Star's End

  The real victory was a stream of confederacy applications from outworlds that had remained stubbornly independent for generations. Well-tempered fear. That was the lever. Let them know Confederation would defend its own, and ignore the others when the hammer fell… Those cunning politicians. They were using the crisis too. Everybody was scoring on this one. Would the maneuvering and manipulation settle out in time? It was human nature to go on wasting energy on internal bickering when doom was closing in.

  Those PI people… They were something. They still had not released anything concrete. The propaganda machine in high gear was a wonder to behold.

  Beckhart was bemused by his own pleasure at observing a high level of professional competence in a department not under his own command.

  His mood soured when he reflected on the latest news from his colleagues in Ulantonid intelligence. That centerward race… They seemed to draw some special, wholly inexplicable pleasure from killing.

  The latest Ulantonid package had included tape taken on a world with a Bronze Age technology. It showed small, suited bipeds, built like a cross between orangutans and kangaroos, armed principally with small arms, systematically eradicating the natives. There was ample footage of shattered cities, burning villages, and murdered babies. Not to mention clips of cadavers of virtually every other mobile lifeform the planet boasted.

  If it moved, the hopping, long-armed creatures shot it. If it did not, they dug it out of hiding and killed it anyway.

  There had been no sky full of ships for this primitive world, just a stream of transports sending in troops, munitions, small flyers, and the equipment used to hunt down the wilder creatures of mountain and forest. The Ulantonid experts estimated a troop input approaching ten billion “soldiers.”

  Beckhart could not grasp that number. Ten billions. For one primitive world… Confederation and Ulant together had not had that many people under arms during the most savage years of their conflict.

  “They’ve got to be crazy,” he muttered.

  He paused near the building where Thomas McClennon, now Moyshe benRabi, had kept the Sangaree woman distracted while Storm had torn the guts out of her Angel City operation. Christ, but hadn’t those boys pulled a coup? And now they had come through again, giving him the Sangaree Homeworld.

  He had to bring them out. Somehow. He refused to write men off while they lived.

  He was determined. There had to be a way to apply enough leverage to force their release… If it came to that alone, and he could prise no better yield from the coming encounter, he would be satisfied.

  The thing looked made to order for another coup. “Down, boy,” he muttered. “First things first. You’re here to get your boys back. Anything else comes second.”

  Still, it was coming together. The word was, the Sangaree wanted revenge. It was a good bet the Seiners would have another go at Stars’ End. The rumors and leaks from Luna Command had everybody excited about an ambergris shortage. A lot of eyes would be staring down gun barrels at this end of the Arm.

  He was pleased. He had choreographed it perfectly. Only he and High Command would be thinking about von Drachau. If von Drachau succeeded, the news would hit like the proverbial ton of bricks.

  He strolled on to the warehouse that had headquartered the local Sangaree operation. It was a fire-blackened pile of rubble. The authorities had not cleared it yet.

  “Sometimes, Lemuel, you’re not a very nice person,” he murmured.

  He was repelled by some of the things he did. But he was sincere in his belief that they were necessary.

  He was terrified of that centerward race. The hungry bunnies, he called them, for no truly good reason.

  Ten billions for one world. Tens of thousands of ships.

  How could they be stopped?

  Why the hell were they so determined to kill? There was no logic to it.

  Was there anything more he could do? Anything he had overlooked?

  He lay awake nights trying to think of something. He suspected that everyone in High Command slept poorly of late, running the same perilous race courses in hopes of finding the key to escape from the nightmare.

  His beeper squeaked. He raised it to his ear. “Hand delivery only, urgent, for Blackstone,” a remote voice told him. He returned the beeper to his belt and walked briskly toward his headquarters.

  The courier was a full Commander. He wore a side-arm, and carried the message in a tamperproof case that would destruct should anyone but Lemuel Beckhart attempt to open it. The case bore a High Command seal.

  “Sit, Commander. What’s the news from Luna Command?”

