“FIRST YOU WILL STRIP OFF ALL YOUR CLOTHING,” Lion Girl ordered, “so that we may scan your clothes and space suit. If we find anything suspicious there, they—and you—will go one way while we go another.”
She took his reluctance for modesty. “Do not think you are God’s gift to women or something. No one will care here.”
The truth was, he was embarrassed, but not for the reason she thought. Fact was, it was going to be painfully obvious that none of these women turned him on in the least. None, anyway, until he met the captain, and she presented other difficulties.
The woman in the captain’s chair looked exotically Earth-human, and she was built like a sex bomb if he’d ever seen one. Gorgeous, sexy, sensual, perfectly proportioned—you name it and she had it. Her hair was short in a pageboy style with bangs in front that only heightened the beauty of her features. In fact, she’d be a real male fantasy if she hadn’t been just ninety centimeters tall.
When he looked closely he saw other, less human, differences. Her dark eyes looked human, but when she moved her head so they caught a light, they shone like cat’s eyes, and her ears were oddly shaped, almost shell-like with a point at the upper end. There were also two small protuberances, like tiny ball-shaped horns, barely visible in her hair. Her complexion seemed extremely pale, yet one could catch hints of almost every color of the rainbow if one stared long enough. The fact that she was also smoking a cigar that seemed almost a third as big as she was didn’t help matters any, but it certainly attracted Raven’s interest.
She looked very young, but Raven suspected that was just the look of her race. Such a tiny, frail creature did not get to be captain over three large colonial women and a ship like this without being the smartest, as well as the most capable and experienced, of the crew.
She sat, perfectly nude, on a normal-size command chair adapted to her with the addition of a smaller form-fitted insert, pillow, and underblanket. She looked so natural and unselfconscious that he suspected that nudity was the norm for her and perhaps for her people. That was interesting, too.
“I am Ikira Sukotae,” she said in the voice that had addressed the Thunder over the communications line. She spoke English with the same sort of accentless machine-learned English as China and the Chows used. “Welcome aboard the Kaotan, which means in English the Wild Doe.” Her tone told him that he wasn’t very welcome at all.
He sighed. “Look, you didn’t want me here and I was volunteered to come, so we’re even. I know it’s kinda tense and it’s irrational of me, but to be perfectly honest I lust after one of your cigars.”
And she laughed. A big, throaty laugh, incongruous from such a small creature. She gestured to a small case near her right hand. “Go ahead, take one. Even though I’m the captain I’d have a mutiny if I smoked off the bridge or around those three. We’ll be punching for several hours yet, which might give us time to really stink up this joint.”
The ice was broken.
“So you and your big ship and your dozen or so people are going to overthrow Master System, huh? Big dreams.”
“Yup,” he admitted, enjoying his first real cigar since Halinachi. “Real impossible, ain’t it? I mean, it’s no more likely than somebody like you becoming captain of a big freebooter spaceship.”
She was taken aback for a moment. “You might have something there. But this—such as it is—is just the result of hard work and strong will and some very lucky breaks. You have all that, but that’s not enough against the whole damned system. This is an enemy with the power of the ancient gods, countless minions to do its bidding, and whom you can’t even see, feel, or face directly.”
“But this god has a weak spot. It’s tried, successfully until now, to keep it a secret for nine hundred years, but it’s not a secret anymore. That’s why we’re out here. That’s what it’s all about.”
She was interested. “And you come from the Mother World out here to do your battles?”
He wasn’t certain how much to reveal, but he felt this was a good test of what he was supposed to do when they rendezvoused with the others. “We have—sort of a gun,” he told her. “The gun will only fire a special bullet made for it, and only five were made—the exact number needed to fire into old Master System’s guts. Master System knows about the gun and the bullets, but can’t stop them from being there and maybe being used. The only thing it could do was to take those bullets and scatter them out into the galaxy, putting them into the hands of people important enough to protect them but ignorant of what they really were. We think we have the gun—in a sense, anyway—and we know where four of the five bullets are. We are not alone in this—very powerful enemies of Master System instigated this whole thing. We mean to beg, borrow, steal, or in any other way get those bullets, and track down the fifth, load up our gun, and blow the damned thing’s brains out.”
She nodded, listening intently, then asked an unexpected question. “Why do you do that? Slip in and out of bad grammar and ignorant expressions into excellent educated English with words like ‘instigated’.”
He shrugged. “My natural self is the coarse one, but I adjust to the company I’m keeping. That’s experience.”
“Uh huh. Somehow I think you’ve got more education alone than the sum total of all the people I ever met. What was your job, Raven—before all this, I mean?”
“Field agent. Security for North American Center, if you know where that is.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea, but I understand the job and the terms. You are probably a very dangerous man under all that, Raven. I will have to keep that in mind.”
“We’re all dangerous, Captain. All hunted, driven people are dangerous. You should know that. We’re just dangerous in different ways. We got one guy who’s the human equivalent of Master System and about as scary. We got a delicate little blind girl who could redesign Master System in her head. And we got one woman, born low and in primitive ignorance, brutalized all her life, tattooed all over and her tongue torn out, who maybe don’t understand a word of what we’re sayin’, but don’t let her get the idea you’re our enemy. Me, I got a lovely lady partner with wonderful diction when she wants to use it and a fine intellect who’s goin’ nuts ’cause she hasn’t killed nobody in months. And that’s only the half of us. I guess we’re dangerous all right, but the whole question is, dangerous to who? I think you ought’a know. You’re still here, a survivor, with a ship and whatever freedom that brings.”
