by Hal Annas
The April issue of OTHER WORLDS
The magazine that is bringing truly great science fiction back to
its original glory!
Infinity to Infinity: Witch of the Dark Star
BOOK II
Being the story of Moxol the Murderer, and three stars of destiny under whose light he was to fight the metal men from the future!
Chapter One
THE stain on his blade was an annoyance. It would not come off. In the shape of a crescent near the point it was growing darker.
He stepped over the dead body, flung aside the curtain and entered the sanctum of the witch.
A tremor ran through him, a tremor such as he had experienced only once before, and that when he had cut his way through the defenders about the entrance to the golden room, aboard the Mallikan pleasure cruiser, and had seen standing just inside a child of a girl whose hair and eyes were as black as empty space. There had been no tears on her face, no fear in her eyes, but the knife at her breast had warned that if he came another step she would take her own life.
She would rather have died than to fall into the hands of Novakkans. And something in her eyes had told him that if she lived she would kill him.
In the attitude of the creature before him now was that same defiance. She was aged, twisted, bent. She steadied herself with a cane, and he had no doubt that within its length was a lethal ray or a poisoned blade.
A black robe hung over her skeletonlike body and accentuated the pallor of her wrinkled features. From an urn in the center of the shadowy room wreaths of smoke rose, broke and curled, giving off a pungent odor.
Her voice was cracked, rasping. “You are Moxol the Murderer.”
He didn’t deny it, nor was he astonished. Hot Novakkan blood flowed in his veins. At fifteen he had been three years in space with Rahn Buskner. They had pillaged whole planets, raped the spaceways, carried off treasure and slaves beyond reckoning. Word of their coming preceded them.
“You killed a man outside this place,” the witch added.
“In a fair fight,” he said. “The man crossed blades with me. But I have not come to banter. I have come to learn my destiny.”
“Your destiny is dark.”
Moxol advanced. “In another moment, Witch, I will carve my name on your heart. On far-off Xnor I heard that you could forecast a nova. On nearer Singuel I was told that you could say to the moment when a man would die. On still nearer Nocto it came to my ears that you could chart a human life to the last jot. Now tell me my destiny, and true, or I will deliver yours on the point of my blade.”
“You should not have killed the man.”
“He should not have tried to stop my entering here.”
“He did that at my orders to spare your mind. Your destiny is dark. Blood flows where you walk. To watch your life unfold can but bring madness.”
“Tell me, Witch.”
“It will take time and cost you much treasure. What have you brought from Xnor and Singuel?”
“It will cost me nothing and I will not wait. Tell me now or join the man who guarded your entrance.”
“You would kill me, a Magian?”
“I would kill a witch, a man, a woman, a devil, a spirit, a god. A Novakkan fears neither the now nor the hereafter, nor any curse you can cast. You have the space of a single long breath.”
“Then sit down and observe. But in the end, spare me. It may be that with foreknowledge you can avert much of that which is written concerning Moxol the Murderer.”
“No other has called me that and lived. I have never killed in cold blood.”
“True. But within a span, by your reckoning, of seven hundred days, the name will crackle across the galaxy. It will be written in blood. The hand of civilized man will be your scourge. It will drive you on to deeds more desperate, to spill blood as water. On planets unnumbered you will be hated, feared, and the price on your head will be so great it will give courage to the faintest of heart. Everywhere you turn your life, shall be sought. Babes in cradles shall know of Moxol the Murderer and grow up with bitterness in their hearts.”
“By what sign?”
“By the sign of the three stars, one of which is dark and deadly.
“The yellow star is a woman, tall, stately, fair, a queen. Men have died because of her, and because of her the galaxy will be divided. Planets will burn. Mighty warships will spread death and destruction. At the head of an armada stretching from star to star Moxol the Murderer will prevail for a time. But greater things are to come.
“The red star is a girl, slender, sensitive, auburn of hair, blue of eyes. In her nature are the elements that excite mem. From another era she will coax life and weapons of unlimited power. She will cast her lot with that of a man accepted as a god, whose power is greater than an armada. She will bring peace, but it is only a lull. What has gone before will seem but a breath beside the flood of death that is to follow. For there is yet the dark star.
“Go now before I unveil the three stars and show you how they are entwined with your life.”
Moxol was impressed, moved. No other had spoken like this. And in it was the ring of truth. He was not certain he wanted to hear the meaning of the dark star. Memory of a girl child brought the tremor coursing his spine. But he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t the witch casting a spell. His Novakkan blood grew hotter. “The dark star?” he said. “Tell me.”
“The dark star,” the witch cackled, “is the spirit of life and mystery in a dark and sultry girl, soon to become a woman of bewitching charm and power to move men. Her net is spread over Moxol the Murderer, and the spell that she will cast will unleash all the furies of hell. It will be she who opens the gate to another era and all the terrors of mortal and immortal creation from infinity to infinity.”
A single clear note from the ship’s audio reached him. He knew what it meant. Back at Xnor, Rahn Buskner had decided to rid the galaxy of the slave cultures in the Dexbo System. The rulers had grown too fat and wealthy. The plunder would be enormous and they had come in force, a score of slow cargo ships in their midst.