  The Commander was a taciturn man. “We seem to be in for some excitement, sir.”

  “That’s a fact. You came in with the squadrons taking station?” Three heavy squadrons had taken orbit around The Broken Wings. They were there at his request.

  “Yes sir. Aboard Assyrian.”

  “Popanokulos still Ship’s Commander?” Beckhart placed his thumbs at the proper points on the case. Something whirred. He prised it open with a fingernail.

  “Yes sir.”

  “How is he? He was one of my students, years ago.” He was reluctant to open the plain white envelope lying within the case.

  “He’s in excellent health, sir. He asked me to extend his best regards.”

  “Extend mine in return, Commander.” He initialed a pink slip for the second time, indicating that the contents of the case had been received. He would have to do so twice more, indicating message read, then message destroyed.

  The Commander moved slightly in his chair. He appeared impatient to return to Assyrian. Beckhart opened the envelope, removed what appeared to be a sheet of plain white paper. He pressed his thumbs against the bottom corners. Invisible microcircuitry read his prints. A handwritten message slowly took form, appearing at the rate it had been written.

  L: All-time screw-up at R&D research facility. Cause unclear. System destroyed. Total loss. VD away with 2 apples. Public disclosure disaster unavoidable. M.

  Beckhart laid the sheet on his desk, covered his face with the palms of his hands.

  There went a key hope. Without telling his Ulantonid opposite number why, he had asked for additional deep probes toward galaxy center, hoping to locate homeworlds that could be shattered with the new weapon. He had hoped the grandeur and viciousness of the thing could be used to intimidate the centerward race into abandoning their insane crusade.

  A total loss. All the info, both on the weapon itself and what had gone wrong. Damn it to hell, anyway!

  He initialed the pink slip, burned the message, and initialed the slip again. “Thank you, Commander.” He handed slip and case over. “There won’t be a reply.”

  “Very well, sir. Have a nice day.”

  Beckhart wore a puzzled smile as the officer pushed out the door. A nice day? Not likely. He keyed a switch on his desk communicator. “I need Major Damon.”

  A few days later his comm whined at him. “Yes?”

  “Communications, sir.” The commtech sounded choked. “Signals from Assyrian, sir. The Starfishers are here. Just detected.”

  Beckhart felt a stir of excitement. He asked, “What’s the problem?”

  “Sir, I… Let me feed you the Assyrian data, sir.”

  Beckhart touched a button. The tiny screen on his comm crackled to life. A series of computer data began flashing across it. Then came a schematic of a ship.

  He read the size figures three times before murmuring, “Holy shit.” He leaned back, said, “Communications, keep running that till I say stop.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He watched the report three times through before he was satisfied.

  So those were harvestships… They were self-contained worlds. If Navy could lay hands on a few of those, and arm them with Empire Class weaponry… “Communications, page Major Damon. Tell him to come to my office.”

  The commander of the Mar
ine Military Police battalion reported only minutes later.

  “Major, there’ll be an adjustment in our plans. Watch this.” Beckhart ran the report from Assyrian. Damon was suitably impressed.

  “Major, sit. We’re going to do some brainstorming.”

  The session lasted the day and the night and into the next day. It ended when Communications interrupted. “Admiral, signals from Assyrian. Sir, they’ve intercepted signals between the Seiner ships. They thought you’d be interested.”

  “Of course I am. Give it to me.”

  The relay was not long. And it was both baffling and exciting. The Starfishers were going to put his own boys in charge of their auction security effort.

  He had it run twice. Satisfied, he said, “Major, go get yourself eight hours. Then get back here and we’ll pick up where we left off. This changes things again. We work it right, now, and we’re in the chips.”

  After the Major departed, he had Assyrian open an instel link with Luna Command. He spent an hour in conference. He broke off smiling a weak smile. This auction might be more than serendipitous.

  He dragged himself to his cot, hoping to catch a few hours, but could not fall asleep.

  His conscience kept nagging him. Once again he would have to use men cruelly for the sake of the Services and Confederation.

