Aces High

  They came to the top landing and their door. Rabdan paused outside, furrowed his brow as his mind probed within. It would not do to be ambushed by groundling burglars. Durg stood silently a few steps below. His kindred were of the Psi Lord class, but like most Morakh he was virtually mind-blind. If Rabdan detected danger, then he would fulfill his function.

  Satisfied, Rabdan unlocked the door and stepped inside. Durg followed, closed it behind him. From the hallway to the bedrooms stepped a figure.

  “Tisianne! But I searched—”

  “You of all my cousin’s people could never drive a probe I could not deflect,” said Tachyon. “It bodes ill for us all that I find you here. Indeed, perhaps for all of Takis.”

  “But worst for you,” Rabdan said. He stepped to one side. “Durg, dismember him.”

  “Zabb’s monster!” Tach hissed, despite himself.

  “The little prince,” Durg said. “This will be sweet.”

  A second figure appeared at Tachyon’s side. “Doctor, who is this?” Moonchild asked, squinting a little in the bright light of the single lamp on the low table.

  She saw a small man—even to her, unmistakably Takisian—with fine sharp features, metallic blond hair, pale eyes that bulged and rapidly blinked. The being lumbering across the threadbare carpet of the little living room she found harder to classify. He was short, barely above five feet, but terrifically muscled, literally almost as broad as tall. Yet his head was a Takisian elf-lord’s, long and thin, austere of feature: beautiful. The contrast was jarring.

  “My cousin’s toady Rabdan,” Tach said, “and his monster, Durg.” For all that he had lived four decades among jokers Tach could scarcely stomach sight of the Morakh killer. This was not a near-Takisian Earther twisted into a grotesque misshape; this was the sight most abhorrent to Tach’s people, a perversion of the Takisian form itself. Part of what made Morakh so terrible in war was the revulsion they instilled in their foes.

  “He’s a creature bred by a family hostile to mine. An organic killing machine, powerful as an elephant, trained to perfection.” Durg had halted, perfect brow furrowed at this new arrival. “Even by our standards they’re almost indestructible. Zabb took this one in a raid when he was a pup; he transferred his loyalty to him.”

  “Doctor, how can you speak of a human being that way?”

  “He’s not a human,” he gritted, “and watch him.”

  Squat as a troll, Durg lunged with a speed no human could match. But Moonchild wasn’t strictly human; whatever, she was, wherever she came from, she was an ace. She caught gold-braided sleeve behind the hand that grabbed for her, tugged, pivoted her hips. Durg shot past to slam into the wall in an explosion of plaster.

  “How did you find us?” Rabdan asked, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “Once we found that man whose mind you tampered with, I knew Takisians were still on Earth,” Tach said, sidling away from Durg, “and from the ineptness of technique I deduced it could be none but you. Once we knew what to look for, you weren’t that hard to trace. Your appearance is distinctive, and you would hardly cower in an abandoned warehouse and subsist off rats and stray cats like the swarmlings.

  “Of course”— he nodded at Rabdan’s white-and-gold outfit— “I never guessed even you’d be fool enough to venture out in Zabb’s own livery.”

  “The groundlings find us the height of fashion. And would you have swans go about in the guise of geese?”

  “When the swans’ mission”— Durg came up from the depression he’d made in the plasterboard, moaning, shaking off plaster powder like water—“is to pass for geese, then yes.”

  Durg’s hand lashed out in a vicious knifehand that caught Moonchild in the ribs and threw her into the bar that separated living room from kitchen. Wood splintered. Tach started forward with a cry. Grinning, Durg came for him.

  Moonchild lunged from the wrecked bar, took two mincing steps forward, kicked Durg in the side of the knee. His leg buckled. She slammed a second kick into the side of his jaw. He groaned—his hand flashed up, caught her ankle, yanked her forward into reach of his other arm.

  He grappled for a backbreaking hold. Tach started forward again. Rabdan’s hand came out of his tunic with the flat black glint of an arrester. “Go for him and I’ll finish you now, Tis.”

  Moonchild slammed an elbow down on top of Durg’s head. Tach heard teeth slam together like a trap. She swung cupped palms viciously inward against his ears. He groaned, shook his head, and she writhed free.

