Simon R. Green - Deathstalker - 1 - Deathstalker

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Deathstalker by Simon

R. Green

CHAPTER ONE

Clash by Night

It gets dark out on the Rim. Strange planets and stranger people can be found on

the edge of Empire, where habitable worlds are few and civilization grows thin.

Beyond the Rim lies uncharted darkness, where no stars shine and few ships go.

It's easy to get lost out there, far away from everything. Starcruisers patrol up to

the Rim, but there are never enough ships to cover the vast areas of open space.

The Empire is growing too large, too cumbersome, though no one will admit it, or

at least, no one who matters. Every year more worlds are brought into the Empire,

and the frontiers press hungrily outward. But not on the Rim. The Empire stops

cold there, dwarfed by the unplumbable depths of the Darkvoid.

It gets dark out there. Ships disappear sometimes, and are never seen again. No

one knows why. The colonized worlds make themselves as self-sufficient as they

can and turn their eyes away from the endless dark. Crime flourishes on the Rim,

unthinkable distances from the hub of the Empire's strict laws; some

transgressions as old as Humanity, others newly birthed by the Empire's ever-

growing sciences. For the moment the Empire's Starcruisers still keep a lid on

things, dropping unannounced out of hyperspace to enforce the law with brutal

efficiency, but they can't be everywhere. Strange forces are at work on the Rim,

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patient and terrible, and all it will take to set them off is a simple clash between

two starships off the backwater planet of Virimonde.

* * *

In high orbit around Virimonde, the pirate ship Shard sailed silently through the

long night, hiding itself from unfriendly eyes. Not a big ship, the Shard, built

more for speed than endurance, and passed from hand to hand through a dozen

owners and commands. Now she carried cloneleggers and body banks, and every

man's hand was turned against her. Deep in the bowels of the ship. Hazel d'Ark,

pirate, clonelegger and bon vivant, strode scowling through the dimly lit steel

corridors and wished she was somewhere else. Anywhere else. The Shard wasn't a

luxurious craft at the best of times, but with most of the ship's power diverted to

maintaining the body banks, the old scut seemed even gloomier than usual. Which

took some doing.

Hazel d'Ark, last owner of a once noble name, came to the locked door that led to

the cargo bay and stood waiting impatiently for the door's sensors to recognize

her. Her mood was bad, bordering on foul, and had been ever since they dropped

out of hyperspace six hours ago to take up orbit around Virimonde. Six hours of

waiting for some word from their contacts down below. Something was wrong.

They couldn't afford to stay much longer, but they couldn't leave either. So they

waited. Hazel wasn't expecting any trouble from the planet's security people. The

Shard might be old, but she had state-of-the-art cloaking devices, more than

enough to fool anything the peasants had on Virimonde. Not that there was much

the planet could do, even if it knew the pirates were there. Virimonde was a low-

tech, agricultural world, with more livestock than people. Its only contact with the

Empire was a monthly cargo transporter and an occasional patrolling starcruiser,

neither of which was expected for some weeks.

Hazel glared at the closed door before her and kicked the frame hard. The door

hissed open, and she stepped through into the freezing cold of the cargo bay. The

door locked itself behind her. A pearly haze misted the air and burned in her

lungs. She shuddered quickly and turned up the heating elements in her uniform.

The body banks needed the cold at a specific temperature to preserve and maintain

their cargo of human tissues for cloning. Hazel looked quickly about her and then

accessed her comm implant.

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"Hannah, this is Hazel. Acknowledge."

"I hear you, Hazel," said the ship's AI. "What can I do for you?"

"Edit the signals from the cargo bay's security sensors so it appears I'm not here."

Hannah sighed. The Artificial Intelligence didn't have human emotions, but it

liked to pretend. "Now, Hazel, you know you're not supposed to be in there. You'll

get us both into trouble."

"Do it anyway, or I'll tell the Captain about your personal video collection of his

private moments."

"I wouldn't have shown you those if I'd known you were going to use them to

blackmail me. They're a perfectly innocent collection, after all."

"Computer…"

"All right, all right. I'm editing the sensors. Happy now?"

"Close as I'll get. And Hannah—if I ever catch you snooping on my private

moments, I'll perform a lobotomy on your main systems with a shrapnel grenade.

Got it?"