It had been a tedious journey, an uninspiring task. The slavers were backward, crude, craven. Their lordly strutting, their cruel tyranny over their subjects and property, their boasting of their deeds of prowess, had turned to water when they faced Novakkan steel.
There was no sense of satisfaction in shackling their bodies to the hulls of ships and carrying them into space. But it had to be done. Novakkan honor was at stake.
It was a peculiar thing, understood only by the true Novakkan who had descended from persecuted forebears whose code was as rigid as their lives were dedicated. A Novakkan might mistreat his captives, but when he sold them as slaves they must become workers, concubines, artisans, scientists, an integral part of the culture, forever under the protection of the law of Novakkan vengeance.
It was not cruelty that had established this law. It was the demands of survival.
Near the center of the galaxy a vigorous, dynamic, progressive race of Earthmen lived and probed outward. Probed forward, too, into the realms of science. To match their progress in weapons the Novakkans had to keep the races on the outlying planets healthy and forward looking. They had to compel the development of science. And they had found that unregenerate idlers, who practiced cruelty and grew fat on their slaves, stultified progress.
They purged the planets periodically, relieved them of their burdens of wealth, and often made the slave the master.
This was such a mission.
The ringing note informed Moxol that the ships were leaving for the last inhabited planet in this system. The task was nearly done.
Rut he was not done with the witch. He wanted all the knowledge she could give him of the dark star, of the sultry girl.
“The three stars,” her rasping voice told him, “hold your destiny. If you can avoid them you may live to a ripe old age.”
“The dark star, the dark girl?” he said.
“
She has already cast her mantle over you. Burn it with your gun. Avoid her as you would avoid falling into the hands of Earthmen.”
The ringing note came again, urgently. It meant that he had exactly nine minutes to reach the ship. His features grew darker. It would not be this way in the future. Rahn Buskner had promised that when his education was complete, with this mission, he would have a ship of his own. And a Novakkan’s word, given in honor, was as certain as his vengeance.
“Witch,” he said, “I cannot wait for your feeble mind to clarify the things you’ve told me. But someday I shall return. Be sure you have them in order.”
Whirling, he parted the curtains, leaped over the body and raced for the ship.
The task on the last planet was dull. He killed two men and one woman he found torturing slaves. He left the shackling to hulls entirely to others. He was preoccupied. Memory of the words of the witch came back. In every instance they brought thoughts of the dark girl child aboard the Mallikan cruiser.
As leader of the boarding party he hadn’t allowed the green-tinged giants at his back to enter the golden room. He’d been young then, fourteen, but with more than two years of raiding behind him. Those years had been filled with training, endless training. Never a day passed in space that he didn’t cross swords with a Novakkan fighting man. Never a day that he didn’t try his muscles against the bulk of men twice his size.
He learned every trick and his quick mind thought up new ones. At fifteen he could master any man aboard his ship and had crossed blades with some of the most skillful of Rahn Buskner’s men.
He had learned to plot the trajectory and spread of a heavy photonic charge. His hand ray-weapon was as familiar as the wide Novakkan belt he wore. He had seen and learned to defend himself against scores of weapons, such as Earthmen and Golgons under their domination employed. He had even fought the carnivore found toward Andromeda, and killed them with his long knife.
In his memory were the locations of hundreds of energy fields and gravity standouts. The latter would deflect the course of a ship unless corrections were made. They could be used to advantage in battle if the enemy were unaware of them.
Knowledge of energy fields enabled the raiders to drop through a segment of space into another many light years away. It made possible explorations to the very fringes of the galaxy.
His training had been rigid. Now it was nearing completion. On the journey back to Unor he would command a ship, and later a squadron. He had no way of knowing that they would encounter the SYZ Patrol and lose many ships before they cut the patrol in two and scattered its survivors.
He didn’t know that they would stop on Andam for repairs and again at Arcadia, and part with much of their plunder.
He hadn’t even a glimmer that has own ship would take a direct hit in the midsection and break in two as they approached Unor and home.
He couldn’t know. His thoughts were filled with a girl child whose eyes and hair were as black as all emptiness.
His mind was on her when the heavy photonic charge jolted him off his feet. And because he was a micro-second slow about making the decision to launch the lifeships he nearly lost his life.
And as the lifeship dropped toward the planet, and he thought of his ship and the men who died as it broke up, he knew that he would have to get that girl off his mind.
The mantle had indeed been cast over him. The spell had begun. But he meant to shake himself free.
CHAPTER TWO
AT Castle du David he found tension and excitement. His mother Aleta had been carried off by Earthmen to face some dark charge out of the past. His half-sister Aline had grown older, in some ways more beautiful.
And though older she had always seemed younger than he. There was no Novakkan blood in her veins to give her stature and the fierce energy that had come to him from his father.
Rahn Buskner was in a fury. The vast communication room was open, the atomic power plants running at full capacity, and the call to Novakkan vengeance was going out across the galaxy.
It meant that the scattered Novakkans would rally in force and at last express their hatred for Earthmen with fire and steel.
