Stardogs (18 page)

Deo paused, in the act of retrieving his knife. “The lady is well informed. What does the Lady Tanzo know about the Kali Ghurka?”

She shrugged, showing no sign of fear. “I know you’re a fanatical sect from Arunchal. The product of Earthgov’s dumping of a mutinous Ghurka regiment, a bizarre Hindu religious group and a ministering order of Catholic Nuns together on an isolated planet. The ruins on Arunchal are very unusual. I wanted to do some research work there. I was warned to keep out of your way at all costs.”

Deo almost smiled. “The holy ones would have called for your death for the description of the origins of the Holy Church of the Kali-Dewa. Never-the-less, the Princess knows who I am, Lady. There is no further need for you to advertise it. Please take the rider girl away. I will put your rider in a place of respect, fitting for a brave man. Then I must dispose of the trash.”

Tanzo helped Una to her feet. “Including that one, I trust.” She pointed to the bound and gagged Sam Teovan.

Deo looked at the blade of his knife. Only a man with no further use for his thumb would test the edge in the ordinary way. “Yes. Goodbye, Lady.”

When she had gone, Deo, who had picked up the weapons of the fallen with obvious professionalism, walked over to the wide-eyed Teovan. Deo’s face was, as usual, expressionless. The
Kukri
edge just touched the gag that the Viscount had tied with surprising professionalism. The material fell aside. “You will tell me who you are, who you are from, and how you came to here.”

Sam Teovan’s famous instincts told him that to lie was to die. Deo’s next statement confirmed this. “I have been trained to tell the truth from falsehood. Speak only the absolute truth.”

“You won’t kill me? I can make you rich.” He really didn’t think it would work. But it was worth a try.

He was answered by a cold stare and no change in expression. It was more terrifying than a threat. Instinct said ‘start talking, and start talking fast’. “I’m a Caporegime of the Yakuza-Syndicate.”

Deo nodded. “True. Who assisted you? The Empire or the League?”

Teovan shook his head. “No one. No one knew. It was Sal. Salvatore Caranzia-Heiki. He’s a Big Capo back on Phillipia. It was all Sal and a couple of other big guys’ idea. They set it all up. It was supposed to be a sure thing.”

“The League knew. You never got those weapons through without them knowing.”

“Hey, that was Kaparov, the Dakada smuggling boss. He organized that stuff.”

“League, probably. Jan-Pieter’s sort of trick to run smuggling past his own customs. Who got you onto the staff? Who recruited Sirian?”

“I dunno. Sal. Sal and that tall, thin Dakada guy.”

“A tall, thin man. Very graceful as he moves. High pitched voice. Slightly slanted eyes?” asked Deo impassively.

“Yeah… I don’t know his name…”

“He would not have used his own anyway. That was Selim Puk. The Emperor’s Security chief. Once his chief assassin,” said Deo with finality.

“You mean it was all a set-up? I’ll kill bloody Sal…”

“He was almost certainly set-up himself. And you will not kill him. You are about to die. It is the custom among my people to give the victim, if possible, an opportunity for a last prayer. Do not waste it by pleading.” The blade of
Kukri
was set against his throat.

Sam’s little piggy eyes widened. He looked into Deo’s unblinking brown eyes. His dry mouth struggled for words. “The bomb.”

The knife was pulled back slightly. “The bomb?”

“Yeah, look. Blower, the dead guy over there, set a bomb. That’s what he did see. He was our explosives man. There’s the trigger-box on the floor.”

“He was killed before he could use that,” Deo said, looking at the transmitter.

“Yeah. But we was supposed to scram off this boat. Use the bomb threat to get the toxin off the Leaguesman, rendezvous with our ship, an’ leave this one. Take the Stardog and the Princess for ransom, and dispose of the evidence. Blower put a timer in his bomb. Easiest way, he said. Lemme out, and I’ll show you where it is.”

Deo shook his head. “We will just abandon ship earlier than previously planned.”