Hannah sniffed once, and broke off contact. Hazel smiled briefly. All the AIs the

Captain could have chosen, and he had to buy a peeping torn. Somehow that was

typical of the Shard and its luck. She looked about her at the long rows of body

banks, huge and blocky, their dull metal sides smeared with frost and caked with

ice. Ugly things, for an ugly business. The AI was quite right; she had no business

in the cargo bay and no authority, either. Not that she gave a damn. Hazel d'Ark

had a long history of not giving a damn, not to mention doing whatever she

happened to feel was necessary and to hell with the consequences. Which was at

least partly why she'd ended up an outlaw and a pirate.

She moved slowly toward the nearest body bank, drawn by a curious mixture of

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revulsion and fascination. She'd had no illusions about what she was getting into

when she'd signed on board the Shard as a clonelegger, but somehow it was

different up close. The body banks were a source of life and longevity, but the

spotless cargo bay still seemed to reek of death. Most of the lights were out,

conserving energy. Never knew when you might need the extra power to make a

run for it. Cloneleggers were not popular, either with the authorities or those who

had a need for their services.

Hazel walked slowly down the central aisle between the body banks. Visions of

hearts and lungs and kidneys burned brightly in her mind's eye, pulsing with fresh

crimson blood. She was sure they didn't actually look like that, preserved in the

icy cold of the machines, but that was how she thought of them. Her fellow

cloneleggers just referred to them as the merchandise, as casual as any butcher in

a slaughterhouse. She stopped and looked around her, surrounded by hundreds

upon hundreds of human organs and tissues, enough to fill a dozen battlegrounds,

and every one of them worthless. Contaminated beyond saving by a smuggled

virus. That was what you got for making enemies in the clonelegging business.

Not too long before, the Captain had come out ahead in a business deal with the

Boneyard Boys, through his usual mixture of high risk taking and low cunning.

Contracts the Shard had lusted after for years had fallen into their hands as though

by magic. Hazel smiled grimly. They should have known better. Clonelegging

was a cutthroat business. Sometimes literally.

Clonelegging was illegal, a crime punishable by death, but that did nothing to

slow down the flood of people ready and willing to make a living out of death.

Officially, the use of cloned human tissues for transplanting was only allowed to

the highest of the high, those with breeding and position and a not too small

fortune. Couldn't have the lower orders leading long and healthy lives; there were

far too many of them as it was, even with the newly colonized worlds opening up

vast new territories for settling. Besides, it might give the lower orders ideas

above their station.

But unofficially, if you had enough money and knew the right (or more strictly

speaking wrong) people, you could get whatever part of you was failing replaced,

either by cloning your own tissues, or by illegally obtained organs from body

banks. There was never any risk of rejection with a person's own cloned tissues,

but surprisingly often the original organs turned out to have built-in defects, or

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there were other problems that made direct cloning impossible. That was when the

bodysnatchers came into their own. And then no one was safe, living or dead.

Most planets cremated their dead, by order of the Empress, to ensure that donor

organs would only be available to the right sort of people, but backwater planets

often cultivated illegal secret graveyards and mausoleums. Never knew when the

crops might fail, or business turn bad, and you might need a little cash in the bank,

so to speak. So the cloneleggers made the rounds, and everyone made a little

money. The cloneleggers made a lot. Demand was high. All they had to do was

maintain a full stocklist and wait for someone to come knocking tentatively at

their door.

Only it isn't always that simple. Cloning is a delicate business with all sorts of

things that can go wrong. Cloning wears out an organ fast, and then it has to be

replaced in stock. The body banks have a voracious appetite. And the hidden

cemeteries are few and far between, often with exclusive contracts to one

particular set of cloneleggers. So sometimes the bodysnatchers go out in disguise

to walk among the living, looking for those who won't be missed too much. A

shame, of course, but you can't make an omelet, and all that…

When Hazel joined the Shards crew four planets back, the Captain had assured her

they were graverobbers only. Except when things got really bad. Get in quick, dig

up enough merchandise to fill the body banks, and then get the hell out of there

before someone sold them out for an Empire reward. There's always someone.

Only this time it had all gone wrong. The Boneyard Boys had got in first and

contaminated the merchandise with a really vicious virus that hadn't shown up on

any of the usual tests. Now every organ they had was worthless, and they had

contracts to fill with people who weren't known for their patience or

understanding.

So Captain Markee had gone cap in hand to the Blood Runners out in the Obeah

systems and begged a favor. Hazel still shuddered when she thought of what she

and the rest of the crew had had to promise in return for the information the Blood

Runners provided. Nothing could be allowed to go wrong with this deal. There

were worse things than death.

So the Blood Runners had put them in touch with people on Virimonde, out on the

Rim, and the Shard had come to play the old game one more time. One last throw

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of the dice.

