Stardogs (19 page)

“See how I fly!” said the lordly eagle to the brick. “I soar! I glide! I bank! I spiral! I rise! And you, common clay? What can you do but sit?” To which the brick replied. “I can fly down pretty well, maybe even better than you. And sooner or later both of us must fall.”

From the parable of the Sergeant-Major, The Gospel according to St. Gopal.

Deo took Teovan to the lifecraft, to make him point out just what had been sabotaged. Not being one to waste time or labor, Deo had carried one corpse and loaded the other onto his prisoner. They came back a few minutes later. The grey-clad man plucked fastidiously at some fluff stuck to his sleeve. “I am afraid, Your Highness, that the lifecraft are completely beyond repair.”

“We may not be in dire straits yet.” The Leaguesman was studying the limited bank of instruments. With the Stardogs and tugs doing the navigating, instruments were considered to be unnecessary on interstellar craft. The original extensive panels of alien readout had been covered by the cocktail unit. Simply cutting it out blindly had been too full of disaster-potential. So, in the fashion of the empire, they had simply been hidden, and ignored. It was like the system that maintained the barge’s 0.92 gravity, without the inconvenience of inertial spin. Ignored. But still functioning.

The leaguesman, with rusty math, attempted to calculate the changes in vector. A few yards away, hidden beneath panels of Terran walnut inlaid with dark Aldera jacnithwood, data screens plotted the tangents and showed that the Stardog was in fact aiming for a spiral near-orbit pattern. But the alien data screens with their insect screeds of numbers wouldn’t have made much sense anyway. The folk in the cockpit would not have known that, besides Leaguesman Kadar’s increasingly frantic signalling, other calls too were flickering across space toward a control centre on the world below.

Below on the edge of a sand sea, from the vast bulk of a grey-stone pyramid structure, a reply, not just a guide-path, was beamed upwards for the first time in more than three thousand years. A challenge. A warning. A demand for something beyond the mere automatic responses of the ship above.

The only thing that happened was that the panel allowing the rider contact with the Stardog’s skin slid slowly closed and sealed again with a small hiss.

In a luxurious cabin somewhere toward the aft end of the vessel another passenger stirred. Hunger had pulled him from sleep. Hunger was something he had never experienced before. What had happened to that damned steward? He was several
hours
late. He would have the fellow flogged to within an inch of his life! Then he realized that he would not. He no longer had the power to have anyone punished. He was dependent on the steward, at least until the League agents could spirit him into hiding.

Fear nibbled at him, and he bit anxiously at his knuckle. Had his father’s agents discovered the steward? Prince Jarian felt the gnawings of terror, and they savaged his vitals more strongly than the hunger that had nearly driven him out into the corridors. He knew he’d get no help from that supercilious bag of an aunt. Besides, she was surrounded by his father’s spies and hatchet men. He would stay for a bit longer in this room. This refuge. This prison. It was lucky he’d got wind of the plans for his assassination. Lucky the League-agent had been able to get him offworld, and onto the one ship that would not be searched. He went and lay down again, and attempted to displace the pangs of hunger with his favorite daydreams of revenge.

In the welded-off drive chamber Juan went again to pound at the doors. There was no response again. At least the ship had stopped bucketing about. And the…shots he’d heard? What was happening out there?

An odd noise came from the alien machinery behind him. He turned. Parts of the dull and silent assemblage were glowing. A set of globes had begun to spin, trickling slow fat blue sparks down into huge cables. The boy shivered, and pressed himself against the obdurate door. A small pink nose stuck itself out of the boy’s shirt and whiffled about.

Scraps of paper lay about as the Leaguesman and the Viscount frantically attempted to calculate what the changes in vector would do to the barge’s course. Deo, methodical as always, had carried the rider’s body away, before returning with a bucket and cloth, and clearing up the signs of the fight. He waived attempts to assist, seeming to find security in the performance of mundane tasks. Thus the others were left to peer out of the windows, which is why they were able to see the separation. The dying Stardog, having delivered its cargo, peeled away from the imperial barge. Its last thrust pushed the ancient craft downward, into an inward spiral, before the Stardog began the last internal changes that would send it on its final journey.

