Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “What? What are you talking about?” demanded Vir, paling.

  “What’s this bacterium?” Elessa demanded. “I never observed one here and I prepared all the initial slides!”

  “It’s called Pseudococcus pneumonosis.” Lunzie smiled slyly. She was rather pleased with the astonished reaction to her little fable. “I’ve just discovered it, you see. A nicely non-existent but highly contagious condition, inevitably and painfully fatal. It might just stall them. It will certainly make them pause a while. If we can be convincing enough.” Then she chuckled. “If we get out of this alive, someone better check with the old ARCT and see just who scrambled to the infirmary, requiring treatment for a fatal lung disease.”

  Zebara and Bringan chortled and, when the rest of the crew realised she’d been acting out a scenario, they gave Lunzie a round of applause. Laughter eased the tension and indicated renewed hope.

  “That just might work,” Bringan agreed after several moments of hard thinking. He gave Lunzie a warm smile. “Would we have trouble with them understanding medical lingo?”

  Lunzie shrugged. “If I could fool you for a few minutes, I maybe can fool them. You see, Bringan’s only a xeno-medic. He diagnosed it as vacation fever: personnel pretending to be sick so they could lounge in the sun. Once we got back here, with me, a human-medically trained person, I began to suspect a serious medical problem. By then it was too late to contain the bacterium. It was widespread. And, for all I know, loose on the ARCT-10 as well.

  “Sorry about this, folks, but I’ll make it extremely personal: heavyworlders get it worst.” She warded off the violent protests until Zebara bellowed for silence.

  “She’s got a valid reason to pick on us.”

  “I said I was sorry, heavyworlders. I’m not disparaging you but it’s a fact, piracy has attracted many heavyworlders. Look, I’m not starting an argument ...”

  “And I’m ending it,” Zebara said, showing his shark teeth. The muttering subsided immediately. “Lunzie’s reasoning is sound. We take the lumps.”

  “How do you know so much about the planet pirates?” Dondara wanted to know, his eyes narrowed and unfriendly.

  “Not my choice, but I do. Sorry about this.”

  “I’ll forgive you if it works,” Dondara said, but he gave her a wry twist of a smile.

  “I think she’s come up with the best chance we’ve got,” the xenobiologist said approvingly. “Unless someone has thought up a better one just recently? Who delivers this deathless message to the pirates?” He looked at Zebara.

  “I think I’d better,” Zebara replied. “Not to decry Lunzie’s dramatic abilities, but because the report of a heavyweight will be more acceptable to them than anything a lightweight could say.”

  “I hate such an expedient.” With a fierce expression, Dondara exploded to his feet. “Do we have to compound the insult to all honourable heavyworlders who abhor the practice of piracy?”

  With a sad expression on his face, Zebara shook his head at the geologist. “Don, we both know that some of Diplo’s children have been weak enough to go into the service of unscrupulous beings in order to ease the crowding of our homeworlds.” Dondara started to protest but Zebara cut him off. “Enough! Such weaklings shame us all and the good carry the disgrace along with them until the real culprits can be exposed. I intend to be part of that exposure. And this is one step in the right direction.” He turned to Lunzie. “Brief me. Doctor Mespil!”

  The plan, as plans do, underwent considerable revision until a creditable script was finally reached. With the help of the garment synthesiser and Flor’s copious history diskfiles, Zebara was tricked out in the uniform of an attache of DipIo, the heavyworlders’ home planet. On a simple dark blue tunic, Flor attached silver shoulder braid and a tight upright collar of silver that fastened with a chain suspended between two buttons. As Zebara was dressed, Lunzie rehearsed him on details.

  Meanwhile, Flor and Wendell were tinkering with the scout’s black box, trying to mask, shield, electronically alter or scramble its identification signal. Neither wanted to tamper with the box because that could lead to other problems.

  With a prosthetic putty, Bringan sculpted a new nose for Zebara and broadened his cheekbones to enhance his appearance to a more typical heavyworlder cast. Lunzie was stunned by the result. It changed him completely into one of the dull-faced hulks that she remembered from the Mining Platform.