“And you’re curious as to how all this ship and crew came about, I expect. I guess you noticed you’re the only man aboard.”
“It was kinda obvious.”
“I never thought of my world as particularly rough or nasty, but compared to most I’ve seen since it is. Real mild climate over most of it, but it’s rich and full of predators and game. It was said we were created small because big people could dominate and ruin the system while ones like us would keep it—and us—stable. It’s pretty hard to develop much when every day you have to go out and get what you need in a big world where everything’s either out to get you or might trample you without even noticing. Very few people grow old there, so the few that do are venerated as leaders because they are tougher and smarter than the rest just by doing it. To make sure we survive, the men—about a head taller than me—are built like rocks and solid muscle. They’re built to be hunters and gatherers and warriors, but they still die young. The women are basically breeders. We can’t help it—it’s chemical. Just get close to a man and we’re in the bushes with ’em. We’re breeding kids constantly just to keep up. No muscles, no speed, no weight—we’re pretty defenseless and dependent on the men for food and protection. We have some defenses, but no offense, you might say.”
He nodded, thinking of China. She’d understand perfectly, only she didn’t even have defenses—unless one counted Star Eagle, who was, indeed, formidable. “Defenses?” he prompted.
She nodded. “The things to stay alive so you keep breeding. It fades bit by bit when you can’t breed any more. I can remain so still that the keenest ears could not hear me. I can mask any scent by secreting odors that match my surroundings. Right now that’d be cigar smoke, so I won’t demonstrate. My hearing has five or six times the range of any other race I have known, and while my daylight vision is weak I can see in almost pure darkness and into the heat ranges where I have found most others cannot. This is because, as a race, we dwell mostly underground. And, almost at will, I can do this.”
He watched, still thinking about the rest. She could see the infrared spectrum, and hear perhaps better than a dog or even a mouse. But what was most remarkable was what she was demonstrating now. It was fast, too, amazingly so. She was sitting on a red blanket, her arms resting on a gray seat, and, incredibly, her skin faded into the tones of the blanket—even the weave—while her arms adjusted for the gray of the chair and even the gaps in between. She was hardly invisible, particularly when you knew she was there, but he bet she could become as good as invisible in her native element.
“I can also mimic almost everyone or anything I have heard before,” she told him in a very male voice that was almost exactly like his own. “That way I can, if still discovered or pinned down too long, imitate something bigger and nastier than whatever is hunting me.” She shifted back to the hard female voice she’d been using, and Raven now understood that it was a deliberate persona, to make her sound and therefore seem bigger than she really was. It was also clear why, coming from a mild climate, nakedness was normal; any clothing would nullify most of the coloration defense and perhaps have a more distinctive scent as well.
“Nothing offensive, as you see,” she noted. “Oh, I’ve killed flies and bugs, but I haven’t even the arm strength for spears or bows, let alone lifting and aiming a common pistol. But here, in this chair, on this ship, with that interface there and the weapons under my control, I could destroy a city.” She said that almost as if she really wanted to, and suddenly he wasn’t sure if he was talking to someone like China or a miniature Manka Warlock. A little of both, he decided.
“But you didn’t grow up in a hunter-gatherer society any more than I did,” Raven guessed. “You would never even have dreamed that any of this existed if you did.”
“In a way, you’re right. I was no nobility, but I had the right bloodlines, and as a child I think I was more curious and inquisitive than girls were supposed to be. The Elders decided that my mind could handle the wonders and mysteries of a Center, and I was selected while still very young to go there. I didn’t have a choice. Oh, I was still breeding stock—I was just supposed to breed better, smarter candidates for the Center in the future. They didn’t educate us—they kept us amused in the lap of luxury like permanent spoiled children. We were all smarter than they thought girls could be, though, so we were able to do some learning on our own. Even if you got caught cold at some terminal with a lecture and display on some complicated subject, all you had to do was act dumb and cute and ignorant and they never caught on or cared. Why they didn’t became real clear after a while. When you reached puberty they ran you through a mindprinter, and you just weren’t curious or inquisitive anymore. Then you went into the harem, where the men of the Elect visited, and soon you were knee-deep in babies, locked in for thirty or more years of that, and when you couldn’t produce any more you just kept helping run the place until you fell apart or died.”
“A great waste, although I can see the computer logic of the culture. But it didn’t happen to you.”
“No. I found out early what the situation was, and I was lucky enough to bump into a boy a bit older than me and just beginning to have the feelings, if you know what I mean. He was the son of a big man at Center—chief deputy administrator, in fact—and about as spoiled and arrogant as anyone could imagine. But I played to his urges and his ego and his arrogance for all I was worth, and he got to thinking of me as his. Just the idea that his girl would be thrown into a communal harem made him boil, and he was in the right spot to do something about it. I admit I lowered myself as far as I could go—no matter what his wish, I granted it, no matter what his fantasy, I played to it. And when my time came, he got me exempted. Several of the big shots had small private harems. Exclusivity is a perk of the powerful. He was in the tough time for him, when his education was intensive and would determine his place in the future, so he needed a servant and housekeeper and somebody to screw when he needed to. He didn’t need babies yet, so he got me a drug that kept me wanting it all the time but prevented conception. And while he was out all day, I’d use his terminals and his books and his lessons to give myself a real education. Hell, he didn’t even know I could read, and if he had it would’ve been the mindprinter in a minute, but it never even entered his head.”
