.
It was near the end of the third day out when they reached their
destination. They had not rushed, first because there seemed no
need and second because it was pleasant to be out and not feel, for
the moment, in imminent jeopardy of their lives. Chow Dai took the
opportunity to talk with some of the more experienced mothers in
the small villages, not only to find out what to expect as the
pregnancy progressed but also to pick up some sense of what she
would be dealing with in a Janipurian baby. She was also delighted
when Sabir stopped at a local marketplace and bought her some small
jewelry and trinkets. It was crude, peasant stuff, but to her it
was like diamonds.
Pickup Two was a small cottage in a forest near a stream and
well off the roads. The land was technically owned by a local
maharajah, who, like most, was an absentee landlord. This was the
edge of the jungle and not a place where people usually came; the
trail was partly overgrown and difficult to negotiate. They had
expected to find the others already there, but it was clear from
both the condition of the trail and the state of the little cottage
that no one had preceded them. The cottage itself was
barren-looking and uninviting, and no one who didn’t know
could guess that the floor was false and under it was another cache
of Vulture’s supplies. It was adequate, although far smaller
a store than Pickup One.
“I am worried,” Chow Dai said. “I think I
would know if something really bad had happened to my sister, but
that means little. Could they have run into trouble, do you
think?”
“I don’t know,” Sabir replied honestly.
“The best we can do is settle in and keep out of sight and
wait. They might have taken a longer route, or the weather could
have delayed them, or a hundred other things. They had to keep the
tiny captain hidden and supplied, as well, remember, so they were
camping out and using the markets only sparingly. We will wait
until they arrive or we are more certain something is wrong. There
is enough here to last us a week, perhaps two.”
“And if they do not come? What then?” Neither of
them had the ring.
“If that comes, we will face it then.”
The others did not come that night, and the next day Sabir took
inventory of Vulture’s stores. There was a lot more equipment
here—some nastier weapons, a sophisticated communications
link, and even a portable mindprinter from Janipurian security.
There were a number of cartridges with it, mostly of the security
type, including one marked “hypno,” a security staple.
Unlike the other cartridges, it wasn’t a permanent
program—although it could be made so with larger and more
complex lab mindprinters and computers or by long-term consecutive
treatments—but anyone put under with it and given suggestions
would then obey those suggestions for a good five to seven days,
staunchly maintaining that black was white and the sky was on the
floor if that’s what they were told. And if they do not come? What then? Oddly, almost
ashamedly, the question was a turn-on. Chow Dai was familiar with
the uses of mindprinters and was now quite trusting of Sabir, but
she couldn’t operate or read the names on the cartridges.
Repeated treatments as long as the power pack
lasted . . . No! That was evil. It was one
thing to fantasize, another to contemplate actually doing something
of that nature. Vulture had called him selfish and that was
certainly true, but selfish did not necessarily have to mean evil.
Two more days, and then he would string the communications net
among the trees and attempt to call Thunder.
Chow Dai stirred, then awoke. It was quite dark, far too dark to
see anything, but her ears and her old sixth sense sounded a
warning that something was not quite right. For a moment she
wondered if it was just her imagination, but her keen Janipurian
ears strained and caught what had awakened her and she stirred.
“Sabir! Wake up!” she hissed.
“Huh? Wa—?”
“Someone is coming! I can hear the sounds of steps
crushing twigs and leaves along the path!”
Suddenly Sabir was fully awake and reached for the pistol, then
moved around and got up on his feet. He stood, facing the door, not
quite knowing what to do. He was totally blind in the darkness, but
if he risked lighting the lantern he might betray their presence
to someone who otherwise might not know they were there. If he shot
when and if the door opened, he might cut down those for whom they
waited, but if he didn’t, he might have no chance to avoid
capture in case it was someone else. He thought quickly, then
decided that while Vulture had prepared a number of things in this
cabin just right, he had certainly neglected to provide any back
exit that Sabir had been able to discover. The gun might prove an
intimidator or even an equalizer, but there was no purpose in
shooting unless there was some way to escape.
“You—you think it’s them?” Chow Dai
whispered.
“Shhhhh . . . Quiet.” In fact,
he did not think it was Vulture and the others. The footsteps,
getting quite close now, had a far different sound man a Janipurian
would make, and if it was Sakotae, she had gained a hundred or more
kilograms someplace.
The footsteps ceased at the door and they both held their
breath. This was not anyone friendly; they knew that now. Vulture
would have sent Sukotae to check in silence, then come in boldly
himself through the front door.
The door opened slowly, and both Sabir and Chow Dai expected to
see the strange, illuminated form of a living being through their
infrared abilities, but the picture they received was a strange
one, with great heat coming from two glowing eyes and otherwise
only in spots along a very tall humanoid torso.
“You might wish to light the lamp for yourself,” the
Val said, calmly. It spoke Janipurian Hindi flawlessly and in a
calm, clear male voice. “I can see you perfectly well but
there is no reason to have you at a disadvantage.”
Sabir was less surprised than let down as his worst fears were
realized, a sinking feeling setting in that the inevitable had
finally happened. You couldn’t escape a Val. Everybody knew
that. And here they had been taking on not just one but two. Sure,
they’d nailed one ship-to-ship, but it had killed Arnold Nagy
in the process and was no sure thing until it was already over.
More a one-of-a-kind freak than a sure victory. He considered for a
moment trying to shoot Chow Dai and then himself to at least keep
the information out of Master System’s hands, but even that
was folly. He might get her, or himself, if the Val wasn’t
expecting it—and it probably was—but not both, and what
good would one death do?
He put down the pistol, fumbled, found the match, and with some
difficulty, lit the lamp. He was surprised at how calm and steady
his hand was, however, once he could see. It was almost as if a
great burden had been lifted from his soul.
“You have captured the others?” he asked the
Val.
“Alas, no, but we will, sooner or later. We staked you out
here the last two days hoping to net the whole crew, but it was
decided that they were not coming, that they had probably seen our
stakeout in spite of all our precautions and been scared
away.”
“Then—you were not on to us from the start. You
discovered us, not the whole group,”
“Yes. Brahman in Cochin Center have little use for money,
as you know, so a small amount is kept in security just in case it
should be needed. The coins are newly minted. Your accomplice Boil
took seven hundred and sixteen rupees, a considerable sum, but they
were of a larger than usual denomination for poor places such as
the ones you went through and all, I fear, have slight defects in
them. That is why they were sent to security from the mint rather
than placed in general circulation. Not even the chief
administrator himself knew this—it was a simple economy move
by the mint. We had paid agents about, of course, looking for any
stranger within a few hundred kilometers of Cochin Center who might
be spending newly minted coins of large denominations. We really
didn’t expect to net anyone that way—although we
thought we might be able to locate you later wherever in the world
you turned up. Uh—I assume the lady is one of the Chows, but
who might I be speaking to?”
He sighed. “I was Sabira, a freebooter crew member. Now I am what you see, without a proper name or identity of my
own.”
“A freebooter! So they have freebooters on their side
now,” the Val responded, sounding very human and seeming to
talk aloud only to himself. “I knew that breaking the
covenant would cause a price to be paid. Master System eliminated a
nuisance and appears to have created an army. How many, I wonder?
Don’t answer—that’s for later. We decided that
two of you in hand with information we desperately need was worth
blowing this probably eternal stakeout. Uh—I don’t
suppose you have the ring, do you?”
“No. I had it, but I returned it. That’s the truth,
too.”
“Oh, I believe you,” the Val assured him.
“There is no reason to lie now, is there?”
“Would it be too much to ask,” Chow Dai interjected,
“what is to become of us?”
“Well, that depends,” the creature replied, still
keeping that friendly, conversational tone. “For a while, you
will be useful to us, I think. We will return to Cochin Center at
first, then take a little trip up to a ship we have in orbit. Then
we will find out what you know and evaluate that data. After that,
you might be of further service to us and you might not. If so, we
might do a little attitudinal adjusting to set you back on the true
path to harmony and stability. When you are of no further use, our
skilled technicians will erase your current memories and create
new, permanent identities for you with, of course, some slight
genetic manipulation to you and your offspring that will be
consistent with, shall we say, a lowered status. But you, and your
child, will be here, happy, for the rest of your days if you give
no trouble. Of that I assure you. I will not promise you more than
a Sudra’s life, but if you are cooperative and cause no
problems I assure you that your child will not be born
Untouchable.”
