Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus (34 page)

“Something doesn’t look right here,” Dux said. “Our princes would never buy ships from the Mutatis, or sell anything to them.”

Inside the facility, he identified the lumpy shapes of Mutati workmen, fitting some sort of hardware into one of the vessels. A complex of smaller buildings was adjacent, surrounded by a high fence. He saw hundreds of blue-uniformed shapeshifters on the grounds, and more of the schooner-like vessels.

“What is this place?” Dux asked.

“Looks like a manufacturing facility,” Acey said. “Military, from the look of it, and the level of security.”

“Something to do with fake merchant prince schooners,” Dux said.

“That’d be my bet.”

Their ship set down a short distance away on a shadowy landing field, where only servobots awaited them, simpleton machines that were programmed to perform a limited number of tasks, repetitively. Moments later, a hatch opened in the floor of the cargo hold, and a ramp extended down to the pavement. On-board systems began sliding items down the ramp, where the bots loaded them onto a groundtruck.

In the cargo hold, Acey used a strip of metal to pry open a crate. “Just food,” he said, peering inside. While the unloading operation continued, he avoided the flexing servo-arms of the bots and broke into another crate, followed by another.

“I know what this is,” he said, pulling out a black field gun. Rummaging around in the crate, he found ammunition, which he began loading into the weapon.

“What are you doing?” Dux asked.

“You want to join the fun, or are you just going to watch?”

“Uh, I don’t …”

Acey grabbed another gun and more ammunition from of the crate just before a servomechanism grabbed the open container and slid it down the ramp, followed by the others he had opened. Finally the hatch closed, and the ship began to lift off. Acey handed the first weapon to Dux, then loaded the second one and fired it at a porthole, blasting it open. Hefting the heavy gun and touching the firing pad, Dux blew open another porthole.

The boys exchanged quick glances, and grinned at each other. Mutatis were the mortal enemies of all Humans, and these two had been indoctrinated in this belief system from an early age.

Without another word, they fired into the building with the powerful field guns, hitting the schooners and barrels of chemicals, which exploded into flames. In a matter of seconds the entire facility was ablaze and alarm klaxons were sounding. Like ants in a frenzy, uniformed Mutatis scurried around, trying to figure out what had happened. The boys emptied their guns into the soldiers, dropping many of them and sending others scrambling for cover.

The cargo ship flew on its programmed course past the flames, while the teenagers shouted in glee at the unexpected bonus, and reloaded their weapons. At last they were getting even for what the Mutatis had done to them, and in the process had undoubtedly saved the lives of Humans who might have been the victims of whatever weapons systems they were constructing inside that building.

Acey ran back onto the bridge, and smashed something. “They’re coming after us!” he shouted. “I see two blips on the scanscreen.”

Dux hurried to the back of the hold and blasted open another porthole. He saw a pair of fighter ships speeding after them, with the factory burning behind them. Dux opened fire on them, and they fired back.

Just then, the cargo vessel banked left and surged upward, in a burst of acceleration. Dux held on and kept firing the field gun. He hit the short wing of one of the pursuit ships, and the craft spun out of control.

“I overrode the program!” Acey shouted. “This baby really has power!”

“I got one of them!” Dux yelled. His field gun was more powerful than the armaments of the fighter ships, and had a longer range. One ship hit the ground and exploded in a fireball, and then he hit the other one, which blew up in midair.

The cargo vessel, lifting higher and higher into the sky, had proven to be more versatile than Acey or Dux could have possibly imagined. They flew to a pod station, jumped onto a deck and used the field guns to shoot their way past any Mutatis they encountered.

Boarding a podship that arrived a few minutes later, they left chaos in their wake. The sentient spacecraft departed for deep space.…

When they were safely off-planet, Acey and Dux talked about what they would like to do to that slimy Canopan—Giovanni Nehr—if they ever saw him again.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Opportunities are all around you, waiting to be plucked like gemstones from a jeweler’s tray.

