Wolf Among the Stars-ARC (31 page)

“What do you expect to gain by this?” she asked. “Your ship—and this one, for that matter—are still covered by
City of Osaka
’s weapons.”

“Which they’ll hardly use with you and the executive director of Hov-Korth aboard. I couldn’t have asked for more valuable hostages.”

“To what end?” asked Svyatog, as Andrew’s translator rendered the Lokaron sounds coming from the communicator grille. “To force them to let you resume your course for Earth? At this short range, they can undoubtedly disable the drives of both ships without killing us. Then you will find yourself in a deadlock—and
City of Osaka
can afford to simply wait you out.”

“You’re wrong!” The triumph in Valdes’s voice rose to almost manic intensity. “Did you really think we had
all
our mobile assets in the outer system? We keep two cloaked ships on permanent station near Earth. I summoned them while en route. They have had to overcome unfavorable orbital elements, but they should be arriving at any time now. They will dispose of
City of Osaka
.” A trace of mockery entered the flawlessly human voice. “Don’t worry: they won’t destroy this ship as long as I am aboard. And now, I suggest we all settle in to await their arrival.” The communicator subsided into silence.

“Captain,” Gallivan half whispered and half rasped, “I think I can bring us up against
Korcentyr
’s starboard access port and attach us magnetically without him noticing. I don’t think that’s exactly where his attention is focused at present.”

“But what good will that do us? We can’t get in unless he opens the port for us.”

Gallivan grinned fiercely. “Captain, the press of events has perhaps prevented me from being entirely forthcoming with you—as was always my intention!—about the capabilities of
City of Osaka
. The truth of the matter is, in the course of her . . . former occupation, it was sometimes necessary to enter another ship from the outside without help from the inside. That is especially true of this gig, which of course has no air lock but merely a port that can fasten to that of a larger vessel.”

“Get to the point, damn you!”

“Ah . . . well . . .” Gallivan fumbled under the instrument console and brought forth an object roughly the size and shape of a deep pie plate. “Shaped charge,” he explained with uncharacteristic succinctness. “With magnetic clamps to attach it to the inside of our hatch.”

“But if we blow their hatch inward, how do we know what the effect in there will be?”

“We don’t, Captain. I can’t guarantee the safety of any of them . . . including your mother. But what choice have we?”

“None.” Andrew drew a deep breath. “Do it. And be prepared to rush in there the instant it blows. Surprise is the only thing that’s going to give us a chance.” He drew his M-3 and charged it . . . and then remembered something. “But you’re unarmed.”

“Valdes doesn’t know that.” Gallivan grinned and then sobered with the speed of a leprechaun. “It’s as I said, Captain: What choice have we? Your mother’s in there.”

Andrew said nothing. He lacked the words. “I’ll go first,” was all he could finally manage.

As the gig moved slowly toward its goal, the silence from the communicator was broken by a rapid-fire spate of Kappainu words in Valdes’s voice.
He must
, Andrew thought,
be talking into a hand communicator to the crew of his ship.
Then Valdes spoke in English, for the benefit of his prisoners.

“All right. My two warships are approaching. You—go very slowly to this ship’s communicator and raise your other ship. I’m going to tell them that if they value the lives of my hostages, they’ll allow my private vessel to depart.”

“Quick,” Andrew hissed. “Disconnect! We can’t let him know we’ve been listening all along.” But Gallivan had thought of it himself; his hand was already slapping the switch.

The down side, of course, was that they no longer knew what was happening aboard
Korcentyr
. But Valdes must have done as he had intended, for on the far side of
Korcentyr
they could see his ship break free and begin to drift away.

Then Gallivan brought the gig up against the starboard access port with a precise delicacy Andrew would never have thought possible without the assistance of a tractor beam. He activated the magnetic seal. Then he hefted the limpet charge and met Andrew’s eyes. Andrew nodded, and Gallivan affixed it to the hatch of the gig, which of course had no air lock. Then he unceremoniously pushed Andrew down behind their acceleration couches.

“It is, as I say, a shaped charge,” he said with an apologetic look. “Still—”

Inside the restricted interior space of the gig, the blast was ear-shattering, and the concussion shook them with teeth-rattling force. Coughing his lungs clear of the acrid smoke that filled the gig, Andrew launched himself at the shattered hatch, with Gallivan close behind. They shoved aside the wreckage, and were inside
Korcentyr.

