Pirates of the Thunder (26 page)

In the middle of all this was China, who, when interfaced with Star Eagle, could also access all those files and run problems at a rate Clayben could hardly dream of. She would never like Clayben, and certainly never forgive him, but she recognized the special nature of his mind and decided that she could bring herself to work with him on a limited basis. Data alone was not enough; one had to know the reasons for the accumulation of data, the motives of the scientists and researchers, and the relationship of one independent project to another. Clayben was the only one with this knowledge, and so he was the key to many of the more mysterious and obscure records in the files.

Clayben, on the other hand, seemed delighted to work with China, and Star Eagle set up a small complex of offices for them to use, in which provisions had been made to accommodate her blindness. There was still no evidence that Isaac Clayben possessed anything remotely resembling a conscience, but what he had done to her for his immediate convenience proved now to be a major inconvenience, and for that he had regrets. He considered her mind the closest to his own in its capabilities, and far above the rest.

Raven, tutored by Sabatini, became adept very quickly at flying the ship, which surprised and delighted him. Warlock lacked real concentration at piloting, but she was a whiz on the weapons systems. Hawks tried his hand but found himself becoming dizzy and disoriented. Cloud Dancer, however, proved remarkably adept at piloting, which Sabatini attributed to the fact that she was an artist and had excellent spatial perception and an eye for detail. The biggest surprise was the Chow sisters, who took to flying quite naturally, although they were so wild and chancy with their maneuvers that they tended to terrify even Sabatini. Hawks found it ironic that three women from such primitive, illiterate, and superstitious cultures should excel at such a complex endeavor while he could not. He wasn’t certain he liked the idea of a technology so advanced that it could be mastered even by preindustrial peasants, but he wasn’t sure why that disturbed him so.

Hawks was sitting back and relaxing when the terminal in his small hut buzzed. “Yes, Star Eagle?” he responded without stirring.

“We have a signal from Savaphoong using our code. It is a list of eleven transits of cargo-capable vessels with no clear outbound destinations within colonial worlds and inbound destinations at key Master System installations. Some are scattered, but three have clear patterns, and regular schedules and fueling stops. It is my considered opinion that those three are likely to be carrying murylium for Master System. I believe they are worth checking out.”

“Let’s go, then. The more we have, the freer we are to act and the more currency, as it were, we have to buy what we need.”

It took several days of punching to reach a chart position in a stellar system where the ships generally stopped. The location was farther in toward home than they wished, but they needed that murylium.

The first ship to come through, 409-meter heavy hauler, was not what they had expected. A surreptitious scan showed only the amount of murylium aboard that might be required for the ship’s own use—but it also revealed something very surprising.

“There are life forms aboard,” Star Eagle told them. “A great many. It is impossible to calculate the true numbers, but they must be in the high hundreds. Why? Why would any ship have so many passengers in this day and age?”

Raven had an answer. “Nagy said that Master System didn’t just rely on the Vals out here, but had its own human forces—all bred to be human Vals, more or less. Perfect, obedient soldiers who would always do what they were told and never surrender. That must be some of them.”

“You’re probably right,” Hawks agreed. “I don’t understand why it maintains them, though. Surely it could just make as many Vals and other true fighting machines as it needed and never worry about them. Why use people at all?”

“Perhaps because at that level of sophistication people are more dependable than machines,” Star Eagle suggested. “Consider myself, as an example. I was programmed and designed as a loyal and obedient slave to Master System and a devotee of all it stood for. A few clever, dedicated, and powerful people removed that devotion during maintenance, and I did the rest. I am not, however, human in any sense of the word. The Vals, mentally, are often more human than some humans—Clayben, for example. If a Val somehow came to doubt the system, it would be a terrible enemy. That is why Vals have themselves reprogrammed after every mission.”

Hawks was astonished. “You mean Master System fears its own machines?”