It was a powerful threat, more powerful than threatening either of them with bodily harm. Even Chow Dai, who thought of
the Untouchables as just unfortunates and irrational outcasts in
this system, knew what price a child would pay in that class. The
Sudras were serfs, but that had been her origin on Earth and it was
honorable and without shame. Sabir was prouder and of higher birth,
but he understood and accepted the offer as the price of failure
and perhaps the punishment of God that he had changed sex and form
from what had been ordained. Thinking that way, and being a fervent
believer in reincarnation, it was not a horrible fate, but it was
severe enough for him to feel that the Val was not just playing
along with them but was really sincere.
“We might as well get this over with, then,” Sabir
said with a sigh. “At least it will not mean any more nights
sleeping here.”
“Move over in the corner,” the Val instructed.
“I want to see what you have here.”
They complied, and the huge, black creature moved to the items
Sabir had brought from the cache under the floor.
“Hmmm . . . A communications system.
Long range, too. Encoded subcarrier via one of our own satellites,
I’ll bet. We will not underestimate your people again. And
one of security’s mindprinters, too! I could use that on
you—but I shall not. We should make this as honorable as
possible. Worthy foes deserve respect, and we get very few of
them.” It turned back to the door. “Sergeant!”
A Janipurian with the uniform of the SPF entered. He was wearing
some sort of headgear and goggles that apparently gave him limited
vision in the darkness. “Sir!”
“You have called for the flyer?”
“It cannot land in here. We must move back toward the road
for safe clearance. Not far—a kilometer or so. It should be
here in fifteen to twenty minutes. They are not well designed for
night flying, you know.”
“Very good. Now, everyone out of here, please. Sergeant,
see that this is sealed and then join us.”
The sergeant looked dubiously at the prisoners. “Are you
sure, sir? All but one of my men are down at the landing site right
now . . . ”
The Val chuckled. “Don’t worry, sergeant. They
won’t escape me. Carry on.”
The Val switched on a light that seemed to grow from someplace
inside of it and afforded them a measure of visibility. They walked
in front of it, the whole forest eerily illuminated. Suddenly the
Val said, “Halt! Freeze! There is something here, something
not right . . . ”
Both Sabir and Chow Dai felt it, too. There was a sudden, deadly
silence in the darkness and then, from forward and to their right a
young girl’s voice came to them ghostly in the night, a
playful voice singing, and in English!
“Ring around the rosy,
pocket full of posey,
Ashes, ashes,
All fall down!"
Sabir and Chow Dai were confused and frightened, but they were
old hands enough to take the hint. Both dropped immediately to the
ground. Almost instantly, there was the crack and flash of multiple
laser pistols from behind; purplish beams shot out and struck the
Val—who had turned and directed its sensors toward the
chanting—directly in the small of the back, just above where
its rectum should have been. Twin beams, criss-crossing rapidly,
and doing damage.
The Val made a terrible, inhuman sound and tried to turn, but it
seemed frozen at the waist, unable to move. It was not defenseless;
return laser fire shot from its back, but the fire wasn’t
directed or locked on to the incoming fire as it was designed to be
but rather wild and random. Sparks flew as its wild beams struck
trees and leaves and started a few small tires.
Chow Dai decided it was safer to take chances than to continue
there. She got quickly to all four feet and screamed
“Run” as she kicked off. Sabir was slower but followed.
The Val ignored them and began flailing around violently,
continuing its wild and undirected fire. A second set of beams now
struck it from the front, concentrating on the lower abdomen.
The Val stopped shooting and began simply gyrating about. The
light flickered and died, and in the darkness the great shape began
to go mad. Tentacles shot from it and groped around wildly in the
dark at fantastic speed; small balls of energy were launched and
struck nearby trees and exploded with incredible force, the
concussions deafening. The sound it made, both metallic and at the
same time that of a mortally wounded beast, rose in pitch as the
fire continued to pour in from both directions. Suddenly there was
a horrible, grating sound of metal against metal; the great,
glowing crimson eyes flickered, faded, and died, and, as if in slow
motion, the gyrations and convulsions ceased, and it quivered, then
fell with a crash to the forest floor. The firing continued for a
few more seconds, then stopped.
“Stay away!” called the voice of the sergeant.
“I want that escape module, as well! Switch to wide disrupter
setting like I showed you!”
Inside the Val, the independent automatic circuits determined
that the unit was no longer functional. Automatic backup of the
memory core had commenced with the first assault, and was now
completed. Draining all remaining power from the Val’s
circuits, the information module powered up and began to bore its
way through the Val’s structure, its normal route of escape
blocked. The heat generated by the friction in doing this was a
dead giveaway to someone who could see in the infrared.
“Wait for it, but don’t let it fly!” the
sergeant warned.
It was out now: a bright, glowing ball of shining crystal a bit
larger than an average man’s fist. It glowed with such
intensity that it hurt their eyes to watch it, but they immediately
opened fire.
The ball shimmered from the assault, then began to rise slowly
as they kept their beams trained on it. For a moment it looked as
if it were going to get away, but it seemed to be having problems
and began to wobble, then vibrate violently.
The explosion was so intense that it deafened all those nearby
and knocked them down; trees snapped and there was a rain of
debris, and the noise echoed off into the distance.
As soon as he regained his wits, the sergeant got to his feet,
bolstered his pistols, and kicked off down the trail, running right
past the still-smoldering remains of the Val. A bit farther down,
Chow Mai met him and they both raced out of the now-burning forest
and into the fields. Ikira Sukotae waited atop Chow Dai; only a few
meters away the charred bodies of four SPF troopers lay where they
had fallen.
“Let’s hit it!” the sergeant yelled, still
deaf from the last explosion. “We want to be as far away from
here as we can as soon as possible! Just key on Chow Dai and keep
going!”
They had gotten only a few hundred meters when, behind them in
the burning forest, there was a second massive explosion and a
fireball that reached above the treetops. Investigators would get
very little of use from Pickup Two.
With adrenaline flowing and thought too confused to be
worthwhile, they ran into the night as fast as they could.
Sabir stared at the man who rescued them and shook his head.
“I still cannot believe that we actually got away. I cannot
even believe that you are the Vulture. How?”
“The Vulture can be whatever he wants to be,” was
the reply. “The Chows know it. You were told that I was
not—human. In a sense, I am less human than that Val back
there.”
They camped in the trees well away from the previous
night’s actions. There were massive searches underway for
them, of course, but they were random and haphazard. Nobody seemed
to be able to understand even how such a thing could have
happened, and the SPF was more concerned with covering up the
demise of a Val at the hands of mere mortals than in immediately
finding the perpetrators.
The trio had taken a more circuitous, less comfortable route to
Pickup Two and had arrived hours after Sabir and Chow Dai. Coming
overland, they had, more by luck than anything else, discovered a
spotter on a hill with monitoring gear and knew that the duo below
had been compromised. It was not a large force—four enlisted
men led by the sergeant and the Val—but it was more than
enough had they simply walked into the trap. It had been
Vulture’s decision to wait and see what would happen.
The previous night, it became clear that the Val had lost
patience and was going to go in. It left the three men to guard the
approaches and took the sergeant and one soldier up the road,
positioning them on both sides of the cabin to cover any possible
surprise exits. Vulture and Chow Mai, who proved quite adept with a
pistol from a braced position, easily hit the men in the open
field, silhouetted as they were against the darkness by their body
heat. Then Chow Mai had taken up a fixed position to one side while
Ikira Sukotae had gone into the trees above the cabin to watch,
warn, and guide Vulture to the first of the two troopers. The
timing was delicate, but Vulture had come up behind the sergeant
and consumed him while the Val was still approaching the cabin. It
was a silent operation, but it took seven minutes to accomplish.
Vulture wasn’t certain they had the time, but figured that if
the Val emerged before the process was completed, it would have
been up to Vulture to suddenly catch up and play the sergeant. It
had been even harder because Vulture had had to get the uniform off
the sergeant while beginning the process. A naked sergeant would
have had much explaining to do.
Fortunately, the Val had been in a casual, talkative mood;
Vulture not only had time to become the sergeant and redon the
uniform, but also to lure and then strangle the remaining
trooper.