“There are a lot of cultures like that even on Earth,” Raven told her, “and many more that differ only by degrees. Usually it disappears at the Center level, or becomes tolerable, but the fact that we still have ‘harem’ in the languages says it all, I guess.”
In fact, however, Ikira had seen this as the pinnacle of existence because, for her, there was nowhere else to go but down. Then about a year and a half into this existence, her “husband” had taken her with him on what was something of a trade mission. Like the vast bulk of colonial worlds, her planet’s Centers required a small but dependable supply of murylium for their own needs, mostly research and medical. Needless to say, one did not get this from Master System but in spite of it, and that was where freebooter trade came in. Her world had no spaceports and only a few skimmers for Center use, but freebooters could—and did—land in the damndest places. What the freebooters wanted was some sort of access to the state-of-the-art technology that the Centers represented, including, quite often, the working out of practical problems that were beyond the capabilities of their own computers. They traded murylium for these services.
Most Centers, however, were outfitted identically; only in the few whose very smart and frustrated chief administrators worked clandestinely was there any competitive edge. To keep freebooters from going off to another Center or even another world meant treating them like royalty and anticipating their needs. The chief deputy had decided that his favorite son was ready to experience the real travails of having to deal with this sort of person, and sonny boy never went anywhere without his concubine.
To Ikira, it was an experience that turned her entire world view upside down and inside out. She had known there were other worlds and other forms of human beings, but nothing had prepared her for the reality.
There were three of them, and two were women. First of all, they were enormous, giants compared to even the largest men of her own race and world. Second, while they were a bit rough and coarse and not really all that pretty, they looked very much the way Ikira’s own race looked except for the size, and they had strong personalities that were in no way deferential to the man with them. In fact, it soon became clear that one of the women was the captain, and that the man worked for her. To Ikira, seeing her own men, arrogant big shots, acting not merely civil but downright servile to these women whose services they needed more than the women needed them was another revelation.
With a lot of guts, considering what might have happened had she been discovered by her own, she sneaked away one day and approached the female freebooter captain privately. Captain Smokevski was more than touched by Ikira’s plight and impressed with her intelligence and nerve. The captain was none too pleased with the culture she was doing business with, but that Center had a genius with an uncannily accurate system for locating new murylium deposits. Now, at last, she had a way of thumbing her nose at this sexist society. This time Ikira’s diminutive size and defense skills came in very handy, and Smokevski managed to smuggle the tiny woman onto the shuttle at take-off. Ikira was in space and free of her culture.
Weightlessness was even more of a wonder to her. She could almost fly, and she could move and even lift things that the strongest male of her own race couldn’t budge. It took months to hunt down a small enough pressure suit, but once she had it she could do maintenance in places too small for others to reach, and her long, tiny fingers and exceptional sight and hearing made her a whiz at doing jury-rigged repairs on equipment that often had to be kept going with nothing but a prayer. She was interested in virtually everything and learned all she could. Of equal import to her future, she found that she quickly lost the sexual compulsions she had lived with since puberty. In her race, the arousal was strictly chemical, and without males of her own kind around, she simply did not feel the urge. Not that she was sexless, but she was in now in total control.
It was a story of both liberation and compensation. Her size a major liability, she simply worked six times harder and did everything six times better. She learned how to think on her feet and be taken as an equal in exotic and gigantic foreign locales. She began to make her own deals and, in one of the apparently not uncommon fights over a murylium claim that wound up in ship-to-ship combat, she had taken over for a captain who’d lost her guts—and won. She parlayed her reputation and profits from that into an ancient, creaking hulk that she redesigned and restored herself, with help from the crew of that fighting ship who’d left their captain, as well, and it became the Kaotan. The other two were Dura Panoshka, the Lion Girl, and Butar Killomen, who’d met Raven when he had boarded. Takya had joined later; she’d had trouble keeping jobs or berths because of her need for regular immersions to keep her skin from drying out. But there were very few freebooters who could deal with the water races, and Ikira had seen the potential for information there that was virtually untapped. Takya had been both useful and dependable, and worth the extra weight and expense of a true water-based rather than chemical bath system and all the problems it entailed.
And, as far as they knew, all four were the only ones of their races in space. It was a special bond, for each could understand the other’s sense of alienation when with others of the more common races.
“I had hopes, one day, of becoming so powerful that I could one day return home and break that insidious system, but I’m old enough now to know that even if I gained such power and tried, it is probably easier to break Master System than to change a culture, particularly one that is partly based on biology.”
“The only way there’s a shot is to break the big system,” Raven told her. “Then you start by introducing technology on a wide scale so that your people become masters of the planet and not just inhabitants. Then that technology can be used to alter the biology that limits things.”
Am I really saying this? he thought suddenly. I think I just told her to turn her people into white men and go rape their world!
It was only a two-and-a-half-day trip to the hideout. In that time Raven grew to like the tiny captain, but he found it far more difficult to get to know the other three. Of them, only Butar Killomen even seemed curious enough to talk to him, and none were as secure as their captain and willing to talk about themselves.
The refugee fleet was still cautious; passwords were required not just from the ship and captain but from each of the other crew members in turn before the sensors and automatic guns of the other ships were turned off. Only then did Ikira relax and put the graphics on the screen for him to see what was there.