  He was so weary of that…

  Thirteen: 3050 AD

  The Main Sequence

  Payne’s Fleet dropped hyper a Sol System radius from The Broken Wings. Danion formed the point of the arrowhead of ships flashing toward the planet. Accompanying the harvestships were a hundred service ships borrowed from other fleets.

  The Seiners wanted to make an impression. They believed this show of strength would rivet all eyes on The Broken Wings.

  While the credit from the auction was important to them, distracting attention from Stars’ End meant even more.

  Almost all Seinerdom had taken hyper for the fortress world. The harvestfleets had gathered. A hundred harvestships, a thousand service ships, and untold millions of people would be involved in the effort to recover the citadel world’s weapons. That gargantuan armada, bearing the hope of a nation, was avoiding traffic lanes, flying easy, awaiting word of the success of the auction diversion.

  A confrontation with Confederation had to be avoided. The Seiner leadership understood the swift doom inherent in a two-front war.

  A one-front war was a terrible enough hazard.

  “We’ve got trouble,” Jarl Kindervoort told his staff. “We’ve just received a scout report from Stars’ End. The Sangaree have moved in there.”

  Mouse made a sound suspiciously like a purr. “Won’t hurt my feelings if they get crunched again.”

  “Somebody’s going to get crunched. The report says there’re hundreds of raidships there.”

  Storm and benRabi became more attentive. Mouse asked, “Hundreds? That would take… Hell, the Families would all have to be working together. They don’t do that.”

  Kindervoort replied, “They seem to have their hearts set on grabbing Stars’ End.”

  “They aren’t the only ones,” benRabi muttered. He snorted in disgust, shook his head. “Who’s fault is that, Jarl?”

  “What do you mean, Moyshe?”

  “Consider our last run-in. Consider one Maria Elana Gonzales, technician, alias Marya Strehltsweiter, Sangaree agent. Remember her? The lady who tried to kill Danion? I shot her and stopped her. And you nice people politely patched her up and sent her home with the other returning landsmen. Bet you she ran straight to her bosses and set this up. Nice doesn’t pay, Jarl.”

  Mouse shifted his chair so he could stare at benRabi. He said nothing.

  Once upon a time, on a faraway world called The Broken Wings, a partner of Mouse’s, wearing the work-name Dr. Gundaker Niven, had stopped him from killing a Sangaree agent named Marya Strehltsweiter.

  Moyshe reddened.

  “Let’s not cry about what we should have done,” Kindervoort said. “We’re here now. Let me have those situation reports, Amy.”

  Amy pushed a sheaf of flimsies across the tabletop. “Navy is damned interested in this end of the universe, too. Three heavy squadrons off The Broken Wings. Squadrons Hapsburg, Prussian, and Assyrian.”

  “Empire Class?” Mouse asked. “All of them? They mean business, don’t they?”

  “There’re battle squadrons at Carson’s and Sierra, too. Our friends the Freehaulers couldn’t get close enough to identify them.”

  “And no telling what’s in the bushes,” benRabi mused.

  “Moyshe?”

  “They’re playing poker, Jarl. They’ve shown us a couple of aces face up. What you have to worry about is their hole cards. What have they got cruising around a couple of light years away ready to jump in?”

  “You think they’ll try a power play?”

  “No. Not like that. But it might behoove us to spend a little brain power figuring what they’re up to. Navy doesn’t put that much power together unless they’re scared they’ll have to use it. You hardly ever see a patrol of more than two ships.”

  “You know Service thinking better than me. Why’re they so excited?”

  “The dispositions look defensive,” Moyshe said. “And that leads us to our lack of landside intelligence. What’s the Planetary Defense Forces alert level in the Transverse? Have they activated any reserves? If so, which units? We could extrapolate their fears from that kind of information.”

  “We have the liaison team report.” Kindervoort shuffled flimsies.

  Mouse and benRabi had insisted on sending a few men ahead, weeks ago.

