The Sky is Filled With Ships

by Richard C. Meredith

  “But maybe, just maybe, and that’s the best we can hope for, maybe if we can keep the STC intact we can save something from the ruins.

  “You know, Al, perhaps this is the most important thing, the STC. I’d think you’d understand that.”

  “Production and trade are what build civilisations, Al. The finest arts and sciences in the universe don’t mean a damned thing if men can’t exchange their ideas and their goods. That’s how the STC built what we call the Federation, by trading goods and ideas, by letting men exchange on a free market, a market that the STC kept free by its strength. No government ever dared challenge it and those it traded with. That’s freedom, Al.

  “My father was an STC captain and so was his father before him. My family’s been in the STC as far back as I can trace it. The STC’s older than the Federation, Al. It made the Federation but it hasn’t grown corrupt along with it. It couldn’t and stay alive. It had to stay strong and independent, or it would have gone under.

  “Maybe the STC is the most important thing in the universe. I believe in it. It’s my country and I thought it was yours. And I damned well don’t intend to see it destroyed because the Federation is sick and rotten and is collapsing in upon itself. I want the STC to survive and I’ll do anything I have to do to see that it does.”

  A distant sound came through the thick paraglas window behind Franken’s desk, the heavy droning of a helicopter moving through the afternoon air, coming from somewhere outside of Central toward the Graham Franken Building.

  As Janas turned to look out, a sudden faint buzzing came from Franken’s desk.

  “What’s that?” Janas asked.

  “Facsimile machine,” Franken answered. “Priority message.”

  Slowly Janas walked around the desk, stood behind Franken and watched a sheet of paper slide from a slot in the top of the large wooden desk. The first words he saw were: “Memo from the desk of Jonal Herrera, Chairman of the Terran Federation.” Janas snatched the sheet of paper from the slot.

  “What is it?” Franken asked.

  Janas was silent for a moment, then spoke: “Proof that we’re right. The expeditionary force met the rebels about seven and a half parsecs out. The rebels won. What’s left of the Federation fleet is running for home as fast as it can.”

  Franken’s mouth dropped open; for a moment he struggled for words.

  “It’s not decided yet,” he stammered at last. “They don’t have Earth!”

  “Janas!” a voice yelled from a long way off, from down the corridor into which D’Lugan had gone.

  Then Janas thought he heard another sound: the rasping of a power weapon.

  Janas stood for a moment in indecision.

  “It’s all over for you, Bob,” Franken said, a weak smile coming across his face. “Bilthor’s no fool.”

  Chapter XVIII

  Solar Trading Company patrol ship number 438 had lifted from the uneasy Rim world of Loki, taking with it almost the full garrison of STC Pinkers. Loki lay under a shaky truce, dominated by rebel victories in the Rim. The rebel commander who all but controlled the planet had refrained from acting against the STC base, waiting to see which way Altho Franken would jump during these, the last stages of the Great Rebellion. Fortunately for the STC garrison, Franken’s decisions had not yet become known on the edge of the galaxy, except by STC officials.

  Aiming away from the blackness and dwindling stars of the Outer Rim, heading into the brightness of the Federation’s Spiral Arm, PS 438 had jumped into Non-space and accelerated toward Earth, its commander halfway expecting to be followed by angry rebel warships.

  At a prearranged spot PS 438 returned to normal space, now deep in the bright ocean of stars. A rendezvous signal was beamed broadly into space and was soon answered by another such signal. PS 438 shortly grouped with three other STC patrol ships, and together the four small battle craft returned to Non-space.

  One by one, at selected spots in normal space, carefully avoiding contact with forces of the Alliance, other patrol craft joined them. By the time PS 438 had crossed half the distance between Loki and Earth the flotilla numbered better than a dozen, and together they moved Earthward.

  There should have been more ships, the commander of PS 438 told himself. He had read the orders that STC Central had sent out, several times over, and he knew exactly what was supposed to be happening. The Solar Trading Company was abandoning its millennium-long tradition of neutrality, now siding with the Federation. All STC patrol ships were to rendezvous near Saturn in the Solar System and then accept whatever commands Chairman Herrera gave them.