“Most are light freighters built less for cargo capacity than speed and weapons ability,” she told him. “For the amount of murylium you generally find out here in months of trying beyond your own needs you don’t need a very big ship, but if you can’t outrun and outgun the competition you might lose out to somebody who found none at all. That’s Espiritu Luzon in the center—Savaphoong’s ship. It doesn’t look like much on the outside because it’s designed to alter itself to different common silhouettes on sensors out here. It’s a neat and expensive defense. Inside, I’m told, it’s a luxury yacht with all the comforts of Halinachi in miniature.”
He nodded. It figured that somebody like Savaphoong would find a way to take his world with him.
“The others are San Cristobal, Novovladivostok, Chunhoifan, Indrus, Bahakatan, and Sisu Moduru. I know them all from the past. I shot it out with San Cristobal’s skipper a few years back. I was glad to see he got it back in running condition. Truth was, I’d lost track of most of them until we crossed paths at the fallback positions.” She paused for a moment. “I had hoped that we might have seen a couple more before we had to run here.”
There was no official leader—these were proud and independent people—but Savaphoong certainly had the commanding voice among them, and few would challenge him. His contacts might well be valid, including many on colonial worlds, and he was the best prepared for an undertaking like this.
“Can you plug me in to Savaphoong’s ship?” Raven asked. “We might as well break the news right off. I think anything I have, to say should be said to him first before one of your trigger-happy friends takes to blasting us just on general principles.”
Fernando Savaphoong was right up on his bridge for the arrival of the Kaotan. He was happy to hear of the load they had aboard and a bit less thrilled to hear of their passenger, but he agreed to talk.
“Sir, my name’s Raven and I was at your place with Arnold Nagy not too long ago.”
Savaphoong remembered quite a lot about Raven, including things he shouldn’t have known.
Quickly, Raven filled the other in on what had happened so far—the death of Arnold Nagy, and at least as much of their purpose and goals as he’d given Ikira. Savaphoong listened patiently, then noted, “I can see why you precipitated all the action. Very well, Señor Raven, what do you think you are going to do now?”
“That’s not the question. I’m stuck here unless some deal is made or I’m dropped at an agreed pickup point and you know it. It seems to me the question is what are you going to do? The cozy relationship between the freebooters and Master System is gone. Every freebooter is a fugitive now, because they’ll try every one they find until they find us. Those caught with no other value will either be disposed of or put through the mill and changed into a worshipful supporter of the System. Face it—in a few days, a few weeks at most, you won’t even be able to risk contacting or trusting ships and people you’ve known for years. We are the only ones you can ever fully feel comfortable around. We want to make a deal. We need you, and I think you need us. Put me on to all of them and I’ll give it straight.”
It took about an hour of radio diplomacy on Savaphoong’s part to get the others calmed down enough to listen, and when they did that’s all they agreed to do—listen.
Once more Raven introduced himself and described the situation. “You have no place else to go, no other life that has any profit or future,” he told them. “You cannot trust anyone not here right now. You can’t go back to your old free-lancing deals with the colonial worlds without knowing that Master System and its forces will be out gunning for you. You might make it several times, maybe last a year or two, but eventually you and Master System will have a meeting because there are only so many colonial worlds.”
“We could go off the charts, into regions even Master System hasn’t gone,” someone suggested. “We can start over again and build ourselves back up with or without colonial support.”
“Wishful thinking and you know it, if you stop and think a minute,” Raven retorted. “It would be rougher than you know, and all guesswork until you formed your own charts. Probably at least half of you would run dry somewhere in a hole like this one and never be heard of again. The other half—well, you might scrimp by, but there’ll be no illegal shipyards, no big transmuters, no access to technology and supercomputing. Many of you are one of a kind out here, and when you die out, that’s it. Some of you might have enough numbers to make a really tiny colony somewhere on some grubby rock, if you can find one that’ll support human life and if you can survive the wilderness there. That’ll go until your ships break down for lack of repair or out of sheer ignorance by your children and grandchildren, condemning them to be new colonials and devolve into savagery and primitivism. You have no future and very short lives now, unless you team up with us.”
“I ain’t sure how much future I got teamin’ up with the likes of you,” someone else commented. “You know how many people they killed so far because of you? And that’s only the beginning. And the colonial worlds depend on us for murylium to keep a jump ahead of Master System. You come out here, with no space experience, and in a real short time you destroy a whole way of life.”
Raven grinned. “You mean we came out and in no time flat we destroyed your neat little system? Eleven people, nine of ’em space rookies, and they destroy your whole system? Well, then, maybe we can knock over the big system, huh?”
“If you’re tryin’ to be funny, I got some real slow ways for you to die,” someone said.
“No! Let him go on!” another urged. “He’s making some sense here.”
That was encouraging. “We didn’t destroy your system, we just gave you what you always said was most dear—liberation. You can get mad and yell and scream, but any of you with any sense out there will have to realize that the freebooters were as much a colonial unit as any of the worlds you served under Master System’s thumb as long as you were useful to it and easily thrown away when no longer needed. You were its unlisted colony, and you provided a service. We ended that. If you want it back, I’m sure you can just trot back to Master System, let its machines see how nice and loyal you are, and it’ll stick you back in business with no illusions. You either do that or you join the rebellion and instead of taking shots at each other you can take shots at Master System. Colonial loyalists allowed to play with antique spaceships—or freedom-fighting rebels. That’s your real choice, and your only one. If you can’t see that, you’re blind or crazy and no good to us anyway. If you can and want to go back to playing footsie with Master System, we sure as hell don’t want you. But if you want real freedom, if you want to win, we need you bad.”
