The Tar-aiym Krang (9 page)

Chapter Four

Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex were making their way casually back to their rooms via the routes of the marketplace. It was twice as noisy and confusing at night as it was during the day. The flashing lights of motorized handcarts and fluorescent vendors added much to the atmosphere of controlled anarchy. Still, they did not need the Flinx. No matter how tortuous or confused the route, a thranx could always retrace it once traveled.

“Well, brother,” said Truzenzuzex, dodging a mobile seller of novelties, “what do you think of our friend the merchant?”

“I would feel much better if our friend the unusual youth were twenty years older and in his place. A partial telepath, for sure. I could sense it. But such wishes are useless. Chaos. Up the universe!” he muttered.

“Up the universe!” replied Truzenzuzex. Both smiled at the private joke, which had a deeper meaning than the surface humor implied. “The man seems as trustworthy a member of his type as we are likely to find, and he has the ship we need. I cannot be positive yet, of course, but under the circumstances I think we have done quite well. And the boy’s presence on the vessel should serve as a moderating factor. He seems to trust the trader, too.”

“Agreed. The lad’s presence will inject an uncertainty element, if nothing else.”

“A certain uncertainty factor. How apropos of this venture so far!” The insect shook its head in deliberate aping of the human gesture. “This has caused three deaths so far. I would hope there will be no more.”

“So would I, brother, so would I. The two of us have seen too much death already.” Truzenzuzex did not reply, as he was concentrating on a difficult forking of their path.

Tse-Mallory followed mechanically. The noise and lights had a tendency to hypnotize, he allowed his mind to drift. . . .

Chapter Five

The picture they were seeing in the viewscreen of the stingship was identical to the one being flashed to every member of the task force. It showed a tall, thin Ornithorphe with primarily black and yellow plumage. The being was possessed of a large amount of natural dignity, which it was at present being hard-pressed to retain. It is not easy to be dignified when one is begging.

Ensign Bran Tse-Mallory, aged twenty-six years, Fourth Battle Group, Sixth Corps of the Enforcement Arm of the United Church, watched the military governor of the blue planet below them crumble mentally as he pleaded with their own commander for aid. Anger and embarrassment mingled in his own throat, which was unaccountably dry, as he followed the conversation.

“Major Gonzalez,” the Ornithorphe intoned, “I will ask you for a final time, and then I must go and do what I can to aid my people, even if it is only to die with them.
Will
you use the forces at your command to intercede and prevent a massacre?”

The voice of Task Force Commander Major Julio Gonzalez filtered though the small grid used for interfleet frequencies. It was cool and controlled. Bran wanted to smash the grid and the sickly smug face that sat behind it.

“And I am forced to remind you once again, Governor Bolo, that much as I sympathize with your plight there is nothing I can do. It is, after all, only by pure coincidence that my force is here at all. We are on a peaceful patrol and stopped by your planet only to pay the customary courtesy call. Had we been a week earlier or later we would not even be witness to this unfortunate situation.”

“But you
are
here and you
are
witness, Jaor,” began the governor for the seventeenth time,” and. . . .”

“Please, sir, I’ve listened quite too long as it is. The Church and the Commonwealth have been at peace with the AAnn Empire for years now. . . .”

“Some peace!” muttered an indiscreet voice elsewhere on the network. If Gonzalez heard it, he gave no sign.

“. . . and I refuse to jeopardize that peace by interceding in an affair that is none of my business. To intervene on either side would be tantamount to an act of war. Also, I should be acting directly contrary to my orders and to the purpose of this patrol. I must refuse to do so, sir. I hope you can understand my position.”

“Your
position!”
the governor gasped. His voice was breaking noticeably under the strain of the last few days and he had to fight to keep his thoughts framed in symbospeech. “What of those AAnn-
ghijipps
out there? An open attack on a helpless colony. ‘Act of war’ you say! Isn’t that a direct violation of your precious Convention? The one that ‘your’ patrol is supposed to be upholding?”

“If your claim is just, I am sure the Convention arbiters will decide in your favor.”

“
Whose
favor!” roared the Governor. “Surely you know what the AAnn do to subject planets! Especially those who have the impertinence to resist. If there are none of us left alive to accept the favorable decision of the arbiting board, what use your damned Convention! Will our memories receive pensions?”

“I
am
sorry, governor. I wish I could help you, but. . . .”

“Send just
one
of your ships, a token showing,” he cried. “They might hesitate. . . .”

“I said I was sorry, governor. I am distraught. Goodbye, sir.” Gonzalez had broken the connection.

From above and behind him, Bran heard the voice of his young ship-brother. The insect’s deep blue-green chiton was rendered even more resplendent by the silver battle harness that enclosed its cylindrical body.

