by Chris Bunch
HUNT THE
HEAVENS
Chris Bunch
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
For:
Dr. Michio Kaku,
Professor of Theoretical Physics
Master Hei Long
Grandmaster Toshitora Yamashiro,
The Nine Shadows of the Koga Ninja
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Also Available
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
The dead ships were scattered through the night, sometimes sharply illumed in white light, then darkness reclaimed its own as they moved, drifted, the rocky spray of the nearby unborn world occluding the light from the far-distant sun.
The ships were linked by nearly invisible cables that held them in an approximate orbit around a medium-size planetoid. Some of the ships were worn-out and centuries old, others were the energy-devouring military craft of the great war eleven years in the past. Some wore the colors of failed merchant enterprises, others the standards of ones too successful by far. Some appeared intact, others were being systematically cannibalized by their caretaker on the asteroid “below.”
Half a light-second distant, space distorted, and there was the slight blink as a ship came out of stardrive. A few moments later, a transmission came:
“Malabar Control, Malabar Control, this is the Grayle. Request approach and docking instructions.”
The call was made three times before a reply came in:
“Grayle, this is Malabar. Request your purpose. This is not a public port. Landing permission is granted only with proper authority.”
“Malabar, this is Grayle. Stand by.” The synthed female voice was replaced by a man’s:
“Malabar, this is Grayle. Purpose for visit: resupply.”
“Grayle, this is Malabar. Permission refused. I say again — this is not a public port.”
“Malabar, this is Grayle. Message follows for Cormac. I shackle Wilbur Frederick Milton unshackle. Sender: Ghost.”
There was dead air, then:
“Stand by.”
Nearly an hour passed before:
“Grayle, this is Malabar Control. Porting request granted. We have auto-approach capability. Please slave your ship controls to this frequency. After docking do not leave your ship until authorized. Cormac advises will meet Ghost personally and strongly recommends it had best be Ghost Actual. Clear.”
• • •
The man lounging against the bulkhead wore an expensive cotton shirt faded from many washings, a sleeveless sweater that could have been his grandfather’s, and khaki pants that might have belonged to a uniform once.
He straightened as the inner lock door slid open and eyed Joshua as he came out.
“Joshua,” Cormac said. “If that’s the name you’re still using, Ghost Actual.”
“It is. And you’re still flying your own colors,” Wolfe said.
“Time must’ve been good to us then.”
Wolfe made no response. Cormac turned to an alcove. “He’s who he said he was, friends. You can go on about your business.”
Two men carrying stubby blast rifles came out, nodded politely to Joshua, and went past into the inner reaches of the planetoid.
“Interesting how you never forget the shackle code, isn’t it?” Cormac commented. “And you’re right. I do owe you. What do you need? A ship? An insert, like the old days? I haven’t done much direct moving lately, but I doubt if I’ve lost any moves. If that’s what you need.”
“I need a shipyard.”
“Ah? You don’t appear to have taken any damage, from what the screen showed me.”
“I didn’t. But the Grayle’s maybe a little too noticeable. Do you still remember how to do a Q-ship setup?”
“Do I remember?” Cormac laughed shortly. “Commander, that’s one of my most requested tunes these days. There appear to be a lot of men and women floating about who’d rather not have their ships present the same face to the Federation — or to anybody — more than once or twice.
“Yes. I can handle that little job for you. How thorough a change you want? Snout, fins, configuration, signature … I can still do it all.”
“How long for the full boat?”
“Pun intended?”
Again, Wolfe didn’t answer.
Cormac considered. “Normally three months. But I assume these aren’t normal times.”
“You assume right,” Wolfe said.
“Month and a half, then,” Cormac hesitated. “That’s a big call-in, I must say.”
“I’ll cover your costs, plus ten percent,” Wolfe said. “I’m not broke. But I’d appreciate a quick turnaround.”
Cormac swept a grandiose bow. “So let it be written … so let it be done!”
Wolfe grinned. “Where were we the last time I heard you say that?”
“I had that wonderful hollowed-out moonlet,” Cormac said wistfully. “Not ten light-minutes from that Al’ar base, and they never twigged to me at all.”
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know,” Cormac said. “I tried to track it down when the Federation started mothballing everything.” He shrugged. “I suppose someone beat me to it.
“Now wouldn’t that make a great smuggler’s haven?”
“From what I’ve heard about this sector,” Wolfe said, “you don’t appear to need one.”
“True, true, too damned true. Come on. I’ll show you around and start my crews to work.”
“Not quite yet,” Wolfe said. “I’ve got a passenger who nobody gets to see. I mean nobody, Cormac. How do we arrange that?”
“We’ll set up quarters next to mine. No bugs, no probes, no nothing. Not even mine. You could put the Queen of Sheba there and no one would ever know.”
“Good. I’ll need some kind of vehicle to make the transfer.”
“No problem with that, either. Now come on. Let me buy you a drink. You still drink … Armagnac, it was, yes?”
