Pirates of the Thunder

by Jack L. Chalker

  The Val absorbed the available information, then was fed the mindprint of the band’s leader, Hawks. The historian was a fascinating individual, a man of some brilliance and accomplishment literally torn between his tribal and Center worlds. Though he was not a rebel or an adventurer, nor a man of action in spite of some romantic fantasies, it was clear that once Hawks had the documents in his possession he would have felt compelled to read them out of sheer curiosity and a hunger to know—and that he no doubt understood them and their implications.

  Recent events not included in the mindprint showed that he was capable of much adaptation, capable of killing if need be, and capable of living in and out of the wild as well. The Val was convinced that in a hopeless position Hawks would kill himself rather than surrender. He would not, however, desert his own people, particularly the women, unless forced to do so by circumstances or necessity. As a result, if Hawks could be located, so might most or all of the rest.

  They will go after the rings, the Val noted. Although it is unlikely, we cannot assume they do not already know their location. Vals must cover all four rings.

  Agreed, Master System responded. But you will not be posted there. They will need ships other than what they have. They will need contacts among the freebooters and others. The Koll Val is working on this end. You will assist. If any are sighted, trace them. So long as they do not possess all five rings, it is imperative that they be taken alive, so that we may find how many others share the forbidden knowledge. However, once they possess all five rings, if they ever do, then no limitations will be imposed.

  But surely there is no danger of them ever obtaining all five! They must run our gauntlet in each case!

  It is always possible. I see a hidden hand in this, one who has selected most of these for just this purpose. It is this hidden hand I want most of all. It is possible our great enemy is behind this. If so, then they are dangerous indeed. We can take no chances. Also, time is not necessarily on our side. If they do not succeed, but escape, we might well face their grandchildren. Go. You are programmed and assigned.

  The Val disconnected. The entire process, from Absolution through reprogramming, had taken just a few seconds. The Val, who thought often in computer time but functioned in human time, could not help but note this fact alone.

  How could they possibly win?

  1. THE WORLD THAT MOVES THROUGH STARS

  IT WAS A SPACESHIP—AND IT WAS MORE THAN THAT.

  It was a starship, a ship designed to go to places even the eye could not follow and to go distances beyond the grasp of human minds—but it was more than that.

  It looked very much like a great tube, flattened a bit on top and bottom and rounded at both ends, with protuberances that were bays for the scout ships that clung to their mother in special recesses, and sensors, and communications devices—and much, much more.

  The ship itself—one of the hundreds that circled great Jupiter in silence, shut down, but preserved and ready for reactivation if their service should ever be needed—was a bit over fourteen kilometers long. The ship had a brain and massive amounts of stored knowledge and skills that had not been needed in a very long while.

  “I wonder if it is bothered by that,” Cloud Dancer said, more to herself than to the others who were gazing at the viewing screen of their relatively small interplanetary freighter.

  “Huh?” Walks With the Night Hawks, her husband and co-conspirator, looked at her. “Who is bothered by what?”

  “The ship. It has a mind, a soul, as this one does. Its spirit is dedicated to work, to a great task, and it has been told to do nothing since it did that task. I wonder if it minds, sitting there idle, without hope or opportunity to do its task, to be itself, for all this time.”

  “It sure fought like hell to keep us out,” came the gravelly voice of the Crow Agency man, Raven. Not long, before they had been the targets of some of those fighters nestled inside the great ships; only deciphering the clearance code in time and some fancy maneuvering had saved them from being blown from the sky.

  “That was its duty,” the Hyiakutt Indian woman responded. She was quite smart, but having been raised in a primitive culture, she saw the universe from a perspective as alien to the others as they were to the computer brain of the great ship they now approached. “Now it receives us. I wonder if it is eager, or if it is waiting to devour us?”

  “Neither,” an odd voice said through the ship’s intercom. When Star Eagle, as they had named the computer pilot of the ship, spoke on his own, it was in a pleasant male voice, but when China was interfaced into the ship’s system, forming a human-computer synthesis, the voice sounded strange, neither male nor female, but somehow both at once. “There is no command module on any of these ships. It was removed when they were placed in storage here. These ships have many brains, as it were, since even the tiny fractions of a second it might take to relay an order might cause needless risk, but the only ones there now are automatic maintenance and ship’s security. The tech cult that discovered the human interfaces intended to fly the ship themselves, without a command module.”

  Hawks frowned. “Is that possible?”

  “Yes, but not efficient or practical. They did not think beyond that point, since even attaining that much was highly improbable. All plans were based on the escape, not what came next. Just like us.”

  Yes, but we’re at least better off than they would have been. We have Koll, who’s been out there, and information from Raven and Warlock. We are not going completely blind. He frowned, wondering if that was really true or if he was just trying to reassure himself.

  Still, he had no doubt they would get away. No mystical sense informed him, and he knew of no particular edge on their part, but even though they’d had to fight every step of the way to this point, he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow they were being led.

