Starhammer (40 page)

"Of course not, the Buro is with you."

Plezmarxsh pursed his lips.

Inside the machine, the troopers ascended in the risers, and as they ascended, the first waves were met by freshly hatched runners that burrowed into their flesh and made directly for the brainpans inside the armored skulls. Once there, they produced a powerful acid that let them through the metal casings in seconds.

The cyborgs rose to the higher floors with dead circuits. They collapsed and their flesh was quickly absorbed by suckers that sprang from the walls. The vang military form fed with a frantic frenzy. Within minutes, all that was left were the cyborgs' metal components and bone structures.

The news of the failure of the cyborgs sent Plezmarxsh into action. He whipped out a stilleto and sank it to the hilt in Magnawl Ahx's back. The Superior Buro Chief slumped over the side of the command pit. Aides ran forward and pulled him away. Melissa Baltitude watched in stunned amazement.

Two Superior Buro spies, planted in Plezmarxsh's private guard sprang into action. A short gunfight ended with both dead, along with one of the remaining guards.

The interior of the big battletank stank of smoke and blood. Two screens had been blown out along with a big hole in one of the command chairs. Melissa's ears were ringing from the incredibly loud gunfire.

Plezmarxsh reopened the channel to Jon Iehard inside the great machine. "Jon Iehard, this is Commander Plezmarxsh of the space group shock division. The Superior Buro are no longer in command here. I am initiating contact with the Grand Council on Laogolden. The Heir himself will stand by to speak with you, please be patient."

Inside the firing chamber, Jon Iehard let out a whoop of victory that momentarily awoke Eblis Bey.

"They're putting me through to the Heir." Jon exclaimed. The Bey struggled to a half-sitting position.

"We have them worried. They know the machine's power. They've had an ample demonstration. Now they calculate and scheme and will pretend to negotiate."

"But they're trapped," Jon exclaimed, "we just destroyed half of the fleet up there!"

Inside the tank, Melissa pushed forward to the microphone.

"Jon, is that you?"

He jumped at the sound of that voice. "Melissa! Where are you? How?"

"I'm out here with the laowon, underneath this machine. They caught me, soon after I left you. But they weren't able to use me the way they wanted to. There's been quite a little gun battle in here and I can vouch for the commander. He's telling the truth. The Superior Buro Chief is dead. They're calling Laogolden now. You've won Jon, you've done it!"

General Plezmarxsh switched off her microphone.

Jon let out a whoop. "Battlegeneral, are you listening?"

Plezmarxsh grunted reluctantly.

"Put Miss Baltitude back on the line. I want her to join my negotiating group. She can monitor such things as the evacuation of the machine. I want all your troops out and I want that main airlock door closed or I will destroy Laogolden and as many other laowon homeworlds as I can target and fire at."

Plezmarxsh could find no way out of the box. He turned Melissa's microphone back on.

Inside the Hammer control chamber, Jon smiled grimly. Eblis Bey laughed lightly, despite the pain it caused him.

"Bring on the Heir," Jon shouted. "We have some proposals to make, proposals that he cannot refuse."

He reexamined the control panels.

"We need a video link."

But Jon had been anticipated by the laowon military communications people and now on one of the screens there appeared the image of the Heir Apparent, surrounded by several members of the high council of court.

Jon heard them arguing in laowon, the radio link was amazingly strong. He could even hear the rustle of their robes of seygfan.

For a moment he stared in awe at the fountainhead of authority in the known Galaxy.

The Heir hushed the council with his raised hand. Jon concentrated on him, a laowon in his middle years, firm of flesh, with fiery eyes. Reportedly a person of ferocious tastes and instincts. He had unseated his senile parent at the age of thirty and ruled alone ever since. But now fear was reflected in the Heir's eyes, a fear unlike anything Jon had ever seen in a laowon before. It brought a strange little smile to his lips, and just for a moment he recalled Hut 416 on North West Alley, far, far away.

"What do you want?" the Heir said in laowon, the inflections one used for servants.

"Many things," Jon replied quietly, "A great many things. Beginning, I think, with a general removal of laowon power from the human hegemony."

"I am not inclined to negotiate with feral bandits."

"I don't think you have much choice."