Sam snorted. “I nearly bust myself laughing when I heard you all talking about that. You think we’d leave the boats in working order?”

Deo looked at him, long and hard. At last he said, “You have earned yourself a temporary respite. Where is the bomb?”

Sam shook his head. “I’ll show you, if you promise not to kill me, and to let me loose.” He was instinctively sure this man could be trusted to honor his word. Which gave him, Sam Teovan, a serious advantage over the sap.

He didn’t even see the grey-clad man’s hands move. Deo was holding the top half of his ear pinna in front of him. “Do not attempt to bargain with me. You live. If the bomb destroys the craft… you die. Show me where it is.”

Sam could feel blood trickling down his cheek and neck. But he was no soft touch. “Look at the trigger-transmitter. It’ll have a timer on the display-screen.”

It was Deo’s turn to shake his head. He picked up the transmitter, deliberately not looking at it, and held it in front of Sam. Liquid crystal seconds flickered away. “Show me.”

Unwilling, but frightened, Sam led off down the passage.

Changes, deep changes, were occurring in the tissues of the Stardog itself. Some cells were developing a gel cushioning. Nutrient, and indeed life, was being sucked from others. The beast was preparing to close the great circle. The intelligent part of its brain had shut down. Gone to roam free in the stardark, with its dead master. Only the almost mechanical reflex sections of the brain functioned.

“So, there is a bomb on board. And the lifecrafts are sabotaged. Well! A day in the life of the average Princess,” said Shari calmly. Having waited for the inevitable death with no way of escape, she was now almost light-headed. For the first time since she was nine, she realized that her future was at last uncertain. The chances of survival were poor, but at least she didn’t know that she would be killed. “Take us to the bomb, murderer.” She said to Deo, “This one and his companions killed the rest of the crew. Martin found their bodies. Tied up and shot, execution style.”

Teovan looked blankly at her. “We didn’t! We tied…”

“Shut up. You nauseate me. Show us the bomb.” Her voice was cutting.

With a prod from Deo, he turned and led them down into the bowels of the ship, to a passage along the one flank. “You’ll have to shoot the lock,” he said sullenly. “Blower turfed the key into the recycler-system. He reckoned it left us in a better bargaining position if the bomb was out of reach. Besides all the keys were numbered, an’ he didn’t want you to know where the explosives were.”

The Princess sighed. “Well. Can we fix the lifecraft?”

“Why?” Martin Brettan already had drawn the heavy calibre automatic from his belt, and was pointing it at the door.

Shari shrugged, “Because you’ll never break that door down. These cabins were built for royalty, assassination scared royalty.”

Teovan stared at her face, reading truth there. “The lifecraft seals are wrecked. Unfixable. The pieces are in space behind us somewhere. “

She looked at the LCD seconds flicking away, flashing the remaining three minutes. “I am going back to my cabin. To prepare myself to die like a Princess. Deo, come with me… please.”

The sound of a nervously cleared throat echoed in the sudden silence. “Er. I believe I may be able to help.” Tanzo came forward, a silver bright section of thin wire in her stubby fingers. She put the wire into the lock and began feeling “I heard the noise, she said, “and Una and I came to see what was happening.” She smiled kindly at the frozen-faced girl next to her. “Ah. One tumbler.” She pulled the wire out and began modifying it. Reinserted it. Another click.

Teovan stared, fascinated. These royal parasites were not supposed to be very proficient lock-pickers. He was no door-tickler himself, but he’d seen enough other practitioners at work to know that she was good. When the kidnapping had been set up, he’d understood they’d have to take on two bodyguards and a bunch of nancy-pants sycophants, who couldn’t even clean their own teeth. The Yak, it seemed, had been badly misled.

The door swung open. Inside was a selection of cooking pots with Blower’s ‘soup’ in them. It appeared Blower had found his position in the kitchen useful after all. The one in the gold and black fancy uniform was first into the room. He might not have known much about lock-picking, but he plainly knew explosives and detonator circuits. He carefully lifted up the entire battery and timer, and the small vial hanging in the ‘soup’, to which they were wired.

