Starhammer

by Christopher Rowley

  The habitat was overwhelming. It pulsed with life, a steady pounding of human surf inside the public ways and open spaces. Rivers of people flowed everywhere, almost twenty-four million of them according to the tourist program. All were connected in some way or other to the centers of finance, trade, entertainment, and light industry that gave Hyperion Grandee its astonishing vigor.

  Fortunately he did not arrive penniless, or he would not have been allowed to disembark. Hyperion Grandee had a severe overcrowding problem. Advertising signs flashed in multicolored frenzy, images poured forth in an overloading fury that he had never imagined before. After gazing openmouthed for a while he found that by contrasting the common ideografs he'd memorized with Nocanicus Varietals, he could comprehend many of the big signs and logos. "SDaba," "Wirl," "Stop No-Joy," "DD," "Alfa Time," there were dozens, hundreds, thousands.

  He took the notes of Lao Mercantility he'd packed at Castle Firgize to the first bank he identified, the Baltitude & Oxygen Bank. Inside the bank his notes gave the young woman who ran the small foreign exchange desk quite a thrill; she'd never seen paper money. She found the patterns beautiful, the colors rich and lustrous. However, she had to inform Jon that they were not of particularly high denominations and he wound up with a mere eleven hundred and thirty Nocanicus credit units for them. He only barely qualified for a credit card.

  Back out in the city, he wandered in awe through the enormous clefts of the central sector around Octagon Five where structures towered more than a thousand meters above his head. He passed through immense archways, wandered inside broad passageways lined with shops, restaurants, pleasure parlors. Everywhere there were people, millions upon millions, brightly clad in the pastels and primaries that were so fashionable. They surged restlessly through the corridors, their passing giving rise to a susurration that reminded Jon of waves breaking on the shores of the Sweetcrystal in storm.

  He ate at snackstands and slept on a park bench his first night. He was duly awakened by the police who let him loose only after a stern lecture about vagrancy and a friendly warning to get the laowon brand removed from his forehead as soon as possible.

  Day, night, day, he wandered, finding that the habitat was always awake, always pulsing with life. If anything the night cycle crowds were even greater than those of the day. At some point he paused and booked into the cheapest hotel he could find, a hundred credits a day for the smallest room. He started to investigate the chances of getting a job.

  After a day or so he discovered that he'd stepped from one trap into another. Hyperion Grandee's economy was superservice, high skill. Jon lacked the educational credits required for any jobs outside the realm of service. But one look at the brand on his forehead and the faces of potential service employers shriveled in disgust. He began to hear disparaging words such as "breed," "brand man," and "laoman."

  On his fifth evening he got into a fight in a small bar in Octagon One after being turned down for a job as a bartender. Almost the whole bar turned on him and roughed him up. Then he was almost denied entry to a hospital when he produced his new credit card. Eventually he was treated, grudgingly, in a charity clinic.

  In desperation, the next morning, he limped to a government job center. But the counselors' recommendations were not encouraging: Jon could, he was told, raise a small sum of capital by selling the rights to his organs to the transplant banks, enough to keep him going until the banks required his heart or liver or lungs. Since he was young and fit and reasonably good looking, he might be able to earn a meager living from the sale of his body for sexual abuse. In the light of the brands on his body and obvious laowon connections, the counselors advised him strongly against this course.

  On the other hand, they pointed out, he might easily find a well-paid job on the laowon level of Hyperion Grandee. He even had the accent of the laowon worlds, nasal, clipped. And the laowon population in Nocanicus system was rising steadily as adventurers from all over the vast Imperiom headed toward the human designated zone.

  Jon, however, refused to consider that idea. The laowon would not get the leash back on an Iehard. And there might yet be a pursuit by the Firgize.

  He had to admit, though, that things looked pretty hopeless, and he began to consider using the microgun still buried in his remaining middle finger. But death seemed terribly permanent, and he faced the prospect with dread.

