Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 20
Two of Clytemnestra's officers had transformed their fishtails into shapely legs to join their captain on land. One was a smooth-complexioned swarthy contralto brunette; the other, a freckled milk-white soprano crowned with a riotous cloud of auburn-red curls. Each wore a fuzzy arctic parka, and a rollover fur cap called a shapka.
Standing watch were the two catwomen, sleek and black in their heated wetsuits, target pistols riding their curving hips, watching the pirate men with cool, heavy-lidded eyes of yellow gold.
At the near table sat fang-faced Captain Vulk, and a pair of his officers, a stony-faced neanderthal graybeard and a variant youth, long-muzzled and fanged like Vulk.
Behind Vulk, watchful, floated or squatted a Swordfish and a Walrus in full kit, toting heavy blockade rifles. The Xiphian was armored from nose to tail, looking like a miniature warship. The thickset Odobenine wore an ornate, wide-brimmed helm and a heavy corset of ultra-alloy, studded with body-shield emitters. Athos did not think it strange that Vulk's marines were watergoing: half his ship decks were aquatic.
Sharing the table with Vulk were officers from the Devil's Delight: Sureshot the Iss sipped absinthe, his freshly-polished scales gleaming emerald-green; and thick-set, white-whiskered Umfrey the Chief Engineer was in a fine blue coat of gold brocade Athos would have never guessed he owned. Hard-Drink Hob, true to his name, had a dozen empty bottles before him, but showed no sign of slurred speech nor unsteady hand.
Gutwound the hairy Neanderthal and Cnut the scarred Cromagnon were not standing guard behind Athos, for he had invited the pair to sit and drink with the officers. Ethelred the Duck, who had not been invited, was also seated there, perched precariously on a footstool atop a chair. He flourished two heavy shanks, one in either feathery fist, and used the blades to pry open and impale the salty shellfish heaped up on a steaming plate before him.
Arbogast, Second Mate of the Devil's Delight, was too large for any table here, but crouched on the roof of the balcony, his twitching mouth-hooks and unwinking pinecone eyes were visible peering down over the edge.
The gravity on this world was low, and Arbogast could move about easily. From time to time, a long, slim, crooked leg reached down to procure an ale-bottle from the tabletop, or to filch a mussel from the plate of the unwary Duck. The Spider tossed his empty bottles into the snowy street below.
Between the tables, seated tailor-fashion on the balcony deck, with their spears propped in a tripod close at hand, Tisquantum and four of his befeathered, brightly-painted braves passed a smoldering weed-pipe from hand to hand.
They were swathed in beaver pelts from planet Maaz, and sat on blankets of hull insulation material. The wonder fabric was nonporous, as if glass were pliant as silk, but utterly opaque to all heat exchange, so the tribesmen used it for groundcloth.
The savages gazed with grim curiosity at the treeless, glassy, icy world visible through the bars of the balcony, and more houses than they had ever seen.
Across the way was a warehouse, but with walls, guard towers, and defensive shields like a fortress. The warehouse was apparently filled to capacity, for shipping containers, great rectangles of gray metal, lay stacked in the yard before the warehouse, and piled on the roof. Each was identical in size and shape, standardized for transport by heavy lifter, monorail, or land-barge.
All about was the port city of Port Bedloe, a huddle of windowless gray boxes and squat domes crouched on a flat and barren plain of snow-swept rock. In the distance, to the east, loomed the space traffic control tower which had guided the Devil's Delight, the Dog-Faced Fortune, and the Fame's Fancy to landing.
The landing facilities, such as they were, consisted of a steaming lake carved out of the upper layer of a glacier valley below the foot of the tower. From emplacements on the tower, heat-rays swept across the lake surface like searchlights, leaving trails of bubbling steam as they passed, a continual danger to tugboat traffic. Ice gathered on the waters near where any starships floated at rest.
Casting a ghastly pall across the whole dark sky was an aurora borealis. The black sun of Noctua, at this hour, was visible as a circular shadow passing before the ghostly-white main disk of the galaxy seen edge-on, which stretched from zenith to horizon like a road of snow. Charged particles from the aura of the black sun were ionizing upper layers of the continental forceshield, and causing the air beneath to fluoresce. It gave the whole scene an unnatural, funereal look.
