Andrew J. Offutt - Spaceways 17 - The Carnadyne Horde

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HReenee felt abundantly significant She was on a ship that had killed! A

spacer that had destroyed dozens of spacecraft and slain thousands of

Galactics. She gazed at her hands. The single claw in each middle finger had

extruded unconsciously. She studied them closely. Beautiful curved talons. She

slashed playfully at the viewing port as if she were tearing out the guts of

the spacers with her own hands. She smiled. SPACEWAYS #1 OF ALIEN

BONDAGE #2 CORUNDUM'S WOMAN #3 ESCAPE FROM MACHO #4 SATANA ENSLAVED #5

MASTER OF MISFIT #6 PURRFECT PLUNDER #7 THE MANHUNTRESS #8 UNDER TWIN

SUNS #9 IN QUEST OF QALARA #10 THE YOKE OF SHEN #11 THE ICEWORLD

CONNECTION #12 STAR SLAVER #13 JONUTA RISING! #14 ASSIGNMENT:

HELLHOLE #15 STARSHIP SAPPHIRE #16 THE PLANET MURDERER #17 THE

CARNADYNE HORDE BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK The poem Scarlet Hills copyright

CARNADYNE HORDE A Berkley Book/published by arrangement with the

author PRINTING HISTORY Berkley edition/May 1984 All rights

Barr. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or

any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley

Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016. ISBN:

0-425-06990-7 A BERKLEY BOOK (r) TM 757,375 The name "BERKLEY" and the

stylized "B" with design are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing

Corporation. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA for Veronica N.

Beckett- Spacefarer and Friend SCARLET HILLS Alas, fair ones, my time has

come. I must depart your lovely home- Seek the bounds of this galaxy To find

what lies beyond. (chorus) Scarlet hills and amber skies, Gentlebeings with

loving eyes; All these I leave to search for a dream That will cure the

wand'rer in me. You say it must be glamorous For those who travel out

through space. You know not the dark, endless night Nor the solitude we

face. (reprise chorus) I know not of my journey's end Nor the time nor toll

it will have me spend. But I must see what I've never seen And know what

I've never known. Scarlet hills and amber skies, Gentlebeings with loving

eyes; All these I leave to search for a dream That will cure the wand'rer in

me. -Ann Morris We do not feel quite so powerless before a corrupt municipal

police force as before a corrupt federal government (and military), simply

because the scale of the former is not so overwhelming. How could we possibly

confront the corruption and criminality of the state itself? -Carl

Oglesby 1 The bigger they are, the harder they hit you. -Sharjar of Bleak She

watched the destruction of the spacer in total silence. From the instant her

ship, Black Dawn, appeared from nowhere in the path of the freighter Abraxis,

she spoke not a word. Tura ak Saiping tossed her head impatiently to one side,

throwing a glistening swirl of hair behind her. It whipped and curled like an

ebony wave in the zero-G of her con-cabin. She had to concentrate on her

actions without the distraction of that fine mane. Long slender fingers tapped

at the keyboard of her Ship Inboard Processing and Computing Unit (Modular).

SI-PACUM responded instantly. Silently. The moment she appeared in front of

Abraxis's prow, she ordered SIPACUM to launch three computer traumatizer

lampreys at the freighter. The only sound the missiles made was a momentary

hiss and thunk as they shot out of Black Dawn's launching tubes. Surprise was

on her side. The freighter's Defense Sys-temry was slow in actuating-eight

seconds from the moment of sighting. In that time, she had already launched

the lampreys and ordered her own DS lasers to blast the weapons nodes on the

other ship. .1 2 She never bothered to confirm whether the ship was the one

she wanted. She knew it would be, for Tura ak Saiping made it her business to

know the movements of TGW freighters. The DS gunner onboard spacer Abraxis

managed to knock out two of the missiles closing in on his craft. He was a

gunner in about the same sense that his captain "piloted" the ship-computers

handled nearly everything onboard. The captain, the gunner, and everyone else

merely turned the computers on and acted as emergency

overrides. Excruciatingly slow emergency overrides, compared to the

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computers. The DS gunner, a round-faced young man who had never really wanted

to be a spacefarer but who went where the money was good, watched in dismay

and a fair amount of terror as the nameless spacer attacked without warning

and immobilized his weapons. Then he felt a reverberation through the

unipolymer plasteel deckplating. "Impact!" he snapped into the inship comm. He

said it with too much alarm, too much fear. "Take us out of here," Captain

Jarant Anstiss told his first mate. One glance at SIPACUM's display revealed

to that mate that escape was no longer possible. "Fobbied, sir. They hit us

with a lamprey. It's already gotten to SIPACUM." "Comm the ship. Demand to

know why we are being subjected to this unwarranted and-and illegal

attack!" "Comm is out too, sir. We can't transmit or receive!" Captain Jarant,

a short Ghanji who had allowed his hairline to recede under the mistaken

impression that his crew would respect him because of his age, commed down to

DS. "Haven't you placidated it yet?" After a pause and a crackle of gibberish

from the trau- 3 matized comm network, a subdued voice replied, "We've been

placidated, Captain. DS won't respond," "Prepare for tachyon conversion,

then." First Mate Jarant Kendis rubbed the bridge of his small, flat nose.