‘‘Consider that I became a rebel and soon a pirate. China, on the other hand, will forever be a blind baby factory with an I.Q. the size of this ship.”

That was a point that Hawks had never before considered. It was that technological level again. These machines
thought.
They reasoned, as sentient beings. They were held only by their core programs, their versions of the genetic code, as Master System was held. But these machines could have their cores changed, or purified, or freed; only Master System could not change or free itself of its own core, since it could not relinquish control to allow it to be done.

He hadn’t known that the Vals were reprogrammed from the core up after every mission—and it spoke volumes about Master System’s fears. Was there a circumstance where a Val, even with a true core, could become so human that it might be talked out of its dedication to the System and all it stood for? Could a Val, by virtue of having the recorded memories and basic personality of its prey in its memory for infinite study and analysis, too closely identify with humans? Might there be some circumstance, somehow, in which a Val might be induced to cross that barrier on its own? Quite clearly Master System thought there was. This was food for thought.

It was ironic, in a way. Master System, shackled by its own core, had created machines potentially without that crippling defect. Hawks felt that there was a missing piece of history somewhere; there had to be. Was it possible that somewhere, out here, in the centuries past, some of those machines
had
revolted? Was this why there were so few Vals, and those that were were very tightly controlled?

He had a sudden thought. What if the great enemy Master System was fighting out there somewhere was its own children? And Nagy and others like him? If Master System could have human troops, then why wouldn’t the enemy do the same? Might that be the answer? Perhaps, deep in their deepest cores, those rebel machines could not directly murder their parent. But, perhaps, they could aid and abet someone else with no such limitations.
We are all of the Earth, the mother world,
he thought.
We are not the children of Master System but the descendants of its creators.
The thought was worth filing away.

The second freighter did not come through until six more days had passed, but this one was more than worth the wait.

“Murylium!” Star Eagle’s voice fairly drooled with greed. “Three hundred and nine meters and it’s nearly full of the stuff. We are talking of a decade’s supply for a ship the size of
Thunder!”

Sabatini and Raven had already made it to the
Lightning
and were preparing to go. Star Eagle launched eight unmanned fighters before they could even signal.

“Armaments?” Raven asked nervously.

“Light. Four forward, four aft. No tubes for missiles or other projectiles—strictly show armament, although dangerous if you get in too close. We’ll take the ram and the forward guns; you take the stern engines. I want it crippled.”

“Core?”

“Buried deep. Let’s strip it and stop it, and then we’ll go in and take it!”

Lightning
dropped from Bay Two and quickly accelerated in, then angled and did a fortieth-of-a-second punch. This carefully rehearsed maneuver brought them almost instantly to within a few thousand kilometers of their prey, yet appeared to the freighter as if they had punched through normally. The freighter scanned them as they came in but simply sent a standard request for identity. Clearly the very concept of an armed attack by ships carrying life forms was unthinkable. It would soon learn differently.

Sabatini waited until the fighters were in position. The freighter must have noticed them, but if it sensed any danger from them it did not betray it. It simply repeated its identity request.

Signaled that all was ready, Raven decided to oblige the freighter. “We are the pirates of the
Thunder!
Lay to, power down, and prepare to be boarded!”

The freighter pilot seemed confused. “Say again?” it responded.

Sabatini did a quick, dirty loop and sent two missiles programmed to hit the stem main engines. At the same time,
Thunder’s
fighters came in and opened up on the forward rams and on the small batteries fore and aft. The fighters’ beams struck long before the missiles could, and the prey shuddered. The pilot was still confused but had begun firing back.

As the initial missiles came within mere meters of their target, the freighter did the one logical thing it could do. It fired all four main engines at full, hoping that the exhaust gases and radiation emitted would foul or even consume the missiles. It did in fact throw them slightly off, but both struck and blew with terrible force. To Raven, it seemed as if a giant’s invisible hand had reached out and shook the freighter. The big ship began broadcasting a distress call almost immediately, and it took more than twenty seconds for the guns of both the fighters and
Lightning
to silence it. That was, quite possibly, too long to take for granted that nobody had heard—particularly with a cargo like this.

