Betrayer of Worlds (9 page)

On the main console, a status lamp began to blink: a cargo-hold hatch opening. Roland’s voice came over the intercom. “We’re leaving now.”

On an internal security camera Achilles watched ten figures in spacesuits leap from the open hold. On external IR sensors he watched them jet on invisible puffs of compressed gas toward the slowly tumbling Pak ship. He had
Argo
to himself.

A monument to the arrogance of genius, the Pak vessel held his eyes. In interstellar space, with neither planetary nor solar magnetic fields to protect you, the radiation would slowly kill you—and that was while you stood still. The faster you moved, the deadlier things became, with every stray atom and molecule coming on like cosmic rays. Ships needed shielding, and lots of it, for protection.

A ramscoop field, by sweeping up the atoms and molecules that came sleeting at a ship, did double duty as shielding. Pak were too sure of their technology, too certain of their ability to improvise around any problem, to backstop the ramscoop field with simple, foolproof, massive shielding. Why carry all that dead weight?

Even without the deadly blast of the neutron bomb, the Pak on that ship were doomed the moment their ramscoop failed.

But the ramscoop field was also deadly. Magnetic fields intense enough to deflect molecules moving at near light speed also induced massive electric currents. Crewed ramscoops had to warp the magnetic field around the habitat module. If that force-field bubble ever wavered, the magnetic flux would kill everyone.

It took arrogant brilliance to fly such ships—much of it, clearly, deserved. The Pak had crossed tens of thousands of light-years in ships like this.

The salvage party had shrunk to ten tiny dots. Sending one person would have sufficed, if that one carried a stepping disc. But if, against all logic, any of the Pak had survived? Achilles had refused to permit stepping discs on the first visit.

“Your status?” Achilles radioed.

“About halfway,” came Roland’s voice. “
Argo
still looks huge, I’m happy to say.”

Because it
was
huge, a #4 hull, the biggest that General Products made. Most #4s were cargo ships, hauling grain from the Nature Preserve worlds to Hearth. Achilles needed a ship this big for quite another reason: to carry home his prize. Once his hirelings confirmed that everyone aboard the ramscoop was dead. For now, in its position just in front of the wreck,
Argo
’s girth and impenetrable hull shielded the humans from the sleet of interstellar gas and dust.

Achilles continued to watch, anxiously, as the ten tiny hotspots closed the distance to the Pak ship. Closer they crept, and closer, and closer . . .

He began plucking at his so carefully styled mane. The madness of the moment asserted itself. It was
so
tempting. He could close the cargo hatch and jump to hyperspace. With minds of their own, his heads reached for the console—

“I wouldn’t do that.”

Achilles twitched, his heads whipping around toward the unexpected voice.

Roland stood in the entrance to the bridge, a stunner in hand. “You’re not going to abandon my people. Move away from the console.”

Achilles stood from his crash couch. “You did not trust me.”

Roland laughed scornfully. “Why would we?”

Meaning capture of an alien ramscoop struck very close to home. Achilles changed the subject. “Do I have other unannounced company?”

“Just me.” Roland laughed again. “If you choose to believe that.”

That was the problem with criminals and mercenaries. The attitudes and aptitudes that made them useful also made them unreliable. Long ago and far away, Beowulf Shaeffer had been a much more dependable tool.

Moving slowly, lest he get himself stunned, Achilles set a display to show the bridge security camera. Roland was nowhere in the picture. Achilles waved a head at the camera. His double in the image remained at work at his console.

Argo
’s security sensors had been compromised.

“So who is about to board the Pak ship?” Achilles asked.

Roland leaned against a console shelf, far across the bridge from Achilles. Too bad the human did not take a proper seat. Had he settled into any crash couch on the bridge, Achilles could have immobilized him with the crash-protection force field. Maybe the human knew that.