Hazel wondered, not for the first time, how she'd come to this. It wasn't exactly

what she'd had in mind for herself when she left her home planet ten minutes

ahead of a restraining order and a lengthy stay in jail in search of excitement and

adventure. Cloneleggers were the lowest of the low, the scum of the Empire. Even

a beggar with leprosy would pause to spit on a clonelegger. People who walked in

certain high circles liked to boast of their personal cloneleggers, as one might of

an attack beast trained for the Arenas, but no one had a good word for them in

open society. They were pariahs, outcasts, untouchables for daring to traffic in the

trade that no one wanted to admit existed.

Ha/e sighed tiredly. She'd leave the Shard in a moment, if she had anywhere to go.

Hazel d'Ark, twenty-three years old, tall, lithely muscular, with a sharp, pointed

face and a mane of long ratty red hair. Green eyes that missed nothing, and a smile

so quick people often missed it if they weren't looking for it. She'd worked in one

dirty job after another since leaving home, and it showed in the wariness of her

stance and the naked suspicion in her scowl. She'd been a mercenary on Loki, a

bodyguard on Golgotha and, most recently, part of the security forces on Brahmin

II, which was where Captain Markee found her, running for her life. A superior

officer had decided his rank entitled him to certain rights to her body, and not for

cloning, either. Hazel d'Ark had disagreed. She'd decided a long time ago that she

wasn't giving away anything she could sell. It came to blows and ended in tears,

and Hazel went on the run again with the bastard's blood still dripping from her

knife.

At the time, a little discreet clonelegging had seemed like a definite career

advancement. Low profile, low risk, the only hard work a little digging… perfect.

Especially with so many people hot on her trail. Just lately, it seemed there was

always someone looking for her with bad intentions. It was all her own fault; she

knew that. She'd always had a tendency to wander into illegal deals in search of

fast money, and only afterward discover what she'd let herself in for. But even

though she'd done a lot of things in her time that she wasn't too proud of,

kidnapping people and butchering them in cold blood for their organs had to be a

new low, even for her.

She didn't know if she could do it. She had a feeling it might be a matter of

principle, something she wasn't exactly familiar with. But everyone draws the line

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somewhere. She ran through the options open to her. It didn't take long. She

couldn't just announce her newfound integrity to her fellow crew members. Not

unless she wanted to see the inside of a body bank the hard way. She could always

jump ship; ride one of the escape pods down to the planet below and lose herself

in the crowds. But Virimonde was a primitive place by all accounts, based around

hard work and damn all luxuries. Not a good place to be stranded on the run.

Especially when there are people looking for you on both sides of the law.

Hazel d'Ark looked around her at the waiting body banks and shuddered, not

entirely from the cold.

What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?

Lights flared around her as the ship's alarms went crazy. Hazel winced away from

the sudden blare of sound, her hand dropping automatically to the gun at her side.

Her first thought was a hull breach, but she quickly realized that if there'd been an

explosive decompression in any part of the ship, she'd have felt its effects long

before the sirens went off. She accessed the emergency channel through her comm

implant, and a babble of voices filled her head. It only took her a moment to pick

out the phrase battle stations, and then she was off and running. Someone had

pierced the Shard's cloaking device, and that was supposed to be impossible for

anything less than an Imperial starcruiser. And if the Empire had found them,

there was a very real danger that Hazel d'Ark's career as a clonelegger was over

before it had even begun.

Just my luck, thought Hazel bitterly as she ran out of the cargo bay and headed for

the bridge. Just my luck to get picked up for one of the few crimes I haven't

actually committed.

"Hannah, talk to me. How deep are we in it?"

"I'm afraid you couldn't get much deeper without crouching," the AI said calmly

through her implant. "An Imperial starcruiser has dropped out of hyperspace and

taken up orbit around Virimonde. Their sensors brushed aside our cloaking

devices in well under a second, and it didn't take them much longer to issue a

challenge. I'm currently lying through my electronic teeth, but there's a limit to

how long I can hope to bluff them. And I have a strong suspicion it isn't going to

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be anywhere near long enough for us to raise enough power to escape into

hyperspace."

"Couldn't we make a run for it in normal space?"

"This is an Imperial starcruiser we're discussing. Hazel. They don't come much

more powerful than this. They'd blast us into tiny glowing fragments before we

even left orbit."

"We've got shields."

"They've got two hundred and fifty disrupter cannon and power to burn."

"Can we fight them?"

"If you really want to annoy them."

"Dammit, there must be something we can do! You're the one with the immense

intellect; think of something!"

"You could always surrender."