“Arnold Nagy told me how to take a Val one on one, almost
with his dying breath,” Vulture told them. “Of course,
I had only his word for it, but it was the only chance. I admit I
did weigh just riding back with you and managing things later, but
I figured the dead troopers in the field would go away with just
the two of you leaving the sergeant in charge of finding the
killers. I have to be honest—I wasn’t sure if I could
keep either of you from being hurt or killed, but that just
couldn’t be a consideration. It sounds callous and cruel, I
know, but you were better dead than captured, isolated, and
interrogated for information about the others.”
“I understand that,” Sabir told him. “I had
considered whether or not I could kill the both of us prior to
that.”
“I hoped that you were clever and quick enough to
understand my diversion,” Ikira said. “I figured that
if it was in the English used on Thunder you would take
the hint and drop.”
“That allowed Chow Mai to add her fire to mine,”
Vulture went on. “The weak point is in the operating core of
the Val—the equivalent of a brain—and that’s not
where you’d think it would be. The casing is well protected
even against the strength we were firing, but Nagy told us to shoot
at the abdominal region, front and back, and give quick
back-and-forth passes. The shots jolted and disoriented it for
precious seconds, and in that time the back-and-front cutting
motion burned out a huge amount of the embedded neurological
system. Sort of like damaging or cutting the spinal column. The
brain functions but the messages don’t go where they should.
Those suckers are damned hard to kill. Even at that, we
didn’t so much kill it as wreck it. When it lost control the
real Val, that crystal ball that was its brain and more, and which
wore that body like a suit of armor, got out of its own power and
quite possibly could have gotten clean away. Only when we destroyed
it did we truly kill a Val.”
“And now what?” Sabir sighed. “We can’t
use the money, they’re still combing the countryside for us,
and there will be more Vals. We can’t keep this up forever.
Sooner or later they will find us.”
“I agree, and we must hurry before Master System brings in
God knows what else. Still, they really don’t know who or
what they’re dealing with and that puts them at a great
disadvantage. We have proven able to massacre them, or so it will
look, but they will still have orders to take us alive if they
possibly can. Considering we wiped out a Val and a squad of SPF
troopers, they won’t be certain how many are actually here or
just who they can really trust. We’ve got to move.
We’ll live off the land and avoid human contact unless
absolutely necessary, choosing the harder and rougher route and
avoiding the roads. We must get to Pickup Three where I can call
Thunder. Only then will we be able to get off this planet,
although I fear that it will not be without cost.”
Vulture was certainly correct about the disarray of their
pursuers. There was evidence in the days ahead of some heavy-handed
tactics and mass arrests by the SPF that showed desperation but
also were violations of all that Master System stood for. The
masses of Janipur were not simply outside the reality of
interstellar wars and scientific marvels, they were quite
deliberately kept ignorant of it. At first the mere display of many
of the tools and weapons of the SPF caused great fear and
confusion, but after a little while it turned from that into anger.
Master Systems’ principles of colonial maintenance were well
founded and based upon a long-term common sense. Security and peace
equals ignorance. It was difficult enough for the Centers to weed
out the budding geniuses and suppress bright new ideas that might
change the status quo; now troopers marched through towns using
mass communication and information systems the people had never
dreamed existed. One does not show such wonders as even simple
flashlights and then tell the people that they are forbidden them
and should forget them. Or, rather, you can tell them, but the seed
will have been planted. Nor can you wipe out such knowledge when it
is shown to masses of people.
The mere fact that such things were happening at all showed a
total lack of direction and firm leadership at the top. Colonel
Privi was born to be a soldier, not a diplomat or planner. It was
the Vals and higher command that used such men as weapons in their
arsenals, with care and caution. Left alone with a major problem
and no one to temporize, the colonel was doing what he considered
his greater duty without regard to cost. Either Master System was
out of touch or, more chilling to Sukotae, Vulture, and the others,
it no longer cared.
Nor were such methods effective. Although there were some close
calls and occasional long hours hiding out, the group reached the
remote and crumbling area where Pickup Three had been established
without detection.
It had been one of the very first settlements, but it had not
worked out over the long centuries that followed. Weather and
agriculture were far better on the plains and in the rolling hills
elsewhere, and it had been abandoned and now mostly overgrown. It
was the third of the four places Vulture had chosen and set up as
refuges, and the fourth was over a thousand kilometers away in the
mountain region where Vulture had first landed on Janipur. Vulture
wasted no time in setting up his communications network and
uttering a silent prayer that the channel was still open. Thunder was delighted to hear from them and that all
were safe, but their tribulations were sobering to those who waited
and the news not all good.
“Another Val has come in, although they don’t seem
very sure of themselves any more. The Val has remained in orbit,
docked to the command ship. There is no clear indication that more
forces are being brought in, but it’s nearly impossible to
tell for sure,” Hawks reported. “Now that we know where
you are, I think we ought to try a probing action to see just what
reserves might pop out of thin air before committing all our
forces. What is the condition of your people?”
“Chow Dai is well advanced on her metamorphosis toward
motherhood. Although still bright and alert, her horns measure more
than a meter and she no longer has effective use of hands and feet.
In effect, she is a four-legged animal with human intelligence. She
is even sleeping standing up at this point, and she’s still
got months to go before delivery. Chow Mai is a bit behind her, but
her horns are long, and any standing or use of hands is
uncomfortable and limited now. They both eat a lot, almost
constantly it seems, and Chow Dai tires easily and will not, I
suspect, be in much condition for a long run. Have you thought
about my plan for allowing our capture? If I am lucky, I might even
get to eat Colonel Privi himself.”
“We rate it as too dangerous,” Hawks told him.
“Once captured, it is likely you all would be separated and
no matter who you become, Vulture, you couldn’t watch over
them all. First priority would be to get a complete mindprint that
would tell them your own nature and betray our best weapon, which
is their ignorance of your existence. No, sit tight, unless you are
discovered, and wait. Within twenty-four hours we will know if we
can get you out of there or not. If not, then your plan might be
the only open course.”
Hawks was clearly worried, and the council of captains was no
more reassured, but they were all sick of waiting.
“I tire of skulking about in the uncharted regions!”
Chun Wo Har exclaimed. The freebooter colonial captain with the
shiny exoskeleton and inhuman eyes was not often given to emotional
outbursts. “Let us strike! My ancestors came from the same
China that bred the Chows, a fountain of civilization and culture
that was tramped upon by lessers because it was often too civilized
to defend itself. I am of rougher stock. It is more honorable to
die than to rot. I say we go get them and the hell with the
cost!”
Hawks looked around. “Everybody agreed?” There was
no response, but a number of nods. “Very well then.” He
sighed. “I just wish we had someone more experienced in naval
battles.”
China, who often sat in on these discussions, cleared her
throat. “There is no substitute for experience,” she
admitted, “but common sense and good information are ninety
percent of any victory. The best admirals can do little without
them. We monitor the command ship, the two fighters, and the Val.
The command ship is also a troop carrier; it is deadly but slow and
not much of a threat. I believe we can assume that it depends, like
Thunder, mostly on its fighters and that its own armaments
are basically defensive in nature.”
“I have no idea how many actual fighters such a ship might
have,” Star Eagle put in, “but I feel that there are
more than just the two we know about, even though they are larger
and more formidable than my own. Still, I wonder. I carry
twenty-four, but this ship was built in a rougher time when
external enemies were the likely threat. The SPF is not used to
having real enemies and in effect is as inexperienced as we are in
actual ship-to-ship combat, perhaps more—since we have had to
do it several times while they are probably entirely dependent on
simulations. They have fought some limited ship-to-shtp engagements
against the freebooters but it wasn’t this command that was
involved. To find out if there are any more surprises waiting for
us, though, we will have to commit a convincing force. They will
detect any feint. Clearly any force we send in must be
theoretically large enough and good enough to win or they have no
incentive to bring in any reserves. At the minimum, then, it means
three of our better ships along with some supplemental
Thunder fighters. I respectfully submit that we have only
six ships useful in such a fight, Pirate One not being
fast enough to compete, and while Espiritu Luzon may be
well armed, it’s better suited to fast getaways than
head-to-head combat.”
Captain Paschittawal of the Indrus nodded to himself, a
grave expression on his face. “Then you are telling us that
if our feint is large enough to be credible, we cannot afford to
have it defeated because we would not be strong enough to try it
again.”
“Essentially, yes.”
Hawks sighed. “Then it’s all or nothing and to hell
with the reserves.”