“Nine,” Roland said. “All but me. The tenth suit was empty, a balloon on a string, towed along so you wouldn’t suspect anyone had stayed behind.” He managed to look apologetic. “Our mission cannot succeed if you get cold feet. Hooves. Now move to the center of the bridge.”

With its heater on, an empty suit looked no different to infrared sensors than an occupied suit. Clever.

Backing up as directed, Achilles pointed a head at the main display. “They are almost at the ship.”

Still standing, Roland reached for the copilot’s console. “Then let’s watch.”

Roland’s deputy, a dour and sturdy woman named Tabitha Jones-Calvani, led the salvage party aboard the derelict. “It’s not pretty in here,” she reported.

Helmet cameras told as much. Corpses floated about, contorted, dotted with lesions. Even knowing what to expect, Achilles felt nauseous.

The Pak were humanoid, although shorter than humans. Their leathery skin was like armor. Their limbs were heavily muscled, and their joints enormous to take the strain. In death, many hands curled like claws—with wicked talons protruding.

These were born warriors.

“No, it’s not pretty,” Roland answered. “Take it slow and be safe.”

Achilles could only agree. He watched the humans fan out to search the
ship. They remained sealed in their spacesuits, and their boot magnets let them walk despite the lack of gravity.

Here and there, as the intruders proceeded, they found Pak belted to their stations. Panels were removed, racks extended, and components scattered about. Cabling snaked everywhere, looking improvised. Achilles managed to respect their doomed efforts to survive, wondering what they thought to construct that could change—anything.

“Approaching the bridge, I think,” Tabitha said. “The bow, in any case.”

“Take it slow,” Roland repeated.

Helmet lamps sent bright spots skittering about, revealing more bodies and scavenged equipment. The camera through which Achilles looked wobbled as its wearer sidestepped yet another floating corpse. The body was frozen, its mouth agape, in a final paroxysm.

“Poor bastard,” someone muttered.

“He would kill you if he could,” another answered.

“How many bodies did—?” Achilles stopped. Something in the image had changed. In an open equipment bay: a bit of red glow, where all had been shadow before.

Screaming began. It was unworldly, inhuman. All around the camera’s suddenly spasmodic point of view, images writhed and jerked.

“Finagle!” Roland shouted. He nodded at a console, at external sensor readouts. “The ramscoop field is back up. Without a crew bubble.”

Too late, they knew what the dying Pak had been up to. Setting a trap. Everyone on that ship was as good as dead. Achilles galloped for the hyperdrive control.

There was a hiss like an angry swarm of purple pollinators: Roland’s stunner. It was a warning shot, and Achilles backed away from the console. His legs tingled from the near miss.

“We can save them!” Roland yelled, standing at the midrange comm console. “If I can kill that field quickly.”

The communications laser was powerful enough to cross a solar system. Up close it was a fearsome weapon. It might destroy the repaired field generator, or the power plant that fed it, without killing all the humans aboard. At the least, it would kill with merciful quickness.

Roland reached for the transmit button and—

The second Pak trap snapped shut its jaws.

The Fleet of Worlds had once held
six
worlds. On one of the six, then known simply as Nature Preserve Four, a few million humans had faithfully served the Citizens. As farmers, factory workers, eventually scouts: grateful humans did everything they could for their benefactors and mentors. They knew themselves to be descended from an embryo bank recovered from a derelict ramscoop found adrift in space. There had been, they were taught, no clues aboard to the location of the ship’s point of origin.

And then those servants discovered the whole truth:
Citizens
had attacked the ancient ship when it risked finding Hearth.

The chain reaction at the galactic core had just been revealed, and the Fleet of Worlds had just cast off its tie to Hearth’s ancestral star. Death lunged at the herd from behind. Unknown perils lurked in their path. At that, the worst possible moment, as Citizen society strained and sanity crumbled, the servant humans had rebelled.