  … Durg was on his feet facing her. She kicked for his chest. He blocked without effort. She flew at him with bolas fury, kicking for head, knee, groin. He gave back several steps, then as she struck again leapt up and lashed out with both feet, kicking Moonchild across the room to smash against the outside wall.

  Tachyon hesitated. He could attempt to seize Durg’s mind, but that ran him up against the sole psionic ability the Morakh possessed, an all-but-insurmountable resistance to mental compulsion. While he concentrated on Durg, Rabdan would kill him … if he tried to fight down Rabdan’s rather feeble screens, Durg would kill Moonchild. He reached for his pistol, hoping the girl would not think too harshly of him—

  She stirred. Durg was shocked; when he kicked someone that hard, they stayed down. He hurled himself forward, heedless.

  She met him halfway. Grabbing his tunic front she fell backward with her boot in his belly, projected him over her. The combined force of his leap and her thrust drove him like a rivet through the wall, four stories above the street.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, standing, “I hope I didn’t hurt him.” She ran to the hole. “He’s still moving.” She clambered out without hesitation.

  Guessing she could take care of herself Tach let her go, still all aback. Durg was as strong as some powerhouse human aces. Moonchild, though she had metahuman strength, was nowhere his match—she had mastered him with skill alone, Durg the master slayer.

  Rabdan came out of freeze and threw open the door. Tachyon’s mind grabbed his like a mailed fist. And squeezed.

  “And now, friend Rabdan,” he remarked, “we are going to talk.”

  It was bad. Rabdan was an incompetent and more than something of a coward. Yet he was a Psi Lord, and at the last he behaved as one, the worse for him. No normal shield he might erect could keep the subtle Tisianne from prying the last crumb of information from his brain. But Rabdan in extremis went heroic, put the deathlock on, laid his name upon it. All that he was opposed Tachyon, and no subtlety, no artifice, no force, could get past such an opposition and leave anything of Rabdan intact.

  Perhaps that was Rabdan’s final cunning; knowing his distant cousin’s softness of heart, he gambled that Tisianne would turn away from the awful finality of unraveling his mind skein by skein.

  Rabdan’s judgment was never the best.

  Joy, joy, joy. My master comes again so soon. Or is something wrong, that he has so much time for me all of a sudden?

  Knock it off, Baby.

  “Hi, Baby. What’s happenin’?” She twinkled her lights in happy greeting and sphinctered open a lock in her side.

  The damned rock was headed for Earth, of course. Zabb’s people had deflected it months ago. Not much; it would take tremendous amounts of power to change the moment of such a mass by any appreciable amount. A sliver of a degree, scarcely perceptible—but over time, enough.

  It was a rock familiar to the groundlings, its reappearance unremarkable. Nonetheless Rabdan and Durg had been sent down to make sure its intended recipients didn’t realize its itinerary had changed. What luck, then, when the alteration in course had been noted by the one man absolutely no one in authority would listen to—whose having claimed the rock for his own, as it were, would mean every other scientist on the planet would shun it like offal. The Takisians could have asked for nothing better to seal the planet’s fate. No one would realize what was happening until the asteroid was so close its path was unmistakable. And that would be too late, not all
the thermonuclear weapons in all the planet’s stockpiles could forestall the wrath to come.

  But their ally had panicked. Zabb’s ally. Much as he hated his cousin, Tachyon could barely bring himself to believe it.

  The vast lump of malignance that was the Swarm Mother had detected Hellcat as she floated in orbit around the world it intended, in its dim, insistent way, to make its own, and had attacked. And somehow, for his own mad reasons, once the attack was repulsed, the warhound of the Ilkazam had made alliance with the greatest enemy of his house—of all Takisians.

  Together they had made a plan. Semisentient, the Mother had perceived only that the plan was detected when Dr. Warren made his announcement. It acted in haste—leaving Rabdan something less than leisure to try to undo the damage it had wrought.

  It had seemed fabulous fortune to spot on the Jokertown streets a being who might be mistaken for a swarmling. So Rabdan and Durg went up to Central Park and made themselves a witness. How can it fail? Rabdan had gloated to his comrade.

