Starhammer (19 page)

Jon could see they were bewildered and rather frightened.

"I don't know what to do," the captain confessed.

"No significant change there, then!" Dahn snapped.

M'Nee was holding his cast, his face tight and gray. That kick had cost him something. "
He
can't come with us!" he rasped. "I refuse."

"Look, I just bought the fuel for the trip, so forget leaving me behind—It's a death sentence. Same for the lady."

"I don't care, I won't have it."

"And who are you to make the decision? Shouldn't that be up to the captain here?"

M'Nee looked sullenly at Hawkstone, who wavered. "For all we know you are laowon spies. I can't allow it."

Jon laughed. "Look, if we were working for the Buro do you think you'd be sitting around here? I think they'd be putting you under with the Hypnogen about now."

There was a sudden knock on the door. Everyone froze.

Jon looked warily at the door.
Were
the Buro here so soon?

"Cut the lights," he hissed to Porox. In the dark, Jon flattened himself against the wall. The door opened slowly and silhouetted in the opening a small sphere floated at head height.

There was a collective release of breath. The lights came back on. Jon stared, speechless, as a glossy green ball with tiny red dots like eyes floated in with a slight humming sound.

"Emergency!" it blared like a demented audio chip.

Jon jumped.

"Emergency! Cold, no energy! Emergency!"

"It's hysterical, someone get a heater," the woman said.

"What is it?" Jon asked in awe.

"That is Rhapsodical Stardimple," Captain Hawkstone said wearily. "A mote, one of the great motes of Baraf."

Jon stared at the glossy little beast/machine. Porox's assistant had brought out an ornate cigar lighter, which he lit. Immediately the ball flew to hover over the flame.

"What is the emergency?" the woman asked. "Rhap Dimp? Why are you here?"

The ball had been murmuring to itself in a squeaky little sing-song. It squawked, "Emergency!" once more.

"We heard that, but why?"

"Yes! Yes! The Bey, there are the aliens. Superior Buro. They are at the spaceship. The Bey is there, I escaped."

"How far is it?" Jon said urgently.

"Not far," Hawkstone replied. "They'll no doubt be down here in a few minutes to arrest us too. Might as well just sit still and wait. This is the end to this whole mad quest." He seemed resigned.

"Oh, no!" sobbed the woman. "We'll all go to the Brutality Room."

Jon decided to act rather than await his doom. "If it's not far, perhaps we can get there in time to rescue matters. Laowon are flesh and blood, they can be killed."

They stared at him, but the mote sped forward and hung in front of his eyes. "You are the one called Iehard!" it piped. The glossy little eyes were like drips of brilliant gel.

"That is my name."

"Yes! You are the one that killed the aliens. On all channels, system-wide search!"

The others looked at him with renewed questions.

"No time for this, where is the Bey? We have to get there before they can take him away."

"Yes! Follow me." The mote brayed and charged from the room with Jon close behind. He found the mote was capable of a steady thirteen kilometers an hour in the corridors. He jogged to keep up.

They rode an empty elevator to the light-gravity passenger terminal. Jon sprang after the mote and into a corridor leading to the docking station. Black-uniformed figures were ahead, blue faces, eyes opening wide in shock and alarm.

Jon brought up the Taw Taw, his first shot spun the leading Buro agent into the wall. His second beheaded the laowon behind him.

Two other laowon held up an elderly man in bloodstained white robes. They raised handweapons, but it was a fraction of a second too late, because Iehard slammed into the one on the left and the mote struck the one on the right and they were hurled backward in a heap. Jon clubbed one, was struck in return and thrown against the wall, but the mote swung and fired itself at the laowon's head and rendered him senseless. Jon's gun sparked twice more. There could be no mercy when dealing with Superior Buro.

Jon looked around. Officer Dahn was the only one who had kept up with him. Then the captain emerged from an elevator.

"Quickly, grab the old man. Get him into the ship."

Dahn looked at Jon. Looked at the dead laowon. She seemed stunned by this turn of events.

"Look," Jon shouted, his voice breaking. "We are all dead if we don't get out of here. The ship is fueled, let's go."