  “Zebara, they’ve achieved parking orbit,” Flor called. “The lead ship will be directly overhead in six minutes.”

  The last touches of his costume in place, the heavyworld captain swaggered into the communications booth and took his place before the video pickup. Out of sight, Lunzie sat next to Flor in the control room and watched as a hail was sent to the two strange ships.

  “Attention to orbiting ships,” Zebara announced in a rasping monotone. “Arabesk speaking, attache for His Excellency Lutpostig the Third, the Governor of Diplo. This planet is proscribed by order of His Excellency. Landing is forbidden. Identify yourselves.”

  On the screen before them, Lunzie and Flor saw a pattern shimmer into coherency. It was not a face but rather an abstract computer-generated graphic.

  “So, they can see us, but we can’t see them,” Flor muttered to Lunzie. “I don’t like this,” the communications officer added miserably.

  An electronically altered voice shivered through the audio pickup. Lunzie tried to guess the species of the speaker but it spoke a pure form of Basic with no telltale characteristics. Possibly computer-generated, like the graphic, she guessed.

  “We know of no interdiction on this planet. We are landing in accordance with our orders.”

  Zebara gave a rasping cough which he only half covered with one hand. “The crew of this ship have contracted an airborne bacteria. Pseudococcus pneumonosis. This life form was not, I repeat, NOT, mentioned in the initial landing report.”

  “Tell me another one, attache. That report has been circulated.”

  Zebara’s second cough lasted longer and seemed to rake his toes. Lunzie was impressed.

  “Of course, but you should also know that the reports were made during the cold season in this hemisphere. Since the weather has warmed, the bacteria has awoken and multiplied explosively, infiltrating every portion of our ship.” For good measure he managed a rasping gagging cough of gigantic proportion.

  The voice became slightly less suspicious. “The effect of this warm season bacteria?”

  “It infests the bronchial tubes, in a condition similar to pneumonia. The alveoli become clogged almost immediately. The first symptom is a pernicious cough.” Zebara demonstrated, ‘gagging dramatically. “The condition results in painful suffocation leading to death. Five of my crew have died already.

  “We heavyworlders appear to be particularly susceptible due to our increased lung capacity,” Zebara continued, injecting a note of panic into his voice. “First we tried to filter the bacterium out by using breather masks, but it is smaller than a virus. Nothing keeps it out. It can live anywhere that is warm. It flourished in the ventilation system and the filters are so caulked up that I doubt we will be able to cleanse them sufficiently to take off again. Ironic, for cold slows and kills it. Unfortunately, living pulmonary tissue never becomes cold enough. It even lingers in the lungs of the deceased until the body itself has chilled.”

  There was murmuring behind the whirling pattern of colours on the screen, then the audio ceased completely.

  “Zebara.” Pollili’s voice came over the private channel. “I now have readings on their ships. They’re big ones. One of them is a fully loaded transport lugger, full of cold bodies. There must be five hundred deepsleepers aboard. It’s the smaller one that’s leaking energy. An escort, carrying enough firepower to split this planet in two.”

  “Can you identify the life-forms?” Lunzie asked.

  “Negative. They’re shielded. I get heat traces of about a hundred bodies, but my equipment’s not sensitive en
ough to identify type, only heat emanations.” Pollili’s voice trailed off as the pirate spoke again.

  “We will consider this information.”

  “I warn you, in the name of DipIo,” Zebara insisted, “do not land on this planet. The bacterium is present throughout the atmosphere. Do not land.”

  Zebara slumped back into the padded seat and wiped his forehead. Flor hastily cut the connection.

  “Bravo! Well done,” Lunzie congratulated him, handing him a restorative pepper.

  The rest of the crew crowded into the communication station.

  “What will they do?” Vir asked nervously.

  “What they said. Consider the information.” Zebara took a long swig of the pepper. “One thing sure. They’re not likely to go away.”

