Pirates of the Thunder (10 page)

“I doubt if it will be that easy, even for you,” Clayben replied. “But you see why this is as close as I can approach. You haven’t the power to keep her from me, Hawks, and I would fight to the death before I would allow that.”

Hawks stared at Reba Koll. He had expected to have to make some very tough decisions as the leader but he hadn’t expected something like this at all, and certainly not right off.

“All right, Captain, or whatever you are. You really have the biggest problem. I can’t stop you from killing us all, but you can’t take this ship and run it and you know it. It’s Star Eagle’s ship. But whether you are friend or foe, and whether I have to die, along with others here, making certain our mission fails at the start, depends on you. It’s Clayben—or a shot at the rings. China?”

“The gods who might be, if any, know that I have only hatred and contempt for this man, yet if it is the choice of the rings or him, I will kneel to him and lick his behind before I would throw away the rings.”

“This ain’t fair!” Koll grumped. “I spent ten years dreamin’ of nothin’ but gettin’ that bastard in a position where I could torture him to death real slow. I wouldn’t eat him. I wouldn’t want to
be
him, and I wouldn’t
never
be in the position of understanding him. Now you got him and you’re tellin’ me to kiss and make up.”

Hawks was beginning to see the larger picture in all this. He just wished he knew who was drawing it. “It’s why you’re here, Koll, or whatever you are. It’s the reason you’re here and not back on Melchior with Master System in control of it and you. You say you can take anyone. I have no reason to doubt you on that, but can you become a Val? A computer?”

“Of course not, idiot!”

“Master System wouldn’t care how many people you killed. It would study you and analyze you and then melt you down for the final analysis, and it would be perfectly willing to incinerate all life forms on Melchior if it thought it needed to dispose of you. You’re not here by accident. Your name was on Raven’s list. You’re here because you can do what you say—go down and get very close to those who have the rings without penalty. But it’s still a group effort. You think it over. You’re no use to me if you have no self-control.” Hawks turned back to the communications set.

“Clayben, I don’t like you very much, and I don’t trust you at all, but I’m willing to deal you in if you have something to offer me. I can really use that ship of yours, but I don’t
require
it. Nobody here will shed a tear if I order you blown to bits. You are a problem and a luxury for me. Tell me why I can afford you.”

“My knowledge, my skill, my experience,” the scientist replied. “You have computer people and security people there but not one good experimental scientist. I have aboard this ship the backup copies of all the essentials of two decades plus of research done on Melchior. The data is unique and priceless. It is also coded only to me. Then there is the ship, as you mentioned, and Mr. Nagy’s not inconsiderable background and contacts. He’s been out here before. He knows the freebooters—who can be trusted and who can’t. I don’t think you can afford to pass us up, sir, or I wouldn’t have chased you.”

Hawks turned to the others. “Mute the communications link for a moment, Star Eagle.”

“Muted. We are here far too long, Hawks. We should move.”

“The risk might be worth it. It isn’t the worst we’ve taken and it won’t be the worst we take in the future. Now, listen, all of you. I want to hear it from everyone. Clayben’s right. He has the data we need, and Nagy the contacts. They have a ship we could use that we don’t have to convert from Master System control. Can we trust men like this? No. Their record speaks for itself. They aren’t so much demonic as they are uncaring about human beings or anything except themselves. They’ll be trouble. Raven?”

“Bring ‘em on, Chief. We’ll take care of them if they get out of line. I kinda think they’ll be real cooperative, real team players, until push comes to shove. Besides, it’s a great way to get the ship. If they get nasty later we can always eliminate them.”

Warlock snickered. “We are of Security, Hawks. This is our job and we are good at it. We can handle them.”

“Chows?”

“They are no worse than any of the others we have always faced. If they can do us some good, then it is about time they served someone else,” Chow Dai said. Her twin nodded.

“Cloud Dancer?”

“Whatever you decide I will accept,” she replied. “I am not certain that such evil men can ever be turned to a good purpose, but if we lose to them we deserve it.”

“Star Eagle?”

“By all means let them come aboard. My core defenses are extensive and there is nothing they can do aboard the
Thunder
without my knowledge. In order for Clayben to use his data he will have to interface with my data banks. Anything he decrypts I will also learn.”

Hawks sighed. “It’s up to you, then, Koll. Think of it this way. For once Clayben will be under our authority rather than we under his. He might try something, but if he does I’ll give him to you, no strings attached. The moment he betrays any one of us, he is yours.”

She seemed to have already made up her mind. “All right—but keep him away from the bridge. Quarantine him. On the ground he’ll be on my turf, as it were, and I think I can handle him if he can handle me. But not here. Not on the
Thunder”

“Communications open,” Hawks ordered. “All right, Doctor, you’re invited aboard by unanimous consent, although our one real dissenter here insists that you be kept isolated from the bridge while on this ship. If that is agreeable, approach at moderate speed and prepare for instructions from our pilot. We will punch as soon as we have you securely aboard, so remain in your ship with full life support until we tell you otherwise.”

“Understand. Acknowledge. You won’t regret this.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But you might,” Hawks muttered under his breath.

It took almost an hour to get the
Star
into an outer hold, but Star Eagle knew his job and was now fully master of the big ship’s systems.

The pilot didn’t hesitate once all was ready, though. The
Thunder’s
great engines roared into life, raising the massive sonic storm, and within minutes they punched.

The sensation was still very unpleasant, but this time there were no hallucinations and only relief that they were out of there.

“You handled that right well, Chief,” Raven commented.

