Pirates of the Thunder (25 page)

“I apologize for the delay,” came the voice of the
Thunder’s
pilot. “I was elsewhere when your beam arrived at the base system, and did not get it until I attempted a relay. I came as quickly as I could after that.”

“It’s those fugitives from Melchior!” somebody on one of the freebooter ships exclaimed. “Well, I’ll be damned! If I didn’t see it, I wouldn’t believe it!”

Sabatini maneuvered close to
Thunder
until
Lightning
could be caught by tractors from the larger vessel and brought inside Cargo Bay Two.

“Where is Nagy?” Star Eagle asked before they were on board. “I do not get a readout on him. And what did you do to the inside of that ship?”

“Nagy’s dead,” Sabatini told the pilot. “We got a Val, but we had to pay a price. His body’s floating through here someplace. Hey—that’s funny!”

Raven frowned. “What is it?”

“You remember when we blasted that Val? That thing that flew out and away and punched?”

“Yes, I remember you saying so. Why?”

“I just got the same kind of reading. A punch, much too small for a ship or anything else useful. Not too far off here, either. Did you get it, Star Eagle?”

“Yes. I just checked my records and I noted it. A very brief but very powerful punch no more than two meters across.”

Raven felt a chill.
About the size of Arnold Nagy’s body,
he thought.

7. THE PIRATES STRIKE

“I’
VE ANALYZED THE ENTIRE SHIP’S RECORDING AND
I find it remarkable that any of you survived,” Star Eagle remarked as they headed back to the base world. “It would seem to me that none of you would without Nagy, and now Nagy is gone.”

“What about him?” Raven asked. “You heard the deathbed statement. Was he telling the truth, or what?”

“Who can say? As far as I can see, he was a normal Earth-human in all respects, but that can be deceiving. Up to now we have been thinking in terms of some of us perhaps having to become colonials, but what holds for us holds for others. An atom is just an atom and a molecule is just a molecule to the transmuter. His earlier remark about some of you having to make what he called the ultimate sacrifice is revealing, I think.”

Raven nodded. “Yeah, I thought that was a funny way of putting it. Like somebody who’d done that very thing and felt that way. So Nagy might well have been some kind of alien creature we don’t even know, maybe something so different it’d revolt any humans, Earth or colonial. It’s a one-way process, so he was stuck, as a monster, living among monsters, for the whole rest of his life. Damn it, that means we can’t take
anybody
for granted! I thought we had enough trouble with Sabatini, here, and now you tell me my own mother might be a three-headed octopus from the Great Bear.”

“It is always a possibility,” the pilot admitted cheerfully. “I do not, however, think that this is the major problem. Suppose we grant, as circumstantial evidence indicates, that Nagy was indeed a member, possibly nonhuman, of the mysterious enemy at war with Master System. If that is the case, then we are their chosen agents. All of this is established as part of a master plan and we are pawns within it. This presents the question of whether or not we are working to save the human race or destroy it.”

“Interesting. Go on.”

“Clearly they cannot win whatever they wish to win so long as Master System exists and the master program operates. They cannot defeat it; should a world, even a number of worlds, be taken by force, Master System would not hesitate to exterminate those worlds to save the rest. If their objective is conquest, then Master System is the only thing that stands in their way. Should we somehow gain the means and the method of eliminating it, as improbable as that still seems to me, would we gain from that, or lose, or perhaps sacrifice everything doing all their work for them for nothing?”

“I hate to inject myself in this,” the normally taciturn Warlock said, “but you both miss the real question. If, in fact, they can create a Nagy and implant him at the heart of Melchior security, then what do they need us for? Why can’t
they
just take the rings?”

“I have thought about that,” Star Eagle replied. “It seems obvious that for some reason they cannot do so. It is not for lack of resources, or volunteers, or knowledge. Very possibly Hawks is correct, and it is in the nature of Master System’s core program. Something that would allow only humans to have even a chance at it.”

Raven shook his head. “It don’t wash. How’d even Master System know the difference between our Nagy and a real Nagy? It’s all screwy. It don’t make no sense. And that guff about rules and the game, like they was the Creator and the Father of Demons usin’ us for sport, winner take all. I don’t like it. It’s spooky.”

Warlock laughed. “I cannot believe you!
You,
the great cynic, the Raven of the northern plains, suddenly getting mystical, as if we were pawns in some cosmic conclusion between God and the devil. Well, if Master System is God, then I will take the devil.”

Raven just shook his head in confusion. “Perhaps, my dear, you don’t know me as well as you think you do. I am first and foremost a Crow. Maybe Hawks can make some sense of it. He has a better sense of the mystic and the perspective of history.”

“The immediate situation is the most pressing,” Star Eagle said. “I had hoped to keep the planetside colony going for another month or two, as I am not yet finished with my renovations, but with so many Vals around, I think we had best consolidate on board here.”

“That’s what everybody else wanted to do from the start,” Raven noted. “You were the one who talked us into going down into that hell hole.”

“That was necessary at the time. The
Thunder
was not a place to live and work. I had no shipyard, so the work had to be done bit by bit and piece by piece, with an army of maintenance robots and all the transmuter power I could bring to bear. Now we have pressing problems, though, and I am far enough along to accommodate you. When I can gain a new supply of murylium to restore the big transmuters, I can complete the job, but the major single task is done.”

Isaac Clayben sighed. “As for me, I am glad to be rid of this primitive place. I long for access to my files and continuing my research. I have much that might be useful to us in there.”

Hawk sighed. “I am less enamored of leaving. There are so many mysteries still here, and this is a place of beauty. I still want to know who or what those mysterious black shapes in the water were, and who planted those groves and why.”