  Tach had given Rabdan the final mercy no Takisian could deny another. Moonchild accepted that his heart gave out unexpectedly under mind probe, and Tach felt soiled at having lied to her. Tach took the pictures purloined from Warren’s lab to Baby. Her astrogational analysis confirmed Rabdan’s story. A hasty planning session, a night spent trying to sleep.

  Now Trips and Tachyon were ready to launch a genuinely harebrained scheme to Save the World. There was no time to come up with a better one. It might already be too late.

  And out there Zabb waited. Zabb. Who’d killed Tach’s Kibr. And betrayed all Takis. In his warship: Zabb.

  Jake was trucking down the street with his bottle of La Copita in its paper bag in hand. On the waterfront, in Jokertown, and him a nat, and it was no damned thing to do at this hour of the night, especially if you were this shitfaced. But Jake wasn’t sure where he’d wandered since the big fuck with the head like an iguana threw him out of his bar for messing on the floor. A good thing he’d thought to carry a spare in his coat pocket.

  A rumbling took his ear. He stopped and watched as the top came off a building right in front of him—not exploding, not collapsing, but coming off in a piece, neatly as you please, like the lid off a box. It set down gently on the roof next door, and then this gigantic seashell covered all over with tiny specks of light came floating up out of the building. Nary a sound was made. It hovered against the dull-orange sky while the roof floated back into place. Then it angled upward and was gone, lining out for the Long Black.

  Very deliberately, Jake walked to the nearest storm drain, and with precise aim dropped his half-full La Copita bottle down it. Then he walked very rapidly out of Jokertown.

  “I never thought of, like, flying a starship from your bedroom, man,” Captain Trips said, clearly enchanted.

  “I think your people would call this a stateroom, yes?” As a matter of fact, it looked like a cross between an Ottoman harem and Carlsbad Caverns. In the midst of it all was a huge canopied bed piled with fat cushions, and in a dressing gown in the midst of that lay Tach. He had long ago sworn to die in bed; Takisian biotechnology made it possible to achieve that goal and a heroic demise at the same time, if you were so inclined.

  “There is no formal command center—bridge?—on a ship such as this. On most warships, such as my cousin’s vessel Hellcat, there is, but on a yacht, no.” He felt a sizzle of fury from Baby at the mention of Hellcat’s name. They were rivals of long standing.

  “A Takisian symbiont-ship is psionically controlled. The pilot can receive information directly, mentally, or visually. For example…” Tach gestured and an image of Earth sprang into being on a curve of membranous bulkhead next to the bed. A yellow line reached away from it, describing their orbit. Then like a computer animation the globe spun away, dwindled, until an out-of-scale image of their entire projected flight path from Earth to 1954C–1100 was displayed.

  Trips applauded. “That’s fantastic, man. Groovy.”

  “Yes, it is. You Earthers are attempting to create sentience in your computers; we have grown sophonts who are capable of performing computer functions. And much more.”

  “How does Baby feel about all this?”

  The picture vanished. Words appeared: I am honored to convey lords such as Master Tis and yourself—though I’m afraid you may poke me with that hat, it’s so tall.

  Trips jumped. “I didn’t know she could do that.”

  “Neither did I. She’s stealing knowledge of written English from me with a very low-powered drain—which is mildly naughty. However, she knows I am indulgent, and will forgive her.”

  Trips shook his head in amazement. He was sitting on a chair that had thrust itself from the floor for him and adjusted to his frame when Tach finally convinced him to sit on it. “Not that I don’t have faith in Baby,” he said, “but isn’t your cousin’s vessel, like, a warship?”

  “Yes. And you don’t have to ask the question you’re hoping not to have to. Under normal circumstances Baby would have no chance against Hellcat—and don’t go static in my head like that, Baby, or I’ll spank you! It’s true.

  “But Baby is fast, even with her ghostdrive gone, none faster. And maneuverable. And, frankly, smarter than Hellcat. But the important factor is that Hellcat was badly injured by the Swarm attack. A Swarm Mother as ancient and vast as this one generally will have developed biological weapons—antibodies, almost—against Takisians and their ghostships. We use similar weapons against them, since only a full war fleet can carry enough firepower to harm even a small one, whereas infection can spread of itself. Zabb fought off a boarding attack, with sword and pistol and bioweapons, and was able to drive off the swarmlings. But Hellcat was infected and damaged, and though they arrested the sickness she will be a long time healing.”

