Earthblood (25 page)

"Hey look," Sidis said cheerfully, holding the gun up, "his finger's still stuck in the guard!" Sidis dislodged the amputated member and tossed the gun up. "What do we do with these nancies, Chief?"

"Poke them in the ship's lazaret. Commander Hullwright's coming with us for a little pleasant conversation, aren't you, sir? We'll go to the bridge where we can talk in privacy and comfort."

Askor gathered up the guns, gave the best one to Roan, handed the others to Poion and Sidis.

Commander Hullwright's ineffectual little eyes were frightened. "What," he began, "what are you . . ."

"Now, now, be calm, Commander," Roan said. "If you play it cleverly, you may even live through this."

Roan sat in the captain's padded chair, gnawing a roasted leg of fowl and studying the charts of the Space Traffic Control Area surrounding Nyurth, the second planet out from Centaurus, and other charts showing the layout of the vast headquarters complex.

"You know, Commander," Roan said, "I'm impressed with the Imperial Terran Navy after all. I'll just want a few details from you so I can be even more impressed. Care for another piece of bird?"

Hullwright snarled. Sidis cracked him across the shins with the power rifle.

"Answer nice when the cap'n speaks to you," he admonished.

"No, I don't want a piece o' bird, you pirate!" he roared.

"Tell me about the defenses, Commander," Roan said.

"I'll tell ye nothing, ye murdering mutinous crossbreed Geeks!"

"Our captain objects to adjectives," Poion said mildly, giving Hullwright a gentle but telling twist of the ear. "And I find your emotional radiation both primitive and appalling. Answer the captain correctly and succinctly."

"I'd eat me own tongue first!"

Roan tossed the chicken leg aside and began peeling a banana. "Umm. Now, about these charts. How many of the emplacements are operative and which ones?" He held the chart for Hullwright to see.

Hullwright was silent. Sidis jabbed him roughly with the end of the gun.

"Ye think I'd betray me uniform, ye scum?" Hullwright snarled.

"That's right," Roan said. "Unless you'd rather die—one piece at a time."

"Ye wouldn't dare lay a hand on me, ye filth! I'm an officer of the Imperial Terran Navy!"

"I killed a captain once," Roan said. "It's just as easy as killing a Gook." Hullwright tried to keep his defiant look in place, but the spirit had wilted from him.

"Damn ye'r eyes," he said, "ye won't get through anyway. Untie me right hand and I'll point them out to ye on the chart."

Hullwright sagged in the chair. His little eyes were closed and he rubbed his sparse eyebrows with his right hand. Empty glasses and plates littered the plotting board and chart table, the remains of meals brought up from the galley at the commander's reluctant request, and passed in through the service slot.

"I've told ye all I know," Hullwright said hoarsely. "Ye've sucked me brain dry as a mummy's tongue."

"You've done very well, Commander," Roan said. "Askor, what's the plot for Planet Three?"

"Twenty-seven million miles abaft our port beam, Cap'n."

"Fine. Now, Commander, I've got just one more little favor to ask, and you've been so nice. Pass the word to your second officer to assemble the crew on the boat deck in fatigues for calisthenics in exactly ten minutes."

"Hah? Whazzat?"

Askor applied the butt of the rifle. "Jump, Terry!" After two more prods of increasing severity, Hullwright complied. With the cold muzzle of Askor's rifle against his left temple, his ragged voice sounded through the vessel.

"And now, good-by, Commander," Roan said. "Askor, you and Sidis take the commander to join his men; they'll be in their skivvies and unarmed, so you shouldn't have to kill many of them. Dump all but two kilotons of reaction mass from our lifeboat; then load the commander and his men aboard and cast them off."

"That's cold-blooded murder, ye swine . . ." A crack across bloody shins cut Hullwright off.

"You'll have enough fuel aboard to reach Centaurus Three. According to your charts, it has a breathable atmosphere. There are forty-three of you and the supplies and water should last you a couple of months, if you're not careless. And if I find you've been honest with me about the information you gave me, I'll see that you're picked up in good time."

"Wait a minute," Hullwright said blurrily. "I just remembered. About that picket line, the outer one . . ." The commander corrected a few errors he had made. Then Askor took him away, followed by Sidis with his toothy grin.

Alone, Roan said in the bridge and knew he was a fool. He could have gone on looting the universe, or set himself up for life on some pleasant planet, with never another care in the world. Instead, here he was alone with three Gooks, going in to face the Imperial Terran Navy. And why?