After all the nasty carping on the channel, the silence was almost eerie. Finally a man’s low, gruff voice spoke. “If I really thought we had any chance of winning, I’d throw in, but I just can’t believe it.”
“That’s all I can offer, but it’s more than you think—a chance,” Raven told him. “There are no guarantees and I can virtually promise that many will die in this, or worse. We might have to—pay the ultimate price. We might have to transmute ourselves, or sacrifice ourselves for others. I intend to minimize that last possibility when it comes to myself, but I recognize it. And we are going to have to work in teams to get it done rather than go strictly lone wolf, since any major failure has the potential to compromise all of us. Now, that’s a heady brew for the likes of freebooters, but that’s the way it is.”
“Too steep,” someone commented. “I’d rather chase and run from the bastards.”
“Ah, but you haven’t heard the important part,” Raven responded. “You don’t do this for nothing. You do this for a payoff—and a big one. You see, once you’re in, you’re in. I put this in terms of bullets and a big gun, but that’s not really right. See, this bullet don’t kill Master System, it just makes it into what it was at the start—a nice, obedient machine that takes orders. Takes orders from whoever gets it. Now, you think about that. Whoever does this all the way gets to rule Master System the way Master System rules most everybody else. The power it has, and all the loyalty it has, and all that it knows and can do, passes up to others—human beings. If you’re in, you’re in all the way. Do your job, don’t screw up or get killed, and you name your own price and I mean it. Anything you want! Your own world, your own fleet of big ships, all just the way you might have dared dream it could be. It’s the magic totem for real, or whatever your own legends call it. You help us, you last it out, and you get one wish for anything that’s within Master System’s power—and you get Master System off your back, too.”
That was something they could understand, and it was staggering.
“I must tell you that I am favorably inclined to go their way,” Savaphoong’s voice came to them. “I can exist for the rest of my life without them, I am fairly certain, and at minimal risk—I have made provisions for this sort of eventuality. Still, if there is no risk, there is no gain, and if I refuse now and then they do it, I will have no profit, no share in the rewards. If they fail, then I lose it all including what might have been, and I admit this. But if they succeed—and I know the background of one or two and would not count them out—then I want my share of godhood.”
There was a long period of silence, then suddenly everybody seemed to try to talk at once, making any rational communication impossible. There was nothing to do but wait for it to die down.
Finally Raven was able to make himself heard again.
“Now, this shouldn’t be anything hasty. Each ship should get off for a while and discuss it, captains and crew. I want no single individual in on this who doesn’t want to be there. I am absolutely certain we can combine crews and ships—those who say yes, those who say no. This is the only shot you get, though. If you’re out, you’re out. If you’re in, you will be in all the way or we will eliminate you without a second thought. Only those who come with me will get the details and the planning. There is nothing personal for those who refuse, but any who fail to take our offer now will be treated later as our enemy. We’ll have to do it that way.”
“I don’t like it,” a woman’s voice said. “We have only his word that this shit even exists. We have no proof that he’s spinning more than a fairy tale, a pipe dream, to lure us into their service permanently and then get rid of us when we’ve served our purpose, who the hell are they who made this discovery? They come here from the Mother World and maybe they believe it, but who’s to say it’s true? All we’re doing is becoming their damned servants. How come this big secret gets kept for nine hundred-plus years and suddenly falls into the hands of a bunch of yokels?”
“You may be right, Meg,” Savaphoong agreed, “but, as I say, I know some of these people. Their scientific brain is perhaps the smartest human being alive, and he has all his data. He believes it. Others, like friend Raven here, are Center people, security people who had the best that the system can offer and paths to power. They gave it up, and they are not all mad. The best example is Master System itself, which is so outraged and so panicky that it has mobilized all its resources to find and get these people. You think Master System would collapse the covenant just to track down pirates, even very slick ones? What are they to its domains? What are the pirates of the Thunder in the larger scheme of things? What is one ship full of murylium to Master System? It is pulling out all its stops, abandoning all its conventions, to go after a tiny band of mere human beings. Oh, yes, my friends—what they say is true. They know the way to fry the brains of Master System, even if they now lack the means.”
The logic was compelling to most of them, but so was the corollary. “What’s to keep us from doing it, then, without them! We got mindprinters here, and hypnoscans, and all the rest, and we got this Raven. Why throw in with them at all?”
Raven was prepared for that one. His rehearsal with Ikira was paying big dividends. “Simple,” he told them. “I can tell you what we’re after, but not how to use them. Just having them ain’t enough. What good is having bullets and guns if you don’t have a target? I don’t know where Master System is, or what it looks like, or anything else. Do you?”
“Then we’re no worse off than you,” somebody pointed out.
“Oh, but you are. We are an odd group, but we were carefully picked. When we get what we’re looking for, at least one of us will know where and how to use it. I’m not certain how—whether it’s a conditional hypno or deep mindprint or something else—but it’s there. You can trust us, or Master System—I leave it to you whether you want to trust the word of a machine or of human beings. Nothing whatever, though, can reveal the target and the means of loading the gun until we have the bullets. That way, it’s safe for all of us.”
“You talk like you all are working for somebody,” noted the suspicious lady. “Who?”
