by Chris Bunch
“Now it is time to show you some deaths.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Federation Hides Deadly Secret:
DEATH STALKS DREAMERS
Do the Al’ar Somehow Murder from Beyond the Grave?
By the Federation Insider’s Special Investigation Team
A strange, supernatural death has struck at least a dozen of the Federation’s most noted psychics and mystics, a special investigation by your Federation Insider has discovered.
According to secret police reports that were provided to your Insider’s newshounds by concerned higher-ups within the government, these vision-favored men and women all died in the same manner: burning to death in awful agony. Yet none of them had time to scream or cry for help, since in several cases loved ones or others were nearby and heard nothing.
In one horrifying case Lola Fountaine, who has frequently made predictions for your Federation Insider over the years, was in the company of her business advisor and best friend when she suddenly clawed at her throat, and her body, the terrified friend told police, showed a terrible rash, then turned red, as if burning, then the flesh charred and boiled, lifting away from the bone. “Yet,” she went on, “there were no flames, and I felt no heat.
“It was almost like Lola was struck by some strange disease, some virus, that killed her by fire before she had time to call for help,” the friend went on.
Lola was not the only one.
The first to die, Federation officials believe, was the late Leslie Richardson of Earth, once known as “The Great Deceiver,” whose body was found on his houseboat two months ago.
With at least a dozen dead, the Federation Insider queried officialdom as to why this horror is being kept secret. None of those we questioned had any response other than “No comment.”
There are only two similarities to the deaths: All of the victims were known for their extraordinary powers; and all of them specialized in psychic investigations of the monstrous Al’ar.
Other known victims, and the circumstances of their death, are …
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The crystal spindle’s fire gleamed no more. It hung, dead, in emptiness, far from the nearest star. There were two other ships nearby. Joshua recognized them as Federation long-range scoutcraft, probably Foley class, built within the last five years.
“So the Federation did find the Lumina,” he said. “Why was Cisco lying to me?”
“As I said previously, my explanation is that the one hand knows not what the other does,” Jadera said.
“You said there were deaths here,” Taen said, “so something beyond the discovery of the Lumina occurred here.”
“It did,” Jadera agreed. He went to another screen, touched its surface.
The image showed the Lumina carrier ship, then moved past it, into emptiness. Then there was something visible, something too small to show up on the screen.
It was the body of a human. He wore no spacesuit, and most of his head had been shot away.
“Here is the first death. None of us can tell what might have happened. One Who Fights From Shadows, bring your Terran eyes to this, so we may learn and decide what must be done next.”
“Suit up,” Joshua said in Terran. “We’ll go visiting.”
• • •
The entry lock of the Al’ar ship bulged outward, and three beings moved through its viscosity into space.
“Are you hearing this band?”
“I am,” Wolfe said. “You correctly set my suit’s communicator.”
White mist came from the driver on Wolfe’s suit, what appeared to be green light from the belts of the two Al’ar, and they moved toward the Lumina’s carrier-ship.
Wolfe looked back at the Al’ar craft. Like his Grayle, its bulk belied the size of the crew — only ten Al’ar had been needed to man the craft before it lifted away from the Guardians’ world.
The ship was named Serex, which translated as Swift-Strider. It was a light cruiser and looked as starkly alien as it was, with a sickle-shaped “wing” that housed the drive, fuel and weapons pods, and twin ovals that hung inside the c-curve at the front for the crew.
The cold past ran down his spine, and he remembered the war, seeing other Al’ar cruisers snap out of N-space toward him.
The Lumina’s carrier-ship loomed close, and he reversed, braked briefly, and touched down on the skin of the craft. It was ridged, and he used the ridges as handholds to follow the two Al’ar to the entry lock.
Jadera touched the circle in two places and it bulged expectantly. They pushed their way through.
Wolfe looked at his suit’s indicators and saw there was zero atmosphere.
The ship’s interior was a single circular room, the walls lined with screens, controls. Coming down from the ceiling and up from the floor were two pylons about a foot in diameter.
The three-foot space between them was empty.
“Here is where the Lumina would have been?” Wolfe asked.
“Just so. The suspending forcefield has been shut down.”
Wolfe went back to the lock and examined its edges closely.
“There are signs of damage,” he said. “Someone forced the entryway and entered who did not know the pattern of this entrance.”
“A Terran.”
Wolfe nodded, then realized the gesture couldn’t be seen. “Almost certainly,” he said. “Would there have been any devices protecting the Lumina?”
“None. The stone’s potency is lessened by anything that blocks any sensory approach.”
“So this person would have entered and seen the Lumina hanging in midair. How would it have appeared? Blank, dull, like mine, when I am not using it?”
“No,” Jadera said. “The Overlord Stone is always reflecting a measure of the energy going into the smaller stones.”
“So somebody — maybe a couple, three somebodies — boards this ship, and here’s the biggest jewel they’ve ever seen. Real hard to figure what comes next,” Wolfe mused aloud, without keying his mike. He looked around the chamber again. No thoughts, no impressions came.
