Planet Pirates Omnibus

by neetha Napew

  “Where, Varian? Where?” Tanegli emphasized each syllable with a twist of her arm.

  “I didn’t hide them. Bonnard did.” Tanegli threw Varian’s suddenly limp body to the deck.

  “Go find him, Tanegli. And the packs, or we’ll be humping everything out of here on our backs. Bakkun and Berru have started the drive. Nothing can stop it once it starts.”

  Lunzie wondered what he meant and whether she dared to go over to Varian and examine her. The heavyworlder leader snarled at Kai.

  “Get out of here. All of you. March.” Paskutti kicked Triv and Portegin to their feet, gesturing curtly for them to pick up the unconscious Gaber and Trizein, for Aulia and Margit to lift the girls. Lunzie bent to Varian, managing to feel the strong steady pulse and knew the girl was dissembling. “Into the main dome, all of you,” he ordered.

  The camp was a shambles of wanton destruction from Dandy’s broken body to scattered tapes, charts, records, clothing. The search for Bonnard continued, punctuated by curses from Tanegli, Divisti and Tardma. Paskutti kept glancing from his wrist chrono and then to the plains beyond the force-screen.

  With Discipline-heightened senses, Lunzie caught the distant thunder. She spotted the two dots in the sky: Bakkun and Berru, and the black line beneath, a tossing black line, a moving black line, and suddenly, with a sinking heart, she knew what the heavyworlders had planned.

  The Theks might get the message but they wouldn’t reach here in time to save them from a fast approaching stampede. Paskutti was shoving them into the main dome now but he caught Lunzie’s glance. “Ah, I see you understand your fitting end, medic. Trampled by creatures, stupid, foolish vegetarians like yourselves. The only one of you strong enough to stand up to us is a mere boy.”

  He closed the iris lock and the thud of his fist against the plaswall told them that he had shattered the controls. Lunzie was already checking Trizein over, briefly wondering if “your fitting end, medic” meant this whole hideous mess had been arranged to destroy her.

  “He’s at the veil,” Varian said, peering over the bottom of the far window, her arm dangling at her side.

  Trizein groaned, regaining consciousness. Lunzie moved on to Cleiti and Terilla and administered restorative sprays.

  “He’s opened it,” Varian reported. “We ought to have a few moments when the herd tops the last rise when they won’t be able to see anything for the dust.”

  “Triv!” Kai and the geologist jammed Discipline-taut fingers into the fine seam of the plastic skin and ripped the tough fabric apart.

  Lunzie got the two girls to their feet. Gaber was dead. She gave the near hysterical Aulia another jolt of spray,

  “There are four on lift-belts in the sky now,” Varian kept reporting. “The stampede has reached the narrow part of the approach. Get ready.”

  “Where can we go?” Aulia shrieked. The thunderous approach was making them all nervous.

  “Back to the shuttle, stupid,” Margit said. “NOW!” Varian cried.

  Stumbling, half crawling, they hurried up the hill. Trizein couldn’t walk so Triv slung him over his shoulders. One look at the bobbing heads of crested dinosaurs bearing down on them was sufficient to lend wings to anyone. The shuttle hatch slammed behind the last human as the forerunners flowed into the compound. The noise and vibration was so overwhelming not even the shuttle’s sturdy walls could keep it out. The craft was rattled and banged about in the chaos, death and destruction outside.

  “They outdid themselves with the stampede,” Varian said with an absurd chuckle.

  “It’ll take more than herbivores to dent shuttle ceramic. Don’t worry. But I would sit down,” Kai added.

  “As soon as the stampede has stopped, we’d better make our move,” a voice piped up from behind the last row of seats.

  “Bonnard!”

  Grinning broadly, the dusty, stained boy appeared from the shuttle’s lab. “I thought this was the safest place after I saw Paskutti moving you out. But I wasn’t sure who had come back in. Am I glad it’s you!”

  “They’ll never find those power packs, Varian. Never,” Bonnard said, almost shouting above the noise outside. “When Paskutti smashed the dome controls I didn’t see how I could get out in time. So ... I ... hid!”

