by Glen Cook
“Our fleet commander looks like a maverick. He won’t bow down to Gruber of Gruber’s Fleet as the head honcho Starfisher. He wants to do things his own way. The other fleets treat this one like an idiot cousin.”
“That why the Old Man targeted Payne’s Fleet?”
“No. He just jumped on a chance to get somebody onto a harvestship. You were right about the experiment, by the way. It was something Gruber put Payne up to. I get the impression that now he’s using the failure as an excuse to go haring off on some adventure of his own as soon as we’re done harvesting.”
“Speaking of which. Amy says it’s the best they’ve ever had. They’re going to hold their auction after we leave.”
“Kindervoort still on you about crossing over?”
“He mentions it sometimes. Came to the cabin last week.” Did Mouse suspect that he found the offer tempting?
Sports season became crazier than ever as playoff time approached. For Moyshe it was all bewildering color and madness. Mouse, of course, was right in the thick of it. Football was his latest passion. He could quote records and statistics by the hour. BenRabi studied the game just so he could carry on a conversation.
Their lives, increasingly, became frosting, sugar-bits having nothing to do with their assignments. They had come here to find starfish. Despite a thousand doubts and distractions, benRabi kept his wavering cross hair sighted near his programed target. He even resumed wrestling with Jerusalem so he could keep his invisible notes.
Sharing quarters with an agent for the other side constantly hampered him. He was not so naïve as to believe that Amy had been struck deaf and blind by love.
He had come aboard thinking starfish were a wonderful concept, a miraculous hook on which to hang modern myths and legends. They had been one with the lost planet Osiris and the fabulous weapons of Stars’ End. Now he knew that the hydrogen streams teemed with “life.” The fairy magic was gone, but still the fantastic fish were something to play with during his long hours of waiting for an emergency that never arose.
The starfish, the leviathans of the airless deep, were more fields of force and the balances between them than they were creatures of matter. The longbeards of the breed could be three hundred kilometers long and a million years old. They might occupy thousands of cubic kilometers, yet have fewer atoms in them than a human adult. In them atoms and molecules functioned primarily as points upon which forces anchored. Here, there, a pinpoint hawking hole left over from the big bang formed the core of an invisible organ.
The fabric of space and time were the creature’s bone and sinew. He could manipulate them within himself. In essence, he built himself a secondary universe within the primary, and, within that homemade pocket reality existed as tangibly as did men in their own reality. The part of a starfish that could be detected was but a fraction of the whole beast. He also existed in hyperspace, null space, and on levels mankind had not yet reached.
Those beasts of the big night were living fusion furnaces. They fed on hydrogen, and enjoyed an occasional spice of other elements in the fusion chain. At first Moyshe had wondered why they did not gather where matter was more dense, as in the neighborhood of a protostar.
Amy told him that the field stresses around stellar masses could rip the creatures apart.
A starfish’s stomach contained a fire as violent as that at the heart of a sun. Not only did fusion take place there, but matter annihilation as well when the beast browsed on anti-hydrogen with that part of him coexisting in a counter-universe.
BenRabi did not speculate on the physics. He was a field man. A supernova seemed kindergarten stuff by comparison. He simply noted his thoughts in invisible ink and hoped the Bureau’s tame physicists could make something of them.
“Mouse, I’ve run into a philosophical problem,” he said one morning. “About the fish.”
“You’ve lost me already, Moyshe.”
“I’ve gotten onto something that’s turning my thinking inside out.”
“Which is?”
“That this isn’t your usual man/cattle relationship. It’s a partnership—if the Fishers aren’t the cows. The fish are intelligent. Probably more intelligent than we are.” He looked around. No one was listening. “They have what they call a mindtech section in Ops Sector. Somehow, they communicate with the starfish. Mind to mind.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“Around. Keeping my ears open. Adding things up.”
“So the ugly old psi theory raises its head again. Out here. You know what the Old Man’s scientists will say about that?”
“They’ll have to loosen up those stiff necks. But what I think is interesting is the research possibilities.”
“Research?”
“Historical research. The fish have been in contact with other races. And some of them are over a million years old. That’s a lot of remembering, I’m thinking.”
Like oceans, the hydrogen streams supported a complete ecology, including the predatory “shark,” the starfish’s natural enemy. There were a dozen species. Even the biggest and most dangerous was much smaller than an adult starfish. However, like man and wolves, several of the species hunted in cooperative packs. They could even pursue their prey through hyperspace.
Packs shadowed all the great herds. They struck when a fish straggled. Sometimes, when driven by hunger, they tried to cut individual fish from the herd. And occasionally, when their numbers reached a certain critical mass, a whole pack went berserk and threw itself at the herd.
The starfish were not helpless. They could burp up balls of gut fire and sling them around like granddaddy nuclear bombs. But sharks were fast and the burping was slow. A starfish under attack seldom had a chance for more than one defensive attempt. He had to count on the help of his herdmates, who might be under attack themselves. Thus inadequate, the starfish sometimes needed allies to survive.
When the earliest Seiners had located their first starfish herd the shark packs had been expanding rapidly. That first herd had been threatened with extinction.
