The Sky is Filled With Ships

by Richard C. Meredith

  Yes, Herrera said to himself, we’ll let Franken handle this—for now. The STC is a proud bunch of bastards, but we’ll see to that one day, too.

  And just to be on the safe side, he thought as he leaned back in his chair, he would send a few Federation men in to—ah—give assistance to the president of the STC. Maybe even send a ship to buzz over Central, strike a little fear into everyone: Citizen Altho Franken included. Let him know that Jonal Herrera expected him to keep his word.

  Herrera nodded decisively and leaned forward.

  After making a very brief 3-V call, the Chairman quickly penned a memo to accompany the copies of Juliene’s report. Those to whom he was sending copies would have to know the true gravity of the situation—he could accomplish nothing by lying to the men upon whom his life and power depended.

  The Federation has suffered a defeat, he said in effect, serious but not fatal. The enemy has won this engagement, but only with heavy losses. Now he must proceed to Earth to make good his claims of victory—and Earth will be no easy conquest: she is heavily protected by Orbital Forts, the Lunar Garrison, the Auxiliary Terrestrial Defense Forces and the remnants of the armada that is even now rushing to her aid. In addition, STC patrol ships are headed for Earth to assist in the home planet’s defense. The Federation has lost a battle, he said, but not the war. We will not sue for peace. To make good his victory the enemy must take Earth herself, and—so said the Chairman— that he cannot do. His fleets will smash against the rock of the Federation and his rebellious challenge to law and order will thus be ended.

  Chairman Herrera slipped his memo into the copier and leaned back in his chair. There were lines of fatigue in his face but anger burned brightly in his eyes. The rebels did not own Earth yet, and, by heaven, they would not do so as long as Jonal Herrera lived—for Jonal Herrera owned Earth and all the Federation—what there was left of it.

  Chapter XVII

  There were four living men and a girl in the large, plush office of the President of the Solar Trading Company. One of the men lay on the floor, bound, his eyes open and pleading, but unable to speak because of the gag in his mouth. Another sat behind the big desk, the grogginess of a stunner beam still on his face, but overlaid with an awakening anger. The two remaining men stood across the desk, weapons in their hands, and stared at him. The girl stood silently, unspeaking, watching and waiting. In a closet near the main office lay the body of an STC Pinker captain, dead from a slug of lead in his chest.

  For a few moments after the brief battle, Janas had feared that the sound of the gunshot would be heard and bring all the Pinkers in Central down on them, but apparently it was not so. Franken’s office and the corridor outside were soundproofed; the acoustic insulation must have prevented the sound of the blast from being heard by anyone else in the building. For that Janas was grateful, though the necessity of killing an STC Pinker had left him with a sick and empty feeling.

  “Sudden death is an occupational hazard of men in his line of work,” D’Lugan said flatly.

  “That doesn’t make my being the instrument of it any more pleasant,” Janas answered. “He was an STC man.”

  “That he was,” D’Lugan agreed, but said no more.

  While they waited for Franken to awaken, D’Lugan brought Janas up to date on the events of the past few hours. As he had suspected, there had been a spy in their midst, though even now Jarl Emmett was not sure of his identity. The unknown spy had relayed the events of the night before to Franken, who had then proceeded to have the conspirators arrested. A counterspy from Emmett’s camp had learned of the coming arrests and alerted the Operations Supervisor. He had quickly taken steps to hold the vitally important Operations building and began alerting the other members of the conspiracy, telling them that one of D’Lugan’s proposed plans was now in effect. Having been unable to contact Janas, Emmett had sent D’Lugan to warn him. Delayed, narrowly avoiding arrest himself, D’Lugan had arrived at Janas’ suite just in time to assist him.

  Modifying the plan slightly, the next step was to get Janas, and together attempt to capture Altho Franken and his brother Bilthor and hold them until Jarl Emmett could come from Operations to take them.

  “First we’ve got to revise corporate policy, right?” D’Lugan asked. “Okay, STC Central’s computers, and particularly the Operations computer, have to have Franken’s policy of cooperation with the Federation removed and then replaced with strict neutrality. Well, that could be done in two ways. One is to get the Board of Directors to sign a countermanding order, but we’d never get them to do that. The other is to get an emergency priority order signed by the president and vice president in charge of Operations. That’s what Jarl has in mind.”

  After a brief pause D’Lugan went on. “Franken here and his brother both have to sign and submit thumb and retinal prints to the computer before it will accept an emergency high level policy change. Once they do that, Jarl can submit orders to the computer implementing the ‘new’ corporate policy.”

  “Do we have to take them to Operations to do that?” Janas asked. “Why can’t we do it from here?”

  “Well,” D’Lugan said, “Jarl says that there are only half a dozen computer input stations in Central that will accept high-level policy changes. All but one of them are in this building—but he doesn’t think we stand much of a chance of getting to any of them. The remaining one is at Operations and Jarl still has control there. We’ll have to take the Frankens there and feed in the information.”

  Franken finally pushed himself erect in his chair.

  “What is this, Bob?” he asked.

  Janas did not speak at once. After a long, empty silence he finally said: “You forced our hand, Al. We had to act.”

