Pirates of the Thunder (14 page)

Reba Koll’s voice crackled. “If we can’t beat
them,
how the hell could we ever take on Master System?”

Hawks sighed and wished he could get rid of the feeling that he was in the role of the cavalry marching against the peoples of early America. He slapped his thighs. “All right—we move!”

4. SETTLING SOME POLITICAL MATTERS

E
XCEPT FOR THE HEAT AND THE HUMIDITY, IT FELT ALMOST
like home. Hawks sat before the campfire and looked around in the gloom. The maintenance robots had done the real heavy work, but all of the crew had a hand in what was wrought here. Ironically, it was Cloud Dancer, Silent Woman, and the Chows who had the proper design skills; the others were far too civilized and spoiled to know just how to build this way out of the materials of the forest around them—supplemented, of course, by the transmuter. Even so, the rest had all been quite amused to discover that neither Clayben nor Nagy had ever seen a pit toilet until now.

The transmuter was a valuable device, but it had its limits. It could turn out real and useful things from programs sent by Star Eagle, but only if they were no more than a meter or so square and no more than two meters high. Even the maintenance robots had to be sent in pieces and partly reassembled by hand, and this was where Clayben was invaluable. It had been fascinating to watch a bunch of spindly wires and meaningless metal forms take shape to a point, be activated, and then assemble the rest of themselves without additional aid.

So now, in a cleared area just off the rocks and reasonably far from the water, they had several huts made from a bamboolike plant, with roofs of thatched strawlike growths from still other plants. The huts were quite comfortable and relatively waterproof. With outdated carpentry tools provided by Star Eagle’s apparently limitless data banks, basic furnishings had been built and a hand loom set up for Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman to weave blankets and other needed materials.

They still depended on the transmuter for most of their food; although the data banks of the generation ship contained the matrixes for a vast quantity of seed plants, it would take time and some care to cultivate such crops here, and there was no guarantee that what they planted would thrive in this planet’s climate and soil.

Clayben was setting up a power generating station in consultation with Star Eagle, but right now they had only basic power, all of which went to maintaining the defensive perimeter. This was a series of rods set well into the ground, between each of which ran a slightly visible and quite effective criss-cross of electric beams. Anyone or anything going between them would get a very nasty jolt; anyone touching one of the posts itself would probably die. The device also made a pretty nasty crackling sound when the current was interrupted, loud enough and strange enough to wake the dead. It was hardly foolproof—what could be under these conditions?—but it guaranteed that any attacker could not come in without warning.

So far, there had been nothing. No signs, no attempts at contact. Hawks was fairly pleased; everyone, even Sabatini, had pitched in to help build the place. Koll and Clayben coexisted peaceably, if uneasily. Hawks had the distinct feeling that while Koll was willing and able to go through with her end of the bargain, at least for the immediate future, Clayben clearly was scared to death, and Nagy wasn’t far behind him. The historian wished he knew or understood more about the strange woman. China was ever-present evidence of what Clayben was capable of doing in the name of playing god, but Hawks still couldn’t accept the story of koll’s origins at face value. That was the problem. This was a mob bound together by mutual need and circumstance; it was no team.

Over in his own meager hut, Isaac Clayben sat, his potbelly overflowing his simple loincloth as he worked by the light of a primitive fiery torch on a portable lab bench that was incomprehensible to any of the others and powered by small energy cells that seemed eternal. He was as cognizant as anyone of the incongruity of his activities under the circumstances, but he was determined. Indeed, his thoughts were not much different from those of Hawks.

“A rabble, Arnold, that’s what we are. Primitive rabble at the mercy of an independent computer pilot. We will get nowhere this way.”

Arnold Nagy sighed. “Doc, I think we ought to let things settle themselves here, at least for a while. Raven and Warlock are my sort of people—we understand each other and I can deal with them. Hawks is a kind of father figure to them, but he’s no real leader type and he knows it. Other than them, only our China doll has real guts and brains, and she’s pretty helpless and dependent. Let things sort themselves out.”

“You forget the creature,” Clayben reminded him. “You’ve seen the way it—looks at me. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since we all came down here.”

Nagy shrugged. “What can we do about it? You’d have to incinerate or electrocute it to a puddle. Shooting wouldn’t work—you know that.”

“If only I had access to my data base!”

Nagy sighed. “Doc, so you get the formula and you whip up a bath of the stabilizing shit. Ain’t no way she’s gonna jump into it and no way you can force it. Before you can deal with it, you gotta be in much better circumstances than here.” It was curious how Nagy, the linguist and dialectician, dropped naturally into a very common nasal and slang-ridden vernacular. The listener tended to forget the mind behind that common working-class voice—which was, of course, exactly his intention.

“The trouble is, Arnold, we’re going nowhere here. We’re lapsing into a primitive, quasi-tribal existence with no cohesion and no drive. With the resources we have on the ships and the knowledge these people represent I could make this into the nucleus of a team that could conquer the universe—but I dare not. Move against them and whatever slight compact the creature feels toward the group will dissolve.”

Sabatini had apparently been dozing on a cot, but now his eyes opened. “What did you say it would take to kill this whatever-it-is?”

“Incineration or massive electrocution.”

“Would the fence have enough power?”

“Possibly—if it could be kept on long enough. You couldn’t count on it, though.”

Sabatini was silent for a moment. “These torches—they’re oil fed, sort of, right?”

“Yes. It’s synthesized in the transmuter from palm fronds. Why?”

“How much could we get? Suppose the old bird could be lured, maybe forced, into touching one of them posts and then, while she was bein’ shocked, somebody poured this oil over her? Instant torch, right?”