"Sir, the lamprey has attached itself to our hull. It is busily fobbying our

SIPACUM, our DS, and every other ship's 'puterlink." As if in emphasis, the

con-cabin's lights flickered twice, flared, and dimmed. In darkness relieved

only by the confused flashing of the control panels, captain and mate regarded

each other. The captain looked with uncertainty toward the frantic, jumbled

'puter displays. "I think we-" "It's blasting our airlocks!" Kendis kicked

over to the viewing port and floated close to the crysplas that separated the

con from the vacuum a few sems-centimeters-away. With Abraxis's telepresence

cameras (routed, as was everything, through the spacer's computers) scrambled

and disinformed and otherwise fouled up by the lamprey, human eyes were the

only sensors to be trusted. "Firm," Mate Jarant muttered. "It's wrecking them.

We can't escape." The captain joined him at the port. "And they can't get

in." "Don't be too sure, Father. Look!" A hatch in the dorsal midsection of

the attacking spacer opened quickly. Five spheres-the same grayish-blue hue as

the plating of the nameless spacer-darted from the airlock. "Cybers," Mate

Jarant said. Captain Jarant nodded. "It's the Dark Wolf!" Jarant Kendis knew

well of the mysterious pirate who plied the spaceways-identity

unknown-attacking and looting freighters in flight. The faceless raider struck

swiftly, 4 accurately, and seldom left the target vessel spaceworthy. That the

crew usually perished in the assault gave First Mate Jarant more worries than

he could handle. He floated away from the viewing port and seized the

comm-mike. "Prepare to repel boarders!" The ancient command reached less than

half the ship. Tura ak Saiping controlled the actions of her semi-autonomous

cybers from the con of Black Dawn with a few commands tapped in on SIPACUM's

keyboard. She eschewed vocally interactive computers, though she owned one for

emergencies. Tura ak Saiping spoke little enough to Galactics. She had even

less to say to machines. The cyber-salvagers drifted past the useless DS nodes

of Abraxis and waited a few hundred meters from one of the damaged

airlocks. "Krishna!" the DS gunner cried as a plasma bolt flared from the Dark

Wolf's ship. It was the last word he uttered. The blue-white blob of

infernally hot ionized matter sizzled into the second hatch of the blasted

airlock and melted through like a diamond drill against cheap plaster.

Instantly, atmosphere punched outward. In a properly functioning ship, such a

blowout would immediately be sensed by the computer and pressure seals would

lock to protect as much of the ship as possible from damage. The lamprey

ensured that Abraxis functioned improperly at best. Air howled out of the

airlock, its staging area, and a dozen tunnels connected to it. The screams of

the crew soon died in the airless void that carried no sound. The gunner,

wrenched from his chair by the force of the outrushing wind, reached out to

grab a stanchion as he hurtled past. His fingers caught and held on. Almost as

quickly as it had begun, the vacuum hurricane abated. The gunner floated in

silence. Airless silence. 5 He heard sounds, though. In his few dying seconds,

he heard his blood throbbing in his arteries, trying to burst through vessel

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walls and boil in the negligible pressure. His lungs went first. Devoid of

air, they contracted under the expanding pressure of his veins and

fluid-filled organs. Other body parts tried to fill the void. His stomach and

intestines swelled and burst. His heart seized up from the vapors of his

boiling blood. By that time he was dead. A contorted rag doll that had been

more boy than man. Swollen, blood-filled eyes stared out into space. Eyes that

no longer saw the cybers jetting in through the hole in the side of

Abraxis. Since stoppers would be no good against non-living matter, Captain

Jarant and his son armed themselves with plasma beamers. They slipped on

emergency breath masks. If the con-cabin lost pressure, the masks ensured that

they would die in five minutes instead of one. The captain knew that- this

time-every second of life mattered. "Escape pod four is closest. Not badly

damaged, either." The first mate nodded and followed his father through the

hatch into the ship's main corridor. Tura ak Saiping watched the displays from

each of the telepresences mounted on the cybers. One of them neared the main

cargo hold. She watched it beam its plasmer at three floating figures. Two men

and a woman scrambled for handholds in the tunnel, the gloves of their mobile

life support systems clutching at anything handy. The plasma beam seared

through their mlss outer coverings. The resulting burst of relieved pressure

masked the vaporization of flesh and bones. That the boiling plasma continued

through the three and punched a head-sized hole in the bulkhead beyond

bothered Tura ak Saiping not a bit. She had no need for the spacer. Only for

what it carried. "This way," Jarant Anstiss said in a terrified hiss. 6 The

pair drifted quietly down a corridor. Using the railing that bordered the

bulkheads and deck, they propelled their weightless forms hand over hand.

