Crown of the Serpent

by Allen Wold

  Sukiro was nearest Falyn, Rikard Glaine, and while their rescuers filled the ramp entrance with a volley, they dashed toward their respective exits and out.

  Glaine did not hesitate but led Rikard through another door into another octagon room, just as Falyn and Sukiro entered it. They all ran out yet another iris, up a short corridor into a third octagon room, then Sukiro and Glaine suddenly stopped. Behind them, Rikard could heard the sounds of heavy blaster-fire.

  "Yah haa!" Sukiro shouted. "That's our people! They've hit the pirates from behind!"

  2

  The turnabout was almost instantaneous. The retreating goons, even the disabled and the Vaashka-struck, took new heart and, under Denny's command, turned against the raiders once more. They were the Goon Squad, after all, and the only thing to do was to go on the offensive, as few as they were. Only the worst of the wounded, Rikard, and Gray shard now riding on Endark Droagn, stayed to the rear.

  The reinforcements, led by Sergeant Iturba and communicat­ing by means of the corn-link field-node, pressed the pirates from the other side, what had been their rear. They were armed with the heaviest of blasters, with which they blew out doors, smashed holes in the walls, and even occasionally shot holes in floor or ceiling. The pirates didn't have a chance. There was no place for them to go, and soon nowhere to hide.

  The pirates from the returning ship, as they later learned, numbered over five hundred, and the base crew had originally been more than two hundred, but counting for casualties, fewer than six hundred of the raiders survived. Against these were fifteen of the original platoon, four of which were wounded, and thirty reinforcements. The pirates didn't have a chance.

  The Vaashka had little or no effect on the reinforcements, whose armor was kept tightly sealed. The original platoon, now that their corn-links were working again, sealed up too. And because of what Sukiro told them about the Vaashka, the rein­forcements instituted a simple policy of blasting every one they saw.

  At last, as their numbers were quickly decimated, the pirates started throwing down their arms in surrender, and eventually, in a complex of connecting rooms, the battle ended.

  It took a while to get things straight. Wounded or Vaashka-affected goons disarmed and restrained the pirates. A few Vaashka, mostly administrators, were found still alive and taken prisoner. Grayshard instructed the goons on how to contain them, and how to disable the three Vaashka warriors that had escaped destruction. The blue-collar Vaashka driving the zom­bies were no problem, they were not intelligent enough to act on their own.

  Rikard and Sukiro went from room to room, moving through the cowed and defeated pirates, more than five hundred of them filling several chambers. Most of these were Human, but many were Srenim, who seemed to have been in charge of the others, taking their orders directly from the Vaashka.

  As Rikard and Sukiro finished the circuit of the prisoners, Rikard thought he saw a familiar face among the pirates on the far side of the room.

  "What is it?" Sukiro asked. Rikard pointed. The man with whom he and Darcy had made the deal back on Nowarth was now looking at them.

  Rikard and Sukiro went to meet him. As they neared, Djent-sin said sardonically, "Well, if it isn't Jack Begin."

  "Indeed it is," Rikard said. "Is this the other business you had to attend to?"

  "As you see," Djentsin said bitterly.

  "And when were you going to find the time to get the Leaves of Ba'Gashi?"

  Djentsin half laughed. "They're in my suite, here on this station. I found them in one of the museums here."

  "What's the matter," Sukiro asked, "your masters not paying you enough?"

  Djentsin stared at her contemptuously. "They are paying me very well indeed," he said, "but what does that matter com­pared with recovering Jhe Reliquiture? I fully intended to live up to my part of the bargain," he went on to Rikard, "but how about you? You can just take the Leaves now."

  "How much of a hero would you be," Rikard asked him, "if the Archipopulos knew how you had gotten the Reliquiture?"

  "That was just a trade with you," Djentsin said angrily, "and has nothing to do with this business."

  "Just what is your part in this?" Sukiro asked.

  But Djentsin stiffened his face and turned away.

  "He was the one who recruited us," another pirate, angry and despairing, said.

  "You must have needed money awfully badly," Sukiro said to Djentsin, "to have sold your own people into slavery like this."

  "I never did," Djentsin shouted, "I never sold my people! What are you to me, or these other non-Human beings, to me? I'd do it again, and would continue to do it for as long as necessary. You're not important, only the Reliquiture is important. I don't care what you do to me, I would have quit this business as soon as I had the Reliquiture anyway. 'Jack Begin,' or whoever you are, you can have the Leaves, just take the Reliquiture back to Derolos."

  "We have no deal anymore," Rikard said.

  "But what is the Reliquiture to you?" Djentsin pleaded. "You can become my people's hero now, you will be honored forever, please!"

  Rikard turned away, embarassed by the man's broken composure. "I'll do what I can," he said, "but I can make no promises."

  "Indeed you cannot," Sukiro said. And as she spoke two special members of the goon squad came forward, in answer to her silent corn-link command.