Athos was scowling. He dearly wished to see all the criminals and cutthroats arrested, tried, and hanged: those in the city, as well as those drinking cheerily with him. And it twisted his heart to admit, after seeing their bravery in recent battles, their loyalty to him, that he had grown fond of his men.
He glared at his boots on the rail before him. In the heel of one boot was the black badge that compelled him. For a moment, he hated it.
The thought lingered that no son of a noble house should answer loyalty with treachery, no matter the cause. Even a dog deserved better!
To wash that thought away, perhaps he did take some deep swigs from his shining amber whisky bottle after all.
4. Syndicate World
A plump landlord with squinty, slanted eyes and a single long braid of hair dangling from his otherwise bald skull bustled up through the thick hatch from below and onto the balcony, antigravity-cart hauling a fresh keg and a generous stock of bottles behind. This was this third visit in three minutes, and no one had pushed the buzzer to summon him. Previously, he had taken orders or passed out food and drink in silence, but now he grew voluble.
"Well, hulloo and ahoy! Fresh grog all around? Wine for the ladies? I have a nice claret!"
He could not take his eyes from Clytemnestra, or the other sea-women. His face was pink with a look of hunger as he propped open his mouth to smile a toothy smile. His eyes became slits as he grinned, almost lost in the cheek folds of his chubby round face.
He bowed to Clytemnestra. "Bless me! That is a lovely fur you are wearing! The hue so nicely brings out the fairness of your complexion, the brightness of your eyes!"
She murmured her thanks, accepting the winebottle he proffered, even allowing him the liberty of a lingering touch of her fingers as their hands met. Clytemnestra did indeed look fetching with a hood of snowy white like a cloud framing her golden head. She purred, "I thank you. Mink is best. I have it from my first husband; may he rest in peace."
"A princely gift!" smiled the landlord. "He had good taste in fur."
Vulk, hearing this, said sourly, "No gift! Her husband was Vlado Borovac." And, when the Landlord's face showed no comprehension, Vulk uttered a laugh and said, "Borovac the Bloody, who plundered the Mirfak worlds."
The Landlord understood, and turned pale, and yanked his hand away from Clytemnestra. Borovac was a Mustelid name. Mirfak was home to the Mink families of that race.
"In fact, poor Vlado had a most vulgar taste, but his pelt was handsome." Clytemnestra smiled sweetly, running her finger through the luxurious fur wrapping her. "Mementos can be a comfort, especially on so cold a world as this. Charming to think of an old lover still able to keep me warm, is it not?"
The Landlord hid his unease, and stretched his mouth widely into an awkward smile. "Only to be expected of a world with no sun. 'Twas snuffed out like a candle, our good sun, during a dreadful battle. Year I was born, it was! My brother, he remembers sunlight. Me, never. Save in holos, o' course. 'Tis a cold world — mighty cold — ah! But there is much which is worthy to see, here. Much to see! Which of you has a three-scope?"
The various pirates exchanged uneasy glances.
The landlord continued to show his teeth. "Come, gents! No one comes to sit on this balcony without a scope or glass of some sort."
Sureshot the Iss had an old-fashioned one-eyepiece triscope over a cubit long, too large to hide beneath his anorak coat. The business end was ringed with dials, filters, wave-amplifiers heavy enough for thick Iss fingers to manipulate. He held it up. "It jus-ss-t ss-so happens-ss — a matter of whimsy, ss-so to ss-speak — that I have my ss-scope."
"Just so!" said the Landlord with an avuncular nod. "And tuned to the security frequencies, I see! Useful to detect spy rays, trip-wire rays, and buried infra-sensors! Well, good sir, just tune it to an astronomy setting, say, two intervals deep, a few points above the visible band, and scan just above the horizon there, where those line of lights cross the glacier flats. What do you see?"
Sureshot put his eye to the scope, and adjusted the dials. "A ss-satellite, ss-searing bright in infrared band, passing north to ss-south. First magnitude. Hyper-atomic, or I miss-ss my guess-ss."
"You guess aright. That is Quadrant Lamp F-40, and it comes north out of No Man's Land, passing parallel to the Old Churchyard Way, goes overhead, and then down along where the Trade Road runs to the Great Ice Sea. Ball of string orbit. Regular as clockwork. Quadrant Lamp F-39 comes behind it by fifteen degree, below the horizon, as yet. We call them Quod Lamps. Get it?"
Athos said, "I thought your satellites gave you sunlight?"