  Then a young woman at the center suggested Jon take the test for psi ability, as there was a strong demand for the psi-able in various jobs. He took the test and was found very sensitive to human fear and rage. He undertook further tests and then received a final recommendation, to the Mass Murder Squad, Hyperion Grandee Police Department; the police department was always looking for recruits who could be trained to track down the thrill killers who plagued Nocanicus. It sounded like grim work, but the money they mentioned was good. Enough for him to get an apartment and be able to live on Hyperion Grandee. But whatever he decided to do, he would have to do soon; his credit was almost gone and he could not afford another night in the hotel. As he had already discovered, homeless people were not allowed to sleep in the parks and corridors. In a few days, therefore, he could expect to be seized by the HGPD Vagrants Squad and hustled aboard a shuttle for one of the grim, older gigahabitats that warehoused millions of poverty-stricken people.

  Indeed, he'd discovered that Nocanicus system as a whole was in deep economic trouble. Situated on the edge of laowon space, the Nocanius Corporation had been unable to attract colonist groups for the surrounding yellow stars with habitable worlds. The outrush from the Hyades systems had slowed drastically in recent centuries, since the laowon had taken most of the usable systems that might have attracted human groups. Without the colonists there was no work in building and refueling NAFAL colony ships. Without such work Nocanicus' relatively large population faced slow, remorseless decline.

  However, the decline was uneven. On the watermoons and the luxury megahabitats with their small populations, the standards of living were as high as anywhere in the human sphere. On the gigahabs of the asteroid belt, the situation was desperate. Too poor to remodel, some were leaking badly despite the high cost of fresh water and gas from the outer moons.

  After thinking it through, Jon agreed to interview for the Mass Murder Squad. They read his psi sense test scores and whistled. They immediately tested him some more. Then they offered him the basic salary and the promise of "liquidation" credits in the future.

  He put his thumbprint on the computer pad and explained that he would require some surgery on the middle finger of his good hand. Eyebrows rose when they heard his story, but his new employers agreed to fund the operation. Scores like his were rarely seen. They also enrolled him in speech classes to correct his lao-planet accent, and literacy classes since they found he was a functional illiterate.

  A few days later he began basic training as well. He lived in a dormitory with other trainees until he achieved his Competency Badge. He was unpopular with the other trainees for the laowon brand earned him enmity everywhere. He learned to live with the dislike, arranged for plastic surgery, and concentrated on being first in his class. He advanced rapidly to the status of Operative and was quickly fitted with his preferred weapons at the armory. Then he was dispatched to seek out and to kill the pestilential Kill Kultists who tormented the general public.

  CHAPTER TWO

  To avoid detection by laowon agents, the messenger left Quism through the sewers. He rode a caravan south but left it well before the Meridian Gap, where the laowon kept an observation post. He walked through the night to cross the mountain ridge, far to the west of the watchpost.

  The following night he wandered through the fringes of the North Machine Belt. In the starlight he observed that tall figures, mutant tribesmen, stalked him through giant, dead machines. He was young and fit; he took evasive action and outran them on the starglitter sands.

  By day he dozed on a high ledge, inside a great hulk of corroding eternite. His sp
ot had a good view in most directions, plus protection from the solar glare.

  The next night brought him to the dunes of glowing glass. Besides a curve in the swelling crystals stood a towering pylon, connected to a rusting rectangle a hundred meters high.

  He ran toward it, a thin man, cutting through the morning breeze.

  The young Elchites greeted him warmly, but searched him nonetheless. Their eyes anxiously scanned the distances behind him.

  "The man with half a head, I have a message for him."

  Their eyes hardened, they bade him wait in a deserted shaft that appeared to have no upper limit. The walls were of some sparkling eternity material. He was still peering upward, trying to locate a ceiling, when a voice beside him startled him.

  A gaunt man rode a silent wheelchair. Most of the left side of his face was missing. Instead of bones and flesh, a dark gray medical unit filled the space. It was connected through a tube to a larger unit that rode on the back of the chair.

  "They said you have a message for me?" The voice was dry, leathery, with a curious resonance. A faint medicinal smell hung in the air.