I'm still looking for Terra, Roan thought. Poion says I'm looking for home and I have no home to find. Man has no home. Perhaps there is no Terra. But that's something Poion wouldn't know—and the Imperial Terran Navy might. They might know the truth of the story of the ancient Niss blockade of Terra. Roan thought of the dead Niss ship firing its last volley, and that made him think of Henry Dread, and even now he couldn't remember Henry Dread without pain. He had had blood on his hands before, but Henry's was the only blood that stained.

Poion came in with his silent tread. "Let that memory die, my Captain," he said, "and gird yourself for the future."

Roan felt the boat lurch slightly. That would be the lifeboat kicking free. Askor and Sidis came back into the control deck in high good humor. Their laughter was like a cannonball rolling over an iron grill.

"That was cute, Chief," Sidis said. "The tub's all yours. What are you going to do with it?"

"First we're going to scuttle her," Roan said, smiling grimly at three astonished expressions. "Then we're going to ride what's left into ITN HQ

on Nyurth."

"And after that?" Askor asked.

"After that we start taking chances."

It took nine hours to burn a carefully aligned series of holes through the bulkheads of the ITN destroyer, so arranged as to destroy food and water supplies and smash unimportant portions of the control system, while leaving intact the vital minimum of instruments and fuel reserves. The final punctures through the outer hull plates were bored by Sidis, cramped in a too-small ITN regulation vacuum suit, at points marked by tiny pilot holes cut from within. When the job was complete, crude patches were rigged and the foursome gathered in the now sealed-off control deck, surrounded by heaps of supplies placed there before the work was begun.

"Get the story straight," Roan said. "We're from an ITN detachment on Carolis. That's far enough away they won't know any better. We found this tub derelict, beyond the fourth from Centaurus, driving out-system at a half-G. We boarded her and sealed off the leaks, restored atmosphere to the conn deck, and headed her for her home station for salvage."

"What were we doing nosing around this sector?" Askor asked, levering the cap from a can of compressed quagle eggs.

"We were lost," Roan said. "And next time you get a yen for quagle eggs go in the john. They smell like a corpse's armpit." There were a few things the Minids ate that Roan could never get used to. "We left our scout ship in orbit around fourth from Centaurus. We were out of supplies and almost out of fuel. When we first saw the Navy ship we thought we were being rescued. Then we found out it was a ghostship. We're distressed spacers—nothing more."

"We'll be more distressed yet, when the ITN gets hold of us," Askor said.

"I get distressed every time you open your ugly mouth," Sidis said. "Why don't you shut up and let the cap'n do the worrying?"

"It's a good forty hour run into the Planetary Control Area," Roan said.

"We'll stand watch two on and four off. Every half hour we transmit our Mayday signal. We'll keep our receivers open; I doubt that we'll pick up anything, but if we do, ignore it."

"What if we hear an order to heave to?"

"Our receivers are out. We keep going."

Roan keyed the transmitter to the ITN distress channel.

"ITN vessel Rage of Heaven, under salvage crew, calling ITN HQ at Nyurth," he called. "We're headed in-system on course for Nyurth; our position is . .

."

At the center of a box of four heavy destroyers which paced the damaged vessel at a distance of one hundred miles, Roan steered the scuttled and patched Rage of Heaven in past the tiny outer moon of Nyurth, crossed the orbit of the massive inner moon, descended, braking now, into the turbulent upper reaches of the deep atmosphere. The escort moved in to fifty miles, then ten. On the screens, the telltales winked with the incoming pulses of long-range sensors aimed from the planetary surface nine hundred miles below.

"They're tracking us like we was a missile volley from a hostile super-D," Sidis growled through his carefully polished teeth. He was sharpening a new toothpick with a steel file, and sweat beaded his low forehead.

"At least they've laid off hailing us," Askor pointed out. "I thought maybe the bastards meant it when they gave us that final warning."

"Their emotions when we emerge from the ship should be fascinating," Poion said, delicately whetting an even finer edge on his already razor-sharp stiletto.

Sidis eyed the business end of his power gun and blew any possible dust out of it. Then he took out his whetstone and started honing his double-bladed Niss knife.

"You know, Cap'n," Askor said, "I dunno if it was a good idea, tricking us out in these Terry suits. A Gook ain't a Terry, no matter how you slick him up."