"They comes in groups of three, sir," answered the Landlord. "Light during daywatch hours, to match human-standard day-night rhythm. Heat satellites where needed to keep the atmosphere gasses as gasses, over rail-lines and towns and such. We have greenhouses covering entire parishes."
Sureshot made another adjustment and turned the instrument to the east, where a pink glow was visible along the black horizon. "Another ss-section of land-ss-scape is being bathed in fission rays-ss from the ss-satellite, bright as the ss-sun. The ss-satellite ss-sheds different frequencies-ss at different angles-ss."
The Landlord began passing out bottles to any hand reaching for one, smiling and talking as he did.
"East of here is Corpse Laugh Parish, still in daywatch. Here in Cadaver Grin Parish is in lights-out, but not curfew for some hours yet. Lights-out means no light. Come curfew, all indoors, hatches battened. Curfew means no heat." The Landlord clapped his hands together, rubbing them as if to keep warm. "But that's hours off! Plenty of time to drink hearty! You'll hear bells and sirens before curfew, and the Enforcers sweep the streets.
"If you meet a patrol, don't be alarmed at the giant rats. Don't show fear! Bred as bloodhounds, they were, all our real dogs being dead. Clever noses! Sniff out any tardy soul when the curfew alarm sounds off!"
For some reason, with no change of expression, Tisquantum now moved and thrust his head between the bars of the balcony railing, staring down, studying the scene.
The Landlord continued to talk. "The Syndicate is plenty courteous about not letting no visitors miss curfew! Plenty courteous! No goods to move without you gentlemen of adventure to bring the goods down to us. Don't want to see too many of you dead in the snow, staring upward forever at a sky with no sun, eyes all frozen, eh? Bad for business."
Athos had not been paying close attention to the Landlord's chatter. Now he looked up. The man was a source of local information, and to ignore him was simply bad policework. "The syndicate? Which syndicate?"
The Landlord straightened up from propping a keg of ale on a chair. "The Syndicate is the Syndicate. There be only one. They owns the satellites. They own the sky. Light. Heat. So they own everything." He shivered, and made the sign of the fourfold star, to ward off evil.
5. Death Row
Athos was thunderstruck. "The Syndicate! Do you speak of the Crime Syndicate?"
Fear came into the Landlord's face. "Of course not, milord. No one speaks of it."
Vulk and Clytemnestra had their eyes on Athos, and questions in their eyes. He thought it better to ask no more about the Crime Syndicate. He did not want to seem too curious about a matter of interest to policemen, but not to pirates.
So, instead, after taking a swig from his bottle, Athos asked, "My men have been here before, but this is my first landfall. Tell me of your curious planet! What is in No Man's Land?"
The Landlord turned to him, "Why! Bless my soul! No man knows, if no man goes, do he, milord?" The Landlord laughed heartily at his own words.
Athos frowned when the fellow called him 'milord'. Athos told himself to hide his high-born accent more carefully, and adopt more pirate patois.
Now the Landlord gestured toward the flat white landscape. He pointed. "Do you see the road north of the city? A great empty highway, wide as you please, all lit with lamps, running straight as a rule across the desert of ice. Look down, and see where this same wide road cuts through the city; runs right past the stoop of my front door. Right past the big steel gates of that fine tall warehouse directly there across the way.
"Right here, the road swaps names. This very spot! Just by the door of my humble alehouse where gentlemen adventurers, at such times as these, hove to and hoist a mug aloft!
"Cannot call it the Trade Road north of here, can we? No trade. No goods going back and forth. Everything goes north. See? On maps, the northern road is named Old Cavalry Way. But as we gots no cavalry on the planet no more, what with all horses dead, we calls it Old Churchyard Way. Get it? Get it?"
Ethelred the Duck had been listening to this exchange while prying at a stubborn clam. Now he uttered a squawk of ill temper. "Gets it! Who gets what? What are you driving at?"
The Landlord wiped his hands on his apron. "Not been here before? Our world of endless night? There be those what never seen no globe like this! I like to tell them what's what — and tell them what's wrong."
Ethelred victoriously yanked a bit of meat out of his clam and flourished it on quivering knifepoint. "Hah!" He thrust it into his throat with an alarming indifference to the sharpened edges of the knife. His bill clacked as he chewed and spat and spoke, all at once. "Awk! I were here before, in orbit. The Cap'n — the old Cap'n, I mean, Kill-Crazy Liska — cut me from the landing party. Might muss his negotiations, said he. Hogwash! Ever-body loves him a Duck!" And he let out a great belch to emphasize the point.