They all absorbed that in stony silence. Finally Raven said,
“Chief, I ain’t on this council, but it’s my ass,
too, and I think you got the priorities ass-backward here. Suppose
we could cripple, maybe knock out that command ship? That’d
leave the fighters on strictly automatic programming, and if we
weren’t lucky enough to nail the Val, it would still be the
only one big threat but acting pretty much on its own. I mean, what
kind of reserves we talkin’ about? Probably more fighters,
right? They wouldn’t even care about human-piloted
craft—this is Master System we’re talkin’
about—and I ain’t sure they got enough Vals to have
’em sittin’ dead in the water, so to speak,
waitin’ for some theoretical attack. I don’t care if
they got a hundred fighters off someplace—if there’s no
command ship to call ’em, then they’re gonna
sit.”
“The Val could call them in,” China noted.
“Maybe, but maybe not. The Vals are just damned machines,
not gods. We already proved that twice. They’re made one way
’cause that’s the only way Master System makes
’em. They’re arrogant, egomaniacal, and loners. Most of
all, they’re loners. They use people, but they’re
always oa top and contemptuous of any of ’em. They
ain’t got no experience in this sort of thing, either. Now I
ain’t sayin’ we can work this trick twice, but I bet we
can pull it off this once.”
They were all interested. “What do you have in mind,
Raven?” Hawks asked.
“Well, first you tell them down there that we’re
shootin’ the wad on this one, and then you tell ’em
they hav’ta sit tight a little longer than we said.
This’ll take some doin’. It ain’t gonna be easy,
but a few real old tricks might do the
job . . . ”
THE GROUND SEEMED TO VIBRATE, AS IF SOME DISTANT rockslide had
rumbled down the side of the hills. A few minutes later it began to
shake harder, then harder yet, and they began to be concerned.
“What is that?” Ikira Sukotae asked.
“I don’t know,” Vulture replied, “but I
don’t like it.”
“Could be one last trick to drive us out,” Sabir
suggested.
“I’m going out to see.” Ikira said. “I
know this hill pretty well now—they won’t see me. Wait
here.” And, with that, she scampered past them and out the
passage.
The vibrations continued, getting a little stronger each time,
and they waited for a report. Vulture had already decided that if
the captain wasn’t back in five minutes he was going after
her.
She ran back in, out of breath. “They’re going along
both sides of the ridge in squads and tossing explosives into the
caves they find. Then they look inside and go on to the next.
They’ll be here in maybe ten minutes.”
“Roll back the mats and open the escape route!”
Vulture ordered sharply. He got his gun and tossed another to
Sabir. “How far into the caves are they coming?” he
asked the captain.
“Not far. They’re moving too fast. I think this is
just a routine exercise. If we’re in one they’ll either
stun or kill us or scratch it off their list. They aren’t
taking enough time to do more than shine a light in when the dust
clears.”
He thought furiously for a moment. “We should stick it
out. When the explosions get very close everybody open their mouths
and cover their ears and keep quiet! I’ll cover the passage
just in case—Sabir, you cover the escape tunnel. If I shoot,
everybody get down there as fast as you can and keep going.
I’ll catch up—but they won’t.”
They waited, agonizingly, as the vibrations and the sounds of
explosions came to them, the vibrations much stronger than the
sounds. Finally they heard the distant voices of troopers shouting
to one another, then there was a silence, quickly broken by three
very loud explosions. The air moved forcefully down the passage and
brought with it dust and dirt, and it was all they could do to keep
from coughing, but they managed. The troops evidently waited for
the dust to settle and then shined floodlights into the cave itself
but did not enter. Everyone inside the inner cave held their
breath, and then there was the sound of more men shouting and then
an explosion a bit more distant and on the other side. Within
minutes it was clear that the force had moved on, but they kept
quiet and on guard until all sounds ceased.
Some of the crates had been knocked over and a few gourd dishes
had been disturbed and cracked but nothing else seemed damaged.
Finally Ikira whispered, “I’m going to
check.”
“But you’re unarmed! If they left a
guard . . . ” Vulture left it
unfinished.
“I can take care of myself. I’m a lot less obvious
than any of you. They don’t even know a creature like me
exists.”
She wasn’t out very long. “It’s getting close
to sundown and I think they were just in a hurry to get it done. It
sounds like they’re running flyers up and down the ridge,
probably with sophisticated infrared and other detectors to see if
anyone pops out, but they can’t keep that up for
long.”
Vulture nodded. “It’s their last gasp, I
think.”
“Then—we will finally be moving out of this
hole?” Chow Dai asked hopefully.
“Yes. I think it is time. I had several different plans
for escape and set up a number of pickup points. I also have some
elaborate disguises that would probably work. Twenty percent of the
young females on this world are pregnant anyway. But I hadn’t
counted on having Captain Sukotae with us.”
“You’d be surprised how well I can stay
hidden,” she assured him. “I have no natural weapons,
but you would be surprised how well my defenses work. They were
bred on a far more hostile world than this one, and they have
served through the worst of occasions.”
“Admirable, and probably true,” he admitted,
“but it isn’t Janipur I’m worried about, nor
those troopers, although they’re more of a problem with their
sophisticated devices and sensors. You wouldn’t fool a Val
for a moment—it knows all the colonial races and
automatically senses them, or so I’m assured, and having
gotten this far, a Val will come whenever we are spotted. Even I am
powerless against a Val unless I can get the drop on it.”
“No one can take a Val one on one,” Sabir asserted.
“It just isn’t possible. Everybody knows that. A whole
group with the best of weapons could, certainly, but as soon as the
loss was sensed by Master System, there would be two Vals
following, and more after that, with whatever added forces and
weapons were needed.”
Vulture smiled. “If I had a Val with its back to me,
ignorant of my presence, and I had a common military laser like
those here, I think I could take it. As for the loss sensors, it
seems to be some kind of small device with its own punch power and
capable of independent action and great speed. Nagy and I saw the
module exit when we blew the Val ship. I don’t know what sort
of tiny mechanism it is, but it’s at least the size of a fist
and must power up and exit the Val when it’s dead.”
The idea was unnerving. “A Val soul,” Sabir
whispered.
“A Val is a thing of metals and plastics and other
artificial parts. It is a machine, nothing more, although a great
one and a thinking one. Its soul, as you call it, is also just a
mechanical device, a recorder with whatever power it needs to get
it to where it can report, nothing more. I can not see or sense
your soul, if such a thing exists, but this is solid, material, and
manufactured. What is solid and tangible can be
destroyed.”
“So? And if you do? What then? There is still the SPF, and
that Val might not be the only one in the area, considering what we
did.”
He nodded. “There are two Vals. One has been alternating
between the command ship and Cochin Center ever since the Troopers
arrived. The other is acting as a sort of messenger boy and
consultant going among SPF General Staff, the Janipur command ship,
and Master System itself. So, that’s two Vals, the command
ship, and the two automated fighters—a hell of a good force,
even against us. We can assume they have a few other automated
pieces of nastiness waiting for the signal to come in as well. The
troopers here are the Janipurian Division, racially the same as us
and therefore of only marginal use elsewhere. They can stay here
forever if they have to, and SPF won’t miss them. The Vals and
fighters are machines, and machines have infinite patience. They
will simply wait for us to be drawn into a fight.”
“What you are saying,” put in Ikira Sukotae,
“is that the only way we can get out is by playing their
game, doing exactly what they want in the first place—forcing
all of us into a head-to-head battle. That’s fine
planning!”
“If we didn’t get the ring, the rest didn’t
matter,” he responded defensively. “Frankly, we knew
it’d be tough getting out, but we didn’t really think
it was a problem we couldn’t solve when we saw the forces
against us. Now I am considering the alternatives. We can go on as
planned to Pickup Two, Three, and so on, until we tire of it or
settle down and rot—or get desperate and call for that
battle. Or we can have the fight sooner and eliminate all that
wasted time.”
“And lose,” Sabir commented gloomily.
“Perhaps, but we have a few things on our side. We will
pick the time. If we are willing to take some risks, we can also
even the odds a bit.”
“Risks,” Sabir repeated. “What sort of
risks?”
“Capture. Imprisonment, perhaps. They would not
interrogate you here, you realize. We all know too much about the
rings and their purpose. They would remove you to the command ship.
The local Val and the local commander, a fellow named Colonel
Privi, would handle it personally. They would have
to . . . ”
“I don’t mind risks, but I don’t like that
‘you’ stuff,” Ikira said. “Us, not
you?”