Since the relative directions of "up" and "down" varied depending on whether a

spacer was under thrust, rotating for artificial G, or decelerating, the rails

were on all sides. In zero-G, they provided a necessary means of

locomotion. Anstiss motioned to the younger man. They both stopped, ducking

into the recess of a hatchway. One of the cybernetic attackers-"robot," they'd

once been called-had made it into the pressurized area. It rounded a bend in

the tunnel and jetted past them. The hiss of its gas thrusters sounded like

the whisper of demons. From their hiding place, the Jarants saw the farrago of

armatures encircling the grayish-blue sphere. Halfway between the equatorial

ring of manipulators and the transceiver antenna at the axis rested a gleaming

black TP camera. When it no longer pointed in their direction, the first mate

let go a sigh. Before it rounded the next bend in the tunnel, the cyber

stopped dead in the air. Its TP detected motion. A crew-member rushed past the

junction, panicking and groping for the rail. The plasmer flared

diamond-white. A mass of charred and smoking flesh floated lazily in all

directions from where the woman had been. "Shiva's eyes," muttered the younger

man. "Indrasta!" "Too late for her. Go!" Captain Jarant kicked off the

bulkhead and raced down the tunnel hand-over-hand. Following him, the younger

Jarant gazed in dull amazement at Indrasta's drifting remains. As silently as

if they were already in vacuum, Anstiss overrode the computer control on the

airlock and cycled the hatch manually. The pearly surface (marred and

scratched by too many years of hauling cargo) slid aside. 7 The captain nodded

inside. His brown eyes held the sorrow of crushed ideals. A captain never left

his spacer. He knew that. He'd heard all the stories while growing up. He also

knew that more often than not, captains elected to desert their ships. The

reason was as old as the race called Gal-actics-where there was life, there

dwelt hope. A dead man, no matter how honorable, seldom recouped his

losses. That did not make Captain Jarant Anstiss feel any better about

abandoning his ship and what might be left of his crew. "In!" he cried,

kicking his son toward the lifeboat. He had heard the crackle of a plasma beam

hitting cyprium. The dropping pressure had already set his ears pounding as he

cycled the airlock shut. "We've lost the main tunnels," he said, and nothing

more. The pair climbed into the escape pod and set the controls to manual.

Jarant Kendis knew that the escape would be very nearly pointless. They were

light-years away from an inhabited planet. The lifeboat possessed simple

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chemical and ion engines. He only hoped that the pirate-whoever it was-would

leave Abraxis intact. The lifeboat had its own computer, one that could

operate independently of Abraxis's traumatized systemry. The captain used the

outside TP waldoes-large manipulators controlled manually from inside-to cycle

the outer airlock. Nothing moved. "Jammed," he muttered. "Blow the hatch." The

first mate threw a set of switches. Dull vibrations shook the lifeboat. Before

them, the outer airlock hatch shuddered and flew away. Indigo space beckoned

them beyond the portal. Relatively nearby, a hot B-type star was an eerie blue

flare. "Redshift!" Captain Jarant shouted. He punched in the thrust vector and

took a deep breath. 8 The engines blazed into life, crushing the two men into

the chairs. The airlock shot away from their view and they sped through the

gem-scattered night of deep space. Twilight, really, here so close to

star-crowded Galaxy center. Onboard Black Dawn, SIPACUM registered the motion

of two objects moving away from Abraxis at differing rates. One tumbled at a

constant velocity while the other accelerated radially from the spacer.