  "Yes. 'The bird flies, it has reached the system where our hope lies.'" The messenger spoke the words carefully, to make sure each was perfectly understood.

  "Thank you," the man said. "Now you may go to the shelter, you have done well." The wheelchair turned and left as quietly as it had come.

  The blue sun was coming up on the horizon. Wild purple shadows ricocheted down the dunes of glass, pleiotic flashes of light caught the eyes.

  The man with half a head paused beside his secret entranceway. Would they come soon? Would they come in time? He looked into the south and the plumes of the North Temperate Dust Belt. Huge, dead machines marched shoulder to shoulder into the haze as if they were buildings in some deserted city of skyscrapers.

  He looked up into the indigo sky. The laowon were up there somewhere, there were always laowon parties abroad on the surface now. One day they would understand the patterns. He prayed that that day would be delayed long enough for the mission to pass safely.

  A stray breeze came out of the south, smelling hot, slightly acrid. Dust was coming. He opened the secret door and slipped inside.

  —|—

  It was Crazy Night aboard Hyperion Grandee, the end of the first academic semester and the beginning of Winter Month. There were parties and bands of revelers everywhere. The police department had its hands full, as usual, just keeping the crowds moving in Octagon Five, Six, and Seven.

  Down on Octagon Ten the students of Hyperion U. were celebrating in the time-honored manner; the fountains outside Shrad Hall were full of struggling maroon-clad forms. Around them a horde of drunken youths sang bawdy versions of the school song. Inside Shrad the faculty party was going full blast, with toast after toast for Coach Bach, who'd taken the Hyperion team to a 15-3 victory over Nocanicus U. in the annual wintergame.

  It was also the night when the top forty students of the senior year were inducted into Orbit, the traditional home to the rulers, movers, and shakers aboard Hyperion Grandee. They were gathered around the clocktower in the darkness, each with an apple in one hand and a whole garlic in the other. At midnight, when the engineers changed the star fields for Winter Month, each would be asked a personal and embarrassing question in front of the others—and all the old members, hidden inside the tower and giggling their drunken selves silly. Depending on how their answer sat with their listeners, the novices would consume either the apple or the garlic. They might also have to take off their trousers or skirts and perform other humiliating exercises.

  It was Crazy Night.

  But bad craziness was also adrift in the air—blood craziness, murder craziness. The Kill Kults were in action and, tracking them, the Mass Murder Squad.

  Theoretically, the forty young about-to-be Orbiters were safe inside the walls of the university grounds; security guards manned the gates to screen guests and visitors. In fact, everyone was so intoxicated that Arnei Oh had had no trouble at all in getting through. He carried a fragmentation device and a short-barrel .44-caliber automatic. Dressed in maroon garb, like the rest of the university boosters, he was undetectable as he passed guards and cops and the throngs of kids and worked his way across Hyades Meadows toward the clocktower.

  Arnei was a nine-scalp man. He had taken twenty-three lives in his four assaults on the general public. In the Kill Kults he was one of the top names. His own club, the Dragons of Kali, bet heavily on his success every time he drew the tang.

  This tang would likely be his greatest. They'd never forget him after this one!

  He crossed through some bushes and paused. A gush of girlish laughter came from somewhere close by, and the grunting of a drunken young man. Arnei sidestepped. Under an ornamental shrub carved into a parasol, a young couple were copulating vigorously. A dreadful little smile broke over Arnei Oh's face. He reached inside his maroon coat for his switchblade. The girl was a magnificent blonde. He could already visualize her scalp hanging in his collection cabinet.

  A hundred meters away Melissa Baltitude walked slowly toward the clocktower, the apple and the garlic heavy in her hands. It was important to walk slowly, to look cool and calm. Otherwise the vindictive old men in the tower would make one do all sorts of disgusting things in front of everyone.

  Melissa wanted membership of Orbit more than anything in the universe right then. But she dreaded the question—and if Jason Patel had made the top forty, then her spiteful, beautiful former boyfriend would have given them all the ammunition they needed.