  So the PS 438’s commander had complied with his orders, though with some degree of reluctance. He was an Earthman by birth but had spent some twenty-five years in the Outer Rim. He had almost come to think of himself as a Rimmer; his wife was from Loki and his children had never seen Earth. He had thought of himself as a Rimmer until the orders had come from Central.

  Then he told himself he was a Terran. Earth was his home, the home of all mankind, and it was his duty to defend her against the rebels. He told himself that, but he was not sure whether he really believed it.

  He had waited until the last minute to give his men their orders, but even at that a number of them had managed to vanish before their departure. Desertion was a criminal act, especially now that they were technically under the orders of the Federation, but he had sympathised with them, especially with those men to whom Earth was no more than a legend of the past and a tyrant of the present. Those true Rimmers, those outworlders who had never even seen Earth, how could you expect them to fight for Earth and the Federation against their own people?

  So when PS 438 lifted from Loki and began her trip toward Earth her crew was short, and the Pinkers he carried with him were fewer than they should have been. But he understood.

  He also understood when some of the patrol ships did not meet them at the prearranged spots. The commanders and crews of those ships had not been willing to join in that fight. It was a filthy, nasty thing, this war, and he could blame no man for wanting to keep out of it.

  Oh, God, he told himself, if only I had the courage to run.

  He looked out into the darkness of normal space, at the bright stars that were even now sullied with the blood of men waging war against men, and he wondered if PS 296, which was supposed to meet them at that spot, would come. In a way he hoped that she would not.

  Chapter XIX

  Janas stood looking at the smirk that had spread across Altho Franken’s face, and he fully realized for the first time, realized to the core of his being, that this was a stranger, an enemy, a fool or a coward, but not his friend.

  Leaping forward, Janas swung the heavy butt of his .45 automatic against the temple of the man who sat behind the desk. Franken tried to jump away to avoid the blow but Janas was faster still. The metal connected with a dull thud; Franken gasped, fell backward, tumbling out of the chair onto the thick carpet. Janas stood over him for an instant, breathing hard.

  “Watch him,” he snapped to the girl who had not moved during the action but now came to her feet. “If he wakes up, hit him again. Hard!”

  Then he spun, running out of the room and into the corridor. He heard again the rasp of an energy weapon: a needle pistol, probably.

  The corridor was a blur as he ran down it to its end, then to the left. He heard D’Lugan’s deadly stunner, its generator screaming shrilly. Then he saw them. D’Lugan lay against the wall, smoke billowing around him as the carpet burned under him. There was blood on his face. His left leg was buckled under him, blood making a bright stain on the portions of the carpet that had not yet caught fire. The muscles of his face were pulled tight, baring his teeth in a hateful grin.

  A man in the uniform of a Pinker lay on his face a meter or so from D’Lugan. Though there was no blood, his posture spoke loudly of the fact that he was unable to move; he was dead or dead-in-life, for D’Lugan’s stunner had brought him down.

  Three
men stood there: two were Pinkers, one aiming his needler toward the fallen D’Lugan, the other facing Janas, his weapon coming up; the third was a paunchy civilian, his ashen face bearing a strong resemblance to Altho Franken’s.

  Suddenly the tableau broke. Two Pinker needlers rasped almost simultaneously. Janas felt a vague stinging sensation in his left shoulder as he leaped to one side, acrid smoke billowing into the air.

  The heavy .45 in his hand spoke. There was a tremendous roar in the confined space as the chemicals in the tiny metal chamber within the weapon exploded. A slug of metal, propelled by oxidizing cordite, spun down the weapon’s barrel, out and across to the nearest of the startled Pinkers. His face collapsed inward; the back of his head exploded, scattering hair, bone and brains against the wall behind him. As if a hurricane wind had struck him, he lifted off the floor, back against the wall. Then the thing that had been a man fell to the floor and lay in a pool of its own blood.