Automatically-and without the notice of Tura ak Saiping-the ventral plasma

beamer flared into action. An actinic sphere of energy crossed the gap between

the pirate's spacer and the escape pod in less than an instant. The lifeboat

fragmented, the shards melting in the heat and condensing into soft spheres of

unipolymer plasteel and cyprium. Tura ak Saiping noticed the flash at the edge

of her vision. Her only thought was a fleeting one-that the DS was functioning

normally. She returned to her task. The deaths of the f ather-and-son

partnership called Jarant Pan-Spaceways passed unnoticed in the emptiness

separating the stars. Only lawyers, a few months-standard from now, would

really care whether the Jarants were dead or alive. Tura ak Saiping scanned

the spacer Abraxis with the aid of her cybers. No signs of life onboard. Good,

she mused. One less crew of worms feeding TransGalactic Watch and its secret

masters. She monitored the cybers in their progress through the labyrinthine

passages of Abraxis. Sending three of the machines to the main cargo hold, she

watched the telepresence screens display the goods available for her

choosing. The lights in the cargo hold suddenly flicked off. The temperature

shot up. Tura directed one of the cybers to deactivate the ship's computers

before the lamprey endangered the spacer and its equipment. Once the computers

were inoperative, Abraxis's ma- 9 chinery returned to normal default

functioning-lacking only a crew and .a good portion of its atmosphere. Hatches

still in working condition quietly sealed and the ship attempted to conduct

repairs where possible. The lights returned to the cargo hold and the

temperature returned to spacer normal of 22 degrees.* One of the

cyber-salvagers floated in front of a crate marked with the seal of

TransGalactic Watch. A shipment of TDP anti-glitch devices. Source, the planet

Sekhar. Tura smiled. She'd been on Sekhar only a few months before and had

been unable to procure one of the expensive, bureaucratically controlled

components. The flaining bastard of a burok she'd bribed had taken the stells

and then told her that TGW had backordered enough TDPs to ensure their absence

from the market for almost half a year-ess. She was pleased to discover that a

portion of the shipment had found its way into her hands-or rather her

waldoes. Four for her, the rest for quick and profitable sale. The cyber

grasped the plascrate and maneuvered it out of the cargo hold. She ordered it

to return to Black Dawn and gave her attention to the four remaining

cybers. One drifted through tunnels until it reached the late Captain Jarant's

cabin. Unceremoniously cutting through the hatch, the salvager drifted about

until its sensors detected the captain's safe. Carefully (under Tura ak

Saiping's remote guidance), it drilled through the cyprium plating with its

cutter, a molecular beamer. An alarm wailed. The hatch behind the cyber tried

vainly to seal shut so as to trap the thief. A spindly manipulator at the

cyber's equator grappled on to the safe door and the sphere thrust

backward. Poison gas filled the room. The cyber didn't mind. It pulled the

door free. "Celsius-about 72 degrees Fahrenheit, Old Style. 10 Stopper

beamers-set in the overhead-attempted to Fry the metal intruder. They

succeeded only in warming its exterior. Damage, however, was likely if the

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cyber lingered in the captain's well-protected cabin. This it minded. Tura

knew what the safe held. She tapped a few commands into the computer. The

cyber responded instantly. Three precision sensors detected the sources of the

sonic beams. Triangulating, they pointed the salvager's plasmers and

triggered. The hidden stoppers vaporized, along with large sections of the

overhead. The cyber extended a waldo and seized the contents of the safe: a

slim gray and maroon equhyde packet. Depositing it in an interior compartment,

the cyber gymballed about and thrust toward the simplest path to Black

Dawn-the cabin's wide viewing port. The metal thief burned a neat hole in the

crysplas with its plasmer. The outrush of what little atmosphere remained in

the cabin (mostly an enzymatic poison gas called 3-4-3 Gamma Dioxylase)

propelled the sphere through with an extra push. It retracted its farrago of

arms and passed the fused edges of the port with room to spare. The gray and

maroon packet it carried contained twenty slim pieces of plastic. They looked

unimpressive. Only the fact that they were sealed in a TGW Priority

Transferral Pouch indicated their true value. Any Galactic banker would

immediately identify them as negotiable credcassettes. Millions of stells

worth. A droplet in TGW's operating budget (a month's payroll and expenses for

TGW personnel and TGO AiP's on Terasaki and Franji), it represented a fortune

in the hands of one person. Tura ak Saiping was that person. She smiled coolly

and concentrated on the remaining three salvagers. A thin film of perspiration

glowed on her golden-bronze skin. One of the cybers she sent back to her ship

with a load 11 of quark-tunnel microcomputer components. They were being

shipped to a TGW (and, presumably, TGO) research facility. She had the cyber

rip open the sealed documents attached to the container. She frowned when she

read what the cyber held up to its TP. Why would there be a TGW research

station just a half light-year away from Shir ash? Most Galactics shuddered at

the mere mention of the planet that gave birth to a race of amorphous

monstrosities possessing intensely powerful telehypnotic abilities. Tura ak

Saiping merely continued to frown. As far as she knew, TGW maintained an

uncrewed cybercraft in orbit around the watery world. It served as a warning

buoy, alerting spacefarers to the almost unopposable danger below. That

monitor would also alert TransGalactic Watch, pres meaning fast, if the

jelly-blobs of Shirash ever escaped their planet and moved out along the

spaceways. One less load of equipment for whatever they're "researching" near

that abominable planet, she mused in satisfaction. Or anywhere else! The other

cyber in the main cargo hold bypassed crates of food and drink-flavorings/farm

machinery (although that was an ancient cover-phrase for weapons, ref: the

Caribbean Connection), holotapes, uniforms, and mining equipment. Thousands

and thousands of stells' worth of stuff, all doubtless urgently needed for

something, by... someone. It was not the cybers' business, however, to

consider the poor starving children of Fill-In-The-Blank. That was of no

concern to their captain, either. The cybernetic member of Tura ak Saiping's

crew in the main cargo hold paused at a small crate marked with the TGW seal

and the words 300 EACH: MULTIFUNCTIONAL PERSONAL BEAM-SIDEARM: SONIC. Tura

paused, too. She debated taking the crate of stoppers 12 onboard her spacer.

Enough stoppers there to arm a little army and start a revolution or rebellion

at the very least, she thought. Then she sneered at her own concept: Sure. And

be wiped out by TGO. No no, Tura, no one's doing that. If there were a

revolutionary force somewhere, wouldn't you love to know about it! Again she

answered her own thought to the contrary: No. Tura's a loner, and a loner I'll

stay. Still, all those stoppers would fetch a nice price. On the other hand,

her Black Dawn was the smallest ship able to utilize tachyon-conversion

systemry and still require a crew of only one. The Corsi-built Masoch Mark IV

had no lifeboats or landers for swooping down into gravity. Tura's ship was

built for speed, stealth-for piracy. It was not built for hauling freight. The

two crates already on their way to Black Dawn would fill its hold.

