Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 46

"It'll take more than herbivores to dent shuttle ceramic. Don't worry. But I would sit down," Kai added.

"As soon as the stampede has stopped, we'd better make our move," a voice piped up from behind the last row of seats.

"Bonnard!"

Grinning broadly, the dusty, stained boy appeared from the shuttle's lab. "I thought this was the safest place after I saw Paskutti moving you out. But I wasn't sure who had come back in. Am I glad it's you!"

"They'll never find those power packs, Varian. Never," Bonnard said, almost shouting above the noise outside. "When Paskutti smashed the dome controls I didn't see how I could get out in time. So ... I ... hid!"

"You did exactly as you should, Bonnard. Even to hiding," Varian rea.s.sured him with a firm hug.

Another shift of the shuttle sent everyone rocking.

"It's going to fall," Aulia cried.

"But it won't crack," Kai promised. "We'll survive. By all the things that men hold dear, we'll survive!"

When the stampede finally ended, it took the combined strength of all the men to open the door. The carnage was fearful. They were buried under trampled hadrosaurs. It was full night now. Under the cover of darkness, Bonnard and Kai slipped out and, using lift-belts, managed to bring the power packs back to the shuttle. "Bonnard was right. We've got to make a move," Kai told them as the survivors huddled together, still shaken and shocked by their ordeal. "Come dawn, the heavyworlders will return to survey their handiwork. They'll a.s.sume the shuttle is still here, buried under the stampede. They won't be in any hurry to get to it. Where could it go?"

"I know where," Varian said.

"That cave we found, near the golden fliers?" Bonnard asked, his tired face lighting.

"It's more than big enough to accommodate the shuttle. And dry, with a screen of falling vines to hide the opening."

"Great idea, Varian," Kai agreed, "because even if they used the infrared scan, our heat would register the same as adult gifts."

"And that's the best idea I've heard today," Lunzie said briskly, handing around peppers which had been overlooked by the heavyworlders in the piloting compartment.

It required a lot of skill to ease the shuttle out from under the mountain of flesh but Lunzie knew it had to be done now while Kai and Varian held on to their Disciplined strength. The two managed, with Bonnard a.s.sisting in the directions since he'd been outside.

By dawn they had reached the inland sea and manoeuvred into the enormous cave, every bit as commodious as Varian and Bonnard had said. Not one of the golden fliers paid attention to the strange white craft that had invaded their area.

"The heavyworlders don't even know this place exists," Varian a.s.sured them when they were safely concealed.

Triv and Dimenon used enough of the abundant drooping foliage to synthesise padding to comfort the wounded on the bare plastic deck. Lunzie sent them out again to get enough raw materials to synthesize a hypersaturated tonic to reduce the effects of delayed shock. Then everyone was allowed to sleep.

Lunzie was one of the first awake late the next day. Moving quietly so as not to disturb the exhausted survivors, she cooked up another nutritious broth in the synthesiser, loading it with vitamins and minerals.

"Guaranteed to circulate blood through your abused muscles and restore tissue to normal," she said, serving up steaming beakers to Kai and Triv who had awakened. "We've slept around the chrono and half again."

After checking the binding on Kai's arm, she ma.s.saged his shoulders to work out some of the stiffness before she ministered in the same way to Triv.

Thanks. How long before the others rouse?" asked Triv, gratefully working his upper arms in eased circles.

"I'd say we have another clear hour or so before the dead arise," Lunzie answered, holding a beaker of soup to Varian. "I'll need some more greenery to fix breakfast for the rest of them."

They filled the synthesiser with vegetation from the hanging vines that curtained the cave's mouth. Weak sunlight, as bright as Ireta ever saw, shone in on the shuttle's tail through the tough creepers. By the time the others awoke, there was food.

"It's not very interesting, but it's nutritious," Lunzie said as she handed around flat brown cakes. "I'd do more with the synthesiser, but how long can we depend upon having the power last? And the heavyworlders might detect its use."

Varian set the children to keep a lockout at the cave opening, warning them not to hang beyond the vines. Bonnard thought that was wasted effort.

"They're not going to look for people they think they've already killed."

"We underestimated them once, Bonnard," Kai remarked. "Let's not make the same mistake twice." Duly thoughtful, the boy took a lookout post.

A very long week went by while the survivors recovered from shock and injury.

"How long do we have to wait for the Theks to come and save us?" Varian asked the three Disciples when all the others had gone to sleep. "They would have had your message within two hours after you sent it. 'Mutiny' ought to stir their triangles if 'heavyworlder' didn't."

Kai upturned his hands, wincing at the stab of pain in his broken wrist. "The Theks don't rush under any circ.u.mstances, I guess. I had hoped they might just this once."

"So, what do we do?" Triv asked. "We can't stay here forever. Or avoid the heavyworlders' search once they realise the shuttle's gone. I know Ireta's a big planet but it's only this part on the equator that's barely habitable. Even if we stay here, we've got to use energy to produce food. We could get caught either way. They've got all the tracers and telltaggers. They have everything, even the stun-guns. What do we do?"