  "Msr. Djentsin," Sukiro told the pirate, "I hereby place you formally under arrest on the charges of kidnapping, murder, consoiracy, resisting arrest, and almost anything else I can think of. 1 must inform you that our present circumstances constitute a state of emergency, and that on my authority, this station is now under martial law. Your normal rights of defense must be put aside as long as my police are still in danger from your other expeditionary team. If you assist us now by answering my questions, what you say will not be used as additional evidence against you. Will you cooperate, or must I use forceful measures? I can only guarantee that should that be necessary, you will not be physically or psychically damaged."

  "What the hell," Djentsin said, and his voice broke. "I don't care. What do you want to know?"

  Sukiro's interrogation was not harsh. With Rikard and the two special goons as witnesses, she asked the broken pirate questions, and Djentsin answered. Yes, there were two fleets of raiders, working more or less independently. Yes, the second team was out, and could come back at almost any time, an hour or ten days from now, he didn't know. Yes, the pirates had sensor-proof equipment, supplied by the Srenim, but he knew nothing about how it worked, the Srenim despised Humans and confided nothing in them.

  The bodies stolen were indeed to be sold on the black market on Vaashka worlds. Djentsin didn't know how widespread the illicit practice was.

  "It is more common," Grayshard said at this point, "than I would like to believe, or than most of our governments would care to admit. Using animals as carriers is not that much differ­ent from Humans or other species eating the meat of specially bred stock. Adapting wild animals to the service might be com­pared to your eating similar wild animals, when all such are supposed to be protected by law. Using the bodies of sentient beings, as these 'zombie' riders have been forced to do, is com­parable to cannibalism."

  "And what about the brains," Rikard asked.

  "It is a complex thing," Grayshard said. "A Vaashka can link itself to neurological tissue, and resonate to its functions. I have not done it, I cannot describe the effect, except that it is exhila­rating, and addictive. The more developed the neurological tis­sue, the more advanced the brain, the more powerful it is, then the greater is its effect on the Vaashka who indulges. The brains of intelligent creatures are the most effective of all, as you would guess. The interaction is both more intense, more inter­esting, and in a perverse way more prestigious. Many Vaashka indulge in vat-grown neurology, as your people consume alco­hol. There is no harm and no stigma in that. It is tissue that was once independent that is addictive, and the more intelligent the source, the more
addictive it is."

  Sukiro found this all very interesting, but she had more ques­tions she wanted to ask Djentsin, and Rikard decided to leave her to her job.

  By this time the pirates were completely under control, and those who were fit were pressed into service to tend to the wounded of both sides, eventually to carry them back to the pirate headquarters, where they would be boarded on the raiders' ship. The Human raiders, leaders and followers, pre­sented no problem, but the Srenim refused to cooperate at all. These were all carefully restrained with security flex. At last they were ready, and with two of the Human raiders guiding, they started back toward the pirate base by the shortest route.

  But the base was some distance away, and as they went, they found lights already on in some rooms, and the ceiling lit in distant sections of corridor, and in one or two rooms a comcon screen was glowing, though blank. The pirates were as sur­prised by this as Rikard and the first platoon of goons.

  "Well," Colder said, "we knew the Tschagan were waking up."

  "Who are the Tschagan?" a pirate named Smith asked.

  "The people who built this place," Rikard told him.

  "But it's been a derelict for thousands of years."

  "Not really, just under stasis."

  It turned out that none of the pirates had had any experience with the Tschagan, and indeed didn't know who they were. But one or two of the Srenim, overhearing the conversation, began to pay attention.

  Grayshard was still riding with Endark Droagn, who was accompanying Rikard and Raebuck, who were close behind Sergeant Iturba, Sukiro, and Djentsin. "It would seem," Gray-shard said, "that there were always a few Vaashka warriors present among the custodial staff. They would be sufficient, I think, to keep away any of the few Tschagan who were awake during the pirates' occupancy of their base here."

  "Why didn't the Tschagan wake up their whole comple­ment," Sukiro asked, "when they knew there were intruders here?"

  "I don't know," Grayshard said.

  ~I don't think they could,~ Droagn said. ~With me plugged into their circuit, they were in a form of stasis that they wouldn't want maintenance technicians to be able to override.~

  "That would mean," Rikard said, "that all the attacks we experienced, at least until we got to the auditorium, were from the equivalent of janitors."

  "Somebody woke up some soldiers," Sukiro said.

  "There had to be some provision for arousing higher echelon administrators," Denny said. "Maybe when we diddled with that comcon, it set something off."

  "But surely the raiders experimented with the comcons when they first found this place," Iturba said.

  "No, we didn't," Djentsin said. "We never touched any of the electronics. It was totally alien, and we just assumed mere was no power."

  "But you had to use power for life support," Sukiro said, "and to keep those brains and bodies."

  "We brought our own generators in for that."

  "Then it had to have been the comcon," Rikard said. "I find that hard to believe, but it's just possible that when Falyn punched those buttons, that was the first time any of the electronics had been used, and we somehow inadvertantly sent a signal."

  "Ahh, I don't think so," Raebuck said. "More likely it was when I was fiddling with that big machine and turned it on."

  "What does it matter what woke them up," Charney said. "What matters is that they are awake, and there's millions of them, and even a platoon and a half of goons won't be able to handle that many. We've got to get off this station right now."

  "That's exactly what we intend to do," Sukiro said.