"I have ordered the High Fleet to prepare to depart to Earth. They will firebomb the planet at my command."

Earth! Jon's heart jumped at that name for some reason he could not explain.

"Then I will destroy Laogolden, and you."

The Heir stared at him flatly. Behind him, the Seygfan leaders boggled in bloodshot rage.

"You will have to prove that you can do as you say."

Jon swallowed. There was a throb in his shoulder, blood matted inside his shirt. Eblis Bey stirred slightly and groaned. Owlcurl Dahn had lost consciousness.

"You would have me send a star nova? That's what this weapon does, you know."

The proud eyes flashed back in fury. Like a wild beast caught in a trap. "Prove it! Only then will all Seygfan of the Imperiom believe."

Jon looked to Rhap Dimple.

"Rhap Dimp, I need a secondary target, one with no habitable worlds, near the primary target."

The mote exchanged flickers of light with the Keeper. On the screen the purple targeting feature around Laogolden became mobile. One of the control levers moved the target overlay.

A bare seven light-years from Laogolden blazed Mayark, a hot white star with no planets. Jon targeted the hammer on Mayark. "The white star that marks the center of your constellation 'Justice,' the balance of law over disorder?"

"Mayark!" the Heir exclaimed.

"What have you there?"

"A few robot probes, maybe some asteroid miners, the Second Orbital Fort."

"The forts are tough, aren't they? Well, this one's going to get a pretty thorough workout. As for your miners, I just hope they're working the outer parts of the system. I want you to set up a deep link with Mayark. Then I want you to watch."

A few moments later the Heir said, "It is done."

Jon ordered Rhap Dimp to activate the Hammer.

"This one's for Meg. For all the gigahabs, all the breathers," he whispered to himself.

Another cube of Baraf was consumed in a fiery flash and instantaneously a gravity void appeared in the heart of mighty Mayark. For a fraction of a second the massive star lacked gravity. An enormous puff of material rose off the surface and then as gravity returned and Mayark fell together again there came a flash, a bubbling on the star's surface, indeed seconds later there was no surface and Mayark increased in magnitude by several degrees and blew a sizable fraction of its own mass into surrounding space.

It was impossible to see anything on that screen except the blazing whiteness. It threw stark shadows, Jon, the mote, the looming mass of the Keeper, against the wall.

"Are you satisfied?" Jon said grimly.

The Heir had paled. Around him the Grand Council were bathed in the death light of the nova. All rushed to speak.

"We shall have to confer. We will reopen communications in ten minutes."

"Don't be a second late, remember I have already targeted Kbark." He switched back to Melissa for a progress report on the closing of the outer airlock hatch. The cyborg shock troops had withdrawn beyond the treads.

Jon ordered Melissa to keep a sharp eye for anything that might mark an attempted attack with an atomic weapon. Not even the great machine could be immune to a nuclear device at close quarters.

The screen blanked. Jon looked around, Eblis Bey was unconscious. Owlcurl Dahn was curled up in a fetal ball. Only Rhap Dimple remained, resting on the console beside the screen. "Just you and me now Rhap Dimp." Suddenly Jon was afraid of relaxing, terrified of falling asleep by mistake, he was aware of his acute exhaustion.

"Incorrect, we are three who are 'on.' You forget the Keeper."

And Jon looked up at the immense batrachianoid robot that squatted silently behind them.

"Yes I'd forgotten about him. Well then, there are three of us to man the Starhammer."

"Incorrect," warbled Rhap Dimp, "you are manning the Hammer. We are part of the Hammer."

And, he realized, without him they would just sit there and do nothing. They were machines, they had no self will. The mote's enthusiasm for their cause was the result of the bond between Rhap Dimp and the Bey.

Jon took a deep breath, pulled himself erect. Ignored the stab of pain in his shoulder. The ten minutes ticked by.

Precisely on time, the screen came back to life. The Heir had a weird expression on his face. His eyes seemed to waver in his head.

"Well, what is your decision?" Jon said.

"We shall have to negotiate," stammered the Heir.

"Call off the High Fleet first then."

There was a long tense moment. Finally, the Heir bowed his head with a little sob. "I will do so." He turned and issued a stream of orders to an aide.