“You remember well.”
The two men started down the long metallic corridor.
“Sometimes,” Cormac said a little wistfully, “it’s about the only excitement I have. I swear I sometimes think I miss the war. You ever feel that way?”
“Not yet.”
“You are blessed.”
• • •
Cormac’s quarters were hand-worked wood, silver, dark-red leather, lavish as a port admiral’s. Wolfe lounged back against his couch, tasted his drink.
“It’s only Janneau,” Cormac apologized. “If I’d known you were coming I could have had one of the freetraders come up with better.”
“It’s fine.” Wolfe looked about. “You have done well by yourself.”
“It wasn’t hard,” Cormac said. “When peace broke out all anyone wanted was to either get out or find some nice, comfortable sinecure. Those of us who had, well, an eye for the main chance could pretty much pick and choose. And I wanted to stay out here in the Outlaw Worlds.
“I heard they needed someone to take care of all the ships that were going to be decommissioned. Given my
modest talents, and a few coms to some friends who remembered what services I’d been able to render, and I had a new career, or anyway the powerbase for one.”
“Doesn’t the Federation ever come looking to see what’s happening to those hulks?”
“Hell no. There’s fifty-eight boneyards around the galaxy. Some of them don’t even have caretakers, and I wonder if the ships’re even still there. At least I’m disappearing mine little by little. By the way, I could make you one hell of a deal on a battlewagon if you’re interested. One thing the Federation still has too much of, Joshua, and that’s warships.” Cormac picked up his glass of beer, looked at it, set it back down. “Them … and the people who used to pilot them.”
“You do miss the war,” Wolfe said gently.
“And why not? I was only twenty-two then. How many people my age had their own spaceport and responsibility for getting people into — and sometimes out of — places no sane person could imagine?”
“Why didn’t you stay in? Federation Intelligence must’ve wanted to keep you.”
“I don’t have much use for some of the people they did keep,” Cormac said. “I did a couple of … small jobs for them after the war. And was sorry I did.”
“Cisco being one of them?”
“That shit-for-brains!”
“He’s still with them.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Cormac said. “Bastards like him have to have a big daddy to hide behind. I can remember … no. Leave it.”
The slender man got up, walked to a bookcase, and picked up a model of a starship.
“I wasn’t surprised to hear from you,” he said without turning around. “Not that surprised, anyway.”
“Oh?” Wolfe’s tone remained casual, but one hand moved toward his waistband.
“Ghost Actual,” Cormac said, “you are in a ton of trouble. Two tons.”
“That’s why I need the ship-change.”
“You might need more than that.”
Cormac went to a desk, opened it, and touched a pore-pattern lock. “This came across about an E-week ago. I pulled a copy, then iced the file. Nobody else on Malabar has seen it.”
He took out a rolled cylinder of paper and handed it to Wolfe, who opened it. There was a pic on it of Wolfe that was four years old, and:
WANTED
Joshua Wolfe
for
Murder, Conspiracy,
Treason,
and
Other Crimes
Against the Federation
500,000 CREDITS REWARD
Must Be Taken Alive
“Alive, eh?” Wolfe read the rest of the sheet. “But I’m considered armed, deadly, guaranteed to resist arrest, and so forth. That ought to slow them down for a little.”
“Should I ask?”
“Better not, Cormac. It gets real involved. Although I wonder how the hell they figure I’ve committed treason since I haven’t been inside the Federation much since the war.”
“It doesn’t matter a tinker’s fart to me,” Cormac said. “Who was it who said if he had a choice between betraying his country or a friend, he hoped he’d have the balls to sell his country out?”
“Don’t remember. But I don’t think he said it quite like that.”
“Actually,” Cormac said, “I thought when I got the call you’d be wanting … other changes made. Ones involving a doctor.”
Wolfe smiled, moved his hand away from his waist, picked up his drink, and sipped. “I don’t think I’m that desperate yet.” He set the snifter down. “Cisco’s the one who originated that warrant.”
“Son of a bitch,” Cormac said. “I should have slotted him way back when. Remember when he tried to tell me how to run a snatch-and-grab and there were about a trillion Al’ar looming down on us?”
“I do. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever seen you raise your voice.”
“I was feeling hostile,” Cormac admitted. “That man doesn’t bring out the best in me. Never mind. And forget about paying for the ship mods.”
He pushed through the beginnings of Wolfe’s protests. “That wasn’t a question, goddammit. You might need the geetus later. Hell, if you’ve got an open warrant, I know you will. Sooner or later that frigging Cisco’ll change the terms and it’ll be dead or alive, no questions as long as the body bag’s full. Just you wait.
“And then you’ll really be sailing close to the wind. Cisco may be a stumblebum, but he’s dangerous. Especially when he’s got the whole goddamned Federation for backup.”
• • •
Wolfe felt the walls themselves might be pulsating to the music. The circular bar was filled, and the slide-tempo band in the center ring was sweating hard.