  “First of all, they’ll check their source files to see if there’s any mention of the bacterium,” Bringan enumerated, ticking off his fingers. “That alone should make it hot for the people who sold them the information and forgot to mention a potentially fatal air-borne parasite here. Second, they’ll try to get a sample of the bacterium. I think we’ll see an unmanned probe scooping the air, looking for samples to analyse.”

  “Third, they might try to put a volunteer crew down to test the effects of living beings,” Elessa offered, bleakly. “A distinct possibility,” Flor said. “I’ll just rig a repeater signal to broadcast the Interdict warning over and over again on their frequency. Might make them just a teensy bit more nervous.”

  Her fingers flew over her console, and then clicked on a button at the far left side. “There. It’ll be loud, too.”

  Lunzie grinned. She was becoming more impressed with the imagination and ingenuity of this EEC Team. “I can’t imagine that ‘volunteers’ will be thick in the corridors. But they will figure out all too soon that there isn’t anything. Shouldn’t we grab some rest while we can?”

  “Well, I can’t,” Bringan said. “When they don’t find what they’re expecting, they’ll ask us to identify it, so I better design an organism. Vir, you’re a good hack, you can help me.”

  “I’ll help, too,” Elessa volunteered. “I wouldn’t be able to rest with those vultures circling, just waiting to land on top of us.”

  “I’ll authorise sedatives to anyone who doesn’t think he or she can sleep,” Lunzie offered, with a look toward Zebara for permission. The captain nodded.

  Those who weren’t involved in designing the pseudobacteria scattered to their sleeping cubicles and left the others wrangling over mouse-controlled Tri-D graphics program.

  Lunzie lay down on her bunk and initiated Discipline technique to soothe herself to sleep. She got a restful few hours before tension roused her. There had been bets as to when another transmission from the pirate vessel would arrive.

  After a twenty-four-hour respite, tempers began to fray. The design team had an argument, ending with Elessa storming out of the scout to sit in tears behind a tree, agitatedly soothing her pet kittisnake.

  Wendell took a nap, but he was so tense when he awoke that he asked Lunzie for a sedative. “I can’t just sit around and wait,” the pilot begged, twisting his hands together, “but if there’s any chance of us lifting, I also can’t be frazzled or fuzzy-minded.”

  Lunzie gave him a large dose of a mild relaxant, and left him with a complicated construction puzzle to keep his hands busy. Most of the others bore with the tension more stoically. Zebara alternated between popping mineral tablets and drumming on a table with an air of distraction and running the ships’ profiles through the computer records. He badgered Flor with frequent updates on the Zaid-Dayan’s ETA.

  The outer two heavyworlders paced the common area for all the world like caged exotics; then Dondara irritably excused himself. He left the ship and headed downslope in the sled.

  “Where’s he going?” Lunzie asked.

  “To break rocks,” Pollili explained, turning her palms to the sky. “He’ll come back when he can hold the frustration in check.”

  Dondara had been gone for nearly two hours when Flor appeared at the door of the common area. Zebara raised his head. “Well?”

  She grimaced. “They’ve launched an unmanned probe. It’s doing the usual loops.” Then she really grinned. “I got good news, though.” Everyone in the room snapped to. “I just stripped the beacon of a reply from the Zaid-Dayan. They say to hold tight. They ought to be here within three hours.”

  Ragged cheers rose from the crew when suddenly a low-pitched beeping came from the forward section.

  “Uh-oh,” Flor said. ‘The upstairs neighbours ahead of schedule!” She turned and run forward, followed by the rest of the crew. The filtered voice came through the audio monitors.

  “Diplomat Arabesk. I wish to speak with Diplomat Arabesk.” Zebara reached for the silver-collared tunic but Lunzie grabbed his sleeve.

  “You can’t talk to them, Zebara, you’re dead. Remember! Heavyworlders are more susceptible. The bacterial plague has claimed another victim. Pollili, you talk to them.”

  “Me?’ squeaked the telemetry officer. “I can’t talk to people like them. They won’t believe me.”

  FIor was wringing her hands with nervousness. “Someone’s got to speak to them. Soon. Please.”