“That,” said Truzenzuzex in cool, even tones, “was just possibly the most nauseating bit of rhetorical doggerel it has ever been my misfortune to overhear.”

Bran agreed. He was finding it more and more difficult to restrain himself. Even without the heightened-instinct-perception drugs, the killing urge was beginning to steal warmly over him. It had the powerful push of righteous indignation behind it.

“Isn’t it possible that maybe the locals . . .?”

“. . . haven’t got a chance,” finished Truzenzuzex.

“They’re outnumbered and outgunned, and not a regular armed force among them in the first place. As the AAnn doubtlessly surmised well in advance. I doubt if their ships even have doublekay drives. Theirs is only a colony and they wouldn’t have need of many.”

“Typical AAnn maneuver. Damn those anthropomorphic bastards! Always sniping and chipping at edges. I wish they’d come right out and say they’re going to contest us for this part of the galaxy. Let ’em stand up and fight like men!”

“No can do, brother, because they obviously aren’t. And I refer not to their physiologies alone. According to the AAnn standards set down by their philosophy of ‘perpetual warfare as the natural state of things,’ any advantage you can get over your opponent is by definition of success ethical. They’re not immoral, just amoral. Sneak attacks are like sugar—pardon, like bread—to them.”

“If the major agreed to step in I’m sure headquarters would give retroactive approval to the action,” Bran said. “They’d offer obeisance in public, sure, but privately I’ll bet Marshal N’Gara would approve.”

“He might. Might not. As soldiers grow older and more powerful their personalities tend more and more to the mercurial. I can’t see dear sweet Gonzalez risking a chance to help a bunch of aliens, especially non-Commonwealth. He’s far too fond of his scotch and imported Terran cigars. Besides, to undertake such an action would require at least a modicum of imagination, a commodity in which our commander is sadly deficient. Look. It’s starting already.”

Bran glanced up above the communications equipment to the huge battle screen. Out in the void a number of ships represented only by ghostly dots were maneuvering across thousands of kilometers for position in a battle which would prove notable only for its brevity. Somehow the locals had mustered six spaceworthy ships. He’d bet a year’s credit not one of them was a regular warship. Police launches, most likely. Opposite, the well-drilled, superbly disciplined AAnn force was forming one of its characteristic tetrahedrons. Fifteen or so attack ships, a couple of destroyers, and two bloated pips that in a normal battle situation he would have interpreted as dreadnoughts. The finer instruments on the big board told the true story: same mass, small gravity wells. Troop carriers, nursing dozens of small, heavily screened troop shuttles.

He’d observed AAnn occupation forces in action before. No doubt by now the members of the first assault wave were resting comfortably in their respective holds, humming softly to themselves and waiting for the “battle” to begin, making sure their armor was highly polished, their nerve-prods fully charged. . . .

He slammed a fist down on the duralloy board, scraping the skin on the soft underside of his wrist. There were ten stingers and a cruiser in the humanx force . . . more than a match for the AAnn, even without the dubious “help” of the locals. But he knew even before the pathetic debate of a few moments ago that Major Gonzalez would never stir from his wood-paneled cabin on the
Altair
to intervene in any conflict where humanx interests weren’t directly threatened. He paused at a sudden thought. Of course, if a confrontation could be forced to the point that such a threat occurred . . . still no certain guarantee . . . definite court-martial . . . dismissal from the Corps 300,000 sentient beings . . . processing camps . . . . He suddenly wasn’t so sure that he wanted to make captain after all. Still, he’d need the concurrance of. . . .

“Bran, our drive appears to be malfunctioning.”

“Wha? I don’t. . . .”

“Yes, there is no question about it. We appear to be drifting unavoidably into the area of incipient combat. At top speed, no less. A most unusual awkwardness, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh. Oh, yes.” A pseudo-smile sharp as a scimitar cut his face. “I can see that we’re helpless to prevent it. Goddamn unfortunate situation. Naturally we’ll have to make emergency preparations to defend ourselves. I don’t think the AAnn computers will be overly discerning about ships which float into their target area.”

“Correct. I was just about to commence my own injections.”

“Myself also.” He snuggled back into the reaction seat, felt the field that enabled them to maneuver at high speed and still live take hold gently. “Best hurry about it.”

He followed accepted procedure and did his best to ignore the barely perceptible pressures of the needles as they slipped efficiently into the veins on his legs. The special drugs that heightened his perceptions and released the artificial inhibitions his mind raised to constrain the killer instinct immediately began to take effect. A beautiful rose-tinted glow of freedom slipped over his thoughts. This was proper. This was
right!
This was what he’d been created for. Above and behind him he knew that Truzenzuzex was undergoing a similar treatment, with different drugs. They would stimulate his natural ability to make split-second decisions and logical evaluations without regard to such distractions as Hive rulings and elaborate moral considerations.