"There was not supposed to be any killing," she whispered. "Nothing like this." She gestured helplessly at the dead laowon.

"They were Superior Buro. What else was there to do?" Jon surprised himself, his conditioning lay in shards. He had killed laowon again, would do so again if he had to. He felt no shame, no disgust. It had been a necessary act of war.

"Look, let's get moving, why don't we?" He seethed with impatience.

Jon ran back, found Porox's office and Meg. They had left her there, alone. Quickly he pushed her along the corridors and into the elevators. He half ran the distance to the docking tube. An airlock was still open. He plunged in.

The ship interior was unexpectedly plain and utilitarian, with hundreds of blue seats laid out in concentric rows in a central circular space. Above that, through a "Crew Only" access tube, was the bridge, also laid out in a circular pattern beneath a radial array of screens and instruments.

They had arranged the man in white robes in a seat. Jon looked down on his quarry. There he was at last, Eblis Bey. Then he lifted Meg out of the wheelchair and put her in a seat in the row behind the Bey. He strapped her in and then folded up the chair and slung it underneath the seats.

The mote appeared suddenly, floating along one and a half meters from the floor until it hovered next to the Elchite. Jon came over and gave the man a quick inspection. A shock-rod rash was plain on the side of his neck, and his nose had bled heavily for a while. He had been struck a blow or two, but there appeared to be no fractured bones. The man seemed much older than in Commander Petrie's photo.

A voice on the PA announced immediate takeoff. Jon strapped in next to the Bey. Only a handful of other crew members were in the main cabin, most were on the bridge.

A ceiling screen came on giving them the view inside the bridge. The screen subdivided; one view showed the exterior of the Sooner docking bay, where lines of tankers patiently waited.

Hawkstone's voice came over the PA, sounding stronger, more confident. "This is Captain Hawkstone speaking. Welcome to the Luft Line flagship
Orn
. I suggest that everyone strap in completely, use the full webbing provided in the sides of your seats. The computer informs me this may be rather a rough ride."

Indeed there was already a strong vibration in the floor. A deep groan came from somewhere.

"Engine room," Hawkstone said, "get me full field in two minutes. We are entering emergency drill now!" Red lights began to flash all around the passenger cabin.

Two minutes! Jon recalled the hours he'd spent between jumps on the laowon jumper from Glegan.

There was a new tone in Hawkstone's voice. A liner captain with two decades of service behind him, he felt stronger at the helm of his ship, surrounded by the mass he'd grown so familiar with.

Jon decided the
Orn
was a short-hop liner, jumping business people around inside a single system. No wonder the people were acting strangely. They were just ordinary space crew caught up in a mission that was getting more dangerous by the moment. Jon had a lot of questions for the Bey, but they'd have to wait until the old man had recovered consciousness, at least.

Then the
Orn
broke away from the docking arm and rose rapidly through the flight paths, pressing them all into their seats.

"Officer Dahn, please get me position of
Illustrious
at this time," Hawkstone said quietly.

The acceleration went on and on, a great weight on their bodies, squeezing them down.

"
Illustrious
currently in docking mode at gigahabitat Nostramedes," Dahn reported. "Distance four million kloms."

"Thank you, Officer Dahn. Engine room, how's my field?"

"Coming right up, sir. Inside two minutes."

Everyone's voice was now measured, steady, as if in the habits of spaceflight they found security, unlike the alien risks of habitat or planet.

"Sooner Central Control is screaming blue murder!" another woman commented quietly on the bridge.

"Here comes an override!"

A face burst onto the main screens.

"Unidentified ship! What the hell are you doing? You're way too close to us to be using gravitomagnetics!"

"Sorry, Sooner. We don't have time to explain," Hawkstone said. "Get him off the screen, Bergen."

"Yes, sir."

"What the hell do you mean, you 'don't have time'?"

"Exactly that," Hawkstone said quietly. The override vanished.

"Where's my field, engine room?"

"Coming up fast, but do you think it's safe, sir? This close to Sooner's mass?"

"We have no choice, I'm afraid. We're all cashiered by now anyway."