  “You did exactly as you should, Bonnard. Even to hiding,” Varian reassured him with a firm hug.

  Another shift of the shuttle sent everyone rocking.

  “It’s going to fall,” Aulia cried.

  “But it won’t crack,” Kai promised. “We’ll survive. By all the things that men hold dear, we’ll survive!”

  When the stampede finally ended, it took the combined strength of all the men to open the door. The carnage was fearful. They were buried under trampled hadrosaurs. It was full night now. Under the cover of darkness, Bonnard and Kai slipped out and, using lift-belts, managed to bring the power packs back to the shuttle. “Bonnard was right. We’ve got to make a move,” Kai told them as the survivors huddled together, still shaken and shocked by their ordeal. “Come dawn, the heavyworlders will return to survey their handiwork. They’ll assume the shuttle is still here, buried under the stampede. They won’t be in any hurry to get to it. Where could it go?”

  “I know where,” Varian said.

  “That cave we found, near the golden fliers?” Bonnard asked, his tired face lighting.

  “It’s more than big enough to accommodate the shuttle. And dry, with a screen of falling vines to hide the opening.”

  “Great idea, Varian,” Kai agreed, “because even if they used the infrared scan, our heat would register the same as adult gifts.”

  “And that’s the best idea I’ve heard today,” Lunzie said briskly, handing around peppers which had been overlooked by the heavyworlders in the piloting compartment.

  It required a lot of skill to ease the shuttle out from under the mountain of flesh but Lunzie knew it had to be done now while Kai and Varian held on to their Disciplined strength. The two managed, with Bonnard assisting in the directions since he’d been outside.

  By dawn they had reached the inland sea and manoeuvred into the enormous cave, every bit as commodious as Varian and Bonnard had said. Not one of the golden fliers paid attention to the strange white craft that had invaded their area.

  “The heavyworlders don’t even know this place exists,” Varian assured them when they were safely concealed.

  Triv and Dimenon used enough of the abundant drooping foliage to synthesise padding to comfort the wounded on the bare plastic deck. Lunzie sent them out again to get enough raw materials to synthesize a hypersaturated tonic to reduce the effects of delayed shock. Then everyone was allowed to sleep.

  Lunzie was one of the first awake late the next day. Moving quietly so as not to disturb the exhausted survivors, she cooked up another nutritious broth in the synthesiser, loading it with vitamins and minerals.

  “Guaranteed to circulate blood through your abused muscles and restore tissue to normal,” she said, serving up steaming beakers to Kai and Triv who had awakened. “We’ve slept around the chrono and half again.”

  After checking the binding on Kai’s arm, she massaged his shoulders to work out some of the stiffness before she ministered in the same way to Triv.

  Thanks. How long before the others rouse?” asked Triv, gratefully working his upper arms in eased circles.

  “I’d say we have another clear hour or so before the dead arise,” Lunzie answered, holding a beaker of soup to Varian. “I’ll need some more greenery to fix breakfast for the rest of them.”

  They filled the synthesiser with vegetation from the hanging vines that curtained the cave’s mouth. Weak sunlight, as bright as Ireta ever saw, shone in on the shuttle’s tail through the tough creepers. By the time the others awoke, there was food.

  “It’s not very interesting, but it’s nutritious,” Lunzie said as she handed around flat brown cakes. “I’d do more with the synthesiser, but how long can we depend upon having the power last? A
nd the heavyworlders might detect its use.”

  Varian set the children to keep a lockout at the cave opening, warning them not to hang beyond the vines. Bonnard thought that was wasted effort.

  “They’re not going to look for people they think they’ve already killed.”

  “We underestimated them once, Bonnard,” Kai remarked. “Let’s not make the same mistake twice.” Duly thoughtful, the boy took a lookout post.

  A very long week went by while the survivors recovered from shock and injury.

  “How long do we have to wait for the Theks to come and save us?” Varian asked the three Disciples when all the others had gone to sleep. “They would have had your message within two hours after you sent it. ‘Mutiny’ ought to stir their triangles if ‘heavyworlder’ didn’t.”