"You're honorary Terries," Roan said. "Now shut up and follow my lead." The ship grounded clumsily at the extreme edge of the vast port complex. Roan watched on the screens as two of his escort settled in nearby, gun ports open and energy projectors aimed. The other hovered a mile or two above.

"They must think we got a army in here," Askor said. The three crewmen looked at Roan. "Do we walk out there—just like that?"

"You know a better way?" Roan adjusted the set of the collar of his ITN

uniform, hitched his gun belt to center the buckle.

"No weapons out," he said. "We can't buck the whole Imperial Terran Navy. Right now all we've got is my brains. So keep your traps shut."

"Well," Askor said, eyeing the bright sky, "it's as good a day as any to take a swig from the Hellhorn."

"I began to sense their emotions," Poion said. "Not death lust, but a mixture of curiosity and excitement and violence restrained. Something's afoot, Captain. Walk carefully among these Terries."

Roan led the way down the landing ramp, squinting at bright sunshine, sniffing the alien scent of fresh air. Across the field, an official, uniformed contingent of the Imperial Terran Navy was drawn up in a rank to greet him. Their shoulder insignia glittered in the sun, and their metal belts shone. Striding at the head of his hulking companions, Roan snapped over his shoulder:

"If one of you thugs disgraces me, I'll have his guts an inch at a time." The ranked Terrans stood rigidly waiting, and Roan admired their precise formation, their disciplined silence and stillness. And briefly he hated himself because he wished he were one of them, a Man among Men, and not a Terry Freak surrounded by bloodthirsty Gooks.

Then he was closer, and he saw they were not all the same height, as they had appeared to be, but were artfully arranged in graduated rows with the tallest on the right and the near-midgets at the far end. His step almost faltered, but he went on, seeing the alien faces now, the wrong-colored eyes under the regulation helmets, the queer-colored skin of wrists showing above six-fingered and four-fingered gloves, the slashes in polished boots to ease wide, webbed feet, the misshapen bodies that bulged under the uniforms of glory.

At twenty feet, he barked the order to halt. A heavy body bumped him from behind. He whirled, bellowed at the trio who were spreading out, gaping at the strangers.

"Back in line there, you bone-skulled sons of one-legged joy-girls!" He turned again, saluted stiffly as a short, pink-faced Terran came up, casually returning Roan's greeting with a wave of a soft hand. He was wearing the insignia of a lieutenant commander, and he tucked a short swagger stick under his arm, glanced past Roan at his crew, wiped his nose with a forefinger.

"Commodore Quex would like to welcome you and your men and requests the honor of your presence at Imperial Naval Headquarters at your earliest convenience," he said in a high, melodious voice. A civilized voice. Roan nodded, staring at the strange Terran's face. Except for Henry Dread, this was the first Terran face he'd ever seen. There were two heavy-lidded eyes—pale blue, Roan noted, with a small lift of excitement—a blob of a nose, a puckered mouth, folds of fat under the small chin. For some reason it reminded Roan of a baby Fustian, before its shell grew. It didn't look like the kind of face Roan had pictured conquering a Galaxy. But he concealed his disappointment and motioned his crew to follow him as the Terran led the way across the field.

"What do you get from them up close, Poion?" Roan asked softly as they marched behind the Terran officer, flanked by a squad of Men.

"Some sort of fear, oddly enough," Poion said.

"Fear? Of four ragged spacemen?"

"Not exactly of us. But that is the emotion I read." The Headquarters of the ITN was a craggy many-towered palace built ages before by a long-dead prince of a vanished dynasty. It loomed like a colossus over the tumbled mud houses of the village. A vast green window like a cyclopean eye cast back brilliant viridian reflections as Roan and his crew marched in under the crumbling walls along a wide marble walkway, went up wide steps flanked by immaculate conical trees of dark green set among plants with tiny violet blossoms. It was faintly, sadly reminiscent of the garden on Aldo Cerise.

Inside, the sun glowed in long rectangles along the echoing floor of a wide, high room. Terries in fitted tunics of navy blue stood at rigid attention by elongated doors at the sides of the room. Above, a vaulted ceiling arched up into shadows where gold and blue mosaics caught occasional sun gleams among masses of hanging brass carvings, all polished, which dangled like earrings from a hundred peaked corners, clanging as the wind moved them. They went under a vast arch of enameled brass, across a wide floor of gleaming brass plates; far up among dark rafters, echoes of more brass clashed softly.