Raven smiled, although they couldn’t see it. “Somebody with a lot of knowledge, but still somebody who can’t get these things themselves—or use ’em. I don’t know who or what it is, and I’m not the least bit concerned with them except for the help they give us until we have all that we seek. Then we might have, well, a difference of opinion. I’m not concerned. We will have what is needed. The bargaining chips will be all ours, and, just as importantly, if we are tough enough and smart enough and clever enough to do what no one else has ever even dreamed of doing, then we can deal with anyone who might try to take it away from us. If we cannot, then we don’t deserve the rewards.”
“I believe, my friends, that all that can be said on this has been said,” Savaphoong put in. “I suggest we now take Raven’s advice and discuss it among our own people. We are not that pressed for a decision as monumental as this one. Let us sleep on it. It is fourteen twenty-two. At twenty-four hundred, in a bit less than ten hours, we will again take this up, and at that time we will vote and make up our minds. This is reasonable, yes?”
“All right with me.” Raven sighed. “I’m almost gettin’ used to boredom.”
Ikira Sukotae had been back with her crew for quite a while, leaving Raven alone on the bridge with his thoughts. All this potential, he couldn’t help thinking. It’s almost like magic how it all falls together. I wonder how many will come? He knew better than to believe they all would. Savaphoong, the opportunist, was a sure bet if only because he figured in the end to be one of the ones giving all the orders, not just one wish as some kind of payoff. He would have to be watched and, perhaps, eventually controlled or dealt with more severely, but until then he would be invaluable. He and Clayben were worlds apart in knowledge and genius, but, deep down, they were two of a kind.
Who would have thought it? he mused, still not quite believing how far they had already come. Raven, born in a small village by a quiet river in the high mountains, raised up first to Security, and with all the cynicism of that job and the knowledge of what was true and real in the universe that bred such cynicism—Raven, the revolutionary, the overthrower of worlds. Quite a leap for Spotted Horse’s little boy, running alongside the warriors as they went to the hunt and dreaming brave deeds. He sighed. That was a long time ago; another life, really, and he’d long ago buried that little kid and his comfortable dreams of honor and glory.
His honor had been tossed aside the moment he’d learned that the whole thing was a lie, that they were ruled not by a creator spirit but by some big damned machine. It had made the concept of glory meaningless, as well, for what was the glory in dying not for one’s people but for the purpose of a museum exhibit for a master machine that didn’t even give a damn about the exhibit?
Center’s wonders had delighted him, but at first the people there had disgusted him. Corrupt, selfish, as contemptuous of their own people and their customs and ways as they were of the system they served. There really hadn’t been much choice; you either became like them or you went back home and lived a lie. It had been easy to be a cynic.
Yet now he began to wonder if that little boy was truly as dead as he had thought. He was still no visionary, no ambitious revolutionary with a grand dream, but he was alive again, alive as he had only felt in the past when he was back home, back in the mountains and the plains, the field that was a part of him. He hadn’t really thought like this in many years, except for brief times alone camped out on the prairies with just his horse and a small fire and the looming shapes of the purple snow-clad mountains in the distance—and those moments had been very brief indeed.
Somehow it seemed ironic that he should find that little boy way out here, far from his people and his beloved north country, far from anything he held to be important and dear. Were you there all the time, boy, or did I imagine your return?
Ikira returned to the bridge, breaking his reverie, and he nodded to her. “You made your own decision yet?” he asked. “It’s almost time.”
“We talked it over, yeah,” she told him. “It wasn’t easy, you know. It’s not easy for any of us.”
“And?”
“We got more colonial experience than any two of these other ships put together. We figured your odds, and we figured ours on our own out here under new conditions. None of us really have any homes or lives except this ship, but we have dreams. We’re in, Raven.”
He clapped his hands together and grinned. “All right! Now let’s see what the score is. Plug me in and we’ll get goin’ on this.”
The vote was by no means unanimous, but it was better than he had thought at the start. In addition to Savaphoong’s Espiritu Luzon, which, Raven suspected, had only one vote that counted and was thus easy to convince, San Cristobal, Chunhoifan, Indrus, and Bahakatan were in, with the exception of some crewmember dissidents who would leave. The majority of Novovladivostok and Sisu Moduru, including their owner-captains, decided against—including both the woman with grave doubts and the tough-sounding man with the questions. Some of their crew, however, also disagreed, and a swap was arranged.
That added in one swoop five experienced pilots, ships, and crews to the pirate fleet, along with numerous crew members. Those who would not or could not trust Raven and his company transferred to the two ships that had voted against. The few on board the two holdouts who wanted in transferred to the ships of their choice, at least as a temporary measure. Maintenance robots on Kaotan managed to carve up portions of raw murylium ore from the hold and mount them on skids and shift those portions to the Novovladivostok and the Sisu Moduru.
“Then let’s get this show on the road,” Raven suggested. He felt like an admiral and he liked the power. “Captain, lay in a course for the last system we went through on the charts before switching here. Thunder will meet us there.”
Ikira looked at him sternly. “You followed us, then. How?”
“We’re just slimy, tricky bastards, that’s all. Don’t worry, this was just to simplify things. We want to move quickly now—it don’t pay to keep Thunder in one spot too long. Tell the others to follow our course, heading, and speed. It’s best we all get together, get to know each other, and get the hell out of this sector.”
There was a mixture of anticipation of action and some nervousness among the others joining the fleet.
“I just hope for all our sakes you know what you’re doing,” Ikira said tensely.
I hope we do, too, thought the little boy running beside the horses of the warriors.