“Let’s go look at the other exhibits,” he said.
The first Federation ship’s outer lock yawned. Wolfe maneuvered into the small portal, saw the inner lock door was also open.
He ran his fingers along the edges of the lock, then looked at black smudges on his glove’s fingertips. He undipped a light from his belt and pulled himself into the ship’s interior, the two aliens behind him.
There were nine dead men inside, grouped around the unfolded chart table. Their bodies had exploded when the lock was blown open, then, as the years passed, withered into dry mummies. Their blood and body fluids were dried red, brown, gray spatters on the bulkheads and overhead.
Wolfe glanced at the bodies, then went past them to the scout’s main control panel. There was a gaping hole to one side. Wolfe touched it, again saw black on his fingertips.
He examined the controls, found the emergency override Switch.
“Try to pull that outer door closed and turn the locking wheel as far as it will go,” he asked.
Taen obeyed. “It appears to have sealed.”
Joshua closed the override switch, saw indicators flicker feebly to life.
“There’s still air in the bottles. Stand by.” Again, he examined the control board, touched sensors.
Overhead lights glowed into faint yellow life.
An indicator on his suit’s panel moved sluggishly. Joshua opened his faceplate.
“We have atmosphere,” he said. “Unseal your suits.”
The thin air smelled dead, dusty.
The two Al’ar slid their faceplates up.
“Why did you do this? We have no need of their atmosphere,” Taen asked.
“Because it’s hard as hell to do a shakedown with gauntlets. Shut up. I want to pay attention to what I’m doing.”
Wolfe took his gloves off and, beginning with the first man, trying not to look at his twisted gri
mace, he systematically went through the pockets and pouches of the torn shipsuit. He did the same for the other nine men.
“Not a bit of ID,” he said, sounding unsurprised. “Now for the ship’s log.”
He sat at the pilot’s chair, again fingered controls.
Nothing happened.
He looked to one side, saw a small slot where something the size of a ship’s log cartridge would have been. The slot was empty.
He found the ship’s safe. The door had been blasted open, and papers were scattered on the deck. He knelt, went through them.
“No ship’s roster, no orders, no nothing.”
He went to one corpse, touched the crumpled skull, closed his eyes.
He felt back into dim time, felt surprise, horror, agony.
“Do you know what happened?” Jadera asked. “We were unable to determine who was the murderer, since all of the Terrans died by violence.”
“Pretty sure. Let’s take a look at the other ship. I’ll predict we’ll find one more body.”
“We do not need to investigate that ship unless you need to,” Jadera said. “It is just as you said. How did you know?”
Joshua didn’t respond but pulled his gauntlets on and turned their wrists until they clicked sealed.
• • •
The second scoutship showed no sign of damage, and Wolfe opened the lock and entered. There was still air in the ship. As the inner lock cycled open he wrinkled his nose, smelling what he’d expected, an echo of the familiar sweet stench of an unburied corpse.
This man had died more quickly than the others. A blaster bolt had cut him almost in two. Over the years the body had decayed slowly, the ship’s conditioner system fighting against corruption: skin pulled tight against bone, ripped, tore. Fingernails, hair grew as flesh vanished. The corpse leered at Wolfe.
Wolfe went to the controls, touched sensors, and the panel came alive. He scanned it.
“Plenty of fuel … air … we’ll take this one back with us.”
He spun around in the chair. The two Al’ar stood on either side of the corpse, their eyeslits fixed on him.
“First,” he said, “is we get rid of that.”
Joshua found a thick plas tarp, rolled the remains into it, and the three lifted the tarp to the lock and cycled it out into space.
He found his lips moving in almost-forgotten phrases as the body orbited away aimlessly.
“Now, Joshua Wolfe,” Jadera said in Terran. “Tell us what happened.”
“It’s pretty obvious,” Wolfe said. “These scouts have four-man crews for most missions. Two men and one kills the other, three and it’s two against one, five is cost-ineffective.
“They send them out in three-ship elements.”
“Ah. There is one ship and one man missing.”
“This is what I think happened,” Joshua went on. “Possibly these scouts came on the Lumina craft by accident, although I find that almost impossible to believe. They’ve got good sensors, but space is pretty big the last time I checked.
“Maybe the Lumina ship radiated some kind of signal that could be received by someone, and they were just being curious as to the source of this signal. Or maybe they were following up on something Naval Intelligence picked up on one of the Al’ar homeworlds.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
“I do know that at least one member of the crew was Chitet — maybe the man that’s missing, although that’s not likely.
“They found the Lumina carrier ship, boarded it, saw the Lumina. The biggest goddamned jewel any man could believe. Somebody got greedy. I’d guess …”
Wolfe stopped, thought for a time.
“Jadera,” he asked slowly, “if someone, someone who had never been trained, concentrated on the Lumina, what would he see? Anything at all?”
“That is almost an impossible question to answer,” the Al’ar Guardian said. “But I can hazard a thought. If someone saw the Lumina as what you said, a jewel of inestimable value, and he gazed into it, the Lumina would most likely reflect what he brought to it.”