"Cashiered?" Someone snorted impatiently. "We're all
dead
because of that crazy gunman you picked up. The laowon will take us for public Expiation. Red-hot pincers, everything, all in front of the television screens."

"Shut up, M'Nee. We don't need to hear any more of that," Officer Bergen said.

Jon held back his own angry retort.

Seconds ticked by.

"
Illustrious
is moving now, sir. We have definite double image there, she's unshipping fast."

"They know where we are now. I'll bet they're in a hurry. How long before they can bracket us?"

"They'll have to turn the ship, we have thirty seconds perhaps," Officer Dahn said bitterly.

"Where's my field?" Hawkstone was now audibly anxious.

"We're all dead because of you, damn it!" someone screamed. Jon wondered who it was she was blaming.

"It's that damned Elchite. He came to Ornholme for payment of the debt. He could not be refused. We had to do as he asked," Hawkstone replied hotly.

Jon imagined the great battlejumper slowly turning to bring its weaponry to bear.

Then the
Orn
jumped. There was a strange, wrenching moment as the gravitomagnetic bubble formed and the ship surged through the wormholes of space-time.

Then it was over and the screen showed nothing but stars, faraway brilliant points.

"Ship will rotate to provide point five gees in passenger section," the computer announced.

Everyone was breathing hard, the PA reverberated to it.

"On my trip to Nocanicus from Glegan, where I was born, it took the ship hours to achieve each jump," Jon exclaimed in wonder, and heard his voice echo excitedly over the PA.

Hawkstone's voice was measured, slightly sardonic. "Spaceliners normally do everything they can to protect themselves and their passengers, Mr. Iehard. Our chances of reaching this point from that jump were no better than three to one, according to the computer. But if
Illustrious
had completed that turn we would've had no chance at all. Four million kloms is short range for a laowon battlewagon."

"You think they could have destroyed us, just like that?"

"Disabled us more likely. At that range they could shave your mustache off with the primary laser."

"But where are we now?"

"On the far side of Nocanicus, opposite where we were. We performed a simple, random-gravity flip-flop. Our jump spin was absorbed by the star. We traveled around its gravity center along the lines of the magnetic field. It increased our chances of survival by twenty percent."

"So
Illustrious
can't detect us yet."

"Precisely, nor can the ship at the Ginger Moon. We're on the far side of Nocanicus from William too."

Jon noticed that Eblis Bey was coming round. He unstrapped himself and went to get some water. When he returned he went to sit beside the old man. The mote emitted a warning buzz and swung in front of him.

"No! Contact is not permitted!" it screamed in its bizarre, mechanoid garble.

"I won't touch him, he's coming round, look."

Eblis Bey sat up with a groan and put a hand to his head. "Am I dreaming or simply dead? I never thought there'd be a ship to take you to heaven."

Jon laughed. "Neither dead nor dreaming. You're back aboard the
Orn
, and we've given them the slip."

The Bey now focused on Jon. He groped for the water and drank it in a gulp. "You!" he exclaimed. "I should have known at once."

"What do you mean?" said Jon.

"You're the one on all the broadcasts, a system-wide search is on. Seventeen laowon, they say."

Seventeen! If he was taken alive the laowon would have him expiate for a long, long time.

"And aren't you the Eblis Bey I was told is a fugitive for killing two dozen laowon, with Grand Weengams and Twirsteds among them!"

The Bey gripped his shoulder. His eyes glittered. "Well done, young man. Let me welcome you to our expedition. We are in need of a fellow like you. We have some dangerous work ahead of us."

The mote suddenly brayed, "Welcome!" Jon smiled. A welcome had been a rarity so far in his life, he was happy to accept one anywhere, even from a talking billiard ball.

Commander Petrie stared down at the figure wrapped in bandages with a mixture of personal fear and considerable perplexity.

Padzn Birthamb struggled to speak. He had absorbed two shots from Jon Iehard's Taw Taw. The first had blown out through his abdomen. His survival was a small medical miracle. The second had blasted off the left side of his lower jaw, as he'd dropped behind the front desk of the Brutality Room, when the madman burst in, his gun spraying bullets.

The medics had patched him together and fitted an emergency speaking tube directly to this laryngial region. It made flat, metallic sounds.