And so Nature Preserve Four, renamed New Terra, had won its independence. It now flew ahead of the Fleet—a world of unwitting scouts. The New Terrans were too few and too weak to confront their former masters. And most were also too cautious, their culture having been modeled on their masters’ society.

Earth authorities, if they should ever learn the fate of the lost colony ship, would have a more forceful reaction. Nessus had spent many years—if often in hiding—on Earth and its colony worlds. He did not doubt humanity’s wrath.

But fits of bravery were not the only form of Nessus’ madness. He had come to
like
humans. When Achilles conspired to reclaim New Terra, hoping to govern there as viceroy for the Concordance, Nessus had brought the humans a champion: Sigmund Ausfaller. And so New Terra had kept its freedom. And so, for long years, Achilles had lost his.

The next time trouble came to this part of the galaxy, it was the Gw’oth who first spotted it. They and Sigmund, as much as anyone, had saved everyone.

Even the Fleet.

It did not matter, in a way, that in saving everyone else Sigmund had been broken. He would have refused to take sides between Gw’oth and Citizens anyway.

Nessus never intended Louis to know any of that.

And then, this time by Nessus’ choice,
Aegis
dropped again into normal space. A recording awaited him on a remote hyperwave radio buoy.

A foreboding message from New Terra, sent by Sigmund Ausfaller. . . .

Ausfaller.

It was a name from Louis’s troubled childhood, a name overheard when his parents were unaware he was in earshot. The boogeyman personified. Louis didn’t know who Ausfaller was, not exactly, but he had a pretty good idea
what
Ausfaller was. An evil genius. A raging paranoid. An obsessive. An ARM, an agent of the United Nations military.

The one who had chased Louis’s family across the stars and into hiding.

And now Louis had a face to put with the name.

An altogether ordinary-looking man, thickset and middle-aged, looked out of
Aegis
’ main bridge display. He had a round face, with dark hair and eyes. He wore a jumpsuit that, aside from its programmed color choices, looked the twin to what Louis wore. Ausfaller could be any bureaucrat, on any world—

Until you looked into those piercing, haunted eyes.

“Voice, replay the message,” Louis said. His impression was that the message came via a relay of buoys. The direction of the ship’s hyperwave-radio beam—if he could figure out how to access that information—would tell him nothing.

“Nessus,” the message began, Ausfaller’s brow ominously furrowed, “we have a situation. My sources say you are away from the Fleet. I neither know nor ask what your purpose is. I only hope that whatever you’re doing has you closer to the action than we are here. Call when you get this. You’ll be put through to me, day or night. Ausfaller, out.”

Louis studied the frozen final frame, considering. Ausfaller spoke strangely accented Interworld. And there was a bit of hesitation at times, as though he was out of practice. Odd.

Day or night? That phrasing suggested Ausfaller was on a planet. But hyperwave didn’t work inside a gravitational singularity. Laser or regular radio links from a habitable planet took hours to reach the edge of your solar system, where instantaneous hyperwave began to work—unless your planet was nowhere near a sun.

Louis glowered at the holo. “What are you up to, Ausfaller? Why do you know about the Fleet?”

Nessus sidled onto the bridge, nervously plucking at his already unkempt mane. He had retreated, shaking, to his cabin upon first seeing the message. “When Sigmund Ausfaller says something is a situation, worlds tremble. Let us see what he knows.”

“Putting through the call,” Voice said.

“Louis, you are about to learn things you will not take back to Known Space.” Nessus shifted his weight from hoof to hoof. He seemed about to say more when the comm display changed. Ausfaller again, looking very tired.

“Nessus, thank you for responding. It appears our old friend Achilles is away on a mission of his own.” A curl of the lip showed that
friend
meant anything but. “If whatever he’s up to is sanctioned by Clandestine Directorate, they are not admitting it. I’ve asked.” (Ausfaller named names with whom he had checked, all from Earth’s mythology. Louis wondered what
that
was about.) “And the disturbing thing is—” Ausfaller paused. “Who is that with you?”