Its fish had touched the minds of those early Seiners, had found in them a hope, and so had contacted them and had made a bargain. They would produce ambergris in quantity in exchange for human protection.
“There’re times when I think they’re trying to touch me,” benRabi told Mouse, after rehearsing what history he had learned.
“What makes you think that?” Mouse seemed excited by the idea.
“Probably just my imagination.” He was reluctant to tell Mouse that he sometimes dreamed of vast, swimming spatial panoramas, oddly alive with things never seen by human eyes. Dragons flew there, and played, with a ponderousness unmatched even in Old Earth’s vanished whales. Each time he dreamed the dream, he wakened with a screaming migraine.
“So those first Fishers armed themselves,” he said, resuming his history lesson. “The fish taught them to detect the sharks. The herd slowly recovered.”
But the sharks, in their slow fashion, reasoned. They learned to associate casualties with the hard things shepherding their prey. In the middle thirties they had begun getting harvestships as well as herds, forcing the Seiners to defend themselves before they protected their allies.
This past year they had begun attacking the ships first, and cooperating between packs of different species.
Their numbers were still expanding. Soon, the Seiners feared, they would be numerous enough to attack and destroy whole harvestfleets.
No ships had yet been lost, but the attack on Danion had demonstrated the reality of the peril.
The Starfishers believed themselves at war, and feared it was a war they could not win. They were too few and too weakly armed.
“Packs are migrating here from deeper in the galaxy,” Moyshe concluded. “I suppose because of a depleted food supply there.”
“That’s it?” Mouse asked.
“What’d you expect? It’s hard to get anything out of Amy. She may be sleeping with me but she doesn�
��t forget that I’m the other old enemy, the landsman. About the only other thing is that they’re desperate for more and better weapons. They might have something cooking there. Any time I mention weapons, Amy changes the subject fast.”
In fact, she usually left the cabin. That scared him. Something big was going on and she did not want to risk giving him a hint.
Her behavior confirmed the feeling he had had from the beginning. This was no ordinary harvest.
Danion had been under drive for weeks. Moyshe’s suspicions had become stronger. Harvestships seldom went hyper. The fish did not like it.
Were the beasts following the fleet?
Nobody was talking. Even the friendliest Seiners had little to say anymore.
The year was winding down. He had learned a lot, but still nothing concrete, nothing of genuine advantage to the Bureau and Confederation. Was the mission going to end up a wild goose chase?
Playing spy-vs-spy in the bedroom with Amy had become agonizing. Yet he had to pursue his tradecraft. He had to try to learn, and he did not dare relax.
He could not forget the Sangaree woman. She was still there, and still very much involved in her own mission.
Whatever her game was, it was in its final moves. She had resumed pushing Mouse, hard, confident of her strength.
The drives had been dead a week. Danion had reached her destination. Whole new sections of the ship had been closed to landsmen. The Seiners who came and went there were more closed mouthed than ever. Some, whom Moyshe considered friends, would barely acknowledge his greetings. Whatever they were doing, they wanted no hint to get back landside.
Work schedules went to shift-and-a-half. There were no exceptions. BenRabi and Mouse just spent that much more time being bored.
“Whatever it is, it’s dangerous,” Mouse said. “They’re all scared green.”
“The shark packs are collecting. Like ten times thicker than they’ve ever seen.”
“I watched one of the Service Ship crews come in this morning. They rotated with an alternate crew.”
“Fighting?”
“Just exhausted, I think. I didn’t see any stretchers. But Kindervoort’s thugs ran me off before I could find out anything.”
Despite Kindervoort they gleaned their bits of information. “They’re in a race against time,” benRabi told Mouse. “I heard one guy say they wouldn’t get a chance to gamble if the sharks hit aggressive mass before they finish their experiments.”
“What did he mean? Are they working on some new weapon?”
BenRabi shrugged. “I didn’t ask. But I sure wouldn’t mind knowing what they’re risking my life for.”
One evening, after a workday spent within taunting distance of the Sangaree woman, benRabi and Mouse tried to relax over a chessboard.
“You’re shook up again,” Mouse observed while staring at his pieces. “What’s up? Trouble with Amy?”
“That’s part of it. I’ve only seen her twice all week. She just comes in long enough to shower and change.”
“So? She’s not sitting on the only one in the universe. The little redhead, Penny something, from New Earth . . . ”
“She’s young enough to be my kid, Mouse. Only a couple of years older than Greta.”
Mouse flung his hands up in mock exasperation. “What’s that got to do with it? She’s willing, isn’t she?”
“Maybe. But I think I’m more a father image . . . ”
“So indulge in a little incest.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Sex isn’t the problem.”
“What? It’s always a problem. One way or another.” Mouse chuckled. He chuckled again as he ambushed Moyshe’s queen. Moyshe could not keep his mind on his game. The want had returned, mildly, along with that damned thing with the gun. “What is the problem, then?”
“The way people are treating us? I guess. They’re so scared they won’t have anything to do with us.”
“Check. Check there too. Part of it’s the Sangaree woman, Moyshe. She’s telling stories on us again. Trying to isolate us. I wonder why? One move to mate.”