  “I’ve seen it,” Moyshe said. “They’ve given The Broken Wings the usual temporary free planet status. They’ve pledged an open auction. The city authorities are so nervous they’ve called up their police reserves and asked Marine MPs to help. They expect trouble. Nobody is saying why.”

  The coded reports said there were three hundred privately owned ships orbiting The Broken Wings. Each had brought a negotiating team hoping to carry off a supply of ambergris. Most of the vessels appeared to be armed.

  All known space was, apparently, in the grip of an undirected war fervor. No one was behaving normally. The auction had a potential for becoming a wild brawl.

  “Mouse, Moyshe,” Kindervoort said, “I don’t mind telling you, this thing has me scared. It’s too big, and it looks like it could get bigger. Be very, very careful.”

  “It could get too big for anybody,” Mouse said. His voice was soft and thoughtful. “It could roll us all under.”

  For two days Danion and her sisters drifted slowly toward The Broken Wings, watching and listening. They kept their presence secret longer than Moyshe expected. He and his compatriots obtained two days’ worth of observations.

  They provided no comfort. Angel City was hell incarnate. Armies of undercover people had materialized there. They were warring with one another with a fine disregard for reason and local tranquility.

  The war scare had set off a chain reaction of insanity.

  As a landing team leader benRabi now rated his own office and a part-time assistant. His wife filled the assistant’s role.

  Till this is over, at least, I’m important, he thought. He put little stock in Mouse’s theory that they were being groomed to master a Starfisher secret service. He had been able to make no independent corroboration of the claim.

  BenRabi’s intercom buzzed. “BenRabi here.”

  “Jarl, Moyshe. I need you over here.”

  “Now?”

  “Right. Final meeting.”

  “I’m on my way.” He gathered his papers, donned fatalism like a cloak, and stalked toward Kindervoort’s office. He met Mouse outside Kindervoort’s door.

  “Broomstick fly,” Mouse said.

  “No lie. Anybody with any sense would cancel the auction.”

  Mouse grinned. “Not the Seiners. You got to remember, thi
s auction is part of their big picture.”

  “I think they’d go ahead even if it weren’t.”

  “Come on in,” Kindervoort called. A moment later he began introducing them to the Ships’ Commanders and Chiefs of Security of the other harvestships of Payne’s Fleet.

  The gentlemen were present only as holo portrayals. Kindervoort, Storm, and benRabi would be aboard their vessels the same way. They and the holo equipment and technicians reduced Kindervoort’s office to postage stamp size.

  “You bring your final reports?” Kindervoort asked.

  BenRabi nodded. Mouse said, “Right here. But you’re not going to like them.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re reality-based. Meaning they recommend that you cancel or postpone.”

  BenRabi added, “We can’t handle security with what you’ve given us. Not under the conditions obtaining.”

  “We’ve been talking about that. How many more men would you need?”

  “About a brigade of MPs,” Mouse growled.

  “Moyshe, you look surprised,” Kindervoort said.

  “Just thinking that this isn’t like working for the Bureau. You ask the Admiral for more than he gives you, he takes half away and tells you to make do. I’d say another hundred men. And two more months to train them.”

  “Mr. Storm. Are those realistic figures?” one Ship’s Commander asked.

  “Minimum realistic. My partner is one of your incurable optimists. But there is an alternative. Cancel this shore leave plan. Don’t send anybody down but members of the auction team. We can set up a compound…”

  Danion’s Commander interrupted. “Sorry. No can do, Mister Storm. We promised our people liberty. Mister benRabi, we’ll give you as many men as you want. But the thing has got to be done now.”

  “You’re going to lose people,” benRabi protested. He was so irritated he stamped a foot. “Shore leave is stupid. The more people you let wander around down there, the fewer I’m going to be able to protect.”

  He had lost this argument several times before. The brass had promised everybody a chance to see what life on a planet was like. They would not go back on their word despite having learned that the Angel City situation was more deadly than expected.