  “It’s madness!” Franken spat. “What do you hope to accomplish? Tell me that.”

  “We hope to save your skin,” D’Lugan answered, the stunner in his hand leveled at Franken, “and ours along with it.”

  “I’ll see you shot,” Franken replied. “You too, Bob. I don’t give a damn how close a friend you’ve been. So help me, I’ll see you shot.”

  “Maybe,” Janas answered, “but maybe before then we’ll be able to salvage something out of this mess.”

  “You’re crazy, Bob,” Franken cried. “The only way to save Earth is give the Federation what help we can.”

  “Save Earth!” Janas said. “Hell, Al, nothing can save Earth. Nothing in the universe can prevent the destruction of the Federation and the conquest of Earth. It’s only a matter of time until Henri Kantralas sits in Geneva—if he doesn’t blow it off the map. What we’re trying to save is the STC.”

  “How?” Franken asked bitterly. “How do you knights-errant plan to save the STC?”

  “Well,” Paul D’Lugan said slowly in a terribly cold voice, “our first step is to get your brother Bilthor up here.”

  “And how are you going to do that?” Franken asked.

  “You’re going to call him,” D’Lugan answered. With that he opened the butt of his stunner, made a slight adjustment with a pocket screwdriver, and closed the butt plate. “Citizen Franken,” he went on slowly, “this isn’t a regulation stunner. It’s a special model carried by officers of the Rim Fleet. Maybe you recognize it. I’ve made an adjustment that increases the power several times. Now, if I were to fire it at you it would not merely temporarily paralyze your nervous system; it would destroy it. Do you understand me?”

  Franken’s face went ashen, but he did not reply.

  “I said, do you understand me, Citizen Franken?”

  Franken nodded at last.

  “And I mean it.”

  Janas looked at the hard-faced young man and knew that he did mean it. A half centimeter movement of his index finger would reduce Altho Franken to a vegetable, would leave him no more than a pain-racked, babbling idiot whose useless life could only be maintained by the most advanced techniques of Federation medicine.

  “Citizen Franken,” D’Lugan went on, “we h
ave nothing to lose now. If you don’t cooperate I shall certainly do it.”

  Franken looked at Janas, fear and pleading in his eyes.

  “He means it, Al,” Janas told him.

  “And you’d let him?” Franken cried. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I was,” Janas said, “but Al, you just said you’d see me shot.”

  “I didn’t mean it!” Franken yelled.

  “He does,” Janas replied. “And I won’t stop him. I think you’d better call Bilthor.”

  “What about Enid?” Franken said suddenly with the desperate urgency of a man grasping at straws.

  “What about her?” Janas asked, stiffening the grip on the .45 in his hand.

  “You care a lot about her, don’t you?” Franken asked, color beginning to return to his cheeks, confidence to his voice. “You wouldn’t want her hurt?”

  “She won’t be hurt,” Janas said coldly.

  “Are you sure?” Franken asked.

  “What do you mean?” Janas felt anger rising in him.

  “If anything happens to me…” Franken began.

  “Do you claim you have her?”

  “Yes,” Franken answered. “My men captured her this morning.”

  “Where?”

  “In her apartment.”

  “What apartment?”

  “The one she has in Frisco, in the building where her brother lives.”

  “Prove it!” Janas felt his finger involuntarily contracting on the trigger.

  “You’d better take my word for it, Bob,” Franken said, something like a smile coming onto his face.

  “You’d damn well better prove it, Al,” Janas said. “Enid wasn’t in her apartment this morning or any time today. She left it yesterday.”

  “Nobody saw…” Franken began, then realized his error. The smile vanished; the ghost of confidence went out of his face.

  “Call Bilthor,” Janas said, gesturing toward the communicator with his pistol.

  Slowly, like a man weighted down on a high gravity planet, Franken moved his hand toward the communicator on his desk.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” D’Lugan said.

  Franken nodded, and punched out a code on the communicator.

  “Citizen Biltho Franken’s office,” came a pleasant female voice. From where he stood, Janas could not see the face in the tank. “May I help… Oh, Citizen Franken.”

  “Connect me with Bilthor,” Franken said, his voice shaken and cracked.

  “He isn’t in his office at the moment, sir,” the girl said. “And I don’t believe he is wearing his pager.” There was a pause. “No, sir, he left it in his office. May I have him call you when he returns, Citizen Franken?”

  Franken looked up at D’Lugan, then said. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” the girl answered. “He didn’t tell me where he was going. Should I have him call you, Citizen Franken?”

  Franken looked up at D’Lugan. The other nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” Franken said. “Tell him it’s important.” Then he broke the connection.

  “We’ll wait,” D’Lugan said.

  “You can’t,” Franken protested. “I have appointments. People will wonder what’s happened. What about Captain Tellzer?” He gestured toward the closet where the security officer’s body lay. “The Pinkers will check.”

  “You’d better hope they don’t,” D’Lugan said, sitting down in a chair across the desk from Franken, the stunner never wavering from the other man’s chest. “Call out front and tell them to cancel all your appointments this afternoon. And tell them that Tellzer went out the back way or something.”