Every instinct in Lunzie shouted "NO" at the obvious answer but she voiced it herself. "There is always cold sleep." Even to herself she sounded defeated.

"That's the sensible last resort," Triv agreed. Lunzie wanted to argue the point but she clamped her lips firmly shut while Kai and Varian nodded solemnly.

"EV is coming back for us, isn't she?" Triv asked with an expressionless face.

Kai and Varian a.s.sured him that the ARCT-10 ARCT-10 would not abandon them. The richness of their surveys was on the message beacon to be stripped when the would not abandon them. The richness of their surveys was on the message beacon to be stripped when the ARCT ARCT had finished following that storm. The beacon Portegin had rigged outside the cave, camouflaged as a dead branch, would guide the search and rescue team to them. had finished following that storm. The beacon Portegin had rigged outside the cave, camouflaged as a dead branch, would guide the search and rescue team to them.

"With the sort of ion interference a big storm can produce, it's no wonder they haven't been able to make contact with us," Varian said staunchly but none of the others looked as though they quite believed her.

Lunzie kept trying not to think of the word "Jonah."

"Good, then we'll go cold sleep tomorrow once the others have been told," Kai decided briskly.

"Why tell them?" Lunzie asked. She would rather get the whole process over with before she lost her courage.

"They're halfway into cold sleep right now." Varian gestured to the sleeping bodies, startling Kai. "And we'll save ourselves some futile arguments."

"It's a full week now and at the rate carrion eaters work on Ireta, the heavyworlders may have discovered the shuttle is missing," Triv said ominously.

"There's no way the heavyworlders could find a trace of us in cold sleep. And there's a real danger if we remain awake much longer," Varian added.

With the other Disciples in agreement with a course she herself had recommended, Lunzie rose slowly to her feet. Unwilling as she was, she went to the cold-sleep locker and tapped in the code that would open it. She really hated to go into cold sleep again. She had wasted so much of her life living in that state. It was almost as bad as death. In a sense, it was a death - of all that was current and pleasant and hopeful in this segment of her life.

But she gathered up the drug and the spraygun, checked dosages and began to administer the medication to those already asleep. Triv, Kai and Varian moved among them, checking their descent into cold sleep as skins cooled and respirations slowed to the imperceptible.

"You know," Varian began in a hushed but startled tone as she was settling herself, "poor old Gaber was right. We are planted. At least temporarily!"

Lunzie stared at her, then made a grimace. "That's not the comfort I want to take with me into cold sleep."

"Does one dream in cryogenic sleep, Lunzie?" Varian asked as Lunzie handed her a cup of the preservative drug.

"I never have."

Lunzie gave Kai his dose. The young leader smiled as he accepted it.

"Seems a waste of time not to do something," he said.

"The whole concept of cold sleep is to suspend the sense of subjective time," Lunzie pointed out.

"You sleep, you wake. And centuries pa.s.s," added Triv, taking his beakerful.

"You're less help than Varian is," Lunzie grumbled.

"It won't be centuries," Kai said emphatically. "Not once EV has those uranium a.s.says. It's too raking rich for them to ignore."

Lunzie arranged the cold-sleep gas tank controls to kick in as soon as its sensors registered the cessation of all life signs. She held her dose in her hand. She wouldn't risk them all if she stayed awake. Her body heat would register as a giff to any heavyworld over-flight of the area. She could stay awake.

But if she slept with these, she would, for once, have someone she knew, people she liked and had worked with. She wouldn't be quite so alone when she woke. That was some consolation. Before she could talk herself into some drastic and fatal delay, she tossed the dose down and lay down along one side of the deck, pillowing her head on a pad and settling her arms by her side.

Who knows when they'll come for us, she thought, unable to censor dismal thoughts. She grabbed at another consolation: the heavyworlders didn't get her, or the others. She'd wake again. And there'd be another settlement due her.

The leaden heaviness began to spread out from her stomach, permeating her tissues. The air on her cooling skin felt uncomfortably hot, and grew hotter. Suddenly Lunzie wanted to get up, run away from this place before she was trapped inside herself again. But it was already too late to stop the process. She felt her consciousness sinking fast into another death of sleep. Muhlah!

Chapter One.

On the FSP Fleet heavy cruiser Zaid-Dayan "We have resources they don't know about," Sa.s.sinak said, and not for the first time. It did not rea.s.sure her.

The convivial mood in which Sa.s.sinak and Lunzie had first made their plans to combine forces against the planet pirates had long since evaporated. They had been carried by the euphoria following the incredible Thek cathedral which had dispensed right justice to Captain Cruss who had illegally landed a heavyworlder colony transport ship on the planet Ireta, right under the bows of Sa.s.sinak's pursuing cruiser. The Thek conference had elicited considerable fascinating information about the Captain's superiors. Apart from sorting out the problem of which race "owned" Ireta, the Thek had departed without reference to bringing the perpetrators of planet pirating to a similar justice.