They also saw the apparently solid hull crack to allow stubby wings to push out. “The Denaari craft were obviously intended to be able to land,” said Tanzo calmly. “It still seems to be functioning. I hope the Imperial re-fitters didn’t mess about too much.”

The relief eased barriers. Smiles spread like ink. Relaxation flowed into the set of shoulders. The Viscount was the first to recover his poise. “Acceleration couches. The refit crews didn’t intend this craft for atmospheric work. We need to make some kind of plan.”

A few moments later the streamlined craft shrugged off the tick-like human-built lifecraft. But there was nobody in the cockpit to see that.

It ought to have been obvious. There had been no orbital stations around the Denaari colony worlds. Of course their craft must all have had planetary landing capability. As they drew into the magnetosphere, long quiescent systems awoke. The ship’s near total hibernation was over. The metallo-silicate-chitin creature flexed, checking awakening motor and neural circuits. The Denaari, after all, had used genes as humans used welding tools.

Something was wrong! The roost chamber was full of dead steel clutter! The hold area was intended for that! The cabins, which the refit crew had fitted into what had been the Denaari roost, cracked and bent as the ship-beast struggled to achieve the conformational changes required for landing its frail-winged Denaari passengers. The doorframe of the chamber in which Prince Jarian was hiding twisted. The lock cracked and shattered. The doors of the rooms in which Teovan and Kadar were imprisoned, survived. The walls split instead. The drive chamber’s doors, leading as they did out of the hold, were not affected.

“What’s happening!? Is the ship breaking up?” Shari came running out of Caro Leyven’s chamber, where she and both her new and old bodyguards had been attempting to turn the well-used mattress into some kind of landing couch for the girl. A piece of metal shrapnel from an exploding stanchion screamed past her, and Lieutenant Albeer’s dive brought her down.

Deo came staggering up the corridor. “Princess! To the kitchen quarters! Quickly! The ceiling appears to be coming down here.”

Getting to her feet she turned back to the chamber she’d run from. “No! Others can bring her! Come.” He attempted to hustle her down the corridor.

She shook free of him. “No Deo! Not without her!”

“I’m coming Princess. Go!” Pale and swaying Caro had obviously made it from the couch. Hastily the Lieutenant, who had also found his feet, scooped her off her feet and ran with her. The others were also in the corridor by now and joined the frantic rush toward the kitchen quarters.

“What about the prisoners?” Deo nodded and headed back up the corridor, now that his greatest concern was attended to. He was nearly bowled over by the terrified Kadar. He found the bound Teovan squirming his way determinedly down the passage. Sam Teovan knew where the safest place on this ship was, and he was getting there. A slash from Deo’s
Kukri
freed his legs and hands. Together they fled, the grey-clad servant helping the numb-footed Yak to run.

A section of steel pipe fell, spraying water. It struck Deo just behind the ear. He staggered. Without knowing why he did it, but knowing he must, the wiry Yak grabbed him and half-dragged, half-carried his stunned rescuer down to the kitchens.

Prince Jarian lay, frozen in terror, looking at the now swinging open door. They’d blown the door! Surely any minute now the assassins would bundle in through it, shooting? He whimpered. Then, grabbing the heavily quilted duvet around himself he rolled off the bed and under it. The ceiling split with a thunderous crack. Oblivion seized the heir to the Imperial throne rolled in his duvet, and cowering under his bed. But Prince Jarian didn’t know that his older brother’s latest experiment with a combination of hallucinogens had ended abruptly off a balcony at the Imperial palace. A sixth floor balcony. Thinking himself to be merely second in line for the diamond throne, Jarian felt quite entitled to faint as the ancient Denaari ship entered the exosphere of the planet.