Andrew was prepared for the abrupt transition from zero g into
Korcentyr
’s internal artificial-gravity field. At least it was only one Harath-Asor g. He hit the deck as weight descended on him, rolled, and sprang upright.

With senses seemingly speeded up to such a pitch that the rest of the universe was stationary, he took in the chaotic scene.

His drop-and-roll had taken him through the small entry port into the central saloon. Several Lokaron, including Svyatog and Reislon, were still flinching away from the blast that had ripped
Korcentyr
open. So was Katy. So was Valdes, who held in both hands a plasma flamer pistol, the smallest weapon of its type that could be engineered, and only by sacrificing almost everything to miniaturization, leaving it practically useless as a battlefield weapon.
I’d wondered how he managed to sneak something like that aboard,
thought Andrew in his state of suspended time.
Still, Svyatog’s security sucks.
But at the moment, the point was that the pistol was devastating in a confined space like this . . . and that Valdes had somehow kept it trained on his hostages.

Andrew leveled his M-3. “Drop it, Valdes.”

“No!” Valdes was wild-eyed. “I’ll kill them all. You don’t dare try a shot!”

For a couple of eternal heartbeats, the motionless tableau held.

Andrew let his eyes stray toward the hostages. They met his mother’s. She smiled.

All at once, she launched herself at Valdes.

Her rush naturally had little speed and less force. But its sheer unexpectedness, combined with the Kappainu’s physical weakness, allowed her to throw Valdes off balance as she clutched feebly at his gun arm. As they grappled, Andrew still couldn’t risk firing.

With a convulsion of desperate strength, Valdes flung her off him. She spun away, and her head struck a bulkhead. She dropped to the deck.

At the same instant, Gallivan sprang. Valdes, still trying to restore his balance, fired wildly.

The blinding gush of superheated plasma stabbed out, brushing against Gallivan’s left arm. He fell, screaming and beating frantically at his burning sleeve. The plasma beam went on to incinerate the head of one of Svyatog’s crewmen.

But Valdes was now in the clear. Andrew fired on full automatic, bringing the stream of hypervelocity bullets from crotch up to mid-breast. Valdes collapsed with a shriek that had very little that was human about it, his tissues trying in vain to reconfigure themselves around the massive simultaneous trauma to so many vital organs.

He began to change.

Andrew became a robot with no purpose save to rush to the communicator and raise
City of Osaka
. He spoke emotionlessly. “Lieutenant Morales, this is the Captain. The situation is under control here. Destroy Valdes’s ship immediately. You have two incoming stealthed ships.” He had intended to use Valdes as a hostage when the Kappainu warships arrived, but that hope, like so much else, was gone. Receiving Morales’s acknowledgment, he permitted himself to turn around and see . . . but not to feel. Not yet.

Reislon had used a first-aid kit to sedate Gallivan and was applying anti-burn salve to his blackened, crisped arm. There was nothing to be done for the Lokaron crewman, whose head was little more than a charred stump. Svyatog was on the deck beside Katy. He looked up at Andrew and shook his head slowly. It was unnecessary. Andrew could see the side of her head, which had crunched into the bulkhead temple first.

Moving in a strange universe of unreality, Andrew turned and looked down at Valdes. The Kappainu’s screams had subsided to a moan, and his features were writhing and reconfiguring in the repulsive way Andrew had seen before.

“There’s something I’ve always wondered about,” he said conversationally. He pointed his M-3 and destroyed Valdes’s brain. Death was instantaneous. The transformation stopped, incomplete, leaving a thing on the deck that was half human and half Kappainu—an obscene travesty of nature, beyond the capability of the most depraved mind to conceive. The indescribable face was frozen in a mask of agony.

For a while, silence reigned. The communicator broke it. It was Morales.

“Valdes’s ship is out of action, sir,” she reported. In the viewscreen, Andrew could see the small craft receding sunward in free fall, clearly lifeless, streaming air and trailing clouds of glowing debris. “But we’ve detected two approaching ships, on an intercept vector that we can’t avoid. They’re not bothering to cloak themselves, but the sensor readings are compatible with—”

“—Kappainu warships. And we’re all out of options. I’d hoped we’d have Valdes as a hostage, but he’s dead.”

In the comm screen, Morales’s face was a battlefield where propriety struggled and lost. “Uh, Captain . . . is Rory . . . I mean Mr. Gallivan . . . ?”