They did not punch for very long. As soon as they arrived in-system they did a scan, and for a moment Raven was worried. Then a ship showed up closing on them. It was Lightning, now with Sabatini at the controls and Warlock on the guns; the Chows were on Pirate One. Raven had to wonder why the crews had been rearranged.
“Any more coming in?” Sabatini asked.
“We got six out of eight, damn it! What did you want—a miracle?” Raven retorted.
“All right. The Chows are calling in the Thunder. Warlock and I are going to check out something suspicious and we’ll be back in a few hours. We have the chart position you’re moving to anyway, so if we’re not back before you get everyone together and get moving, we’ll catch up.”
Raven frowned. Something suspicious? “Anything we should know about?”
There was a pause. “No. Nothing you should know about.”
Ikira used her scanners on Lightning as it pulled away and prepared to punch. “That is one fast ship. I have never seen a design like that before.”
“It’s a custom job. It took on a Val and won, so don’t underestimate it. I—” He stopped, then just sat there a moment, thinking, a sad frown descending on him.
We’ll be back in a few hours . . .
“Something wrong?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side. “No, nothing wrong.” He sighed. “Forget it.” But he couldn’t forget it, because he now understood the reason for the crew switch; he knew where they were going and what they were going to do and he didn’t like it one bit.
The only ones who knew the identities of the ships and crews that had come to their side were the two holdouts, Novovladivostok and Sisu Moduru. They wouldn’t have left yet, most likely; they’d be examining their new stores of murylium and deciding what to do next. Sooner or later one or both would fall into the hands of Master System, perhaps alive and certainly with their records intact. Master System would then know the personalities aboard the Thunder’s supplemental force, its ships, numbers, and capabilities.
Both ships were well armed and shielded, but they would be no match for Lightning, rebuilt as a killer machine and with Warlock at the armaments controls.
Raven was very glad Kaotan had decided to join in. He sighed. At least Warlock would be in a very good mood when he next saw her.
It took about forty minutes for Thunder to come in from wherever it had been lurking, and Raven always liked to hear the comments of people who had never seen the likes of a fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship before. It was more like having an asteroid with engines.
“Thunder to Raven, how are you doing?” Star Eagle called.
“Just fine, I guess. I have six ships here—including Fernando Savaphoong and his ship—all filled with veteran freebooters and a mixture of colonials, as well. I haven’t the slightest idea how many people we’re talking about, though.”
“The murylium’s all been stored or shifted to the aft processors, and with Lightning not in, all four bays are available. I don’t see any ship that wouldn’t fit in there, but with Pirate One we still have three more ships than bays. I suggest that three of you will have to use the cargo docking ports and make your way to the bay air-lock stations using pressure suits. Until we get everything organized I would like to move as a unit, acting as a mother. I am scanning the fleet and I am impressed, but I would suggest you all send me your identification codes so I can sort and direct you.”
This was accomplished in a fraction of a second.
“I have limited drydock facilities in the bays, although not what we really need. Kaotan, San Cristobal, and Bahakatan, you could all use some maintenance and refitting. So could you, Indrus, but you are in better shape than they are. I suggest Kaotan in Bay One, San Cristobal in Bay Two, Bahakatan in Bay Three, and Indrus in Bay Four. Pirate One, you dock at Bay Two after San Cristobal is inside and the outer hull closed and sealed and walk down with care. Espiritu Luzon, do the same with Bay One after Kaotan is inside and secured, and Chunhoifan, take Bay Three after Bahakatan is secured. The bays are not currently pressurized, so wear suits. We will have people to meet you in each and lead you into the ship.”
There were some special requests. Because of the artificial gravity in the interior shell there were a couple who needed some kind of rider transport, and Ikira made certain to note that she had at least one amphibian aboard who required water at intervals. It was not easy to gather everyone together; the whole process took more than three hours and a lot of grumbling. Only the fact that some of these reluctant recruits really wanted to see the inside of a ship like the Thunder kept things in hand at all. Hawks met the crew of the Kaotan, and did not comment on the odd and mostly antique and bulky space suits they wore. He did, however, make a mental note to himself to have Star Eagle work on outfitting them better.
“Take everyone into the village and make them as comfortable as we can for now,” he told Raven. “I’ll stay here and wait for the people from Espiritu Luzon. Don’t take off your suit, though. When I get back I may need you to help fetch the ones from Chunhoifan.”
“Fair enough, Chief. I didn’t get much exercise lately anyway. Ladies, this way, and be prepared for gradually increasing gravity as we pass through the air-lock sequences. We have the interior at about point eight of a gee to allow for muscle toning and natural activity.”
All of them seemed awed by the village interior, and stared unbelievingly at what felt like a tiny island rather than a spaceship.
“I’m afraid we’re gonna have to double up a lot, or have some folks sleep outside for a while, depending on the crowd we get,” Raven said apologetically. “I expect we’re gonna wind up with a bunch of folks either livin’ in offices or on the better ships. Ten to one old Savaphoong would rather commute than stay here.”
“I think it is fantastic!” Ikira Sukotae told him. “I couldn’t have dreamed that such a thing was possible inside a ship!” The others echoed her sentiments.
“You ought’a seen the place before we fixed it up,” the Crow noted. “It looked like the biggest rolling mausoleum in history. We still got plenty of room back there, and if we can take the banging and other construction there should eventually be room for everybody in this kind of setting. Once we get your ships repaired and all fixed up, we’ll have to figure a way to give the ones on the outside some kind of direct access in.”