  Most of this crew had been selected, somehow, by Lazlo Chen, the ambitious chief administrator of the central Asian district and discoverer of the information that five gold rings could, if found and used properly, deactivate or control Master System. Chen owned the only one of the rings remaining on Earth, and was determined that this group secure the others for him. The stakes were quite high—nothing less than godhood for the one who found all the rings and brought them together.

  But even Chen was subject to Master System; even Chen had severe limits on his knowledge and power. Chen’s reach extended over the whole of the Earth and even beyond, but it did not reach as far out as Jupiter. Since their escape from the asteroid penal colony, Melchior, Hawks had been convinced that another player was also on the scene, one who also wanted them to succeed and whose reach did extend farther out. Who or what this player was could not be known now; nor could they guess whether it was using Chen for its own ends, or whether Chen was using it.

  This was a strange band to pick for such a mission. Hawks was a Hyiakutt Amerind historian, a student of rebels and warriors, not one himself. Cloud Dancer had been born and raised in the Plains culture, a primitive suddenly thrust into a world of what to her was magic. The Chow sisters came out of an equally primitive society in China, but as personal servants to Center personnel they’d had more experience with technology; they had an uncanny ability to pick even computer-encoded locks, though they were otherwise ignorant. Raven, the Crow security man built like a boulder, and his associate Manka Warlock, the Jamaican beauty with the cold personality and a liking for killing people, seemed more obvious choices, but neither of them had ever before left Earth. Out here in space they were as ignorant and helpless as he was. The selection of China, too, made some sense—originally known as Song Ching, she was the daughter of the chief administrator of China and the product of a breeding experiment to produce a subrace that was physically perfect and mentally so advanced it was hoped to be a match for the computer system—but she, too, had never been off Earth, and thanks to the cruel experimentation of the scientists on Melchior she was hardly a perfect choice now. Blind
and compulsively pregnant, her true value was only in her ability to use the human interface to become one with the mind of the ship’s computer pilot, as she was doing now.

  That, too, was a mystery. Why did these ships have interfaces for humans at all? Master System alone could build them, in far-off, wholly automated factories among the stars. Why was there a bridge, with connections to the vital parts and operations of the ships, as if humans and computers were supposed to work together? It was this absolute control of space that made Master System unbeatable, and it had been perhaps nine hundred years since any humans had traveled on spaceships as anything other than passengers. It would have been simple to build these ships so that no one could ever control or tamper with the command modules, the computer brains. Why hadn’t that been done?

  Even the huge interstellar vessel they were now approaching had positions for humans, and more than one bridge, yet these ships had not been built until after Master System had taken total control of humanity. These ships had been designed not for human use but to carry the bulk of humanity against its will to captivity among the stars. Why, then, were there a bridge and interfaces for humans, since without those they would have no escape, no opportunity to flee, at all?

  And then there was Reba Koll, the essential one, the only one who’d been out there before, and the only one who herself had used the interfaces illegally to pilot a spaceship. They had a lot riding on the memories and long-unused skills of the strange old woman with the tail, and she was quite mad—who wouldn’t have been after enduring ten years of experimentation on Melchior? She claimed not to be Reba Koll but someone—or something —else she would not now reveal. Even the security forces who had pursued them from Melchior claimed the same, and that worried Hawks. He didn’t think she was some sort of inhuman monstrosity, but he wondered if she was something very dangerous such as the carrier of a dread disease.

  The final two in the party had been unexpected additions to the mission. Silent Woman, a product of years of slavery and degradation in the primitive culture of North America, her tongue cut out, her body covered with colorful tattoos, was almost childlike, and there was little or no way to communicate with her on more than a rudimentary basis. She understood none of the languages the others used commonly—though Hawks had used a mindprint machine to give her basic English—and she seemed to live in a world all her own.

  Sabatini, the cruel captain from whom they’d taken this ship, was here involuntarily, a prisoner. They could neither trust him nor let him go; sooner or later, Hawks knew, they would have to face his disposal.

  There was nothing left to see on the viewscreen; Star Eagle was now so close to the massive interstellar ship that the vast bulk blotted everything out.

  “Strap in and prepare for a set of big jolts,” the ship warned them. “My reverse thrusters are shot thanks to the battle, and that means, in effect, no brakes. I’ve done as much as I can, but now we will have to be caught and halted by tractor beam and that’s going to be a pretty big shock. Helmets on and switch to internal air supply. I have no idea if we can maintain pressurization.”

  They were already all strapped in, both here and in the lounge and up on the bridge, yet each checked his own straps and webbing to make certain they were secure. The ship then activated the restraint system, pulling them back and holding them so firmly that it was hard to breathe. All were wearing pressure suits and helmets now, and they could only wait.

  Suddenly there was a massive jolt, a tremor that shook the whole ship, followed by another, then another. The ship seemed to lurch, moving in all directions at once, and all around were creaks and groans of metal in distress. Loud hissing sounds punctuated the moaning and groaning of fatigued metal. The sense of motion and the shocks stopped quickly; the noises did not.

  “What’s happening?” Warlock asked nervously. “We’re not going to die just on the edge of victory!”