Without ceremony he handed them to Deo. “Dump these. You’ve still got 130 seconds.” Deo hurried away. The Viscount smiled, “I wonder, Lady Tanzo, if we could prevail on you to lock this room again… with your rare skills.” The look she gave him would have damaged scorpions, but she complied.

The Viscount turned to Sam Teovan. Teovan knew the man intended to kill him. “Well, murderer? Any more nice little surprises you have for us?”

Sam Teovan kept his mouth closed. He knew that to open it was to sentence himself to death. At all costs he must avoid being taken away from the view of the rest of the survivors. The Viscount smiled at him, catlike. All good even teeth. “I’ll just take this one and lock him up somewhere safe, shall I?”

Sam’s numbed brain scrambled for a way out. But the necessity was taken from him by a sideways buffet, followed by a terrible wrench that sprawled all of them like skittles down the passage. “What in hell!”

“Did we hit something?” Another lesser buffet struck them.

“We’ll have to go up to the cockpit and see.” The group battled its way up the passages. On the way they met with Deo and also with the younger Leaguesman, looking green and attempting to shield his broken arm.

“Was that the detonator?” asked the Viscount. “Did you cycle it?”

Deo shook his head as, like a veteran seaman he navigated the swaying passage to cockpit. “No, M’lord. This is something else, M’lord.”

In the cockpit it was apparent what else it was. They were under attack.

“They look like Stardogs.” The Leaguesman’s voice was incredulous. Stardogs didn’t attack other Stardogs.

“Much smaller,” someone commented. But yet the broken-umbrella shapes were very Stardog like, just perhaps a twentieth of the size. Ripping at the flanks of the huge beast that carried them.

“We must stop them! They’re ripping our beast apart!” Tanzo shouted, anger filling her.

The Viscount raised a sardonic eyebrow, despite having to hold on to a stanchion to stay upright. “How, Lady lock-picker? Go out there and beat them off with sticks?”

“Perhaps the rider can communicate?”

The girl shook herself. “No. They’re horrible. Horrible. Just hunger.” She seemed to sink into herself again.

“We’ll feed them then.” The leaguesman spoke between gritted teeth. He risked his broken arm to hold up the toxin-canister with his good hand. “Here. It’s disconnected. Cycle it. If it’ll kill Stardogs, it should kill these brutes. They’re ingesting the gobbets they rip off. I just hope they’ll eat each other too.”

Without a word Deo took the canister of nerve toxin and swayed hastily back into the passage. A few moments later the deadly canister had been spat out into space. The lead proto-dog was too intent on its attack to see the bait, but it was taken by one of the smaller followers. The others stopped to attack the dying. The toxin was plainly concentrated enough to continue to kill.

Shari looked at the young Leaguesman as the flight path steadied. At the sobbing ridergirl. “Well Leaguesman. This is the first time your kind has been in space without a threat to keep the riderfolk in place. You’d better hope that they don’t want revenge as badly as you think they do.”

Deo returned, as unobtrusively as usual. “I’m sorry your highness. The bomb-scare prevented me finishing the clean up here. If you would be so kind…”

Shari pointed at the expanding planet before them. “It seems pointless, doesn’t it, Deo. In another hour we’ll hit that atmosphere, and burn.”

The viscount looked out. Memories of the idealistic young man joining the Imperial Space Navy, the paint on his glory dreams still wet-surfaced. He had not always been the perfect consort, twisted into the plots and greed of Empire. No. In those days he’d been a starry-eyed dreamer, learning the depths and distances of deep space… without Stardog distance-cheating. The perspective of space that navigating interplanetary craft lent told him they had less time than that. Suddenly, the maneuvering and scheming, the deaths, the smirching of the soul of the last fifteen years seemed so wasted. He could have been happy…