Hazel would have laughed sarcastically, but she was too short of breath. She

pounded down the steel corridor, head I aching from the clamor of the alarm siren,

and finally burst r onto the bridge and threw herself into her fire control seat.

Whatever was going on, she was sure she'd feel a damn sight more secure plugged

into the Shard's two disrupter . cannon. Theoretically, the AI was far more capable

of aiming and firing the ship's disrupters, but what one AI could plan another

could anticipate and match. Human unpredictability provided an edge no AI could

deal with. Which is why there were always human gunners on every ship.

Hazel meshed her mind with the computers through her implant and spread out

through the fire systems, running quickly through the warm-up routines.

Computer displays sprang up all around her, and a steady stream of information

flowed through her thoughts. Hazel got her first real look at the starcruiser, and

her heart sank. The Empire ship was a thousand times bigger, dwarfing the Shard

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like a minnow f next to a whale. The AI ran quickly through a list of the Imperial

craft's capabilities, and Hazel's heart sank even further. Disrupter cannon, force

shields, assault torpedoes… the Shard wouldn't stand a chance, but then, she'd

always known that. The only thing big enough to take on a starcruiser was another

starcruiser. Hazel swallowed hard and let her thoughts move cautiously through

the two fire turrets. The cannon stirred restlessly at her touch, picking out targets

of opportunity on the Imperial ship.

Hazel's breathing had almost slowed to normal, but her anger took it away again

as she studied the starcruiser. What the hell was it doing here? There wasn't one

due for weeks, officially. It couldn't have come looking for the Shard; a handful

of cloneleggers on a pirate ship weren't that important. Which was all very fine

and logical, but the Imperial ship was still there, large as life and twice as deadly,

its ranked cannon no doubt locked on the pirate ship and ready to fire at a

moment's notice. Hazel scowled fiercely. They couldn't run, they couldn't fight,

and they didn't dare surrender. Maybe they could make a deal… if they could

think of something to bargain with. Her mind worked frantically, but came up

with nothing. Unless Captain Markee had a whole pack of aces up his sleeve, the

Empire ship had them cold.

She looked across the bridge at the Captain. Terrence Markee was in his late

forties; large and solid and reliable. He'd been a pirate all his adult life and loved

every illegal moment of it. He dressed like a gaudy if somewhat dated dandy, all

flashing silks and clashing colors, and affected an aristocratic accent he had no

right to. At the moment he was scowling at his displays and growling a series of

calm, quiet orders. Slightly reassured that at least one person on the bridge wasn't

panicking, Hazel left her eyes drift round the cramped confines of the command

area. Anything was better than looking at the Empire ship.

The bridge of the Shard was a mess. Half the lights weren't working at any given

time, because bulbs were expensive and they never carried enough spares, and the

limited low-ceilinged space was crammed with work stations, computer displays,

and terminals; never mind the sensor panels and fire control station. Officially

there was room for seven crew on the bridge, including the Captain, but as usual

there were only four, including the Captain and Hazel. The Shard operated on a

bare minimum crew, with everyone holding down as many jobs as they could

handle. Half the systems weren't working, but you learned to put up with that as

long as the essentials were maintained. Repairs were hideously expensive,

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especially at stardocks. Clonelegging could provide a very comfortable living if

you were in the right place at the right time and kept up a good stock, but it was a

crowded field these days, and small independent ships like the Shard were being

forced out. Markee had been relying on the Viriminde run to restock the body

banks, and repair his fortunes and his ship. And then he made an enemy of the

Boneyard Boys, and everything went to hell in a hurry.

A thought struck Hazel, and she looked back at Markee. "Captain, how about if

we just dump everything? Throw the merchandise and body banks out the airlock

and let it all burn up falling through Virimonde's atmosphere? No evidence, no

proof."

"Nice idea," said Markee. "And if that ship hadn't been a starcruiser, we might

have got away with it. But with the kind of sensors they've got, they could identify

every organ and tissue sample independently and read the maker's name on the

body banks. Their sensors records would make damning evidence. So, we can't

dump it, and we can't afford to be caught with it. Doesn't leave much room for

maneuvering, does it?" He smiled briefly. "I suppose we could always eat the

merchandise. How's your appetite, Hazel?"

"Not as good as it was a moment ago. Basically, what you're saying is we're

screwed if we do, and screwed if we don't I suppose surrender is out of the

question?"

Markee's smile came and went again. "There's enough evidence on this ship to

hang us all. Slowly."

"So what are we going to do?"

"The one thing they won't expect. We'll fight. Who knows, maybe we'll get

lucky."

"And if we don't?"

"Then at least we'll die quickly. Are the guns ready?"

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