“Oh, I would be there with you all the way. That’s
the beauty of it. The problem is, I would have to have extensive
communications with Thunder for it to work, and I
don’t think even now that I can risk any long-term
transmissions from here. It is less than a day’s trot from
here to the edges of civilization. Two days southwest of here I
have another hideout, better situated and more comfortable. With a
bit of disguising, I think we can all make it to that one. I have
the materials here for the disguises and the necessary maps, even
some currency.”
“There’s bound to be a hue and cry over us,”
Chow Dai pointed out. “Wanted—two men traveling with
identical twin sisters, both pregnant.”
“We will not travel together. We are two males and two
females so we pair up naturally, and no one will notice identical
twins if they are not next to each other. Each pair will take a
slightly different route to avoid any smart people getting wrong
thoughts. I am unconcerned about the pregnancy aspect; there are
close to a billion and a quarter people on this continent and
growing rapidly in spite of a fairly high infant mortality rate.
Maybe one in six women are pregnant at any one time on the average.
Once we are in some sort of civilization, we will blend in and the
searchers know it. If we make the real world from here, they
won’t get us. They will wait for us to make a move.
Come—Sabir, help me with this black barrel. The applicators
are over in that box.”
They got out the barrel and the box, and the lids were removed.
Sabir shook his head and sighed. “Vaisya. Must you step us
down so much?” The dye color was a reddish brown.
“We can’t go as Brahman. That would be like
transmitting our presence and we could never move unobtrusively.
Ksatriyas, as the political and professional leaders, have friends,
higher education, and they stand out. They will be expecting us to
use Ksatriya, and so it won’t be long until the first slip
brings them down on us. Sudra is simply too low and lacks mobility,
although it’s the largest caste and would provide the
greatest invisibility. Captain Sukotae, you will travel with me but
you’ll have to forage and fend for yourself. We will work
something out. Chow Dai, you will go with Sabir; Chow Mai with me.
We will go separately at intervals as soon as we seem
ready.”
Sabir stared at Vulture. “You are enjoying this,
aren’t you? You are really enjoying this.”
“It is the most fun I have had in my whole life,” he
admitted unapologetically.
Sabir and Chow Dai walked slowly down a road that was little
more than a dirt track between fields of grain planted across very
low rolling terrain. Here and there would be a small Sudra village,
its modest adobelike houses made from the inhabitants’ own
dung and baked and formed as bricks. The hordes of insects,
particularly flies, filled even a quiet time with a low buzz that
changed in pitch now and again. The villages were based around
communal wells, the wells usually being located in the center of
the settlement and creating a broad town square that was filled
with women getting water and often just talking as young children
romped and laughed and played all about, looking more like
four-footed animals with strange heads than anything else.
The odors were the hardest to get used to after the clean and
filtered air of the Center and, before that, the even more purified
air of the spaceships, but they were starting to adapt to it. The
peasant organization itself was quite familiar to Chow Dai,
although her people lived in small homes of bamboo, wood, and
straw. Her old people, she thought, almost longingly.
These were her people now.
Her primary thoughts were of the child within, which moved and
kicked from time to time. She had never really thought of becoming
a mother since she’d been fairly small, but now it seemed
very important to her, the most important thing in the world. She
could still stand if she had to, but she no longer wanted to do so
and feared that it would risk undue pressure on the child. She was
becoming more and more dependent on Sabir as a result, but this
didn’t really bother her. Other than giving the seed, the
only real purpose she saw for Janipurian males was to protect the
women during this period and through birth and the first month. She
did not think of it as being subordinate, but rather as her
due.
They had been given a bag of coins by Vulture that was more than
adequate for anything they might need; indeed, it was the
equivalent of a half a year’s average income for these
people. Sabir had more common sense than to show it or the pistol
around, and kept them in a backpack. He kept just two coins, medium
denominations with an incarnation of Vishnu on one side and a
stylized Janipurian hairy elephant on the other, in the waist pouch
for normal purchases. Many of the people in this small town were so
poor that any more than a small amount would be an open invitation
to thievery.
At first the proprietor had denied there were any rooms, but the
sight of both coins, worth about four times the regular rental
rate, caused her to change her mind and find something out back. It
was a small, dung-adobe one-room cottage with straw for a floor and
some well-worn mats for furnishings, but it was adequate. The
inn’s large outhouse was but a few meters away and the inn
had piped-in well water with a “guest pump” just out
back. A small alcohol lamp was the only illumination.
Sabir unpacked and removed the purse, removed two more coins,
then stuck the purse in his pack. “I’m going to have to
go out and get us something to eat,” he told her. “I
shouldn’t be long. I don’t like to leave the pack
unguarded and I think we should just relax here and get some rest
for the journey tomorrow. We are still far too close to take any
risks. You saw how they looked at us just because we were
strangers.”
Chow Dai nodded. “Go ahead. I will be all right
here.”
They had not started until midday and now it was close to
sundown in the town. The marketplace itself was officially closed
now, but there were still enough vendors open to assemble some
food. Although Sabir had had a harder time learning to be a
Janipurian than the sisters, he had almost completely assimilated
his thinking to the native culture in a way the sisters had not.
Also, he felt very comfortable as a male, something the Chows could
never comprehend. The Chows had been born peasants of peasant stock
in a Chinese village no higher in culture than this one; a society
that was protective, safe, and where everything was clearly
structured. Sabir had a rougher upbringing and had always envied
her brothers their freedom of movement and their confidence. Sabir
had always been small and somewhat frail and had always felt a
level of fear and vulnerability to those strange places and
practically naked and defenseless on a dark street. There was no
such feeling now.
There was more trouble getting change than finding things to eat
at the marketplace, even though it was shutting down. Few patrons
here used money; it was mostly a barter economy, with money
something out-of-towners brought now and again. For a five-rupee
coin, he was able to arrange not only to purchase decent food but
to have a local woman prepare it and then bring it to the cottage.
It was significant only that no one asked any questions, and that
no one seemed particularly interested in his features as if
comparing them to, say, a wanted poster.
The local dishes, when they arrived, were not the best cuisine,
but they would do, particularly when washed down with some rather
potent local Janipurian beer that eased fears, aches, and pains. It
most likely had some mild herbal drug mixed in that made one feel
happy and content after a hard day working the fields, but it was
not of great concern. If any alarms were raised, there was nothing
either of them could do about it, so there seemed little purpose in
worrying or standing guard. It made Chow Dai relaxed and somewhat
softer, gentler, even romantic. Sabir found himself fantasizing
about having a mindprinter to himself for just a little while and
removing Chow Dai’s rough past and making her like this
always. Deep down, he knew he should be ashamed of himself for
thinking that way, but the fact was that was his ideal way to live
the rest of his life. Chow Dai would probably have been appalled at
this had she known, but as she did not, both slept better than they
had since this whole business started.
It was near the end of the third day out when they reached their
destination. They had not rushed, first because there seemed no
need and second because it was pleasant to be out and not feel, for
the moment, in imminent jeopardy of their lives. Chow Dai took the
opportunity to talk with some of the more experienced mothers in
the small villages, not only to find out what to expect as the
pregnancy progressed but also to pick up some sense of what she
would be dealing with in a Janipurian baby. She was also delighted
when Sabir stopped at a local marketplace and bought her some small
jewelry and trinkets. It was crude, peasant stuff, but to her it
was like diamonds.
Pickup Two was a small cottage in a forest near a stream and
well off the roads. The land was technically owned by a local
maharajah, who, like most, was an absentee landlord. This was the
edge of the jungle and not a place where people usually came; the
trail was partly overgrown and difficult to negotiate. They had
expected to find the others already there, but it was clear from
both the condition of the trail and the state of the little cottage
that no one had preceded them. The cottage itself was
barren-looking and uninviting, and no one who didn’t know
could guess that the floor was false and under it was another cache
of Vulture’s supplies. It was adequate, although far smaller
a store than Pickup One.
“I am worried,” Chow Dai said. “I think I
would know if something really bad had happened to my sister, but
that means little. Could they have run into trouble, do you
think?”
“I don’t know,” Sabir replied honestly.
“The best we can do is settle in and keep out of sight and
wait. They might have taken a longer route, or the weather could
have delayed them, or a hundred other things. They had to keep the
tiny captain hidden and supplied, as well, remember, so they were
camping out and using the markets only sparingly. We will wait
until they arrive or we are more certain something is wrong. There
is enough here to last us a week, perhaps two.”