  "What are you talking about?" one of the goon reinforcements, named Quinn, asked.

  "This station isn't a derelict," Rikard said. "The people who built it are still on board. They were in stasis until just a few hours ago."

  The remnants of the first platoon quickly informed their fellows as to what had happened, what the Tschagan were like, and how they had fought. Only the Srenim seemed unconcerned, though they listened intently.

  "Do they know something we don't know?" Rikard asked Droagn.

  ~They could, and that makes me nervous. It's one thing to sneak into a place like this secretly. It's something entirely different when they know you're here and come looking for you.~

  "You can't be sure that they're all going to wake up now," Raebuck said.

  But even as she spoke a comcon screen blinked on. There was only a brief flicker-image of a Tschagan face looking at them before the screen went blank again. But the screen stayed on.

  ~I think they are all waking up now,~ Droagn said, ~and they are obviously very aware of us, and know where we are.~

  "Do you feel air moving?" Denny asked suddenly.

  "I do," Rikard answered, and so did everybody else.

  "They've turned on the main ventilation," Falyn said.

  "And look." Raebuck pointed at one of the strange, round-edged objects standing on the floor, set diagonally into the corner of the room they were passing through at the moment. It was blue, a meter tall, half a meter wide, and three meters long. It was striped and smeared with grayish dark brown, with things like red fingers sticking out of the middle of each face. The fingers were moving in and out.

  "All the equipment is being turned on," Charney said.

  "How long," Rikard asked Droagn, "would it take them all to come out of stasis?"

  "It's hard to say. It feels like they're waking up about a thousand at a time, but I can't feel the whole station. It's been a while since I was disconnected from the circuit. I'd guess they could arouse the whole population in a matter of days, maybe a lot less.~

  "I still don't understand why they put you in the center of the stasis circuit," Rikard said. "They had to have some other way of accomplishing the same thing, they couldn't depend on you coming and being captured."

  ~They just took advantage of the situation,~ Droagn said.

  "It's really quite simple," Raebuck told them. "The Tschagan liked to dominate people, and use them. I think it gave them a kick knowing that a member of one of the most powerful and mysterious species in the galaxy was enslaved to their machine and them."

  ~That would certainly have great appeal,~ Droagn said. ~And I think we'd better hurry. It's hard to judge distances, but I can feel a number of Tschagan coming in our direction, and I don't think they're very far off.~

  They hurried on toward the raiders' base, even as more and more of the objects in the rooms, the lights, the occasional electronic devices came on or began to move or change shape. They could all hear a slight humming now, further evidence that the derelict was a derelict no more.

  "They're coming up to full power," Sukiro said. "What do you want to bet that they intend to try to reassert their position in the galaxy?"

  "No bet," Rikard said. He nodded at a comcon screen as they passed. There, full in view, and slowed so that the Humans and others could clearly see it, was the face of a Tschagan.

  3

  The goons found it difficult to keep all their prisoners under control, but as more comcon screens came to life, and as other equipment behind panels in walls came on, the pirates became as eager as anybody to get back to their ship and away.

  At last they came to the perimeter of the pirate base, where rooms had been cleared out but not yet converted to their new uses. The pirate leaders began to feel more relaxed, but as they went through an iris into an area that had been modified as a kind of common room dining hall, they found the Tschagan there ahead of them, waiting motionless until the first of the group had entered. They became almost invisible as they moved to attack.

  Before the police could react the Tschagan opened fire, and a fusillade of shots came through other doors around the large room. The goons were still fully armored and not hurt by the small caliber projectiles, but the pirate prisoners were unpro­tected. The police returned fire and retreated from the room, but not before thirty or so of the prisoners nearest the front fell wounded or dead.

&
nbsp; "Everybody back out," Sukiro commanded. "Keep the pris­oners to the rear." With so few police, and so many prisoners, it took several seconds for the group to respond. The first platoon, though their weapons were lighter, kept to the fore and, when the irises in front of them started to snap, were the first to get off their shots. The more heavily armed reinforcements added to the barrage belatedly, and destroyed the irises in the process.

  The Tschagan, in ambush, had not been ready for so quick a response, and it was several seconds before they attacked again. That was enough time for the police to get their prisoners moving away from the base. But the second attack, when it came, was from the two forward flanks. Again, the police armor was proof, but nearly twenty pirates fell dead.

  Grayshard and Droagn were in the middle of the group, a room or two back from the attacks, and at first didn't know what was going on. But as soon as they got word of the ambush Grayshard had Droagn carry him back to where the other Vaashka were being kept. Sukiro and the sergeants were busy organizing the retreat so Rikard went along to keep track of things.

  Corporal LeClarke, in charge of the Vaashka, wasn't pleased with either Droagn or Grayshard, but Rikard explained the effect the Vaashka warriors had on the Tschagan and LeClarke reluctantly let Grayshard talk with the prisoners. Rikard could not even hear their communication, half chemical and half telepathic, but the conversation obviously disturbed the prisoners, who waved tendrils and fibers around, changed form from spheres to columns to low disks and back again, and otherwise seemed to be resisting Grayshard's suggestions.