“Perhaps. Perhaps I’m handling this on gut instinct, Crow. Instinct and educated hunches. But they’ll be a time bomb once aboard and you know it. I want no quarter given. The slightest wrong move and, well, they are expendable.”

“No!” China said sharply. “Use your head, Hawks. We need them—but on
our
side. That man has played whatever games he wanted with people at his mercy using mindprinters and transmuters.
We
have transmuters and when we are finished cannibalizing the old ship
we
will have a mindprinter.”

“But that one’s too limited to be of real use,” he pointed out.

“Perhaps, but I will wager that Clayben had that ship of his outfitted as a fully equipped fast escape ship from the planning stages on. The fact that all data from the Melchior master computers was automatically transmitted to it in encoded form shows that. I’ll wager that aboard that thing he has a small transmuter and a state-of-the-art mindprinter. Possibly even a psychogenetics minilab. That ship, I will wager, is a one—or two—person Melchior in miniature. By the time Star Eagle’s maintenance robots and probes get through with it, I think we’ll be able to do to the doctor whatever we wish—before he does it to us.”

3.  AN ISLAND IN THE WILDERNESS

S
he was sheer power, able to see in many directions at once, to have all things background monitored and brought to her notice, if need be. A mere thought brought access to more data on more subjects than her mind could handle; in some ways, it was too much for her, yet she could not get enough of it. While she was the ship, she was a goddess, and it was no fantasy, no wish fulfillment—it was real.

But she was also a small, fragile thing lying there in a command chair on the bridge, wearing a huge padded helmet from which specialized cables extended into the front panel. Star Eagle understood that the small form there was her primary reality, the one that made the rest possible, so he limited the duration of her stays in his mighty realm, while giving her absolute freedom while she was there.

She sped along the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of communications and monitoring circuitry and enjoyed it as her own private sort of peep show. Of particular interest was the large, rectangular module in Cargo Bay Four that had been constructed by Maintenance and endowed with full life-support and comfort facilities. Hawks referred to it as the Leper Colony, although he alone aboard knew what a leper was. They had built it for Clayben and Nagy, and then sent Sabatini down there as well, if only to get him out from underfoot.

Since Star Eagle had designed and constructed the module, it was hardly private, in spite of assurances to the occupants that their space was secure. Every move, every spoken word, every pulse beat was monitored and recorded, and it was all carefully scrutinized by Raven and Warlock, who knew just what to look for.

Clayben looked about fifty, with thin white hair, blue eyes, and a ruddy complexion. He appeared fat and chubby-faced, but he was in remarkably good shape and worked to keep it. He had a deep, pleasant, throaty baritone that always sounded confident and secure, the voice of a family physician or top salesman. He certainly had one of the best minds of his or any other generation, the sort of mind that could work on a dozen problems at once and master virtually any discipline it wished. That was both his greatness and his curse. He had run a torture chamber, yet never once had he thought of it that way. To him, the entire universe and all the creatures in it were merely props, put there for his convenience. His was total egocentrism, but, unlike most such conceited people, he really
was
superior to most other human beings. The only other he recognized and truly feared was Master System, and it would never have occurred to him that he and the great hidden computer were mortal enemies—primarily because they were so much alike.

The best way to describe Arnold Nagy physically was to think of a wide-angle photograph of a man in which the sides were compressed, making him a distorted stick figure. His head was very long and narrow, and it sat on a long neck attached to a body that was also very tall, very angular, and very thin. His tremendous hawklike nose and lantern jaw, narrow eyes, and very small mouth only accented his peculiar appearance. He was very dark complected, with deep-brown eyes and long jet-black hair, and it was impossible to guess his age.

This was the man who had been trusted with Melchior’s security by both Clayben and Master System—he was formidable and dangerous. So far he seemed to speak and understand about every language he’d come across. He had long and often involved discussions with Sabatini in the latter’s native Italian, and he even had the dialect and the slang right. One could not use Mandarin, for example, to comment privately where he might overhear, and Cloud Dancer couldn’t even be certain Nagy didn’t know Kyiakutt. Clearly Nagy was a natural linguist. Languages could be learned by mindprinter, to a point, as many of them had learned English and were still perfecting it by listening to those who spoke it naturally, but dialects and slang were not so easy to impart.

“Boring.”
Nagy sighed, settling down in a chair. “Sitting watch on the patient monitors was a thrill a minute compared to this.”

“Patience, Arnold,” Clayben responded. “Doubtless by now they’ve gone over the ship almost molecule by molecule, and they’re sorting out all their data and trying to break the encryption on the data-bank records. Our active time will come. Great goals require great patience. Would you rather put on a pressure suit and go up and say hello to Reba Koll? She’s going to
have
to eat someone, you know, sooner or later, and there aren’t many likely candidates around.”

Nagy looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Sacrificial goat no matter what, huh, Doc? Is that why you wanted me transferred from the
Star?
For this?”

“No, Arnold, I did not. The last thing I imagined was being in a secondary role on this ship with that
thing
aboard and running free. I actually intended us to get to the freebooters and establish a new working base somewhere from which to build an organization and obtain the rings. It would be very difficult to find them on our own, but not impossible. They are quite distinctive. Someone, someplace, must have noticed them. Then, when it became clear that these people might get this ship started, it was worth the risk of improvising and following. I had no idea that such people could get something of this size and complexity running so smoothly at all, let alone this quickly. I would be willing to work with most of these people, but I shall never be comfortable while that creature is loose. I should have destroyed it ten years ago, when I had the chance. It is my greatest mistake.”