Cormac leaned close. “Well?” he said, half shouting to be heard.
“Well what?” Wolfe said.
“Well, it’s been two weeks. You feel any more relaxed than when you checked in?”
Wolfe shrugged. “I’ll relax when the Grayle’s ready to go. Lately I get twitchy when I don’t have a back door.”
“I’m pushing the crews as hard as I can right now. Most of the material’s in-shipped. Oh, yeah — I stole a nifty piece of signature-masking electronics out of a P-boat that got dumped on me last year. Put that in today myself.”
A voice said hello, and Wolfe turned. The woman was in her early twenties, had red hair in a pixie bob, and wore a designer’s idea of a shipsuit, made of black velvet with see-through panels. He returned the greeting. The woman held her smile, lifted a finger, and ran it slowly over her lips, then melted into the crowd.
“You been making conquests while I’m slaving in the guts of your ship?” Cormac asked wryly.
“Hardly. Never seen her before. You know her?”
“No. I think I’ve seen her once. Don’t even know if she’s pro or just looking for action.” Cormac shrugged. “You want dinner?”
Wolfe nodded, and they found a wall booth. Wolfe slid the privacy/sound one-way curtain shut and grimaced in the sudden hush. “I guess one of the drawbacks of the aging process is that music gets louder than it used to be.”
“While everything else gets dimmer,” Cormac agreed. “So the trick is to never get old.”
The menu glimmered to life between them. Wolfe studied it, then touched the sensors for a conch salad and curried crayfish brochettes.
“You want wine?” he asked.
“Never developed a taste for it,” Cormac said. “I’ll stick with beer.”
To accompany the meal, Wolfe ordered a half-bottle of a white whose description suggested it might resemble an Alsatian Riesling, and leaned against the back wall of the booth. Cormac touched his own sensor, and a mug of beer appeared from a trapdoor in the table’s center.
“Joshua,” he said carefully, “something I’ve wondered.”
“Wonder away.”
“The word was you grew up among the Al’ar. Is that right?”
“Not quite,” Joshua said. “My folks were diplomats. We were on Sauros for three years. Then the Al’ar jumped the fence, and we got stuck in an internment camp.” He paid deliberate attention to the drink menu and found a claimed Earth brandy. The drink arrived, Wolfe tasted it, made a face.
“Somebody’s chemist needs a trip to the home planet for research. Anyway, my folks died there, and I got off, and the Federation thought I was a hot item. And the war dragged on.”
“What do you think happened to the Al’ar?”
“They vanished.”
“No shit! Every damned million or billion or trillion of them, zip-gone? I was out there, too, remember? Where do you think they went?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can they come back?”
“I … don’t think so.”
“So we had ten years and who knows how many bodies so they could pull a vanishing act. Why did they start that goddamned war, anyway?”
Joshua considered his words. “Because they wanted the same thing we do. All the room in the gal
axy plus two yards. I guess space can’t support but one hog at a time.”
“So much for patriotism,” Cormac said. “Sorry. I got the idea you aren’t real fond of talking about them.”
“That doesn’t bother me,” Wolfe said. “I don’t much like talking about the war, though.”
“So what do you want to talk about?”
Wolfe considered, then smiled. “What about whether that redhead was real or not?”
The trapdoor opened, and their food lifted into view. Neither man spoke as they ate. After a time Cormac looked out.
“Here she comes again. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Maybe. After I finish eating.”
“Looks like she’s got a question of her own.”
The woman came over to the booth and tapped. Wolfe found the open sensor, and the music battered them.
The woman smiled and started to say something. Wolfe leaned closer.
“Joshua!” Cormac shouted, and went over the top of the table, knocking Wolfe back as a blaster beam crashed across the room and blew a hole in the booth’s back wall.
Wolfe was momentarily trapped between the back of the booth and the table. Cormac rolled away and Wolfe squirmed up. The redhead’s hand went into a slit in the shipsuit and flashed out with a tiny handgun.
Wolfe curled forward, smashing the table away, and his fingers snapped out and touched the woman’s gunhand. She shrieked; the gun went flying and she stumbled back as the first gunman fired again.
The blast took the woman in the back. Her body spasmed, and she flopped aside as Wolfe came out of the booth, gun in hand.
The gunman was on the other side of the band, running for the stairs that led to the upper deck.
Wolfe knelt, free hand coming up to brace the gun butt, elbow just on the far side of his knee.
Breathe … breathe … the earth holds firm …
His finger touched the trigger stud, and the gun bucked. The bolt took the gunman in the side, and he screamed, clawed at himself, and sagged, body slipping bonelessly down the stairs.
The room was screams and motion. Cormac was beside him, his own pistol out.
Wolfe glanced at the woman, saw dead, surprised eyes, and looked away. He went across the room, paying no attention to the hubbub, and kicked the gunman’s body over.