“He’s badly injured, but he’ll live.” Andrew’s lips quirked in a ghastly parody of a smile. “For a little while.”

Morales’s expression matched his. “I see what you mean, sir.”

“It has been an honor to serve with you, Alana.”

“And with you, Captain.”

Rachel’s face appeared beside Morales’s in the screen. Given the total absence of privacy, all Andrew could say was, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re always saying that when it isn’t necessary.” Her smile brought a trace of warmth creeping back into Andrew’s soul.

Morales turned to receive a report, then faced the pickup expressionlessly. “They’ve commenced launching missiles, sir.”

Andrew glanced at Svyatog, who turned to his surviving crewmen. “Take evasive action. We’ll split up and do the same.” His eyes locked with Rachel’s.
What can it matter now, what I say or who hears it?
He started to open his mouth.

From somewhere in
City of Osaka
’s control room came a shout loud enough to be picked up by the communicator. Morales spun around, stared, then faced Andrew again. “Sir, we have fighters coming in at an incredible velocity. They must have been launched from a ship moving at—”

“Broadsword
!” whooped Andrew. “It’s got to be.” He turned to the viewscreen and looked in the direction from which the Kappainu ships were approaching. Lines of flashes began to appear, as though fireflies were winking on in formation. He recognized what he was seeing at a distance: spreads of the small nuclear warheads of fighter-launched missiles.

“Sir,” said Morales, visibly struggling to maintain formality, “we’re being hailed by
Broadsword.
”

“Patch him in to this ship, on a split screen.” There was a perceptible time lag.

It took a moment before Andrew even recognized Jamel Taylor. He had never imagined his friend could look so haggard. He knew the signs of a man who had spent too long under dangerously high acceleration. “Andy, we got here as quickly as we could. I launched all my fighters a while back, to save time.”

“Plenty of time, Jamel,” said Andrew with a weary smile. “Ample time. I don’t suppose any of the Rogovon ships came with you?”

“No. That didn’t seem like such a good idea. But Borthru is aboard.”

“Give him my best,” said Andrew, reflecting that the Lokar, Rogovon or no, must be half dead from the sustained G forces.

“And now,” Taylor continued, “we’ve built up too much velocity to kill anytime soon. We’re going to have to flash past you—and Earth, for that matter—and loop back around.”

“That’s all right, Jamel.” Andrew looked at the viewscreen. A larger flash than the others erupted, then another—the funeral pyres of the Kappainu ships. “Thanks to your fighter pilots, I think we can take over from here. Signing off.” Taylor’s image vanished, leaving those of the two women in
City of Osaka
’s control room.

“Lieutenant Morales,” he said briskly, “please bring these ships together at
Korcentyr
’s port access hatch so I can come back aboard. The gig is slightly out of commission.” He turned around. Unnoticed by him, Svyatog had had Gallivan and the corpses removed—all three corpses, including his mother’s.

All at once, everything he had been suppressing overflowed and burst the barriers he had erected. He slumped down on the console, burying his face in his arms. His shoulders began to heave. Neither Svyatog nor any of the other Lokaron saw fit to disturb him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The facility lay deep
in a mountain not far from Geneva, under what appeared to be an inconspicuous ski chalet. No one except Confederated Nations personnel with the highest security clearance knew of its existence. Fewer still had ever actually been inside it. No nonhumans had, until now.

Svyatog’Korth, Reislon’Sygnath and Borthru’Goron sat on one side of a long conference table with Andrew, Rachel, and Jamel Taylor. Across the table were only three humans . . . but very important ones.

Savitri Gupta, president-general of the CNE, closed the folder she had been reading with a decisive snap. She glanced to her right at Admiral Bruno Hoffman, Chief of Naval Operations, and to her left at Ilya Trofimovitch Tulenko, director of the CNE’s Security and Investigations Bureau.

The three of them, along with certain highly cleared staffers and technical experts, had by now heard the entire story and seen its electronic documentation. They had also seen the Kappainu corpse that had been Erica Kharazi, and the half-human horror that was still recognizable—just barely—as Franklin Ivanovitch Valdes y Kurita. At the sight of that last, Gupta had excused herself, gagging, to return a few minutes later with restored composure but with an ashy undertone to her normal duskiness. Now she turned to Hoffman, tapped the folder, and spoke briskly.