  Under protest, Franken complied.

  “You’ll never get away with it,” he said, once he had completed the call.

  D’Lugan glanced at his watch. “Jarl should be on his way here with a chopper now. He had a plan for getting away from Operations without being detected. If we could only get Bilthor up here we’d have a chance.”

  A smug expression had started to form on Franken’s fleshy face when the communicator buzzed. Franken started, his face going white.

  “Answer it!” D’Lugan snapped.

  When Franken did not move at once, D’Lugan stepped forward and waved the stunner in his face. Franken nodded abruptly and complied with the order. His right index finger stabbed a button on the communicator.

  “Good afternoon, Al,” said a voice from the speaker of the desk communicator. “Did you want me for something?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Franken finally spoke. “Yes, I did. Will you come up to my office, please.”

  “I’m awfully busy, Al,” replied Bilthor Franken’s voice. “There’s some kind of trouble over at the Operations building. I’m not sure what’s going on. Couldn’t you tell me about it over the ‘com?”

  “I need to see you in person,” Franken said, staring at the barrel of D’Lugan’s stunner.

  “Is something wrong?” Bilthor asked.

  “No, no,” Franken said after a moment’s pause. “I just need to see you.”

  “Okay,” Bilthor sighed. “I’ll be up in a couple of minutes. ’Bye.” There was a click as he broke the connection, the puzzled sound of his last few words hanging in the air like fluorescent question marks.

  Franken leaned back in his chair, glaring at D’Lugan and Janas. “He’s coming.”

  “We know that,” D’Lugan replied. “How will he come? Through those doors?” He gestured toward the huge double doors through which he, Janas and Maura had come.

  “Yes,” Franken answered.

  “No, he won’t,” Maura said, breaking her silence for the first time. “There’s a private entrance for vice presidents and board members.”

  “Where is it?” Janas asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Maura told him. “I only know they don’t come through the regular way.”

  “How will he come?” Janas asked, turning to Franken.

  “Are you threatening me, Bob?” the other asked slowly.

  “You’re damned right I am!”

  Franken nodded sadly. “Go through that door on the right, back to the end of the corridor, and then left. There’s a flight of stairs. He’ll come that way.”

  “Thank you,” Janas said coldly, then looked at D’Lugan.

  “You stay here,” D’Lugan suggested. “Keep him covered. I’ll greet Citizen Bilthor.”

  When Janas did not reply at once, D’Lugan spoke again: “Look, captain, there’s a lot more than just friendship involved here. It doesn’t matter that this slob was your friend once. What happens to the STC is more important that he is.”

  Janas nodded grimly. “Don’t worry, Paul,” he said at last. “I’ll do what I have to do.”

  D’Lugan shot him one of his brief, rare smiles, and turned to leave.

  “Do you want to exchange weapons with me?” D’Lugan asked as he paused in the doorway. “We can set this stunner back on regular power.”

  “No,” Janas replied, glancing down at the .45 in his hand. “I feel more comfortable with this one.”

  “Be careful, Paul,” Maura said suddenly, her voice strained and thin.

  “I will be,” D’Lugan said softly, a gentleness to his voice and in his face that Janas had never expected to see.

  Maura mouthed the words “I love you.” D’Lugan nodded, something that might have been a sad smile on his lips, and then went through the doorway and down the corridor.

  “Touching,” Franken said sarcastically.

  “Shut up!” Janas snapped, spinning to face him.

  “There was a long period of silence before Franken spoke again, a strange calmness seeming to have settled over him once D’Lugan was out of the room.

  “Why have you gotten mixed up in this, Bob?”

  “I don’t think you’d understand, Al,” Janas said, sitting so that he could keep his eyes on Franken’s hands. “And I don’t think I could explain it to you.”

 
“I’d like to know,” Franken said, a sound like sincerity in his voice.

  “Then let me tell you this,” Janas said, wanting to try, at least, to explain his actions to this man whom he had called his friend for nearly a century. “I’ve spent most of my life Out There.” He gestured skyward. “I’ve touched down on just about every world where men live and I’ve seen what people are doing. They’re building a new civilization, Al, a hundred new civilizations. They’ve started from scratch on a thousand worlds and they’re doing their damnedest to build the best things they can for themselves.

  “It’s not easy. Oh, Odin, Rama, Orpheus, maybe half a dozen others are—were—pretty well in hand, but as for the rest of them, they’ve just started clearing the land.

  “And they’ve remembered a lot of things you people on Earth seem to have forgotten. Things that built the STC and the early Federation. They don’t have security and they don’t want it, not the kind the Federation gives. They’ve been pushed around by the Federation for centuries. They think they’ve been forced to give too much for too little in return. They won’t take it any longer. And I think that maybe they’re right, a lot of them.”

  Janas paused for a moment, looked out the window, glanced back at the girl who sat silently, her eyes on him.

  “The Federation’s finished, Al. Dead right now but doesn’t know it. But so are the men who are ending it. There’s a dark age coming. Anyone with two eyes and the will to see with them knows it, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. It’s two hundred years too late.