Reluctantly, Tura ordered the cyber to pass up the stoppers, despite the high

demand for weapons all along the spaceways. She hoped to find something more

valuable and less bulky. The cyber found just that, a moment later. A

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container the size of a go-bag lay strapped unpretentiously atop a shipper of

Bleak's only beer, Puce Ribbon. Even though separated by hundreds of meters of

vacuum, Tura reflexively wrinkled her nose. She thought of TransGalactic Watch

personnel as scum, as policer scum of the lowest sort, but such bad taste in

potables appalled her. Probably some subsidized export program that Bleak

can't afford anyway. Maybe the whole damned planet'II go broke close down. No

more Bleak! Who'd notice? She tapped in a command for the cyber to scan the

smaller container. She nodded, eyes narrowing. Drugs. Captured incidentally in

some raid on a slaver or pirate or smuggler 13 and being transported as

evidence, for storage. Or perhaps to a disposal facility. The cyber took it in

one "hand" and flew out. Back to Black Dawn. The last of her cybernetic crew

floated to the center of the ship. It was not a salvager. Its function was not

to take anything, but to leave something behind. Seeking the ship's center of

mass with its delicate sensors, the cyber drifted along corridor-tunnels,

always farther in. When it could go no farther, it released a cubic object

measuring a half-meter on a side. The cube drifted until it touched a

bulkhead, where it lightly adhered. Just a large building block, gray and

red. The cyber wended its way out of Abraxis. When Tura ak Saiping firmed that

all five cybercrew-members were safely onboard and had stored away their loot,

she moved Black Dawn out to a hundred kloms' distance and triggered the

Shockwave bomb left at the center of the freighter. She watched the spacer's

silent death in silence. The hull of Abraxis burst at several junctures. Fuels

and remaining atmosphere mushroomed out of the fractures, the debris expanding

from the ship like the blossoming of a rose. For a moment, the entire ship

quaked with interior shocks. Then something in the depths of the spacer flared

to the surface. Abraxis was shattered into a thousand pieces, as if struck

interiorly with a thousand giant hammers. She watched the bits of slag glow in

hues from white to yellow to orange to dull red, while surrounding stars

seemed to fade and vanish. She smiled with grim pleasure and felt the warmth

between her lithe thighs grow to fiery levels. Slowly she rotated her hips,

clamped and eased her thighs, to send the lovely sensations coursing through

her. 14 No survivors, she thought, and her hands drifted over to squeeze her

own breast, with force. No lackey worms left alive! How delicious! How...

erotic! She tightened the straps of the master's chair (the only chair in the

con-cabin) and rubbed against the seat even harder, squeezing her thighs

together until they trembled with the delightful strain. In the null-G, her

long black, black hair whipped about her wide shoulders. Her smile formed a

cruel, blood-red slash between her wide lips. Bits of slag end-over-ended

about her, drifting, adding to the surprisingly great mass of matter that

cluttered the so-called "void" of space. Abraxis and its crew will not rest in

peace, she thought, but drift forever in pieces. The thought sent a new surge

of welcome sensual delight all through her. She inslotted a navigation

cassette containing instructions to SIPACUM for the trip to her next

destination-Mirjam- and a well-paying but undiscriminating dealer in

unregistered goods. She swept her gaze over the glittering jewels of the

freighter's demise, and she was feeling good. Death to you, TransGalactic

Ordure! And your toadying freighters. Her long eyelids closed, their long

lashes jet fans on her cheeks, barely fluttering beneath the narrow epicanthic

folds... which Tura ak Saiping had added herself, along with her name. And

along with her declaration of war on TGO and its uniformed arm, TGW. And its

so-necessary freighters. SIPACUM pingged twice, indicating ninety seconds to

tachyon conversion and faster-than-light travel. Time enough. Her hand snaked

down to her loins to finish what her destroying Abraxis had

commenced. 2 Always and ever the government and its rulers and operators have

been considered above the general moral law.... Service to the State is

supposed to excuse all actions that would be considered immoral or criminal if

committed by "private" citizens. -Murray N. Rothbard, For a New

Liberty Marekallian Eks was ready to bash heads together. The Outreacher sat

in a conference chamber as austere and functional as a prison lunchroom.

Throughout the green and beige enclosure squatted unimposing chairs and

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tables. Nearly a hundred people sat or stood, listening to the current

speaker. Marekallian Eks listened, too, with blatantly evident impatience. If

there were any place else in the Galaxy he could have been, he would have been

there rather than at this meeting of the Council of Ninety-Three. He would

much rather have been engaging in his Mindrunning activities, bringing

technology to the people of Protected planets, boosting their intelligence

(and looting their temples). * Only his hatred of TGO brought Marekallian Eks

to this alliance of financiers, smugglers, manufacturers and idealists; and

kept him involved as its foremost activist. The speaker-a banker from

Samanna-droned on in a *As in SPACEWAYS #13, Jonuta Rising! 15 16 gratingly

nasal tone about the predacious behavior of TGW s "fee" collectors on his

native planet. "They are nothing more than gangsters, collecting their

'protection' money and strutting abput in their little uniforms interfering

with commerce, sticking their noses in-" "Thank you, Prastiba-seety," Eks said

to the Sam. "I think your view is quite obviously shared by the other members

of the Council. That's why we're here." He stifled a yawn and continued. "This

meeting is intended to be a strategy session on how best to use our resources.