  Kai upturned his hands, wincing at the stab of pain in his broken wrist. “The Theks don’t rush under any circumstances, I guess. I had hoped they might just this once.”

  “So, what do we do?” Triv asked. “We can’t stay here forever. Or avoid the heavyworlders’ search once they realise the shuttle’s gone. I know Ireta’s a big planet but it’s only this part on the equator that’s barely habitable. Even if we stay here, we’ve got to use energy to produce food. We could get caught either way. They’ve got all the tracers and telltaggers. They have everything, even the stun-guns. What do we do?”

  Every instinct in Lunzie shouted “NO” at the obvious answer but she voiced it herself. “There is always cold sleep.” Even to herself she sounded defeated.

  “That’s the sensible last resort,” Triv agreed. Lunzie wanted to argue the point but she clamped her lips firmly shut while Kai and Varian nodded solemnly.

  “EV is coming back for us, isn’t she?” Triv asked with an expressionless face.

  Kai and Varian assured him that the ARCT-10 would not abandon them. The richness of their surveys was on the message beacon to be stripped when the ARCT had finished following that storm. The beacon Portegin had rigged outside the cave, camouflaged as a dead branch, would guide the search and rescue team to them.

  “With the sort of ion interference a big storm can produce, it’s no wonder they haven’t been able to make contact with us,” Varian said staunchly but none of the others looked as though they quite believed her.

  Lunzie kept trying not to think of the word “Jonah.”

  “Good, then we’ll go cold sleep tomorrow once the others have been told,” Kai decided briskly.

  “Why tell them?” Lunzie asked. She would rather get the whole process over with before she lost her courage.

  “They’re halfway into cold sleep right now.” Varian gestured to the sleeping bodies, startling Kai. “And we’ll save ourselves some futile arguments.”

  “It’s a full week now and at the rate carrion eaters work on Ireta, the heavyworlders may have discovered the shuttle is missing,” Triv said ominously.

  “There’s no way the heavyworlders could find a trace of us in cold sleep. And there’s a real danger if we remain awake much longer,” Varian added.

  With the other Disciples in agreement with a course she herself had recommended, Lunzie rose slowly to her feet. Unwilling as she was, she went to the cold-sleep locker and tapped in the code that would open it. She really hated to go into cold sleep again. She had wasted so much of her life living in that state. It was almost as bad as death. In a sense, it was a death - of all that was current and pleasant and hopeful in this segment of her life.

  But she gathered up the drug and the spraygun, checked dosages and began to administer the medication to those already asleep. Triv, Kai and Varian moved among them, checking their descent into cold sleep as skins cooled and respirations slowed to the imperceptible.

  “You know,” Varian began in a hushed but startled tone as she was settling herself, “poor old Gaber was right. We are planted. At least temporarily!”

  Lunzie stared at her, then made a grimace. “That’s not the comfort I want to take with me into cold sleep.”

  “Does one dream in cryogenic sleep, Lunzie?” Varian asked as Lunzie handed her a cup of the preservative drug.

  “I never have.”

  Lunzie gave Kai his dose. The young leader smiled as he accepted it.

  “Seems a waste of time not to do something,” he said.

  “The whole concept of cold sleep is to suspend the sense of subjective time,” Lunzie pointed out.

  “You sleep, you wake. And centuries pass,” added Triv, taking his beakerful.

  “You’re less help than Varian is,” Lunzie grumbled.

  “It won’t be centuries,” Kai said emphatically. “Not once EV has those uranium assays. It’s too raking rich for them to ignore.”

  Lunzie arranged the cold-sleep gas tank controls to kick in as soon as its sensors registered the cessation of all life signs. She held her dose in her hand. She wouldn’t risk them all if she stayed awake. Her body heat would register as a giff to any heavyworld over-flight of the area. She could stay awake.

  But if she slept with these, she would, for once, have someone she knew, people she liked and had worked with. She wouldn’t be quite so alone when she woke. That was some consolation. Before she could talk herself into some drastic and fatal delay, she tossed the dose down and lay down along one side of the deck, pillowing her head on a pad and settling her arms by her side.