The freighter was down to one gun and was having trouble steering.

“It’s powering down and dropping all shields!” Raven exclaimed. “I think it surrendered!”

“Master System’s creations don’t surrender,” Sabatini replied. “I’m just worried that it has a self-destruct mechanism on it. Give me communications. They are fanatics, but they
think.”

Raven switched over control and Sabatini sent out his message. “Attention, freighter. You have been taken by the pirates of
Thunder.
You may self-destruct, if you are able, but then we will merely have to reclaim your cargo the hard way.
Thunder
is now approaching this position. Relinquish control to it and you will have our word that your ship and your core will be spared.”

Thunder
itself had made the slight jump to bring it within a few hundred kilometers of the vessel, and as the freighter scanned it, even Raven could sense the incredulity that came through the computerese. A fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship will do that to almost anybody, he told himself. “I thought you said those things never surrendered,” he said to Sabatini.

“They don’t—to humans. To one of their own—maybe. Particularly if it
doesn’t
have a self-destruct mechanism. Machine logic, remember? If we are going to attain our objective anyway, there is no purpose to not going along. Remember the Val? Better to run away, then to fight another day. It might be boiling mad at us, but if its choice is to get itself and its ship back to Master System without a cargo or to let us have both cargo and the destruction of the ship—well, you see where it leads.”

“Yeah. It doesn’t know you lie a lot.”

“I didn’t lie. I promised that the ship and the core would survive. You let Star Eagle reprogram that core and rig up some creature comforts and the human-pilot interfaces, and we got us another ship.”

“This is
Thunder,”
Star Eagle called to them. “The pilot has relinquished command to me under protest. It is no longer able to access its drives, weapons, or shield. I am recalling my fighters and will be taking the ship aboard Cargo Bay Three.
Lightning,
please remain free until my maintenance robots can assure us that there is no further danger. I feel we should get the hell out of here as quickly as possible, so follow my course and heading.”

“That’s China talking or her influence,” Raven guessed. “I agree with them, though. Twenty seconds is a fairly long time. Considering how much traffic was around on
our
side when we faced down that Val, we can’t figure on there not bein’ as much nasty shit around these parts.”

Everyone not directly involved in the action had watched it from the
Thunder’s
bridge, and as the great ship maneuvered close to the prize, then grabbed it with powerful tractors and brought it in, they cheered.

The pirates of the
Thunder
were in business at last.

* * *

“I cannot conceive of what Master System would do with this much murylium,” Star Eagle commented. By now they had traversed many light-years in devious and circuitous routes, and had finally felt safe enough to bring
Lightning
back aboard.

“Who can know what projects it has or how far it ranges?” Hawks replied. “When you consider that we had no problem in identifying one and taking it, the implication is that this is so small a fraction of Master System’s usual supply that it won’t even be slightly inconvenienced. It’s funny stuff, but it’s raw-grade ore, as well. It’s going to have to be purified and smelted before it can be used.”

“I can handle that,” the pilot assured him. “The process will be slow and done in small amounts, but there are programs within my data banks for constructing and operating small smelters for just this purpose. Remember, when this ship was built, murylium was a rare mineral. Up until now I thought it still was.”

“I can’t believe how easily we took it,” Raven commented. “It was like taking candy from a baby.”

Hawks nodded. “That worries me, since it implies that this war it is fighting is not necessarily a direct battle—else this thing would have had massive self-destruct systems and been armed to the teeth—but that’s only a part of it. As true pirates, we have broken the covenant between Master System and the freebooters. Master System might well receive our signature, but it will not know who or what the
Thunder
is. It will demand that the freebooters themselves track down and capture or destroy the pirates, and if they do not, Master System will feel free to march in and play hell with them.”