The Star Fox (8 page)

‘I don’t know,’ Vadász said like a robot. ‘So much depends on who they are. Obviously not anyone official. A government need only arrest you on some excuse.’

‘The Militants, then. Jonas Yore.’ Heim rose and walked toward the exit.

‘Where are you going?’ Vadász grabbed his arm. It was like trying to halt a landslip.

‘For a gun,’ Heim said, ‘and on to Chicago.’

‘No. Hold. Stop, you damned fool! What could you do except provoke them into killing her?’

Heim swayed and stood.

‘Yore may or may not know about this,’ Vadász said. ‘Certainly no one has definite information about your plans, or they would simply tip the Peace Control. The kidnappers could be in the lunatic fringe of the Militants. Emotions are running so high. And that sort must needs be dramatic, attack people in the street, steal your daughter, strut their dirty little
egos – yes, Earth has many like them in the upper classes too, crazed with uselessness. Any cause will serve. “Peace” is merely the fashionable one.’

Heim returned to the bottle. He poured a drink, slopping much.
Lisa is alive
, he told himself.
Lisa is alive. Lisa is alive
. He tossed the liquor down his gullet. ‘How long will she be?’ he screamed.

‘Hey?’

‘She’s with fanatics. They’ll still hate me, whatever happens. And they’ll be afraid she can identify them. Endre, help me!’

‘We have some time,’ Vadász snapped. ‘Use it for something better than hysterics.’

The glow in Heim’s stomach spread outward.
I’ve been responsible for lives before
, he thought, and the old reflexes of command awoke.
You construct a games theoretical matrix and choose the course with smallest negative payoff
.

His brain began to move. ‘Thanks, Endre,’ he said.

‘Could they be bluffing about spies in the police?’ Vadász wondered.

‘I don’t know, but the chance looks too big to take.’

‘Then … we cancel the expedition, renounce what we have said about New Europe, and hope?’

‘That may be the only thing to do.’ It whirred in Heim’s head. ‘Though I do believe it’s wrong also, even to get Lisa home.’

‘What is left? To hit back? How? Maybe private detectives could search—’

‘Over a whole planet? Oh, we can try them, but—No, I was fighting a fog till I got the idea of the raider, and now I’m back in the fog and I’ve got to get out again. Something definite, that they won’t know about before too late. You were right, there’s no sense in threatening Yore. Or even appealing to him, I guess. What matters to them is their cause. If we could go after
it—
’

Heim bellowed. Vadász almost got knocked over in the big man’s rush to the phone.

‘What in blue hell, Gunnar?’

Heim unlocked a drawer and took out his private directory. It now included the unlisted number and scrambler code of Michel Coquelin’s sealed circuit. And 0930 in California was – what? 1730? – in Paris. His fingers stabbed the buttons.

A confidential secretary appeared in the screen. ‘
Bureau de – oh, M. Heim
’

‘
Donnez-vous moi M. le Minister tout de suite, s’il vous plaît
.’ Despite the circumstances, Vadász winced at what Heim thought was French.

The secretary peered at the visage confronting him, sucked down a breath, and punched. Coquelin’s weary features came to view.

‘Gunnar! What is this? News of your girl?’

Heim told him. Coquelin turned gray. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. He had children of his own.

‘Uh, huh,’ Heim said. ‘I see only one plausible way out. My crew’s assembled now, a tough bunch of boys. And you know where Cynbe is.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Coquelin stammered.

‘Give me the details: location, how to get in, disposition of guards and alarms,’ Heim said. ‘I’ll take it from there. If we fail, I won’t implicate you. I’ll save Lisa, or try to save her, by giving the kidnappers a choice: that I either cast discredit on them and their movement by spilling the whole cargo; or I get her back, tell the world I lied, and show remorse by killing myself. We can arrange matters so they know I’ll go through with it.’

‘I cannot – I—’

This is rough on you, Michel, I know,’ Heim said. ‘But if you can’t help me, well, then I’m tied. I’ll have to do exactly what they want. And half a million will die on New Europe.’

Coquelin wet his lips, stiffened his back, and asked: ‘Suppose I tell you, Gunnar. What happens?’

‘S
PACE
yacht
Flutterby
, GB-327-RP, beaming Georgetown, Ascension Island. We are in distress. Come in, Georgetown. Come in, Georgetown.’