As he stood naked beside the big marble pool in the sun room he noticed the reflection of the scar across his groins. It had been made by the dark child of a girl. Even in her tender years she had known the crudest blow. She had meant to desex him.
Studying the wavering reflection, his six feet of height, his two hundred pounds of olive-hued muscle, he relived that frantic episode. He knew that if he entered the golden room she would kill herself. He turned away, and then, with the deceptive speed of a swordsman, whirled and leaped toward her.
He had stopped the knife from entering her own breast; he hadn’t stopped it from slashing his groins. He had been nearer to death, as she squirmed in his arms, than he had been in cutting his way through her defenders.
Even under the threat of torture she had refused to reveal where she was from or who might ransom her. But he got it out of her under drugs. And he learned something else. Deep in her subconscious she had never been more moved by sight of a person her age. With all her heart she wished that he was a civilized Earthling and not a bloody pirate.
The cruiser had been built on Mallika in the SYZ System. And she was an orphan Earthling on her way to live with relatives she’d never seen. In her subconscious she didn’t believe anyone loved her enough to ransom her.
He thought of selling her as a slave. But her small, delicate body wouldn’t bring a price, and he was certain no owner would keep her long. She was intractable. She would find a way of killing her owner or herself.
He finally told her his decision. “I’ll put you on the first ship headed for Mallika. When you’ve grown old enough to be worth something I’ll come and steal you and sell you in the Dexbo System.”
No scorn could’ve been more pronounced than hers. “I’ve left a mark on you,” she spat. “With every breath I’ve drawn I’ve prayed that it would get infected. If we ever meet again I swear to open your throat with my teeth, and when you’re dead to boil your heart in poison.”
Days passed and they had a brush with outmoded Golgon warships. When two had been destroyed and the others scattered he found the girl methodically crossing the wiring of the intercom and the photonic batteries. In that manner she hoped to destroy the ship and herself with it.
He locked her in a bare compartment, carried in her meals himself and himself took her out for exercise. As time went on he thought she grew more tractable, but the moment his vigilance was relaxed she almost got his photon gun.
It seemed hopeless. She could never be tamed. Then one day he found her crying. In her lap was a dead arrokot. It was small a winged pet taken from a plundered ship. In the fighting it had somehow got a broken leg. The small plastic air chamber in which it could be moved from ship to ship was inlaid with rubies. Knowing no harm could come of it, he placed arrokot and chamber in her bare compartment.
Later he had furnished her bandage and fragments of plastic with which to make splints.
It ate with her and for a while grew plump and cheerful. But the hard fare of a Novakkan raider was not its native diet, and something disagreed with its delicate system.
She begged for fresh fruits, but the raider was deep in space and the best it could provide was the unvarying fare from the hydroponic wells.
Cautiously, expecting to be slashed by her nails, he took the dead creature from her lap. She didn’t move. Nor would she eat again for forty-eight hours.
She grew so thin he had to take her out of the compartment, had to compel her to walk the nine-tenths of a mile length of the raider, to run up and down winding companion ways, had to compel her to look on as the fighting men went through their drills.
The green-tinged giants got used to her, got so they would do anything she asked, and when her garments got soiled she was offered hundreds, worth a fortune, from the plunder they had taken.
And when they
finally halted a lugger bound for Mallika and put her aboard, the raiders forced on her enough jewels and precious metal to buy a mansion and a hundred slaves.
It was he himself who warned the master of the lugger to deliver her safe or suffer Novakkan vengeance. And as if to emphasize the warning, the raiders followed until the lugger was within seventy-two hours of the space-lane and the protection of the SYZ Patrol.
She was just a child, twelve or thirteen, but as the battle-scarred raiders turned away, in search of fighting or richer spoils, every hulking green-tinged giant on his ship was thinking of her. He knew by the way they glanced out the ports, by the way they followed the course of that lugger on the visicoms.
The ship didn’t seem quite the same. The drills and swordplay became vicious and more than one lost blood for his recklessness. Fighting couldn’t come too soon, and when they got on the track of ore ships, bound for Earth, they pursued them right on into the Solar System, and didn’t turn back until they were hopelessly outnumbered by warships.
As he stood now beside the pool and looked at the reflection of the scar, he couldn’t avoid being reminded. He’d received other scars since, but none that had left such a deep gash in memory.
He didn’t like the pitiless way Rahn Buskner was driving the Unorians to overhaul the ships, for many were dying, but the call to Novakkan vengeance spared none. In carrying away Aleta the Earthmen had set in motion a tide of force that would crush everything in its way.
He was an inexorable part of that force. In the raiders’ clash with the SYZ Patrol he had proved his ability to command. He had brought to tactics skill and imagination that surprised even him. It seemed that he couldn’t make a wrong move.
Grasping the deception of two directions of motion at once, he had made good use of his laterals, and in repairing the ships saw to it that their power was increased.
He had long since passed his sixteenth birthday. His confidence had grown, and when Rahn Buskner divided the armada and put him in command of half of it, just before striking the spacelane and the Eg planets, he realized that literally tens of thousands of green-tinged giants depended on him.