  She gritted her teeth. Whatever the question she would answer it. And she would eat the garlic and jump around stark naked too if necessary. She would do whatever it took, and then she would be in Orbit and the rest of her life would be assured.

  She heard the muffled screams, three of them, from the nearby topiary exhibit, but they didn't seem so extraordinary. A great wall of noise was coming from the fountains where the pigs were splashing and the pigwatchers were getting drunker. So she paid the new sounds no mind. What if some horny little pig female was getting raped in the bushes? It happened every year; she should've known better. Last year there had even been some man-raping out in those shrubberies.

  Melissa concentrated on the faces of those around her, gathering around the tower. There was Suzy America; Melissa had always known Suzy would make it. And Simon Weezel, and Garropy Ondine, and others still too far away to make out. Would Suzy America actually marry Bertane Lagode? They were lovers from big families; when the daddies were Megabucks, the kiddies married among themselves. Melissa stilled the excitement she felt and concentrated on walking slowly.

  Back beyond the fountain a slim man with staring eyes suddenly turned around and looked into the shrubbery. With a curse he pulled a short shock rod from his coat pocket and sprinted into the crowd.

  Crystal clear on Jon Iehard's psi sense was a mental picture: the knife rising and falling; the beautiful hair; the leather-gloved fist wrapped in the hair; the knife sawing away around the scalp, loosening, ripping, triumph!

  He had him! Arnei Oh was in the topiary exhibit. Exulting in grisly triumph as he took scalps.

  Jon used the shock rod vigorously to clear students from his way. Curses and screams of pain marked his path. He mashed the rod into the face of some big boy with a bloated belly who got in the way and tried to stop him. The howling face went down and Jon ran right over him and knocked two girls flying as he disengaged from the crowd.

  "Stop that bastard!" someone screamed. Footsteps sounded behind him, but Jon ignored them and accelerated across the lawns, his other hand pulling out the Taw Taw automatic .22 that he always wore.

  Into the shrubbery he ran. By good fortune he came on the scene of carnage almost immediately. The bodies had been dealt with in Kali Kult manner. Heads removed, torsos slit, and intestines spread far and wide. Jon had seen so much of this sort of thing in nine years working for the Mass Murder Squad that he har
dly broke stride. He knew then what Arnie Oh's primary target had to be that night.

  The youngsters pursuing him were not so familiar with this sort of thing and pulled up in horrified amazement. Somebody saw that Annie Klein had been scalped as well as beheaded. He was immediately sick in the bushes. The others joined him.

  On the green around the clocktower forty-one figures in maroon were gathered in a loose circle. From the clocktower the questions were being put.

  "Melissa Baltitude," boomed an electronically distorted voice. "Step forward."

  She did so. "Melissa, is it true what they say about you and Suzy America?"

  Her heart jumped. How did they know that? They'd been fourteen years old.

  And then she became aware that something wrong was happening on her right. Bad craziness had made an appearance.

  A small handgun was firing; there were screams. Everyone was running. A heavyset figure, too old to be a student, was running toward her with a long knife in his right hand. In his left was a small gun. He raised it and she stared into the barrel. She thought she heard her own scream.

  But the first bullet missed her by a fraction. And then another figure, slender, legs pumping furiously, came into sight across the lawn. The heavyset man whirled, fired back at the pursuer who yelled at the top of his lungs. He had a gun too, Melissa could see it in his hand.

  Then the heavyset man had an arm around her waist, hoisting her off the ground and dragging her toward the clocktower.

  "Stop, Arnei!" the pursuer shouted. Arnei covered the gravel in three grotesque bounds and hurled Melissa into the door, driving it open. Arnei smashed through it and rolled into a firing position, his gun roared impossibly loudly in that enclosed space. Hot streaks zinged out the door over her body. Her bowels released as she pressed her face into the tile.

  People were screaming and running up the stairs of the tower. Arnei slid in another magazine and pumped bullets up the stairwell. Some of the screams took on a different timbre.