The whistle of cloven air lifted toward a roar. Heat billowed through the forward shield. The bridge viewports seemed aflame and the radar screen had gone mad. Heim settled firmer into his harness and fought the pilot console.

‘Garrison to
Flutterby
.’ The British voice was barely audible as maser waves struggled through the ionized air enveloping that steel meteorite. ‘We read you. Come in
Flutterby
.’

‘Stand by for emergency landing,’ David Penoyer said. His yellow hair was plastered down with sweat. ‘Over.’

‘You can’t land here. This island is temporarily restricted. Over.’ Static snarled around the words.

Engines sang aft. Force fields wove their four-dimensional dance through the gravitrons. The internal compensators held steady, there was no sense of that deceleration which made the hull groan; but swiftly the boat lost speed, until thermal effect ceased. In the ports a vision of furnaces gave way to the immense curve of the South Atlantic. Clouds were scattered woolly above its shiningness. The horizon line was a deep blue edging into space black.

‘The deuce we can’t,’ Penoyer said. ‘Over.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Reception was loud and clear this time.

‘Something blew as we reached suborbital velocity. We’ve a hole in the tail and no steering pulses. Bloody little control from the main drive. I think we can set down on Ascension, but don’t ask me where. Over.’

‘Ditch in the ocean and we’ll send a boat. Over.’

‘Didn’t you hear me, old chap? We’re hulled. We’d sink like a stone. Might get out with spacesuits and life jackets, or might not. But however that goes, Lord Ponsonby won’t be happy about losing a million pounds’ worth of yacht. We’ve a legal right to save her if we can. Over.’

‘Well – hold on, I’ll switch you to the captain’s office—’

‘Nix. No time. Don’t worry. We won’t risk crashing into Garrison. Our vector’s aimed at the south side. We’ll try for one of the plateaux. Will broadcast a signal for you to home on when we’re down, which’ll be in a few more ticks. Wish us luck. Over and out.’

Penoyer snapped down the switch and turned to Heim. ‘Now we’d better be fast,’ he said above the thunders. ‘They’ll scramble some armed flyers as soon as they don’t hear from us.’

Heim nodded. During those seconds of talk
Connie Girl
had shot the whole way. A wild dark landscape clawed up at her. His detectors registered metal and electricity, which must be at Cynbe’s lair. Green Mountain lifted its misty head between him and the radars at Georgetown. He need no longer use only
the main drive.
That
had been touch and go!

He cut the steering back in. The boat swerved through an arc that howled like a wolf. A tiny landing field carved from volcanic rock appeared in the viewports. He came down in a shattering blast of displaced air. Dust vomited skyward.

The jacks touched ground. He slapped the drive to Idle and threw off his harness. ‘Take over, Dave,’ he said, and pounded for the main airlock.

His score of men arrived with him, everyone space-suited. Their weapons gleamed in the overhead illumination. He cursed the safety seal that made the lock open with such sadistic slowness. Afternoon light slanted through. He led the way, jumped off the ramp before it had finished extruding, and crouched in the settling dust.

There were three buildings across the field, as Coquelin had said: a fifteen-man barracks, a vehicle shed, and an environmental dome. The four sentries outside the latter held their guns in a stupefied fashion, only approximately pointed at him. The two men on a mobile GTA missile carrier gaped. Georgetown HQ had naturally phoned them not to shoot if they detected a spacecraft. The rest of the guard were pouring from quarters.

Heim counted. Some weren’t in sight yet…. He lumbered toward them. ‘Emergency landing,’ he called. ‘I saw your field—’

The young man with Peace Control lieutenant’s insignia, who must be in charge, looked dismayed. ‘But—’ He stopped and fumbled at his collar.

Heim came near. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Why shouldn’t I have used your field?’

That was a wicked question, he knew. Officially PCA didn’t admit this place existed.

The Aleriona overlords who comprised the delegation could not be housed together. They never lived thus at home; to offer them less than total privacy would have been an insult, and perhaps risky of all their lives. So they must be scattered around Earth. Ascension was a good choice. Little was here nowadays except a small World Sea Police base. Comings and goings were thus discreet.

‘Orders,’ the lieutenant said vaguely. He squinted at the argent spear of the yacht. ‘I say, you don’t look damaged.’

You could fake a name and registry for
Connie Girl
, but not
unsoundness. The last couple of men emerged from barracks. Heim raised his arm and pointed. ‘On her other side,’ he said. He chopped his hand down and clashed his faceplate shut.