—Malbert Nehr, to his sons

Giovanni Nehr was not as skilled as the boys in getting away from the Mutati world. He hid in the marshland for two days, drinking rainwater and not eating anything. Seeing shuttles lift off regularly in the distance, he made his way through swamp and jungle to the edge of the transport station. For most of a day he watched the shuttles taking off and landing. Early that evening, in geostationary orbit high overhead, he saw a bright light, which he judged must be a pod station.

Darkness dropped like a thick black blanket over the land. It was a moonless, starless night, illuminated only by the pod station and the landing lights of the shuttles. Gradually, he built up his courage, and crept across the landing field.

Concealing himself behind a stack of shipping crates, he watched Mutati soldiers supervise robots that were loading a shuttle, using heavy equipment. On occasion the Mutatis came close to Gio, only a couple of meters away, without seeing him in the shadows.

As he watched, he discovered something very interesting. Even when he was relatively near the shapeshifters, they showed no signs of anti-Human, allergic reactions … apparently as long as they could not see him, as long as they were unaware of his presence.

Gio learned something else as well, of even greater significance. From his place of concealment, waiting for an opportunity to sneak aboard a shuttle, he overheard two Mutati officers supervising the loading operation, giving the robots voice commands in Galeng. The pair also talked between themselves about impending military missions against the Humans … stepped-up attacks.

“It’s nothing like the merchant princes have ever seen before,” one of the Mutatis said. “They can’t defend against it.”

“The Demolio program is brilliant, isn’t it?” said the other. “This will be the deciding factor in the war.”

The voices drifted off as the Mutatis moved farther away. When they returned, they were discussing the same subject, but there were no specifics. They kept referring to something called “Demolio.”

Demolio
?

Whatever it was, it sounded big to Gio, and he wondered if he could get a reward for tipping off the merchant princes about it. But for his next venture he vowed do more research in advance, so that he didn’t get into trouble again, the way he did with the Mutatis. Always the opportunist, Gio knew there was a great potential for profit during wartime. If he could only escape and take advantage of the situation.…

The loading took the better part of an hour, after which the Mutatis and robots boarded a motocart and sped away across the landing field.

With the shuttle unattended, Gio made his way to a loading hatch and sneaked aboard the craft. Hours passed while he waited inside in the darkness of a cargo hold.

He drifted off to sleep on the hard deck, then awoke hours later at the sound of voices, and the rumble of an engine as it surged on and vibrated the vessel. He hoped the interior air would be breathable when they reached orbital space. Dim light filtered into the hold, making him think it might be dawn.

Gio yawned and stretched. His muscles were sore, and hunger gnawed at his stomach, like a creature consuming his body from the inside out. He felt air circulating in the hold, and heard the whir of fans. The ship lifted off.

In only a few minutes, he felt weightless, then the craft’s gravitational system kicked on. Presently, he heard what he judged to be the sound of a docking mechanism engaging, perhaps at a pod station or space station.

Soon he heard voices again, an angry confrontation outside. Peeking around the edge of an open hatchway, he saw the Mutatis on the loading platform of a pod station, arguing with a pair of pale-skinned Kichi men. The Kichis claimed that the Mutatis had taken their docking berth, and they were quite upset.

“Take another berth,” one of the Mutati officers said. He pointed the forefingers of his three hands to another docking spot, a short distance away.

“No,” the tallest Kichi said. “We reserved this one for a freighter arriving in the next half hour.”

“What difference does it make which berth you get?” the Mutati asked. “They’re all the same, just holding spots until a pod takes us aboard.”

“It makes a lot of difference, you fat pile of ugly. You have five minutes to get out of here, or we’re going to cut your piece of junk loose.” He spit on the Mutati vessel.

Enraged Mutatis surrounded them. But the Kichis activated a long, high-pitched signal, and moments later a throng of them came running toward the platform.

During the wild melee, Gio saw a podship arrive in one of the zero-g docking berths at the center of the station, where passengers were already lined up to board. On impulse, he ran for the ship, but had to pass the fighting aliens to get there.