Clayben stopped puttering and turned to stare at Sabatini. “You are becoming interesting. Go on.”

“I think it can be arranged. She’s been real protective of the girls, particularly the Chows and the Indians. The stream where we get the drinking water and the pit toilet are both real near the fence line, both in back, out of routine sight. I been itchin’ to teach them Chow bitches a lesson in humility.”

“Think you could?” Nagy asked, smirking a little. “Seems to me I heard tell the last time you thought that they shoved you out an air lock.”

“It was that China broad. I underestimated her, but you fixed her good, Doc. Them other girls ain’t no threat. China gave ‘em their guts. I’m pretty sure I could lure Koll back usin’ one of them.”

Clayben stared at the former captain, the only one of them not out there of his own free will. “And then what, Captain? Assuming it works—then what?”

“Huh? Then we—you—take over, like you said.”

The scientist cleared his throat. “Yes, and I suppose you know how to do that as well. What? Slit Raven and Warlock’s throats? I doubt if that will be so easy, particularly the woman. She is a psychopath. She
enjoys
killing, and she is good at it, I suspect, or she wouldn’t be here. Hawks, too, of course.”

“Yeah, sure. Hell, if I can take out Koll, then you sure as hell can take out the others. Five women, three of us, should be real nice, with the China broad as hostage to makin’ that computer do what we want.”

Clayben glanced at Nagy, who rolled his eyes.

“As foreign a concept as this might be to you,” Clayben said carefully, “diplomacy and deal making often gain more than brute force, Captain. However, I’m willing to meet you partway. You take out the creature for me, and I will make certain you get all the reward I can muster. Take her out and leave the rest to us.”

Sabatini got up, yawned, and stretched. “Yeah, sure, Doc. Ain’t that what I said?”

The pit toilet, dug as far from the huts and the water supply as possible, was very near the camp perimeter. Since the fence line could be breached by a projectile weapon such as stone, spear, or arrow, anyone using the facilities was in a vulnerable position. So no one went to the toilet without an armed guard. Manka Warlock or Reba Koll generally accompanied the women, since only those two had any experience with modern weapons.

Sabatini had planned fairly well. He had only to sit, and wait, watching from a vantage point to one side of the huts, until he saw Chow Dai walk casually out toward the pit toilet. Reba Koll remained in the more protected hut area, where she could stand guard without becoming a target herself. She wasn’t even watching the girl, which allowed Sabatini to gather his small set of tools and make his way along the fence line unobserved. Chow Dai, finished, stood to adjust her ersatz skirt. Koll seemed preoccupied with something back toward the campfire area.

“You’d look better without that skirt,” Sabatini said aloud to Chow Dai. “I remember you real good, honey. You been a long time without a man to give you what you need.”

She started and looked at him in shock. Sabatini had cruelly tortured her and the others when they’d been helpless prisoners on his ship, and the memory of that remained.

“Get away, you bastard,” she snarled at him bravely, although her voice was trembling. “If I need a man I will find one. There are none near me at this moment, only foul-smelling excrement.”

“You little bitch! Do I have to teach you again?” He reached for her, deliberately, and with some melodramatic exaggeration.

She wriggled free and started to run, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back to him. She screamed.

Koll’s head came around. For a brief second her hand went to the trigger on her pistol, but she didn’t dare shoot, since Sabatini had a wriggling, panicky girl in his grasp.

“Sabatini, you worm!” she shouted, running out toward them. “You let her go right now! This has gone far enough!”

He grinned evilly at Reba Koll. “You gonna stop me, you washed-up hag?” Coldly seeing that Koll had no intention of shooting, he flung Chow Dai away and stood to face the onrushing woman, who clearly was too angered to think straight or call for help. Chow Dai just lay on the ground, stunned.

“I’ve taken far bigger and better’n you!” Koll snarled, assuming a judolike stance. Sabatini grinned and did likewise. Koll feinted, then jumped, her feet aiming for his stomach, but he moved aside, and she struck a glancing blow that did not unbalance him. He managed to turn a full circle and push her farther out toward the fence. She recovered but Sabatini reached into the grass and pulled up a long, thin wire that seemed to run all the way to the fence. She saw it, laughed, and jumped it, only to find herself tangled in a whole nest of wires carefully concealed in the grass between the pit toilet and the fence. She fell over, and he was on her, grabbing her and pulling her right hand to the charged post. She struggled, but she was caught in the wire and briefly confused, and he touched her hand to the post.

There was a loud and nasty electrical buzzing sound that startled the insects and carried far in the wind. Chow Dai for a moment could not understand what had happened; if he had touched Koll to the fence, then why was he not getting the charge, as well?

His boots!
she realized suddenly.
He’s wearing his pressure suit’s boots! They protect him!

He let go and stepped back as Reba Koll’s scream of pain rose over the terrible sound of the fence’s lethal charge. He reached over and pulled away her pistol, suddenly afraid that the charge would make the bullets fire, then stepped well back again.

Reba Koll’s hand blackened, charred, and bubbled, and the stench of burning flesh suddenly filled the air. It seemed as if the hand were made of plastic, melting into a terrible bubble as Koll tried to pull away.

And Koll
was
pulling away, the right arm now connected to the bubbling mass that had been her hand by only some blackish, plasticlike goo, and then it was free—and she was free of the charge. Her hand was still on the post, still burning, but Reba Koll was no longer attached to it.

Sabatini frowned and stepped backward. “This ain’t possible!” he muttered to himself.

Reba Koll was obviously in pain, but she got to her feet, her blackened stump looking all the more horrible as she did so. There was no blood, and that horrified Sabatini most of all. He edged back still more, toward the bucket of oil he’d brought out with him and set down before accosting Chow Dai.