But it was Takya Mudabur, the amphibian, who said what was in back of all the colonial crew’s minds. “Our ancestors—might have come on this very ship. This is the origin, the way it began . . . ”
He hadn’t even considered the historical and cultural impact the Thunder might have, but he was secretly glad they hadn’t seen in it in its original form. The history of colonial transport might as well remain romantic; let only the original rebel band know how ugly it really was.
Cloud Dancer arrived with another awed and incredulous crew. Star Eagle was landing them in measured order to minimize the confusion and stretch his few greeters as best he could.
San Cristobal had a mixed crew of Earth-humans and colonials including a couple of people that the Kaotan crew seemed to know very well, if the emotional greetings were an indication. Its crew of six included two defectors from the ships that had opted out. Captain Maria Santiago was small, brown, and Earth-human; the other two Earth-humans were both men, one large and blond and bearded, the other medium-sized with some of the characteristics of Raven’s own people. Two others were the oddest colonials yet. Their torsos and heads were very strange but at least humanoid. Their large bodies stood on four legs; the largest part of the steel-blue torso was under the humanoid part, and the rear rested on what appeared to be short, stubby back legs that almost didn’t seem up to the job. The final one was the Rock Monster, if a man could turn to rough stone, develop bumps all over, and have deep, dark recessed eyes and a mouth as wide as the whole face, this was how he might look.
Hawks arrived with Savaphoong and his entourage, which included a very tough-looking Earth-human man and two Earth-human women who looked just as tough and mean. He had also brought his favorite remakes—the air-headed slaves of Halinachi—but had left them aboard as he didn’t even have space suits for them. The two males and five females still aboard the Espiritu Luzon would be more a source of embarrassment to the rest than any real use, anyway.
Raven excused himself and went to fetch the crew of Chunhoifan as Clayben arrived with those aboard the Indrus. Captain Ravi Paschittawal was obviously more provincial in his choice of crews, or he kept it all in the family. The two men and two women with him, all Earth-human, were definitely of the same race and culture as their captain. Hawks knew enough to recognize them as the same sort of people who ran Delhi Center back home. The real Indians.
Chunhoifan proved entirely colonial, with Captain Chun Wo Har a creature who, while humanoid, wore an armor like exoskeleton that together with his stalked eyes and long feelers gave him an insect-like appearance. Two others of his kind accompanied him, both female and, oddly, looking it in spite of their alien appearance. With them were two others from one of the ships that remained behind: Small, rotund humanoids with green skin and mottled complexions, owlish faces, bulging yellow eyes, and what looked like wings on their backs although it was impossible that ones of their shape and weight could ever actually fly. Hawks decided that the wings must have another less obvious function, since no colonial would have anything vestigial.
Finally Clayben, on his second trip, brought in the crew of Bahakatan. Captain Ali Mohammed ben Suda looked Earth-human enough, although his appearance reflected a hard life as did that of his wife, Fatima, who might have been no older than Cloud Dancer but whose medium-length hair was gray. They looked North African or Middle Eastern, and the two Earth-human members of the crew, both huge men, had Han Chinese features very much like those of the Chows and China. One had blue eyes and the other a full reddish-brown beard and hair—half Han, most likely.
Hawks and the others had been, they thought, mentally prepared for the sight and smells of colonials, but now they realized that they had been wrong. It would be very difficult sledding before everyone was comfortable here, Hawks thought. He was a bit ashamed of himself for feeling that way and somewhat admiring that Raven had appeared to have no such problems.
It was the last member of the Bahakatan’s crew, however, that caused the most consternation and would be hardest to accept. The creature had an exoskeleton and long, flat tail terminating in large finlike appendages, but it walked on four thick legs mounted on circular joints. Although it was a glistening, shiny black, Hawks couldn’t help thinking of Mississippi crawfish. Two other sets of appendages were arranged around its head, both tiny in proportion to the body or legs and terminating in ridged pincerlike claws. The head was a set of eight tentacles, long and rubbery and constantly in motion, around two protruding eyes on what seemed to be retractable stalks, and something dark and wet and nasty that might have been a mouth.
This thing was no colonial; this thing had never had a human ancestor, had never been processed by Master System at all. It had been spawned on a world far different from anything the rest of them there could even imagine.
“I sssee your wooks,” the thing said in a very unpleasant simulation of a human voice from inside that pulpy mass beneath the tentacles. “I am ssschief engineer of Bahakatan. I am Makkikor. You hafff never ssseen Makkikor before. I can tell.”
That was putting it mildly. All of a sudden Hawks felt like hugging the insectival Captain Chun and calling him “brother.”
Captain ben Suda was quick to intervene. “The Makkikor are alien to all of us, sir, but they are no less under the great demon’s thumb than we. They had the bad luck to be in the way when Master System was expanding its colonial empire and they were simply co-opted into the colonial system by force. Their world is not one any of us would be comfortable on, but it is no less a part of the system than the colonials, and after these centuries it and they have far more in common with us than they should. I was lucky to get him, and you should feel lucky, too. The Makkikor carry around their own natural son of air supply and are nearly impervious to vacuums and much of the radiation that would be injurious to us. Debo, here, is the best ship’s engineer and maintenance crewman imaginable.”
Raven stared at the creature and gave a wry chuckle. “Well, Chief, you can’t say we ain’t startin’ off with no one-note crew.”
Hawks opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. All he could think was, Welcome to the universe, Walks With the Night Hawks.
The Thunder vibrated, roared, and began to move out into a universe far more complex than even the originals had anticipated.