They had used the small fighter to go over to that other island, where they found signs of expert cultivation of fruit and vegetable trees, but the system seemed to be self-maintaining and clearly had not been visited for a long time. There, too, they had found fierce-looking carved-wood totems that resembled more the demons of Hawks’s people than anything else, surrounding red-stained stones in a formation that resembled an altar. That had been their only attempt at real exploration, and had resulted in the camp atmosphere becoming even more edgy.

China was back to normal. Cloud Dancer had woven a backpack for carrying the baby, and it seemed to be working out well. The child had been given a traditional Han name by his mother, but because shortly after being born he had reached out and grabbed a piece of cloth with such force that he had torn it, everyone called him Strongboy.

China was quite an attentive mother, even once she was back to her old hardheaded self, but she relished returning to the
Thunder
and what it had to offer her that nothing on the ground could: vision, a special kind of vision that few others in the party could understand.

The ship’s corridors looked the same, if a bit more well traveled, but a complex air lock now separated the inner hull from the cavernous interior.

“Eventually I will have the outer regions pressurized all the way to the cargo bays,” Star Eagle told the group. “I need more fuel to build that new and independent network, though. With what I had in the reserves, I concentrated on the interior great hall.”

The view that greeted them when they entered was startling, almost impossible to believe. Star Eagle had dismantled most of the tubes, elevated catwalks, and other structures to create a vast open space almost a full kilometer wide and five kilometers back from the forward bulkhead. This area had been pressurized and given artificial gravity—but what was inside the vast area was the most astonishing of all.

“It’s gross!” Raven gasped. “And trees! It looks like a small village down there, too!”

“It is,” Star Eagle responded proudly. “I am afraid that the wood used in the buildings and furnishings is synthetic, but it should feel and look like real wood. The trees and grass and much else are real. The humidity within the enclosure is regulated, the temperature maintained at twenty-six point six degrees. There is a watering system that will maintain the plants and flowers, and a central area with a food and drink synthesizer, as well as some cooking facilities if you prefer to prepare you own food. The vegetation is natural and will produce oranges, melons, and other assorted fruits, and I am also growing some vegetables hydroponically in a separate section to supplement the blandness of the synthesizer. The lighting is set to follow a normal pattern and will be dimmed for eight hours a day to allow easy rest. With more fuel, I can expand and elaborate on this for almost the entire length of the cavity, as well as develop the surrounding rooms between here and the cargo bays for laboratories, offices, and the like. If we add more people, this has the capacity to become a true town.”

They removed their pressure suits and were startled to feel a slight wind on their cheeks. Cloud Dancer was entranced. “Our own little world.”

Some of the catwalk mechanism had been retained and was used to lower them down to “ground” level. Another, also controlled by Star Eagle, provided access to the bridge entrance.

“It is still somewhat like living in a great cave,” Raven remarked dryly. “A right comfortable cave. I ain’t sure I like it much more than bein’ down there, though.”

“I think it is much better to be at the center of the action than to sit down there and rot,” Hawks said. “I share your affinity with the sky and natural wind and rain, but down there we were of no use to ourselves or to anyone else. Now we are all together.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinkin’ of, Chief,” Raven responded. “You weren’t on the
Lightning
trapped by a Val.
Two
Vals. If it happened to us, it sure as hell can happen to a ship this size, and next time they’ll have learned from their experience and they’ll bring a fleet. Remember, they know what they’re dealing with in
Thunder.
If they get us, they get everybody.”

“Not necessarily,” Star Eagle put in. He had apparently planted some sort of transceiver system all over the ship and would be a potential ghostly companion almost anywhere, something else Raven didn’t relish. “This ship is extremely well defended. It will be the last thing they attempt to take on directly, I think. And, if we can get some more ships, we can have a great deal of mobility without having to betray
Thunder.
Also, when I am repairing the damage you did to
Lightning,
I will make some other modifications. Never more should our smaller ship go out without some sort of cover. I am right now working on the problem of binding to the ship two fighters with automatic defense mechanisms. All three would be more than a match for any Val.”

The small houses proved quite comfortable. Each had a sink and a small toilet, as well as beds, a table, and chairs. Raven and Warlock were housed together, and the Chows had their own small hut. Hawks, too, had a two-person hut, with the idea that one of the women would stay with China at all times, alternating nights. Clayben and Sabatini each had their own place—at opposite ends of the village. Clay ben’s hut also had a bed for Nagy, which now would not be needed. Star Eagle had rigged terminals with intercoms in each of the huts, each with a conspicuous on/off switch. Raven couldn’t help but wonder if the switch really did anything.

“Well, now what?” Raven asked nobody in particular.

“We wait,” Hawks replied. “We wait and see if the seed you all planted with Savaphoong bears real fruit.”

“Waiting,” Raven grumbled. “That’s all we ever seem to do is wait.”

They waited eleven days until finally Star Eagle picked up a transmission on the frequency designated by Nagy and stored before his death in the
Lightning’s
records. By this time, a shipboard routine had been established. Hawks now had access to the vast library of information in the
Thunder’s
data banks, and Isaac Clayben was permitted limited access to his own private files stolen from Melchior.

Now that Clayben was entirely contained on the
Thunder,
Star Eagle saw no reason to deny the scientist this and every reason to allow it. Star Eagle controlled all computer access aboard; anything Clayben decoded and removed for use was also instantly known to Star Eagle, including the codes for retrieving that particular area of information. Clayben’s system, which appeared to be based on old English nursery rhymes, soon became quite clear and logical to Star Eagle, and with the aid of Hawks’s knowledge of history and past cultures, the pilot soon had free and unhindered access to the entire collection of Melchior files. It was unclear whether Clayben knew this or even suspected it, but if he did he made no protest.