  Softly: “And Zabb felt each of her wounds as his own, whatever you may say of him.” His eyes stung.

  Mournfully Trips shook his head. “Talking about fighting bums me out, man.”

  “This must be hard for you, given your pacifist convictions. But your role in what lies ahead is not martial, and I’ll fight only if attacked.”

  “But Moonchild fought. Most of the others would too. I’ve never fought in my life. I only hit one person, and he hauled off and busted my nose, and then one day I’m in, like, someone else’s body while she throws some muscle-bound alien through a wall.”

  “It was a glorious spectacle,” said Tach, chuckling despite himself.

  “Being an ace is turning out to be a pretty heavy trip.”

  Tisianne, I feel her! Hellcat comes.

  Tach rumpled his hair and sighed. “I fear it’s time, my friend.” He swung his legs out of bed and rose. “I’ll see you to the lock.”

  Luminance paced them down a curving corridor. “You’re sure you—he—can find the rock?” Tachyon said.

  “It’s not like there’re going to be many others in the vicinity, Doc.”

  The bitch is shaping interception orbit. Max weapons range in twenty minutes.

  Head her off, Baby.

  They stopped by the inner sphincter of the crewlock. Tach and Trips embraced, both weeping, both trying not to show it. “Good luck, Mark.”

  “Same to you, Doc. Say, this whole ship is Baby, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Self-consciously, Trips leaned over and lightly kissed a brace whose form flowed like a stalagmite. “Bye, Baby. Peace.”

  “Good-bye, Captain. Godspeed.”

  Pandering to primitive superstitions, Tach chided as they withdrew politely around a bend.

  Amusement. What will the new person be like, Tis?

  I don’t know. I’m eager to see. Another Moonchild was too much to hope for. Fortuitous enough that they had access to an ace with a combination of powers that gave them some small chance of success.

  “Doctor?” The voice rolled around to them like liquid amber, deep and rich. Tachyon walked forward.

  The vi
sual impact stopped him in his tracks. Ace as Greek god: tall, elaborately muscled, a jaw like a bridge abutment, a clear green gaze, a nimbus of curly blond hair, all wrapped in a skintight yellow suit with a sunburst blazing on the chest.

  “I,” the vision said, “am Starshine.”

  “The honor is entirely mine,” Tach said reflexively.

  “Quite correct. You are a militarist, representative of a decadent and repressive civilization. I am about to attempt to avert a horror brought upon my world by your unbridled technology, while you engage in combat with another faction of the same technocratic gang that afflicted Earth with your satanic virus in the first place. Under the circumstances I find it difficult to wish you success, Doctor. Nonetheless, I do so.”

  Tachyon’s voice seemed to have vanished, and Baby was making little staticky phosphene pops in his head. “I’m so grateful,” he managed at last.

  “Yes.” Starshine stroked his heroic jaw. “Perhaps I shall compose a poem, about the moral dilemma I face—”

  “Hadn’t you better go face the asteroid first?” Tach almost screamed.

  Starshine scowled like Zeus caught by Hera, but he said, “I suppose so.”

  The lock dilated. “Farewell,” Tach said.

  “Thank you.” He stepped through.

  As the outer lock cycled open, Baby transmitted the view from outside—every square centimeter of her skin was photosensitive at need—to Tach’s mind. Starshine floated out into vacuum, turned his face into the full glare of the sun, now more or less astern, and appeared to take a deep breath. Then he pushed off from the ship, arms and body straightened to a line, and he became a single brilliant yellow beam bisecting eternal night.

  “Photon transformation,” Tach said, impressed. “Like the tachyon transformation of our ghostdrive, but allowing only lightspeed. Incredible.” For a moment he felt almost proud of the wild card.

  He shook the sensation off. “I’m going to find it hard,” he remarked, “to like that one.”

  He’s sure a prick. I liked the Captain ever so much better.