“And if they do not come? What then?” Neither of
them had the ring.
“If that comes, we will face it then.”
The others did not come that night, and the next day Sabir took
inventory of Vulture’s stores. There was a lot more equipment
here—some nastier weapons, a sophisticated communications
link, and even a portable mindprinter from Janipurian security.
There were a number of cartridges with it, mostly of the security
type, including one marked “hypno,” a security staple.
Unlike the other cartridges, it wasn’t a permanent
program—although it could be made so with larger and more
complex lab mindprinters and computers or by long-term consecutive
treatments—but anyone put under with it and given suggestions
would then obey those suggestions for a good five to seven days,
staunchly maintaining that black was white and the sky was on the
floor if that’s what they were told. And if they do not come? What then? Oddly, almost
ashamedly, the question was a turn-on. Chow Dai was familiar with
the uses of mindprinters and was now quite trusting of Sabir, but
she couldn’t operate or read the names on the cartridges.
Repeated treatments as long as the power pack
lasted . . . No! That was evil. It was one
thing to fantasize, another to contemplate actually doing something
of that nature. Vulture had called him selfish and that was
certainly true, but selfish did not necessarily have to mean evil.
Two more days, and then he would string the communications net
among the trees and attempt to call Thunder.
Chow Dai stirred, then awoke. It was quite dark, far too dark to
see anything, but her ears and her old sixth sense sounded a
warning that something was not quite right. For a moment she
wondered if it was just her imagination, but her keen Janipurian
ears strained and caught what had awakened her and she stirred.
“Sabir! Wake up!” she hissed.
“Huh? Wa—?”
“Someone is coming! I can hear the sounds of steps
crushing twigs and leaves along the path!”
Suddenly Sabir was fully awake and reached for the pistol, then
moved around and got up on his feet. He stood, facing the door, not
quite knowing what to do. He was totally blind in the darkness, but
if he risked lighting the lantern he might betray their presence
to someone who otherwise might not know they were there. If he shot
when and if the door opened, he might cut down those for whom they
waited, but if he didn’t, he might have no chance to avoid
capture in case it was someone else. He thought quickly, then
decided that while Vulture had prepared a number of things in this
cabin just right, he had certainly neglected to provide any back
exit that Sabir had been able to discover. The gun might prove an
intimidator or even an equalizer, but there was no purpose in
shooting unless there was some way to escape.
“You—you think it’s them?” Chow Dai
whispered.
“Shhhhh . . . Quiet.” In fact,
he did not think it was Vulture and the others. The footsteps,
getting quite close now, had a far different sound man a Janipurian
would make, and if it was Sakotae, she had gained a hundred or more
kilograms someplace.
The footsteps ceased at the door and they both held their
breath. This was not anyone friendly; they knew that now. Vulture
would have sent Sukotae to check in silence, then come in boldly
himself through the front door.
The door opened slowly, and both Sabir and Chow Dai expected to
see the strange, illuminated form of a living being through their
infrared abilities, but the picture they received was a strange
one, with great heat coming from two glowing eyes and otherwise
only in spots along a very tall humanoid torso.
“You might wish to light the lamp for yourself,” the
Val said, calmly. It spoke Janipurian Hindi flawlessly and in a
calm, clear male voice. “I can see you perfectly well but
there is no reason to have you at a disadvantage.”
Sabir was less surprised than let down as his worst fears were
realized, a sinking feeling setting in that the inevitable had
finally happened. You couldn’t escape a Val. Everybody knew
that. And here they had been taking on not just one but two. Sure,
they’d nailed one ship-to-ship, but it had killed Arnold Nagy
in the process and was no sure thing until it was already over.
More a one-of-a-kind freak than a sure victory. He considered for a
moment trying to shoot Chow Dai and then himself to at least keep
the information out of Master System’s hands, but even that
was folly. He might get her, or himself, if the Val wasn’t
expecting it—and it probably was—but not both, and what
good would one death do?
He put down the pistol, fumbled, found the match, and with some
difficulty, lit the lamp. He was surprised at how calm and steady
his hand was, however, once he could see. It was almost as if a
great burden had been lifted from his soul.
“You have captured the others?” he asked the
Val.
“Alas, no, but we will, sooner or later. We staked you out
here the last two days hoping to net the whole crew, but it was
decided that they were not coming, that they had probably seen our
stakeout in spite of all our precautions and been scared
away.”
“Then—you were not on to us from the start. You
discovered us, not the whole group,”
“Yes. Brahman in Cochin Center have little use for money,
as you know, so a small amount is kept in security just in case it
should be needed. The coins are newly minted. Your accomplice Boil
took seven hundred and sixteen rupees, a considerable sum, but they
were of a larger than usual denomination for poor places such as
the ones you went through and all, I fear, have slight defects in
them. That is why they were sent to security from the mint rather
than placed in general circulation. Not even the chief
administrator himself knew this—it was a simple economy move
by the mint. We had paid agents about, of course, looking for any
stranger within a few hundred kilometers of Cochin Center who might
be spending newly minted coins of large denominations. We really
didn’t expect to net anyone that way—although we
thought we might be able to locate you later wherever in the world
you turned up. Uh—I assume the lady is one of the Chows, but
who might I be speaking to?”
He sighed. “I was Sabira, a freebooter crew member. Now I am what you see, without a proper name or identity of my
own.”
“A freebooter! So they have freebooters on their side
now,” the Val responded, sounding very human and seeming to
talk aloud only to himself. “I knew that breaking the
covenant would cause a price to be paid. Master System eliminated a
nuisance and appears to have created an army. How many, I wonder?
Don’t answer—that’s for later. We decided that
two of you in hand with information we desperately need was worth
blowing this probably eternal stakeout. Uh—I don’t
suppose you have the ring, do you?”
“No. I had it, but I returned it. That’s the truth,
too.”
“Oh, I believe you,” the Val assured him.
“There is no reason to lie now, is there?”
“Would it be too much to ask,” Chow Dai interjected,
“what is to become of us?”
“Well, that depends,” the creature replied, still
keeping that friendly, conversational tone. “For a while, you
will be useful to us, I think. We will return to Cochin Center at
first, then take a little trip up to a ship we have in orbit. Then
we will find out what you know and evaluate that data. After that,
you might be of further service to us and you might not. If so, we
might do a little attitudinal adjusting to set you back on the true
path to harmony and stability. When you are of no further use, our
skilled technicians will erase your current memories and create
new, permanent identities for you with, of course, some slight
genetic manipulation to you and your offspring that will be
consistent with, shall we say, a lowered status. But you, and your
child, will be here, happy, for the rest of your days if you give
no trouble. Of that I assure you. I will not promise you more than
a Sudra’s life, but if you are cooperative and cause no
problems I assure you that your child will not be born
Untouchable.”
It was a powerful threat, more powerful than threatening either of them with bodily harm. Even Chow Dai, who thought of
the Untouchables as just unfortunates and irrational outcasts in
this system, knew what price a child would pay in that class. The
Sudras were serfs, but that had been her origin on Earth and it was
honorable and without shame. Sabir was prouder and of higher birth,
but he understood and accepted the offer as the price of failure
and perhaps the punishment of God that he had changed sex and form
from what had been ordained. Thinking that way, and being a fervent
believer in reincarnation, it was not a horrible fate, but it was
severe enough for him to feel that the Val was not just playing
along with them but was really sincere.
“We might as well get this over with, then,” Sabir
said with a sigh. “At least it will not mean any more nights
sleeping here.”
“Move over in the corner,” the Val instructed.
“I want to see what you have here.”
They complied, and the huge, black creature moved to the items
Sabir had brought from the cache under the floor.
“Hmmm . . . A communications system.
Long range, too. Encoded subcarrier via one of our own satellites,
I’ll bet. We will not underestimate your people again. And
one of security’s mindprinters, too! I could use that on
you—but I shall not. We should make this as honorable as
possible. Worthy foes deserve respect, and we get very few of
them.” It turned back to the door. “Sergeant!”
A Janipurian with the uniform of the SPF entered. He was wearing
some sort of headgear and goggles that apparently gave him limited
vision in the darkness. “Sir!”
“You have called for the flyer?”