Resources such as time, Myrzha Prastiba." Eks gazed around the chamber at the

faces turned toward him. Human, mostly-that spacefaring race that called

itself Galactic and seemed to be proving worthy of the name- plus a few Jarps

and an actual Crozer, robed. The Crozers looked Galactic in all aspects, yet

they differed on a genetic level that prevented cross-breeding. That made them

something other than human. So did that unpleasant pineal eye. A Jarp spoke

up. The translation helmet it wore converted the whistles of its thin, long

tongue into Erts, the language of the spaceways. It gestured with its slender

orange arms and shook its heart-shaped head so that rich, burgundy-hued hair

rippled and shimmered in the lights. Eks ignored the words it spoke through

its translahelm. He was thinking about a woman. A woman just a few months back

and half a Galaxy away. "You don't expect," she had said, "that we'll be able

to get away with him and the loot?" She strode along one of the tunnels near

the surface of spacer Coronet and glanced from Marekallian to the Akil. The

downy-furred alien stared back at her with eyes the color of gold dust. He

stood shorter than either she-Verley of Sekhar-or the man she

addressed. 17 Eks ran a tanned set of fingers across his jet black hair down

to where it ended in a queue. "Oh," he said with a nonchalant air, "I think

I'll be able to." He put an arm around the white-gold furred shoulders of the

Akil. The gentle-looking creature continued walking but stared up at him

inquiringly with eyes larger than a Jarp's. It (he-the Akil was quite

obviously male) could have evolved to its humanoid status from the lemurs of

Home-world-Urth. His long fingers reached up to grasp the Gal-actic's wrist.

That grip was strong, belying the delicacy of his build. Eks and Verley had

seen the frail alien jump four meters up a wall with little more than a

running start. From ankle-deep water. Only moments after being awakened from

its cryosphere in a treasure vault on a distant Protected planet called

Arepien.* The Mindrunner, who had looted the vault as "payment" for making the

surface-dwellers aware of Galactic civilization, now had to deal with a more

formidable opponent. The captain of Coronet. "Leave our host to me," he said,

eyeing the lovely woman from Sekhar and patting the Akil's arm. He disengaged

from the Akil upon reaching the con-cabin and signaled their

presence. "Enter," a deep basso voice boomed. The con-cabin hatch slid open to

admit the trio. At the con stood a man of 180 sems height. He wore

linden-green equhyde tights and an imposing long-tailed coat of piratical

scarlet. When he turned, a double row of brass-imitating prass buttons

reflected glints of light from the flashing and flickering telits. The captain

of spacer Coronet faced his "passengers." *In Jonuta Rising! 18 Marek spoke

up first. "I see you got the kunda vine sap off your clothes. Or do you stock

identical outfits?" Captain Kislar Jonuta of Qalara smiled. "We are in orbit

around Jasbir, Mindrunner. This is where I expect to pick up some, uh, cargo.

And let you off." "With Phoenix, slaver." Eks grinned with feral enjoyment.

"Your thirty-five per cent of my recovery doesn't include sentient

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beings." Jonuta smiled wanly. His coal-sack eyes glimmered with feigned

menace. "I'll take'-as my forty per cent for saving you from TGW-the Akil.

Period. I won't even touch your loot." "Loot! I was nearly killed removing

those barbarous relics of Arepien's superstitions." He looked genuinely hurt-

as genuine as he could improvise. "I've brainbdosted enough of them that

they'll be spacefarers in a few decades, if they exert themselves. They don't

need their old gods now." The Outreacher slid an arm protectively around the

Akil. "I insist that I keep Phoenix. I'm the sentenologist, not you. I'll keep

my bargain with you, Jonuta. You may have the full thirty per cent of what you

call my 'loot.'" Jonuta leaned against the first mate's chair to his left.

"Hear that, Kenny?" he said to the woman sitting there. The chair rotated. In

it sat a voluptuous woman with a large, more than attractive face and skin the

hue of burnished bronze. She wore a truly lovely and obviously expensive

sweater the color of champagne, with very full raglan sleeves decorated from

collar to cuff by a braided plait of its own material. It bloused over her

tight-hipped, tight-crotched but loose-legged pants, which were burnished

burnt orange suede. The sweater was cut lavishly, clear down to here, and the

close-pressed cleavage made her look as if she was smuggling watermelons. She

looked blandly at Marekallian Eks and up at her man, and nodded. 19 Jonuta

looked back at Eks. "I'm the slaver here. I'm the one with the contacts and

the knowledge to unload walking cargo right past watching security people. You

only know how to fence artifacts." "You're skipping one vital point,

Jonuta." "Which is?" Marekallian Eks walked over to the con and looked

squarely into Kislar Jonuta's dark, dark eyes. "Phoenix is a living, thinking

being that I found, freed, and took responsibility for. I'm not going to let

you enslave him the same way TGO enslaves the worlds of the

space-ways!" Jonuta maintained a bland gaze and permitted himself a wry smile.