Neither Sa.s.sinak nor Lunzie felt they would be lucky enough to obtain more support from the Thelcs, even if that long-lived race were the oldest of the s.p.a.ce-faring species. Theks rarely interfered with members of the various ephemeral species that they had discovered over the centuries. Only when, as on Ireta, some ancient plan of their own might be jeopardized would they intervene. As a rule, Thek permitted all their 2.

client races, from the lizard-like Seti, the shape-changing Wefts, the marine Ssli down to humans, to "dree their ain weirds," No sooner than the Thek had resolved the matter of Ireta then they had departed, leaving Sa.s.sinak and Lunzie with an irresistible challenge: to seek out and destroy those who indulged in the most daring sort of piracy-the rape and pillage of entire planets and the ma.s.s enslavement of their legally resident populations. The problems were immense. Sa.s.sinak was too experienced a commander to ignore real problems, and Lunzie had seen too many good plans go wrong herself. Lunzie, sprawled comfortably on the white leather cushions in Sa.s.sinak's office, watched her distant ofispring with amus.e.m.e.nt. She was so young to be so old.

"So are you," Sa.s.sinak retorted.

Lunzie felt herself reddening.

"There's no such thing as telepathy," she said. "It's never been demonstrated under controlled conditions."

"Twins do it," Sa.s.sinak said. "I read that somewhere. And other close relatives, sometimes. As for you and me . . . n.o.body knows what that many deepfreezes have done to your brain, and what my life's done to me. You were thinking I'm young to be so old, and I was thinking exactly the same thing about you. You're younger than I am ..."

"Which doesn't give you the right to play boss," said Lunzie. Then she wished she hadn't. Sa.s.sinak's fece had hardened . . . and of course to her, she did have the right. She was the captain of her ship, one step below her first star, and she had ten more years of actual, awake, living-experience age.

"I'm sorry," Lunzie said quickly. "You are older, and you are the boss ... I'm just still adjusting."

Sa.s.sinak's quick smile almost rea.s.sured her. "Same here. But I do have to be the boss on this ship. Even if you are my great-great-great, you don't know which pipes hold what."

"Right. Point taken. I will be the good little civilian." And try, she thought to herself, to adjust to having a distant ofispring not only older than herself but quite a 3.

bit tougher. She leaned forward, setting her mug down on the table. "What are you thinking of doing?"

"What we need/' said Sa.s.s, frowning at nothing, "is a lot more information. The kind of proof we can bring before the Council meeting, for instance. Take the Diplo problem. Who's been contacting whom, and whose money paid for that heavyworlder seedship? Which factions of heavyworlders are involved, and do they all know what they're doing? Then there's the Paraden family. I have my own reasons to think they're guilty, root and branch, but no proof. If we could get someone into position, some social connection ..."

Lunzie picked up her mug, gulped down the last of her drink, and tried to ignore the hollow in her belly. Was she about to do something stupid, or brave, or both?

"I ... might be able to help with the Diplo bit."

"You? How?"

Sa.s.sinak had been thinking of her own heavyworlder friends, but she hated to use any of them that way. It would be too risky for them if some agent within Fleet caught on.

"They don't let many lightweights visit Diplo, but because of their continuing medical problems, genetic and adaptive, medical researchers and advisors are welcome. As welcome as lightweights ever are. I'd need a refresher course with a Master Adept ..."

Sa.s.sinak pursed her lips. "Hmmm. That's reasonable, the refresher part. If anyone were watching you, they'd expect you to. You've gone a stage or so beyond your rating, haven't you? And you people go back fairly regularly, once you're in the Adept rating, so I've heard. ..."

She let that trail away, in case Lunzie wanted to ofier more information, but wasn't surprised when Lunzie simply nodded and went on to talk about Diplo.

"Doctors are expected to ask questions. If I were on a research team, perhaps statistical survey of birth defects, something like that, I'd have a chance to talk to lots of people as part of my job."

Sa.s.sinak c.o.c.ked her head to one side; Lunzie barely stopped herself from making the same gesture.

4.

"Are you sure you're not doing this just to exorcise your own heavyworld demons? From what you've said ..."

Lunzie didn't want to go into that again. "I know. I have reason to hate and fear them. Some of them. But I've also known good ones; I told you about Zebara." Sa.s.sinak nodded, but looked unconvinced. Lunzie went on. "Besides, 111 have time to talk to the Master Adept renewing my training. You know enough about Discipline to know that's as good as any psych software. If a Master says I'm not stable enough to go, 111 let you know."

"YouTl discuss it with him?" By Sa.s.sinak's tone, she wasn't entirely happy with that.

Lunzie sighed internally. "Not everything, no. But my going to Diplo, certainly. There are certain special skills which can make it easier on a lightweight."

"Just be sure a Master pa.s.ses you. This is too important to risk on an emotional storm, and with the trouble you've had ..."

"I can handle it." Lunzie let her voice convey the Discipline behind it, and Sa.s.sinak subsided. Not really Impressed, Lunzie noticed, as most people would be, but convinced for the time being.