They batted possibilities around. Moyshe so loathed the one that occurred to him that he refused to mention it right away.
His game grew increasingly poor. He became irritable. The I want grew stronger, louder, mocking him, telling him that he was on the threshold of its fulfillment and was too blind to see it.
“I can’t hold off much longer,” Mouse said, taking a pawn with a savage grab. “Next time she gouges me, or the next, I’ll bend her, and damned be the consequences.”
“Please don’t. We’re almost home. We’ve only got five weeks to go.”
Mouse slaughtered a knight. “You think we should let her set us up?”
BenRabi glanced at Mouse’s emotionless face, back to the disaster already developing on the chessboard. “I yield.” The more he reflected, the more he was sure he knew what Marya was planning. He stood abruptly, scattering chessmen. “We may have to.”
“Have to what?”
“Bend her. For our own good. I know what she’s doing. We ignored the obvious. Suppose she has the same kind of tracer we did? They’ve got the technology. And suppose she has control and didn’t turn it on till after the Seiners stopped worrying about things like that?”
“Got you. Let’s not bend her. Let’s just chop the tracer out.” Mouse returned his chessmen to their box with loving care, then recovered a wicked homemade plastic knife from beneath his mattress. “Let’s go.”
BenRabi thought of a dozen reasons for putting it off, but could not articulate a one. It was time Marya was put out of the game. She was too dangerous.
They were halfway to her cabin when he stopped, struck by a sudden thought. “Mouse, what if she’s expecting us?”
“Doesn’t seem likely.”
“You can’t overlook anything in this business.”
“That’s true. Let me think a minute.”
For months they had known that the Seiners sometimes listened in on them. When they did not want to be overheard they carefully lipread one another, never verbalizing anything that might excite an eavesdropper.
“I think I made a mistake bringing this up in your cabin.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But it’s too late to cry. If she bugged us, she bugged us.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“I’m thinking. I don’t got a whole lot of use for Pyrrhic victories, you know.”
They continued talking quietly, ten meters from Marya’s door.
Three Seiners on a flying scooter squealed round a corner and skidded to a stop at Marya’s door. They wore Security patches. One moved toward Mouse and benRabi, hand on his weapon, then stood easy. They tried to look like curious bystanders. The other Security men eyed the door.
“Looks like we get it done for us, Mouse.”
“They’re not thinking!” Mouse growled. BenRabi’s heart pounded out a flamenco. These guys were too sure of themselves.
They overrode the door closure. A pair of explosions greeted them. One man fell in the doorway. The other flung himself inside.
The one facing Mouse and benRabi whirled, charged into the cabin too. His face had gone grey.
They heard grunts and a cry of pain. “Homemade gunpowder weapons!” benRabi gasped. “Nice welcome she had for us.”
Mouse looked up and down the passageway. “Come on. Before we draw a crowd.”
BenRabi did not know what Mouse planned, but he followed. Mouse went in the door low, scooping the weapon from the hand of the dying Seiner. BenRabi scrambled after him, seizing another fallen handgun.
The Sangaree woman had her back to the door. She was struggling with the last Security man. Her left hand darted past his guard, smashing his windpipe. He gagged. She followed up with a bone-breaking blow over his heart.
BenRabi’s grunt of sympathy warned her of enemies to her rear.
“Slowly,” Mouse said as she started for the Seiner’s weapon. “I’d hate
to shoot.”
For once she had no instantaneous retort. Mouse’s tone made it clear there was nothing he would hate less than killing her. Emotional pain twisted her face when she turned. Once again, from her viewpoint, they had out-maneuvered her—and this time might be fatal.
Her agony turned into a strained smile after a moment. “You’re too late.” The smile broadened. It became anticipatory. “They’re on their way by now.”
“Moyshe, get that man in here and close the door. How bad is he?”
“He’s gone.”
“Better be nice,” Marya said as benRabi forced the door shut. She had the sense to keep her voice neutral. To survive, to enjoy her victory, she had to overcome the obstacle she had made of Mouse. “They’ll be here soon. You won’t want them mad at you.”
“This one’s gone too,” benRabi said. “The other one might make it. Marya, don’t think the Seiners will hand over a harvestfleet because a few raidships turn up.”
She smiled that gunmetal smile.
He remembered ruined merchantmen left in the wake of Sangaree raiders. They would come with enough gunpower. There would be no survivors.
An alarm began hooting. It was a forlorn call to arms.
“General quarters, Mouse. She’s for real.” The borrowed weapon seemed to swell painfully in his hand. A part of him was telling him it was time he finished what he had started on The Broken Wings.
Sixteen: 3049 AD
Operation Dragon, Combat
Time telescoped, then coiled around itself like some mad snake trying to crush itself. It detached Marya’s battlefield cabin from the macro-universe, establishing an independent timeline. Ten seconds became an eternal instant.
BenRabi was afraid.
Something clicked inside Mouse. He slipped into assassin’s mind. BenRabi vacillated between answering the alarm and staying to restrain the organic killing machine.
Danion shivered. Moyshe recognized the feel of service ships launching.
“I’m going on station, Mouse. Keep her here till Jarl’s people come. And keep her alive.”