Before he had finished there was a commotion, the sound of gunfire.

On screen, figures in the red robes of the lao cult had appeared. They shot and stabbed the Grand Council with every evidence of joy in their hearts.

"I am the new High Minker!" shrieked a voice in a heavy Laogolden accent. A narrow-faced fanatic had taken over the screen. It bayed at Jon in harsh laowon syllables, demanding surrender and blood.

Jon stared into those eyes, they lacked the slightest glimmer of reason.

The figures in red were actually garroting the Heir on screen, a warning to all members of the Royal Family that treachery to the racial mission of the laowon would be punished by the cult with death.

"All of these treacherous Aristocrats will be slain for their appalling weakness. As High Minker I will immediately order the High Fleet to attack the planets of the under-race. Not a grain of sand will be left unfused!"

Jon checked the targeting patch. "One last chance," he said to the mad eyes in that blue face.

"Surrender!" it screamed in a rage close to insanity.

He ordered Rhap Dimple to fire.

Jon assumed Laogolden would be a few minutes from the primary and so it proved. The High Minker howled and roared threats and prayers until the connection abruptly cut off in a blaze of furious light.

There was silence for a long minute or more. Then a bewildered-looking Battlegeneral Plezmarxsh appeared on the screen. It had been an unexpected turn of events. "The deep link is gone. We cannot raise anyone on Laogolden."

"I am sorry," Jon said, appalled by the enormity of what he had just done. He had killed an entire world, indeed an entire system. Billions upon billions of people were dying in the catastrophic effects of the nova flash of the primary. Laogolden's rotation carried the remaining population on into the incinerating fire, minute by minute. The Imperiom had been beheaded.

"What will you do?" Jon said. "Who can negotiate now for the laowon?"

"I will have to enquire. There is considerable confusion."

"Better hurry it up. Also, I want a deep link opened to Earth at once. If the High Fleet attacks Earth, I will continued to fire the Hammer at your homeworlds. We now target the Feress system and planet Ratan. The population is, I believe, three billion. In addition, I want your troopers moved further away at once. And I'm only going to give you a couple of minutes. You'd better think about what that could mean. So, make haste; we are about to change the ways of the galaxy."

Plezmarxsh went away. Minutes dragged by with infinite anxiety levels until he reappeared on screen. He looked perfectly flustered.

"There is a search now being undertaken for representatives of the Royal Family. The only agreement we have been able to reach is agreement to abide by the social contract with the Monarchy. Only the Crown can hold together the Imperiom in this crisis." There was considerable irritation in the Battlegeneral's voice. He had been struggling with a chaotic situation and the ugly turmoil that had broken out in the remaining Seygfan.

"What about the link to Earth? Where is the High Fleet?"

"Coming, it is being made now. You forget that we have suffered heavy losses to the fleet here. But we are opening a line to the assembled Diktats of Earth. The High Fleet has been recalled."

"To where?"

Plezmarxsh was in agony.

"Where?" Jon repeated, "I may have to target it before things are done."

After a long moment the Battlegeneral broke down. "Fatuz, the fourth orbital fort."

"The coordinates in human digital code, please. Do not attempt to deceive or dissemble if you value your homeworlds."

Tonelessly, Plezmarxsh obeyed.

"By the way, what happened to the Second Orbital Fort?"

There was a long moment of silence.

"We are still trying to regain contact."

"Not tough enough, then. I'm sorry, Battlegeneral, believe me. But I won't hesitate now. What made them do that, do you think?"

Plezmarxsh looked acutely uncomfortable.

"Ah, you don't want to comment on that, eh? I suppose you're afraid of them, too. I must admit they frighten me. Now they've made me history's greatest killer."

Plezmarxsh stared into the screen for a long moment. Then he turned away.

Minutes dragged by. Jon pondered the tactical problems surrounding him. He had no food, no medical supplies, and two wounded colleagues. He could not hope to negotiate for very long, he needed a swift set of decisions. In addition, there was the problem of the vang that was aroused and watchful now in the machine interior. How would a rescue party get in? And how would he and the others get out? He swallowed, his throat was dry from thirst.

"Rhap Dimple, is there any way of getting some water?"