The Landlord laid a finger alongside his nose and winked. "You’re a proper gentleman, right enough! Well, I can let you know the lay of the land! I seen you eying the warehouse across the way there. No one else perches up here, on this balcony, in the cold, after lights-out, when the treasure fleet has made port, but to admire the warehouse.
"That warehouse is something of a landmark, being the tallest building hereabouts, and the fattest, if you take my meaning. Three tall walls of field-reinforced battleship ultronium-steel all about it, and watchtowers on the walls, and guns on the watchtowers. Snares and trips and leg-breakers in every flagstone, cameras and sensors and spy-eyes in every brick! The Waystation Warehouse is the real name. We townsmen just call it the Rat Trap. Get it?
"Now then, the highway goes past the Rat Trap straight north into No Man's Land, across the ice flats, to yon mountain pass. If you have sharp eyes, you can squint and see it."
The Landlord raised his hand and pointed and said to Sureshot, "Sir! Turn you your scope where highway cuts through the hills. On the horizon, see that notch in the ridge? Noon Pass, it was called, but there be no noon on the planet no more. We calls it No One Pass. Because no one passes it. Not and comes back. Get it?"
He turned and passed a fresh bottle to the Duck. "Now, as I was telling about the empty highway. We calls it Old Churchyard Way, as I said. Why so? Not a soul goes but a mile along but he leaves his corpse dead and cold by the side of the road.
"We got no pests on this world, but for rats in the hydroponic dungeons and mineshafts. They grow mighty large in the dark, mind you, but even rats ain't fool enough to venture out on the naked glacier past curfew.
"So, nothing eats the bodies nor no one carts them off. There they rest, staring up. Staring. Bodies all froze up beneath the ice. Stay fresh for centuries, most likely. Forever.
"The whole road is an open-air mass-grave, so to speak. A boneyard. Cold as a meat locker. Big as all outdoors. Get it? A churchyard, but with no church." The Landlord sighed, adding, "No church out there. No prayers out there. No hope."
Sureshot impassively swung his long scope left and right, studying the white expanse north of the city. "There is-ss nothing to ss-see. No life signs-ss. No energy uses-ss. Nothing visible. You ss-said there be no beas-ssts."
Ethelred said, "So! Why so dangerous, this road? Old Churchyard Way, as you call it?"
The Landlord smiled a sad smile, and this time, for once, the expression was not forced. He said to Sureshot, "Answer me this, sir. You have a clear reading of the ice flats. How easy would it be to jam or cloak any energy use, hide any output from a heating element, a vehicle engine, or suchlike?"
Sureshot took his longscope from his unblinking serpent-eye. "The land is-ss icy, flat, even and pale as a you please-ss. No minerals-ss, no magnetic distortions-ss. Nothing us-ssing an energy cell can be hidden here."
"Could you spy out, let's say, a man in full kit? Space armor?"
The Iss nodded. "Easily. No need for a ss-scope ss-so ss-sensitive as this-ss."
Fresh bottles were all passed out, so the Landlord began clearing away the empties, cleaning the ashtrays. "Now, the other sight that draws all eyes, aside from the walls and weapons round about the Warehouse, is watching the robots and the condemned load up the land barges for hauling. We use condemned men, because they don't come back. Mass grave or slave mine or shipped offworld — who knows? Who cares? But the Syndicate runs a tight ship, gentlemen, ladies, milord. Then all that pirate gold trundles slowly off north."
Umfrey, the Engineer, spoke up. "You don't recover your robots? Seems a great waste."
The Landlord said, "The Syndicate has robots by the boatload. We get them cheap as chalk from a planet called Rana. Only thing cheaper is convicts. Women is always breaking the population laws, birthing unlicensed babies, so we is always overcrowded in the warrens and mines, and the quartermasters have too many mouths to feed: so the Enforcers find more crimes to break, to bring the convict quota up."
The Duck held up a mollusk on a knifepoint. "Can't feed your folk? On my planet, when our eggs look hungry, we go out and pilfer swag from whoever looks too fat. Ducks are very democratic in that way. Then we eat up! A full belly makes it easier to bear the sad sight of hungry kids."