“It cannot land in here. We must move back toward the road
for safe clearance. Not far—a kilometer or so. It should be
here in fifteen to twenty minutes. They are not well designed for
night flying, you know.”
“Very good. Now, everyone out of here, please. Sergeant,
see that this is sealed and then join us.”
The sergeant looked dubiously at the prisoners. “Are you
sure, sir? All but one of my men are down at the landing site right
now . . . ”
The Val chuckled. “Don’t worry, sergeant. They
won’t escape me. Carry on.”
The Val switched on a light that seemed to grow from someplace
inside of it and afforded them a measure of visibility. They walked
in front of it, the whole forest eerily illuminated. Suddenly the
Val said, “Halt! Freeze! There is something here, something
not right . . . ”
Both Sabir and Chow Dai felt it, too. There was a sudden, deadly
silence in the darkness and then, from forward and to their right a
young girl’s voice came to them ghostly in the night, a
playful voice singing, and in English!
“Ring around the rosy,
pocket full of posey,
Ashes, ashes,
All fall down!"
Sabir and Chow Dai were confused and frightened, but they were
old hands enough to take the hint. Both dropped immediately to the
ground. Almost instantly, there was the crack and flash of multiple
laser pistols from behind; purplish beams shot out and struck the
Val—who had turned and directed its sensors toward the
chanting—directly in the small of the back, just above where
its rectum should have been. Twin beams, criss-crossing rapidly,
and doing damage.
The Val made a terrible, inhuman sound and tried to turn, but it
seemed frozen at the waist, unable to move. It was not defenseless;
return laser fire shot from its back, but the fire wasn’t
directed or locked on to the incoming fire as it was designed to be
but rather wild and random. Sparks flew as its wild beams struck
trees and leaves and started a few small tires.
Chow Dai decided it was safer to take chances than to continue
there. She got quickly to all four feet and screamed
“Run” as she kicked off. Sabir was slower but followed.
The Val ignored them and began flailing around violently,
continuing its wild and undirected fire. A second set of beams now
struck it from the front, concentrating on the lower abdomen.
The Val stopped shooting and began simply gyrating about. The
light flickered and died, and in the darkness the great shape began
to go mad. Tentacles shot from it and groped around wildly in the
dark at fantastic speed; small balls of energy were launched and
struck nearby trees and exploded with incredible force, the
concussions deafening. The sound it made, both metallic and at the
same time that of a mortally wounded beast, rose in pitch as the
fire continued to pour in from both directions. Suddenly there was
a horrible, grating sound of metal against metal; the great,
glowing crimson eyes flickered, faded, and died, and, as if in slow
motion, the gyrations and convulsions ceased, and it quivered, then
fell with a crash to the forest floor. The firing continued for a
few more seconds, then stopped.
“Stay away!” called the voice of the sergeant.
“I want that escape module, as well! Switch to wide disrupter
setting like I showed you!”
Inside the Val, the independent automatic circuits determined
that the unit was no longer functional. Automatic backup of the
memory core had commenced with the first assault, and was now
completed. Draining all remaining power from the Val’s
circuits, the information module powered up and began to bore its
way through the Val’s structure, its normal route of escape
blocked. The heat generated by the friction in doing this was a
dead giveaway to someone who could see in the infrared.
“Wait for it, but don’t let it fly!” the
sergeant warned.
It was out now: a bright, glowing ball of shining crystal a bit
larger than an average man’s fist. It glowed with such
intensity that it hurt their eyes to watch it, but they immediately
opened fire.
The ball shimmered from the assault, then began to rise slowly
as they kept their beams trained on it. For a moment it looked as
if it were going to get away, but it seemed to be having problems
and began to wobble, then vibrate violently.
The explosion was so intense that it deafened all those nearby
and knocked them down; trees snapped and there was a rain of
debris, and the noise echoed off into the distance.
As soon as he regained his wits, the sergeant got to his feet,
bolstered his pistols, and kicked off down the trail, running right
past the still-smoldering remains of the Val. A bit farther down,
Chow Mai met him and they both raced out of the now-burning forest
and into the fields. Ikira Sukotae waited atop Chow Dai; only a few
meters away the charred bodies of four SPF troopers lay where they
had fallen.
“Let’s hit it!” the sergeant yelled, still
deaf from the last explosion. “We want to be as far away from
here as we can as soon as possible! Just key on Chow Dai and keep
going!”
They had gotten only a few hundred meters when, behind them in
the burning forest, there was a second massive explosion and a
fireball that reached above the treetops. Investigators would get
very little of use from Pickup Two.
With adrenaline flowing and thought too confused to be
worthwhile, they ran into the night as fast as they could.
Sabir stared at the man who rescued them and shook his head.
“I still cannot believe that we actually got away. I cannot
even believe that you are the Vulture. How?”
“The Vulture can be whatever he wants to be,” was
the reply. “The Chows know it. You were told that I was
not—human. In a sense, I am less human than that Val back
there.”
They camped in the trees well away from the previous
night’s actions. There were massive searches underway for
them, of course, but they were random and haphazard. Nobody seemed
to be able to understand even how such a thing could have
happened, and the SPF was more concerned with covering up the
demise of a Val at the hands of mere mortals than in immediately
finding the perpetrators.
The trio had taken a more circuitous, less comfortable route to
Pickup Two and had arrived hours after Sabir and Chow Dai. Coming
overland, they had, more by luck than anything else, discovered a
spotter on a hill with monitoring gear and knew that the duo below
had been compromised. It was not a large force—four enlisted
men led by the sergeant and the Val—but it was more than
enough had they simply walked into the trap. It had been
Vulture’s decision to wait and see what would happen.
The previous night, it became clear that the Val had lost
patience and was going to go in. It left the three men to guard the
approaches and took the sergeant and one soldier up the road,
positioning them on both sides of the cabin to cover any possible
surprise exits. Vulture and Chow Mai, who proved quite adept with a
pistol from a braced position, easily hit the men in the open
field, silhouetted as they were against the darkness by their body
heat. Then Chow Mai had taken up a fixed position to one side while
Ikira Sukotae had gone into the trees above the cabin to watch,
warn, and guide Vulture to the first of the two troopers. The
timing was delicate, but Vulture had come up behind the sergeant
and consumed him while the Val was still approaching the cabin. It
was a silent operation, but it took seven minutes to accomplish.
Vulture wasn’t certain they had the time, but figured that if
the Val emerged before the process was completed, it would have
been up to Vulture to suddenly catch up and play the sergeant. It
had been even harder because Vulture had had to get the uniform off
the sergeant while beginning the process. A naked sergeant would
have had much explaining to do.
Fortunately, the Val had been in a casual, talkative mood;
Vulture not only had time to become the sergeant and redon the
uniform, but also to lure and then strangle the remaining
trooper.
“Arnold Nagy told me how to take a Val one on one, almost
with his dying breath,” Vulture told them. “Of course,
I had only his word for it, but it was the only chance. I admit I
did weigh just riding back with you and managing things later, but
I figured the dead troopers in the field would go away with just
the two of you leaving the sergeant in charge of finding the
killers. I have to be honest—I wasn’t sure if I could
keep either of you from being hurt or killed, but that just
couldn’t be a consideration. It sounds callous and cruel, I
know, but you were better dead than captured, isolated, and
interrogated for information about the others.”
“I understand that,” Sabir told him. “I had
considered whether or not I could kill the both of us prior to
that.”
“I hoped that you were clever and quick enough to
understand my diversion,” Ikira said. “I figured that
if it was in the English used on Thunder you would take
the hint and drop.”
“That allowed Chow Mai to add her fire to mine,”
Vulture went on. “The weak point is in the operating core of
the Val—the equivalent of a brain—and that’s not
where you’d think it would be. The casing is well protected
even against the strength we were firing, but Nagy told us to shoot
at the abdominal region, front and back, and give quick
back-and-forth passes. The shots jolted and disoriented it for
precious seconds, and in that time the back-and-front cutting
motion burned out a huge amount of the embedded neurological
system. Sort of like damaging or cutting the spinal column. The
brain functions but the messages don’t go where they should.
Those suckers are damned hard to kill. Even at that, we
didn’t so much kill it as wreck it. When it lost control the
real Val, that crystal ball that was its brain and more, and which
wore that body like a suit of armor, got out of its own power and
quite possibly could have gotten clean away. Only when we destroyed
it did we truly kill a Val.”