Two men in the airlock stepped back. The gas cannon they had hidden poked its nose out. Under fifty atmospheres of pressure, the anesthetic aerosol boiled forth.

A sentry opened fire. Heim dove for dirt. A bullet splintered rock before his eyes. The yellow stream gushed overhead, rumbling. And now his crew were on their way, with stunners asnicker. No lethal weapons; he’d hang before he killed humans doing their duty. But this was an attack by men who had seen combat against men whose only job had been to prevent it. Death wasn’t needed.

The short, savage fight ended. Heim rose and made for the dome. Zucconi and Lupowitz came behind, a ram slung between them on a gravity carrier. Around the field,
Connie Girl’s
medical team started to check the fallen Peacemen and give what first aid was indicated.

‘Here,’ said Heim into his suit radio. Zucconi and Lupowitz set down the ram and started the motor. Five hundred kilos of tool steel bashed the dome wall at sixty cycles. The narcotic fog clamored with that noise. The wall smashed open. Heim leaped through, into the red sun’s light.

A dozen followed him. ‘He’s somewhere in this mess,’ Heim said. ‘Scatter. We’ve got maybe three minutes before the cops arrive.’

He burst into the jungle at random. Branches snapped, vines shrank away, flowers were crushed underfoot. A shadow flitted – Cynbe! Heim plunged.

A laser flame sizzled. Heim felt the heat, saw his combat breastplate vaporizing in coruscant fire. Then he was upon the Aleriona. He wrenched the gun loose.
Mustn’t close in
–
he’d
get burned on this hot metal
. Cynbe grinned with fury and whipped his tail around Heim’s ankles. Heim fell, but still Cynbe hung on. His followers arrived, seized their quarry, and frogmarched away the Intellect Master of the Garden of War. Outside, Cynbe took a breath of vapor and went limp.

I hope the biomeds are right about this stuff’s being harmless to him
, Heim thought.

He ran onto the field and had no more time for thought. A couple of PCA flyers were in the sky. They swooped like hawks. Their guns pursued Heim’s crew. He saw the line of
explosions stitch toward him, heard the crackle and an overhead whistle through his helmet. ‘Open out!’ he yelled. His throat was afire. Sweat soaked his undergarments. ‘Let ’em see who you’re toting!’

The flyers screamed about and climbed.

They’ll try to disable my boat. If we can’t get away fast
– The ramp was ahead, hell-road steep. A squadron appeared over Green Mountain. Heim stopped at the bottom of the ramp. His men streamed past. Now Cynbe was aboard. Now everyone was. A flyer dove at him. He heard bullets sleet along the ramp at his heels.

Over the coaming! Someone dogged the lock.
Connie Girl
stood on her tail and struck for the sky.

Heim lay where he was for some time.

Eventually he opened his helmet and went to the bridge. Space blazed with stars, but Earth was already swallowing them again. ‘We’re headed back down, eh?’ he asked.

‘Right-o,’ Penoyer answered. The strain had left him, his boyish face was one vast grin. ‘Got clean away, above their ceiling and past their radar horizon before you could say fout.’

Then a long curve above atmosphere, but swiftly, racing the moment when Peace Control’s orbital detectors were alerted, and now toward the far side of the planet. It had been a smooth operation, boded well for the privateer. If they carried it the whole way through, that was.

Heim lockered his suit and got back steadiness from the routine of an intercom check with all stations. Everything was shipshape, barring some minor bullet pocks in the outer plates. When Lupowitz reported, ‘The prisoner’s awake, sir,’ he felt no excitement, only a tidal flow of will.

‘Bring him to my cabin,’ he ordered.

The boat crept downward through night. Timing had been important. The Russian Republic was as amiably inept about TrafCon as everything else, and you could land undetected after dark on the Siberian tundra if you were cautious. Heim felt the setdown as a slight quiver. When the engines ceased their purr, the silence grew monstrous.

Two armed men outside his cabin saluted in triumph. He went through and closed the door.

Cynbe stood near the bunk. Only his tailtip stirred, and his hair in the breeze from a ventilator. But when he recognized
Heim, the beautiful face drew into a smile that was chilling to see. ‘Ah-h-h,’ he murmured.

Heim made the formal Aleriona salute. ‘
Imbiac
, forgive me,’ he said. ‘I am desperate.’

‘Truth must that be’ – it trilled in his ears – ‘if you think thus to rouse war.’