A Mutati guard spotted him as he crept out of the shuttle, and opened fire with a jolong rifle. Sparkling blue projectiles whizzed by his head, and thumped into the thick gray-and-black skin of the podship. The vessel shuddered.

Gio ran to the front of the line and pushed his way on, out of turn.

“Who do you think you are?” a Jimlat dwarf shouted, after Gio shoved him aside and he fell to the dock.

Ignoring him, Gio found a seat on a bench at the rear of the passenger compartment. A handful of additional passengers boarded, but not the dwarf. Without warning, before the normal amount of time allowed for boarding, the podship hatch closed, and the large sentient vessel got underway.

The cabin wasn’t even half full, but apparently the podship had been agitated by the projectiles hitting its side, even though it would take more firepower than that to harm one of the creatures. Some of the passengers glared back at Gio, but he ignored them.

Noticing a stinging on his left arm, he examined it. Just a flesh wound visible through the torn sleeve of his shirt, with a little trickle of blood. Nothing to dampen the ebullience he was feeling. He had gotten away from the Mutatis, and was free now.

Chapter Forty-Nine

My mind cuts in many directions. The gyrodome makes the blades sharper.

—Zultan Abal Meshdi

It was difficult to imagine that anyone could be unhappy living in the magnificent Citadel of Paradij. As the Zultan of the Mutati Kingdom, Abal Meshdi possessed everything a shapeshifter could desire, including a harem of the most stunning and sensual Mutati women in all of creation, each of them rounded heaps of rolling fat. On a terraced hillside, his private baths offered a broad selection of mineral and spirit waters from all over the galaxy, for soothing his tired bones and renewing his energy, which had been sapped by endless affairs of state. Tens of thousands of Mutatis, robots, and the slaves of various races (other than allergy-producing Humans) worked for him in the Citadel, a virtual city within the capital city, attending to his every need, his every whim.

Originally, Paradij had not been a world that appealed to any galactic race for habitation, since it was covered with arid deserts and vast salt flats. But the planet featured deep aquifers, essentially subterranean seas. The Mutatis—driven there by Human attacks against their other planets—had set up a massive hydraulic engineering project to bring the water to the surface, which they then used to create rivers, lakes, and irrigation canals for crops and forests. The costs in money and the expenditure of time had been enormous, but the marvelous result had been a source of inspiration to all Mutatis. It showed what they could do in even the most difficult environments, and that the greedy, aggressive Humans could not take everything away from them.

He lived in such exquisite luxury that he didn’t really need to go to war against the merchant princes. But they had insulted him and his people, driving them from one world to the next, never letting up.

And Mutatis did not take insults lightly.

With many important matters weighing heavily on his mind, the big shapeshifter shuffled toward the clearglax bubble of his gyrodome, which he’d had moved to one of the highest rooms in the Citadel, where he could be closer to God-on-High. The platform inside the dome spun slowly now as it awaited him, making a faint, inviting hum. Pursuant to his instructions, the mind-enhancing unit was in its simplest, most basic configuration, without the customized compartments that could be fitted on the outside to contain aeromutatis and hydromutatis. Sometimes he did not want such distractions.

Just then an aide interrupted him and said, “Pardon me, Your Eminence, but there is a messenger to see you. He says it is important.”

Shaking his tiny head in dismay, since he really needed what he had come to call his “morning gyro treatment,” the Zultan said, “Very well, send him in.”

Moments later a uniformed aeromutati flew into the chamber, and hovered in the air. It was one of the small, speedy flyers who were best suited for such tasks. “There are two messages, Sire. I carry one”—he held a small communication pyramid in one hand—”and the other is outside.”

“Outside?” Abal Meshdi said.

“Look over there, My Zultan,” the messenger said. He pointed to a small window on the narrow north end of the chamber.

Hurrying to the window, Meshdi beheld a sight that surprised him, and filled him with patriotic pride. He counted ten outrider schooners flying in formation over the capital city, swooping this way and that.

“They are performing for you, Sire, in honor of the glory they will achieve when you send them into battle.”

“But I thought there was a delay in production,” the Zultan said. “I was told that the vessels would not be ready for another month.”