“And now what?” Sabir sighed. “We can’t
use the money, they’re still combing the countryside for us,
and there will be more Vals. We can’t keep this up forever.
Sooner or later they will find us.”
“I agree, and we must hurry before Master System brings in
God knows what else. Still, they really don’t know who or
what they’re dealing with and that puts them at a great
disadvantage. We have proven able to massacre them, or so it will
look, but they will still have orders to take us alive if they
possibly can. Considering we wiped out a Val and a squad of SPF
troopers, they won’t be certain how many are actually here or
just who they can really trust. We’ve got to move.
We’ll live off the land and avoid human contact unless
absolutely necessary, choosing the harder and rougher route and
avoiding the roads. We must get to Pickup Three where I can call
Thunder. Only then will we be able to get off this planet,
although I fear that it will not be without cost.”
Vulture was certainly correct about the disarray of their
pursuers. There was evidence in the days ahead of some heavy-handed
tactics and mass arrests by the SPF that showed desperation but
also were violations of all that Master System stood for. The
masses of Janipur were not simply outside the reality of
interstellar wars and scientific marvels, they were quite
deliberately kept ignorant of it. At first the mere display of many
of the tools and weapons of the SPF caused great fear and
confusion, but after a little while it turned from that into anger.
Master Systems’ principles of colonial maintenance were well
founded and based upon a long-term common sense. Security and peace
equals ignorance. It was difficult enough for the Centers to weed
out the budding geniuses and suppress bright new ideas that might
change the status quo; now troopers marched through towns using
mass communication and information systems the people had never
dreamed existed. One does not show such wonders as even simple
flashlights and then tell the people that they are forbidden them
and should forget them. Or, rather, you can tell them, but the seed
will have been planted. Nor can you wipe out such knowledge when it
is shown to masses of people.
The mere fact that such things were happening at all showed a
total lack of direction and firm leadership at the top. Colonel
Privi was born to be a soldier, not a diplomat or planner. It was
the Vals and higher command that used such men as weapons in their
arsenals, with care and caution. Left alone with a major problem
and no one to temporize, the colonel was doing what he considered
his greater duty without regard to cost. Either Master System was
out of touch or, more chilling to Sukotae, Vulture, and the others,
it no longer cared.
Nor were such methods effective. Although there were some close
calls and occasional long hours hiding out, the group reached the
remote and crumbling area where Pickup Three had been established
without detection.
It had been one of the very first settlements, but it had not
worked out over the long centuries that followed. Weather and
agriculture were far better on the plains and in the rolling hills
elsewhere, and it had been abandoned and now mostly overgrown. It
was the third of the four places Vulture had chosen and set up as
refuges, and the fourth was over a thousand kilometers away in the
mountain region where Vulture had first landed on Janipur. Vulture
wasted no time in setting up his communications network and
uttering a silent prayer that the channel was still open. Thunder was delighted to hear from them and that all
were safe, but their tribulations were sobering to those who waited
and the news not all good.
“Another Val has come in, although they don’t seem
very sure of themselves any more. The Val has remained in orbit,
docked to the command ship. There is no clear indication that more
forces are being brought in, but it’s nearly impossible to
tell for sure,” Hawks reported. “Now that we know where
you are, I think we ought to try a probing action to see just what
reserves might pop out of thin air before committing all our
forces. What is the condition of your people?”
“Chow Dai is well advanced on her metamorphosis toward
motherhood. Although still bright and alert, her horns measure more
than a meter and she no longer has effective use of hands and feet.
In effect, she is a four-legged animal with human intelligence. She
is even sleeping standing up at this point, and she’s still
got months to go before delivery. Chow Mai is a bit behind her, but
her horns are long, and any standing or use of hands is
uncomfortable and limited now. They both eat a lot, almost
constantly it seems, and Chow Dai tires easily and will not, I
suspect, be in much condition for a long run. Have you thought
about my plan for allowing our capture? If I am lucky, I might even
get to eat Colonel Privi himself.”
“We rate it as too dangerous,” Hawks told him.
“Once captured, it is likely you all would be separated and
no matter who you become, Vulture, you couldn’t watch over
them all. First priority would be to get a complete mindprint that
would tell them your own nature and betray our best weapon, which
is their ignorance of your existence. No, sit tight, unless you are
discovered, and wait. Within twenty-four hours we will know if we
can get you out of there or not. If not, then your plan might be
the only open course.”
Hawks was clearly worried, and the council of captains was no
more reassured, but they were all sick of waiting.
“I tire of skulking about in the uncharted regions!”
Chun Wo Har exclaimed. The freebooter colonial captain with the
shiny exoskeleton and inhuman eyes was not often given to emotional
outbursts. “Let us strike! My ancestors came from the same
China that bred the Chows, a fountain of civilization and culture
that was tramped upon by lessers because it was often too civilized
to defend itself. I am of rougher stock. It is more honorable to
die than to rot. I say we go get them and the hell with the
cost!”
Hawks looked around. “Everybody agreed?” There was
no response, but a number of nods. “Very well then.” He
sighed. “I just wish we had someone more experienced in naval
battles.”
China, who often sat in on these discussions, cleared her
throat. “There is no substitute for experience,” she
admitted, “but common sense and good information are ninety
percent of any victory. The best admirals can do little without
them. We monitor the command ship, the two fighters, and the Val.
The command ship is also a troop carrier; it is deadly but slow and
not much of a threat. I believe we can assume that it depends, like
Thunder, mostly on its fighters and that its own armaments
are basically defensive in nature.”
“I have no idea how many actual fighters such a ship might
have,” Star Eagle put in, “but I feel that there are
more than just the two we know about, even though they are larger
and more formidable than my own. Still, I wonder. I carry
twenty-four, but this ship was built in a rougher time when
external enemies were the likely threat. The SPF is not used to
having real enemies and in effect is as inexperienced as we are in
actual ship-to-ship combat, perhaps more—since we have had to
do it several times while they are probably entirely dependent on
simulations. They have fought some limited ship-to-shtp engagements
against the freebooters but it wasn’t this command that was
involved. To find out if there are any more surprises waiting for
us, though, we will have to commit a convincing force. They will
detect any feint. Clearly any force we send in must be
theoretically large enough and good enough to win or they have no
incentive to bring in any reserves. At the minimum, then, it means
three of our better ships along with some supplemental
Thunder fighters. I respectfully submit that we have only
six ships useful in such a fight, Pirate One not being
fast enough to compete, and while Espiritu Luzon may be
well armed, it’s better suited to fast getaways than
head-to-head combat.”
Captain Paschittawal of the Indrus nodded to himself, a
grave expression on his face. “Then you are telling us that
if our feint is large enough to be credible, we cannot afford to
have it defeated because we would not be strong enough to try it
again.”
“Essentially, yes.”
Hawks sighed. “Then it’s all or nothing and to hell
with the reserves.”
They all absorbed that in stony silence. Finally Raven said,
“Chief, I ain’t on this council, but it’s my ass,
too, and I think you got the priorities ass-backward here. Suppose
we could cripple, maybe knock out that command ship? That’d
leave the fighters on strictly automatic programming, and if we
weren’t lucky enough to nail the Val, it would still be the
only one big threat but acting pretty much on its own. I mean, what
kind of reserves we talkin’ about? Probably more fighters,
right? They wouldn’t even care about human-piloted
craft—this is Master System we’re talkin’
about—and I ain’t sure they got enough Vals to have
’em sittin’ dead in the water, so to speak,
waitin’ for some theoretical attack. I don’t care if
they got a hundred fighters off someplace—if there’s no
command ship to call ’em, then they’re gonna
sit.”
“The Val could call them in,” China noted.
“Maybe, but maybe not. The Vals are just damned machines,
not gods. We already proved that twice. They’re made one way
’cause that’s the only way Master System makes
’em. They’re arrogant, egomaniacal, and loners. Most of
all, they’re loners. They use people, but they’re
always oa top and contemptuous of any of ’em. They
ain’t got no experience in this sort of thing, either. Now I
ain’t sayin’ we can work this trick twice, but I bet we
can pull it off this once.”
They were all interested. “What do you have in mind,
Raven?” Hawks asked.
“Well, first you tell them down there that we’re
shootin’ the wad on this one, and then you tell ’em
they hav’ta sit tight a little longer than we said.
This’ll take some doin’. It ain’t gonna be easy,
but a few real old tricks might do the
job . . . ”