  The speakers sputtered, hissed, and crackled. “I—released China—to her,” came the pilot’s normal voice. “Ship—break up. Suits on, hold tight—I—”

  “You’re breaking up!” Hawks said through his suit radio. “If I understand correctly the ship is breaking up in the tractor. Will you be all right?”

  “You—get in—soon as bays close. Decompressing... mand module—no serious danger to—China—”

  Suddenly there was silence except for the faint buzz of the carrier in the suit radio. The lights blinked, then went off, leaving the passengers for a moment in darkness and then in an eerie semilight as their helmet and small body locator lights came on.

  “Is the ship dead?” Cloud Dancer asked, awed by the idea. “Has Star Eagle now soared to the otherworld?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Hawks responded. “The body of the ship is dead, that’s for sure, but those computers have their own power supplies and sources of energy. It’s possible he’s still alive and we can rescue him. I hope so.”

  There was a sudden and unexpected jarring and the whole ship shuddered, then seemed to roll over slightly on its side, as the big ship’s tractor mechanism pulled them in, controlled by the automatic maintenance and defense systems.

  “We’re in!” Raven called. “Damn it, we’re inside the thing!”

  Hawks was suddenly galvanized into action. “Warlock, go forward and see to China and Reba Koll and bring them back here.”

  “No need” came Koll’s sharp, raspy voice over the radio. “We’re all right and coming back now.”

  “The command module,” China said in her own soft, high voice. “Have you seen to it?”

  “Huh?” Hawks frowned. “Where is it?”

  “Aft, in the first cargo hold. There’s a big round plate in the floor secured by nine recessed bolts and an electronic combination. You throw two long switches to reveal the lock.”

  Hawks looked around. “Okay, Chow sisters. That sounds like it’s in your department.”

  “No need,” China told him. “I know the combination and it can be set and timed to blow the bolts. I come as quick as I can. Someone get a measuring tool and meet us there.”

  “Do we have to do it now?” Warlock asked irritably. “It’s a damned machine. It’ll wait.”

  “It is one with us,” Cloud Dancer responded in a bitter, almost menacing tone. “It comes with us.”

  China was there now, being led by Reba Koll. Hawks shrugged as he was handed an electronic measure from Sabatini’s kit and went back with them. “Nobody leaves yet,” he cautioned. “You don’t want to go into that kind of place without backup.”

  “How long’s the air last in these things?” Raven muttered.

  “Better than sixty hours,” Koll told him. “There’s time.”

  “Yeah.” The Crow security man sighed. “There’s time, but is there air out there?”

  Hawks wasn’t quite sure what China had in mind, but he was willing to go along with her. She was a strange sort, but she knew these machines like nobody else did, and in a real sense the whole group was dependent on the blind girl.

  The plate was not easy to find in the dark; even under normal conditions they might have missed it. Recessed into the deck were two long mechanical rods that took some effort just to get lifted up a bit; they were almost as difficult to raise the rest of the way, eventually requiring the combined weight of Hawks and Raven. Finally, though, both rods were pulled up and then pushed over as far as they could go, and a center plate popped out revealing a dirt-caked touchpad. When they’d cleaned it off as best they could, China gave them the combination that she had learned from Star Eagle.

  Hawks nervously keyed it in, then they all stepped back, well away of the plate, and waited. There was no sound in the airless ship, but a sudden series of flashes burst around the plate and the bolts all seemed to leap out of their sockets. Moving quickly now, they pried the plate up and put it out of the way, revealing a cavity perhaps half a meter deep in which sat three small rectangular objects.

  “Pull up the center one carefully�
��very carefully,” China instructed. “Then measure its dimensions and tell me of its connectors.”

  Doing so carefully was a chore; magnetism or some other force kept the device seated well, and breaking that grip was tough. Finally, though, they got it up, measured it, and checked it over. The connectors, smoothly polished and brass-colored, seemed etched into the sides and bottom of the box; there were a lot of them in numerous patterns. Hawks did his best to describe them to China.

  She nodded. “For now, put it back so that it can continue to draw on its emergency power reserves,” she instructed. “Now we must go into the big ship.”

  “Just what is that, lady?” Raven asked, irritated that this didn’t seem to have much point after all that work.

  “That is the command module—the brain—of Star Eagle,” she told them. “The other two are management modules. They can live far longer there than we can in these suits, so we must hurry. We need to discover the equivalent place on the big ship and check it out as well.”

  Hawks understood. “You’re thinking of moving Star Eagle from this ship into command of the big one. Is that possible? Surely the design of the command modules will be different for a massive interstellar craft than for an interplanetary freighter. The operations will be far more complex.”

  “Not really,” she told him. “Most of it appears standardized so that they can be reprogrammed easily at any point. Master System doesn’t want any computer too sophisticated running these things, and particularly not one that can’t be reprogrammed on the fly. There is no guarantee; the size might be right but the connectors different, for example.”

  “What if it is?” Hawks asked her. “What if it’s impossible? How do we fly this monster?”

  “The way the tech cult who discovered the plans for these intended to do it. Direct interface, human mind to machine. Or minds, in this case. I suspect it will take several to manage it.”