“Dreams of glory,” Wolfe said.
“This is so. I would imagine he would suddenly find his mind filled with all manner of possibilities.”
“So we have,” Wolfe went on, “our dreamer, whom the Lumina has just taken to the roof of the temple. So he arranges a conference on some pretext aboard one ship. One man — or woman — is left on each of the other two. Standard policy.
“Our villain arranges to be the last to arrive, waits until he knows everybody’s unsuited, then blows the lock safety and the inner door open.
“He goes to this ship, kills the man here, and then, or maybe later, shoots the man on the third ship and pitches him out the lock.
“At leisure, he tries to make sure he — or she — is going to be able to disappear, and destroys all the crew IDs and the ship’s log so, he hopes, nobody can know which of the twelve did it.
“Then he vacates for parts unknown, and fame and fortune, in the third ship with the Lumina.”
“Why did he not use the ship’s weapons to destroy the other two, and leave a completely clean trail?”
“I don’t know,” Wolfe said. “But I can make a pretty close guess.
“Murder doesn’t come as easy as people think it does. Especially the first time out. It scrambles the brain a trifle. I remember serving a bounty once on a woman who murdered her family for the death benefits and then forged their names on bank records after it was already known they were dead.
“Our friend managed to commit eleven murders successfully. Now he’s suddenly up to his bellybutton in gore. These were people who were his shipmates, maybe even his friends until a few hours ago.
“All he wants is out and away.”
“I do not understand all of your words,” Jadera said. “But it appears you are making sense.”
“I do,” Taen said. “He is.”
“So our man flees with the Lumina. What would he do with it? Sell it?” Wolfe asked.
“He might think of doing that,” Jadera said. “But it would certainly take a measure of time to do. Particularly if any of the details were known in the Federation. But more likely he would, especially if he spent some time considering the stone, thinking into it, and understanding what it was telling him, realize it could be used to get him far greater riches than just selling it could ever bring.”
“What could it give an unskilled man, one untrained in using a Lumina?” Joshua asked.
“It could give him certain insights, feelings that he could follow. What someone intended, what someone was really planning, really thinking. It is likely that a man who would think of killing, who did kill, would be encouraged by the Lumina to go in evil ways. It, of course, is unconstricted by human or Al’ar customs or laws.”
“So he’s gone to ground somewhere and is busy trying to become the Great Nefarious Something-Or-Other. I can think of a couple of ways to go looking for him,” Wolfe went on. “But first we’ve got to worry about the Chitet.
“I said before that I thought there was a Chitet mole — sorry for the slang, an agent — among the men and women on these ships. Some time between the discovery of the Lumina aboard the ship and the killings, he or she managed to dump a report off into N-space.
“The Chitet got that report. That’s what put them in motion, looking for anything resembling a Lumina or anything like an Al’ar, since they were specifically interested in the Mother Lumina.
“Now, if they believe this is the root of all Al’ar power … no wonder they’ve been getting a little testy lately.
“Next the Federation hears about all this activity, and it’s wandering around trying to figure out what the hell is going on. That’s why they came to me.”
“Yes,” Jadera said. “That makes uncommonly logical progression. So what we must do is find out more about this scout team so we are able to track the murderer and recover our Lumina. You said you knew of some ways.”
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“I do. That’s why we’ll need this ship. It’ll give me a starting point — inside the Federation. I’ll start by — ”
A warning shrilled in his speaker.
It came from the Serex.
“Jadera … our sensors report transmissions coming from the ship you are aboard, being broadcast into N-space.”
“Son of a bitch,” Joshua swore. “Somebody booby-trapped this goddamned thing.”
Taen and Jadera looked about, as if they would be able to see the source of the transmission.
Breathe … feel … reach out …
The Lumina was warm against Joshua’s skin.
He saw the vibrations their hurried questions made in the air, felt the waves the transmission from the Al’ar ship, and something else.
He pushed past the Al’ar and pulled the inner lock door open. He reached under the sill of the outer lock door and pulled out a black, soft cylinder about a foot long that had been worm-curled out of sight.
“Kill it!” he ordered, and threw it on the deck.
Taen’s sidearm came out, and he touched the firing stud.
The air shattered with the blast as the bolt struck the transmitter, and the metal deck seared.
There was silence.
“Back to your ship, Jadera, Taen,” Wolfe ordered. “Somebody already found these ships and set a little alarm between the time you Al’ar came here and now. Maybe they were hoping the murderer’d come back to the scent. I’ll bet the bug was set by the Chitet.
“That transmitter’s shouting for backup, and I’ll bet it’s not far away. The Chitet have everything riding on this card.”
“What will you do?” Jadera asked.
“They’ll want to track whoever was here. They can’t know about the Guardians. You two return to the planet. I’ll hang on here and give them something to chase.”
“You are being foolish,” Jadera said. “We can fight them with the Serex.”
“They’ll be coming in something big, too big for you. Goddammit, they’re buying battleships! Let them chase me around for a while. If I could run rings around your watchdogs in the war, I know I can play the fox with these sobersides.”