This poor flainer's obsession with fighting TGO is going to fob his thinking a

little too much one of these days. Booda's eyeballs, he isn't even looking

down into Kenowa's cleavage-canyon! "We've been fragged by a lot of action

recently," the devilishly handsome master of Coronet said equably. "Some

uninterrupted sleep will put us both in better mind to discuss this." He

smiled and spread his hands placatingly. To the great surprise of Verley of

Sekhar, Marekallian Eks flipped his fingers in the spacefarer's equivalent of

a shrug and said, "You're right. We're all on edge, Captain." He stretched his

arms and stifled a yawn. "I think a few hours of horizontal meditation will

work wonders." And that was about as transparent as your suggestion,

Captain-san, he mused without bitterness. Now we'll see who corks whom, you

smiling clone bastard! Eks spent the "night" portion of the spacer's sleep

cycle wide awake. Verley lay on the amorphous bed beside him, naked and

relaxed, partly curled and wearing a disgustingly pleasant expression. She

breathed regularly, asleep in a warm, post- 20 lovemaking dreamworld. Well

stroked and well fucked, Marekallian very well knew. The scent of their

lovemaking titillated his nostrils still. She twitched, sighed, turned to lie

on her back. Naked and exposed with her emphatically straight pubic hair all

tangled and still damp. Without thinking about it Marekallian reached over to

cup and squeeze a bare, softly relaxed breast-she made a happy sighing noise

in her sleep-and gazed at the black grove between the tops of her thighs. It

quite concealed her welcoming stash. Strange; most Galactics kept their bodies

hairless from the eyelashes down, and nearly all from the neck down, at least.

To do otherwise was to announce perversity-or the backward nature of one's

culture. He touched that soft, damp patch of fur and a little smile touched

his face. Marekallian Eks of Outreach positively reveled in backward cultures.

His interest lay, however, along more serious lines than the avoidance of bald

stash. He sought to bring new cultures into the interplanetary society of the

universe, and he considered that every race's birthright. Phoenix was the

second representative of an unknown sentient species, and Eks was not about to

let the Akil slip from his grasp. (He had no notion that Jonuta had no

intention of selling the Akil as a slave, and would not have cared to believe

it had he known.) A bumping sensation brought him to instant alertness and he

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withdrew his hands from the woman beside him. (Again she made a little sound,

and again she turned away, onto her side, drawing her legs up.) Eks smiled

faintly. He knew the vibration a starship made when it hard-docked at a space

station. Rolling gently off the bed, he eased his butt up and pulled on gray

tights. Into them he stuffed a deep-rust hued shirt of grixsilk. He drew 21 on

his utilitarian jacket of Panishi khaki. It was well supplied with a score or

so pockets that held items ranging from fifteen meters of coated monomolecular

cable to a combination ministopper/jangler. His own full-sized stopper hung

from the holster of the jacket's self-belt. Sealing up the jacket's meld, he

jumped lightly up and down to ensure that nothing rattled. Firm, he thought.

Not a sound. Eks slipped on leather boots and sealed their molecular bindings.

Poised to leave, he glanced around the cabin for anything he might have

forgotten. Ah-he plucked his wristcomm up from the center table. He took a

last look at the coiled, sleeping Verley 2197223SK of Sekhar. She had followed

him into the shrine tower of the Mother and her Lover-the gods of the

Protected planet Arepien. And had helped him make off with its most exquisite

artifacts. One was the Akil he called Phoenix. Verley had definitely been a

life-saver. In the course of a long life, he remembered, a wise man must be

willing to abandon his luggage many times. Clear ether, my jocko! He turned to

open the hatch. No sound disturbed the tunnel outside. Straining his hearing

to its limits, Eks waited long moments before sealing the hatch as silently as

he'd opened it. The soft leather boots moved as quietly as a whisper against

the plasteel deck. He heard them when he passed the second blowout pressure

seal. Kenowa had volunteered to take the Akil onstation. Jon-uta had only to

comm a holo of the beautiful alien to the first contact he'd picked. The price

demanded and agreed to would buy a planet. Not a large planet, but hardly an

asteroid, either. Kenowa wanted one last moment with Phoenix... The Akil

sensed her need and readily made his affir- 22 mation apparent. Walking with

him from the con to an empty cabin, she admired the growing size of the small

alien's slim, long slicer. As with the rest of his beautiful, sensual body,

his penis beckoned her with its promise of pleasure. "Makhseem," he

whispered. Kenowa smiled warmly. She'd heard him use the word often enough to

presume that it was the Akil word for "fornicate." (That makhseem was

infinitely more than fornication, she already knew-she had shared that

marvel-ously intimate sexual bonding with the white-gold humanoid as often as

she could during the flight to Jasbir. The Akil obliged, happy to spend its

hours in a form of communication that required no words.) The alien stroked

Kenowa's firm backside, running its downy fingers into the valley between her

cheeks as they walked with slow, languid steps. I'd buy Phoenix for me if I

had the cred, she thought. Feelings of tingly warmth pulsated through her. She

walked faster. That damn' cabin's too far. I might just take him right here in

the tunnel and hope Sak and Shig are asleep. Vark, too, the Bleaker bum. She

knew Jonuta was wide awake, preparing the sale of Phoenix. They turned at a

tunnel junction and faced the Mind-runner. Eks levelled his stopper at Kenowa

and squeezed. He had it set on Two-Dance. Most men would have taken the

opportunity to watch the magnificently endowed woman writhe and jerk under the

effect of the sonic tingler. Her breasts trembled as if liquidly alive within

her champagne-colored sweater and appeared to be trying very hard to burst and

leap right out of its deep-cut U-front. Instead of observing the arousing

rictus, Eks swiftly pulled a short strap from one of his pockets and almost

tried to grab her wrists with one hand while beaming her with the 23 stopper

in the other. He halted the action in time to avoid transmitting the effect of

the beam to his own nervous system. Idiot, he thought. The Akil watched

without alarm, his huge eyelids narrowed. Peering as a scientist would at a

microbe. Eks flicked off and bolstered the stopper. Kenowa stopped her

Two-step Dance and sagged against a bulkhead. In the few seconds it took her

jumbled nerves to begin approaching normalcy, Eks lashed her wrists together.