  Who knows when they’ll come for us, she thought, unable to censor dismal thoughts. She grabbed at another consolation: the heavyworlders didn’t get her, or the others. She’d wake again. And there’d be another settlement due her.

  The leaden heaviness began to spread out from her stomach, permeating her tissues. The air on her cooling skin felt uncomfortably hot, and grew hotter. Suddenly Lunzie wanted to get up, run away from this place before she was trapped inside herself again. But it was already too late to stop the process. She felt her consciousness sinking fast into another death of sleep. Muhlah!

  Chapter One

  On the FSP Fleet heavy cruiser Zaid-Dayan

  “We have resources they don’t know about,” Sassinak said, and not for the first time. It did not reassure her.

  The convivial mood in which Sassinak and Lunzie had first made their plans to combine forces against the planet pirates had long since evaporated. They had been carried by the euphoria following the incredible Thek cathedral which had dispensed right justice to Captain Cruss who had illegally landed a heavyworlder colony transport ship on the planet Ireta, right under the bows of Sassinak’s pursuing cruiser. The Thek conference had elicited considerable fascinating information about the Captain’s superiors. Apart from sorting out the problem of which race “owned” Ireta, the Thek had departed without reference to bringing the perpetrators of planet pirating to a similar justice.

  Neither Sassinak nor Lunzie felt they would be lucky enough to obtain more support from the Thelcs, even if that long-lived race were the oldest of the space-faring species. Theks rarely interfered with members of the various ephemeral species that they had discovered over the centuries. Only when, as on Ireta, some ancient plan of their own might be jeopardized would they intervene. As a rule, Thek permitted all their

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  client races, from the lizard-like Seti, the shape-changing Wefts, the marine Ssli down to humans, to “dree their ain weirds,” No sooner than the Thek had resolved the matter of Ireta then they had departed, leaving Sassinak and Lunzie with an irresistible challenge: to seek out and destroy those who indulged in the most daring sort of piracy—the rape and pillage of entire planets and the mass enslavement of their legally resident populations. The problems were immense. Sassinak was too experienced a commander to ignore real problems, and Lunzie had seen too many good plans go wrong herself. Lunzie, sprawled comfortably on the white leather cushions in Sassinak’s office, watched her distant ofispring with amusement. She was so young to be so old.

  “So are you,” Sassinak retorted.

  Lunzie felt herself reddening.
>
  “There’s no such thing as telepathy,” she said. “It’s never been demonstrated under controlled conditions.”

  “Twins do it,” Sassinak said. “I read that somewhere. And other close relatives, sometimes. As for you and me . . . nobody knows what that many deepfreezes have done to your brain, and what my life’s done to me. You were thinking I’m young to be so old, and I was thinking exactly the same thing about you. You’re younger than I am ...”

  “Which doesn’t give you the right to play boss,” said Lunzie. Then she wished she hadn’t. Sassinak’s fece had hardened . . . and of course to her, she did have the right. She was the captain of her ship, one step below her first star, and she had ten more years of actual, awake, living-experience age.

  “I’m sorry,” Lunzie said quickly. “You are older, and you are the boss ... I’m just still adjusting.”

  Sassinak’s quick smile almost reassured her. “Same here. But I do have to be the boss on this ship. Even if you are my great-great-great, you don’t know which pipes hold what.”

  “Right. Point taken. I will be the good little civilian.” And try, she thought to herself, to adjust to having a distant ofispring not only older than herself but quite a

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  bit tougher. She leaned forward, setting her mug down on the table. “What are you thinking of doing?”

  “What we need/’ said Sass, frowning at nothing, “is a lot more information. The kind of proof we can bring before the Council meeting, for instance. Take the Diplo problem. Who’s been contacting whom, and whose money paid for that heavyworlder seedship? Which factions of heavyworlders are involved, and do they all know what they’re doing? Then there’s the Paraden family. I have my own reasons to think they’re guilty, root and branch, but no proof. If we could get someone into position, some social connection ...”

  Lunzie picked up her mug, gulped down the last of her drink, and tried to ignore the hollow in her belly. Was she about to do something stupid, or brave, or both?