  A needle-thin beam of energy had leaped from the other Pinker’s weapon, had found D’Lugan—and the angry young man who had survived the stupid blunder called the Battle of ‘77 died.

  The .45 fired twice more, as rapidly as Janas’ index finger could draw back the trigger. Two more metal slugs crossed the smoke filled air, and both found their target, the chest of the Pinker who had taken Paul D’Lugan’s life. The first bullet shattered his left rib cage; he was all but dead when the second broke into his breastbone. His needler fired again as he stumbled back, the reflex of a dying animal, but its beam reached nothing but the ceiling.

  Robert Janas felt sick for a moment; sick from the pain that had suddenly blossomed in his left shoulder, sick from the mingling odors of seared flesh, burning wool carpet, and cordite fumes; sick from the death of a man who had, only minutes before, become his friend.

  Bilthor Franken screamed, the hoarse, nightmare scream of a man who suddenly finds himself in a reality which he cannot accept. He turned to run down the stairs up which he had come. Janas’ weapon fired for the fourth time, above Bilthor’s head, blasting plaster from the wall of the staircase.

  “Stop!” Janas yelled.

  The other man halted, then slowly turned to face him.

  “That way,” Janas said, gesturing back down the hallway. “Go on. Now!”

  Bilthor hesitated again. Janas brutally gestured with his weapon. The other man finally responded, half walking, half staggering.

  Moments later, Janas and his captive were back in Franken’s plush office. The STC president had begun to stir, a painful daze on his face as he tried to rise from the floor.

  Maura shot a questioning look at Janas, fear and sadness mingling behind her green eyes.

  “He’s dead,” Janas softly told her, and turned away. He did not want to look at her face, at the pain that shattered her pretty features.

  From outside the office, through the stillness that had suddenly come over it, Janas could still hear the roar of the approaching helicopter, louder now. Looking out through the broad windows he saw the aircraft waddling through the afternoon air, coded with the bright colors of the STC Operations Division.

  “Maura,” Janas snapped, “how do we get to the roof?”

  The girl looked at him blankly. The words had failed to reach her, as though she did not know that he had spoken to her.

  “The roof!” he said. “We’ve got to get there before anyone else comes.”

  The girl snapped out of her trance. “This way, I think,” she said in a weak voice.

  Janas grabbed Franken and roughly hauled him to his feet.

  “Walk, damn you,” he said. “Help him,” he told Bilthor. “I don t want to have to kill either of you.”

  Bilthor, white fear on his face, crossed to his dazed brother and allowed him to throw his arm across his shoulder. Franken looked at Janas with pain and hatred in his eyes.

  “A better man than either of you could ever be just died out there,” Janas said with a voice he could barely keep under control, “and you’d damn well better make his death worthwhile, or so help me…” His voice trailed off. “Follow her,” he gestured toward Maura who stood pale and damp-eyed but ready to lead them.

  With very little hesitation the girl started and the three men followed. Soon she found the escalator that led upward to the ‘copter landing deck on the roof. The Franken brothers mounted the escalator with Janas’ gun at their backs, and a few minutes later they were out on the deck.

  “Citizen Franken,” a startled attendant said, seeing the blood on the president’s face, “I thought I heard…?” Then he saw the weapon in Janas’ hand and fell silent.

  “Don’t move,” Janas said, and looked up to see the Operations chopper dropping down for a landing. He saw the pilot’s face and waved grimly, ignoring the growing pain in his bleeding shoulder. Jarl Emmett was not a second too soon.

  Chapter XX

  The news leaked out, as bad news will do even under the tightest of security precautions: the armada had met the rebels and had been defeated; the rebels were headed for Earth to destroy the Federation.

  *

  It was already night at the Federation Lunar Garrison Outpost in Copernicus Crater. The line of darkness had spread down along the ring walls, into the depths of the crater, and gradually across to the opposite wall, slowly moving in its endless march around the tiny planet. The sky had not changed with the coming of night; it remained as pitch as ever, though Earth had grown slightly, ever so slightly, as Luna’s face swung around toward her lighted side. Pale, bluish-green Earthlight gave the rugged landscape a surrealistic feeling that was not altogether unpleasant.