  Lunzie hauled Pollili by the hand into the communications booth. “Poll, this can save all our lives. Will you trust me?”

  The heavyworlder female looked at her beseechingly. “What are you doing to do?”

  “I’m going to convince you that what you are about to say is one hundred percent the truth.” Lunzie leaned forward and put a comforting hand, the one in the cast, on the other’s arm. “Trust me?”

  Pollili shot a desperate look at the beeping console. “Yes.”

  “Good. Zebara, will you clear everyone else out for a moment?”

  Puzzled, the captain complied. “But I’m staying,” he announced when everyone had left.

  “As you wish.” Lunzie resigned herself to his presence. “Flor can’t hear us, can she?”

  Zebara glanced at the set of indicator lights above the thick quartz glass panel. “No.”

  “All right. Poll, look at me.” Lunzie stared into the heavyworlder’s eyes and called upon the Discipline techniques she had learned on Tau Ceti. Keeping the small hypospray out of Flor’s line of sight, she showed it to Pollili. “Just something to help you relax. I promise you it’s not harmful.” Pollili nodded uneasily. Lunzie pressed the head of the hypospray against the big woman’s forearm. Pollili sagged back, her eyes heavy and glassy. Flor stared curiously from the other side of the panel and reached for a control. Zebara forestalled her with a gesture and she sat back in her chair, watching.

  Lunzie kept her voice low and gentle. “Relax. Concentrate. You are Quinada, servant and aide to lenois of the Parchandri Merchant Families. You landed here with a crew of twenty-five. Eight have already died of the bacterial plague, all heavyworlders. Arabesk, the Governor’s personal representative, has just succumbed. Nine lightweights, the oldest and weakest ones, are also dead and the clone-types are showing at least the first symptoms of infection. You have a pernicious, deep-lung cough which strikes whenever you get excited. The bacteria is found only within thirty feet of the ground.” Lunzie turned to Zebara. “That’s too low for a probe to fly safely. With topographical variances, it’s more likely to crash into a tree or a rock outcropping.” Zebara nodded approval.

  Lunzie turned back to programming Pollili. “The bacteria multiplies in direct relation to warmer temperatures. It’s 22 degrees Celsius here right now. Optimum breeding time. You, Quinada, have connections with the faction in the Tau Ceti sector. You are something of a bully so you are not easily cowed by the inferior dogsbodies of any pirate vessel.” Now Lunzie signalled to Flor to open the channel to the communications booth. “Remember, your name is Quinada, and you don’t take guff from anyone, especially the weakling lightweights. You respect only your master, and he is one of those who is ill. You know and trust those of us here
in the ship. We are your friends and business associates. When you hear your real name again, you will regain your original memories. I will touch you now and you will reply as circumstances require.”

  “We seek Diplomat Arabesk,” the tinny voice said again. Pollili roused the instant Lunzie touched her arm. The medic leaned out of range of the video pickup and crept from her side.

  “Arabesk is dead. Who is this?”

  “Who speaks?” the voice demanded, surprised.

  “Quinada!” Pollili said with great authority and some annoyance.

  “Who is this Quinada?” Zebara asked in a low voice as Pollili’s expression assumed a suitably Quinadian scowl.

  “Just who I said she is,” Lunzie whispered, crossing her fingers as she watched the heavyworlder female lean forward, prepared to dominate. “She works for a merchant who knew about Ambrosia more than two weeks before I left Tau Ceti for the ARCT-10. I must now assume that lenois has direct lines with pirates from here, the ARCT-10 and Alpha Centauri. Since he’s got such a wide family, I’d be willing to bet someone of his kin were involved in setting up the Phoenix double-deal.”

  “This Quinada must have made quite an impression on you,” Zebara replied wryly. “However did you impose her on Poll?”

  “A Discipline technique.”

  “Not one of which I’ve ever heard. You must be an Adept. Oh, don’t worry,” Zebara assured her as she began to protest. “I can keep secrets. More than one, if your information on this merchant is true.”