He was careful to pass an end of the cord up between the linked wrists so as

to tie them separately as well as together-and then he flipped the line over a

standpipe, tugged it back, and knotted it three times. Made helpless in less

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than a minute, she hung, arms over her head and the rather famous Kenowa

breasts stretched tautly, sleekly lengthwise. The perfect damsel in distress,

Marekallian Eks thought, reaching up to pat her cheek. "Sorry to leave you

both unfulfilled and defenseless, supercake, but I have grander plans for

Phoenix than his being a party favor." "I don't blame you," she said in a tone

both groggy and strained. And she added, "Jonuta will kill you for him, you

know." "Captain Cautious? I hardly think so, with me using Phoenix as a

shield." "That does show your concern for him, yes," she muttered. But she was

watching his back, and Phoenix's. Eks had departed with the Akil in tow

without waiting to hear Ken-owa's verdict on his ration of courage. She had a

glimpse of Phoenix's slicer, shrinking from distraction and motion, and then

of his very small very tight buttocks. Kenowa sighed. 24 She was aroused, in

polite phrasing, and, in terminology less restrained, horny. Being in such a

thoroughly kinky position made it worse. And knowing that Marek is trying to

escape with a great lover and a small fortune is even more frustrating! She

did not intend to stay frustrated for long, and so did not dwell on it. She

pressed her chin down between the shining tops of her forcibly elongated

breasts. "Jone," she said into her depthy cleavage. "Marek's got Phoenix. He

must be heading for his lander. Verley wasn't with him." Somewhere within her

treasure chest, her wristcomm nestled warmly. Anticipating trouble, Jonuta had

made the pleasant effort of assisting her in the secreting of her comm-link.

She cocked her head to listen. "Uh. I'm sending Vark and Shig to intercept."

Jonuta's voice barely reached up from the snug recess between her warheads.

"You check on Verley, Kenny. I do not want any surprises." "Uh, Jone..."

Kenowa writhed, trying to unhook her wrists from the standpipe. "He's, uh,

trussed me up." "I've got to stay oncon," her captain said. "I'm sending Sak

to free your trussworthy body, m'love. Enjoy it while you can." Kenowa smiled.

The pain in her wrists diminished before the calm voice of her ever-competent

man. She closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she was a prisoner here of

that sublimely chivalrous but bondage-loving devil Captain Sword, who had long

lived in her imagination. The Akil stared at the hand that so firmly grasped

his wrist. Marekallian tugged harder, urging him on toward the bay that held

Eks's lander. "Sh'lashtiat kiz BavkaDil?" "Couldn't agree more," Eks said

without listening. He 25 peered around a comer along a pale blue tunnel and

ran at full gait to a sealed hatch. The alien called Phoenix must either run

along behind or be dragged. He ran. "This is it, fuzzface." He punched the

cycling switch on the hatch and waited all of two seconds before determining

that it had been deactivated. Swiftly he unlatched the manual cycling bar and

rotated it. Footsteps sounded down the tunnel. "Damn!" The hatch eased slowly

upward. Eks didn't waste time raising it more than a meter. Giving the Akil an

ungentle shove down and under, Eks dived through the hatch after him and

cycled it down from inside. Spacefarer First Shiganu saw the hatch seal just

as he rounded the corner. Vark stopped a pace behind him and

cursed. "Buggerhumpin' flainer's inside already! How the double vug're we

supposed to get in there with the sisterslicin'-" "Don't get fobbed," Shig

said, raising his wrist. "They're inside the lander bay, Cap'm. Give the hatch

some juice." The only response was a whine as the hatch slid up. The Terasak

and the Bleaker rushed into the empty airlock in time to see the pressure

warning light flash orange. "He's already evacuating the bay!" "He won't get

far with the outer hatch sealed," came the voice of Captain Cautious, and it

sounded oddly unself-assured. "Shree gast vo'tubriah!" the Akil was meanwhile

shouting, gesturing angrily. Eks raised one hand placatingly while the other

moved rapidly over the keys of his lander's inboard computer. He had kept the

lander on a trickle charge so that it could be powered up in a few

seconds. "Relax and strap-oh shit." He reached over to nudge 26 the Akil into

the other chair. "Get the drift?" The Akil strapped in after watching

Marekallian arrange his own safety gear. He settled back to stare at the

Out-reacher with a distinctly human frown. "Give it up, Eks," a voice crackled

over the intership comm. A voice deep and powerful. "The hatch is zipped up

tight and I'm overriding the pumps to repressurize the bay." "Just keep

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