  Such would have been Corporal Kaire Lee Chan’s thoughts, had they been verbalised. But Corporal Chan was not really thinking at that moment while he stood gazing up at the bright, slightly more than half-full Earth. He was not sure what he was doing other than walking his guard perimeter around the Copernicus Post in the age-old tradition of armies since the dawn of history.

  There was something inside Corporal Chan that might have been fear, but that was not verbalised either. It laid deep within him, a cold lump of stone in the pit of his stomach that he could neither digest nor regurgitate. It was there, and he had grown rather used to it.

  Still, though he had been in Federation uniform for quite some time, time enough to earn his corporal stripes, Chan could not think of himself as a soldier, and he really wasn’t. He was a fairly competent hover-car mechanic and would always be just that, no more and no less, no matter what kind of uniform they put on him.

  Corporal Chan looked longingly at the paraglas dome some kilometer and a half away, brightly lit, full of air and heat and beer and the half dozen or so girls that the Federation allotted to the soldiers who served in the old Copernicus Post. And Chan wanted to scratch his nose and smoke a cigarette, neither of which he could do inside his spacesuit, and he steadfastly refused to allow himself to think of the girls, all soft and warm and sexy and waiting to give a tired soldier just exactly what it was he wanted from a girl.

  He knew better than to think of them while he was on guard duty.

  He looked back up at the sky again, and the half-Earth, and remembered the rumor that was going around—the rumor that said that the rebs had beaten old Julie and were heading like hellbats for Earth. Chan didn’t believe it. Not really. Old Julie was a hell of a soldier; he could beat them. But… something in his mind said, maybe it’s true. Kantralas is older and sharper than Julie, so they say. Maybe…

  A cold chill went up his spine and he had a sudden vision of a sky filled with ships, bombs and missiles and energy beams raining down toward Luna’s surface, blasting away the domes and tunnels and fields and… and Corporal Kaire Lee Chan.

  Chan gripped his energy rifle a little tighter in his gauntleted hands and took one determined step after another around his perimeter.

  *

  In the city of Great Rio De Janeiro, in the near slums of the old Copacabana Beach area, a man who was suspected
of being a sympathizer with the accursed rebels was dragged out of his home by a suddenly fearful, blindly enraged mob, a mob screaming for the blood of those who had threatened their homes and security, who had threatened the status quo that, good or bad, was life as they knew it.

  The mob swelled as it marched down the new Avenida Rio Brancho, out toward the huge monolith called, in happier times, Sugar Loaf Mountain. There was the smell of blood in the air as the mob prodded the poor fisherman forward, their growing chant drumming in his ears, deafening him to all else: “Up the Federation! Up the Federation!”

  He tried to join them in their chant, to show them that he wasn’t what they thought he was, but a big, hairy Neanderthal of a man slapped him in the mouth when he opened it to yell.

  A kangaroo court seemed to materialize out of nowhere in the center of the broad avenue, and there the noisy procession stopped, exhaling its stale collective breath, to watch the trial and execution of the traitor, Citizen Fontes Silva.

  The trial, if it can be called by such a name, was mercifully short. In no more than fifteen minutes a jury of his neighbors, friends and peers had formed, had heard the prosecution—there was no defense; his wife attempted to present one, but she was carried away screaming—and had passed sentence: death by stoning. Now!

  The poor dazed, confused fisherman, whose gravest crime had been to doubt the godhood of Jonal Herrera, felt the first of the rough stones smack against his back, just below his shoulder blades, tearing the cloth and ripping his skin. He stumbled forward to meet a second stone, just below his left eye. Blinded and hurt, Fontes Silva fell to his knees. The third stone struck his groin, skillfully, brutally aimed. He screamed, tried to rise, but the fourth and fifth stones, one to his cheek, shattering teeth, and one to his chest, knocked him back. He counted no more stones after that—he only screamed and died.