Shortly after the Amalgamation, when human and thranx scientists were discovering one surprising thing after another about each other, thranx psychologists unearthed what some humans had long suspected. The mind of
Homo sapiens
was in a perpetual state of uneasy balance between total emotionalism and computerlike control. When the vestiges of the latter, both natural and artificial, were removed, man reverted to a kind of controlled animalism. He became the universe’s most astute and efficient killing machine. If the reverse was induced he turned into a vegetable. No use had been found for that state, but for the former. . . .

It was kept fairly quiet. After a number of gruesome but honest demonstrations put on by the thranx and their human aides, mankind acknowledged the truth of the discovery, with not a small sigh of relief. But they didn’t like to be reminded of it. Of course a certain segment of humanity had known it all along and wasn’t affected by the news. Others began to read the works of ancients like Donatien Francois de Sade with a different eye. For their part human psychologists brought into clearer light the marvelous thranx ability to make rapid and correct decisions with an utter lack of emotional distraction and a high level of practicality. Only, the thranx didn’t think it so marvelous. Their Hive rulings and complicated systems of ethics had long kept that very same ability tied down in the same ways humanity had its killer desires.

The end result of all the research and experimentation was this: in combination with a ballistics computer to select and gauge targets, a thranx-human-machine triumvirate was an unbeatable combination in space warfare. Thranx acted as a check on human and human as a goad to thranx. It was efficient and ruthless. Human notions of a “gentleman’s” war disappeared forever. Only the AAnn had ever dared to challenge the system more than once, and they were tough enough and smart enough to do it sporadically and only when they felt the odds to be highly in their favor.

It was fortunate that thranx and human proved even more compatible than the designers of the system had dared hope—because the nature of the drug-machine tie-up resulted in a merging of the two minds on a conscious level. It was as if the two lobes of a brain were to fight out a decision between themselves, with the compromise then being passed onto the spinal cord and the rest of the body for actual implementation. Some stingship pilots likened it more closely to two twins in the womb. It was that intimate a relationship. Only in that way would the resultant fighting machine operate at 100 percent effectiveness. A man’s partner was his ship-brother. Few stinger operators stayed married long, except those who were able to find highly understanding wives.

The tingling mist flowed over his eyes, dimming and yet enhancing his vision. The tiniest things became obvious to his perception. Specks of dust in the cabin atmosphere became clear as boulders. His eyes fastened on the white diamonds on the battle screen with all the concentration of a starving cobra. All stinger pilots admitted to a slight but comforting sense of euphoria when under battle drugs. Bran was experiencing it now. For public relations purposes the enforcement posters insisted it was a beneficial by-product of the HIP drugs. The pilots knew it for what it was: the natural excitement that overtakes most completely uninhibited humans as they anticipate the thrill of the kill. His feelings whirled within, but his thoughts stayed focused.

“Up the universe, oh squishy bug!” he yelled drunkenly. Off from never-never land Truzenzuzex’s voice floated down to him.

“Up the universe, oh smelly primate!”

The ship plunged toward one corner of the AAnn tetrahedron.

The enemy force stood it as long as possible. Then three ships broke out to intercept their reckless charge. The rest of the formation continued to form, undaunted. Undoubtedly no one in a position of command had yet noticed that this suicidal charge did not come from the region of the pitiful planetary defense force circling below. And having all heard the interfleet broadcast they
knew
it couldn’t possibly be a Commonwealth vessel. Bran centered their one medium SCCAM on the nearest of the three attackers, the pointer. Dimly, through the now solid perfumed fog, he could make out the outraged voice of Major Gonzalez on intership frequency. It impinged irritatingly on his wholely occupied conscious. Obviously Command hadn’t bought their coded message of engine trouble.

“You there, what do you think you’re doing! Get back in formation! Ship number . . . ship number twenty-five return to formation! Acknowledge, uh . . . by heaven! Braunschweiger, whose ship is that? Someone get me some information, there!

It was decidedly too noisy in the pod. He shut off the grid and they drove on in comparative silence. He conjured up a picture of the AAnn admiral. Comfortably seated in his cabin on one of the troop carriers, chewing lightly on a narco-stick . . . one eye cocked on the Commonwealth force floating nearby. Undoubtedly he’d also been monitoring the conversation between the planetary governor and Major Gonzalez. Had a good laugh, no doubt. Expecting a nice, routine massacre. His thoughts must now be fuzzing a bit, especially if he’d noticed the single stinger blasting crazily toward the center of his formation. Bran hoped he’d split an ear-sac listening to his trackers.