Double Solitaire

Chapter Thirty-Nine

"Baz reporting, the Network has requested burnback from the station," Taj was saying as the shuntlift doors opened and deposited Mark and Tis in House Defensive Operations.

The old man had a hand pressed against his mastoid as if to shut out the din in the command post. Totally unnecessary of course, the receiver-transmitter was buried deep in the bone, but Tis could appreciate the motivation. The spherical room was a morass of shouted orders, queries, answers. Zabb raced past, his combat armor hanging about his waist, his batman in close pursuit trying to complete the task of dressing his master.

"Read that!" he said, and shoved a sheaf of foil in Tisianne's hands. "Abortion!" This directed to Taj. "Tell them to stall!" he bellowed over the noise.

Tis skimmed the sheets. She looked up at Mark, who had been reading over her shoulder. "You understand?"

"Enough. Blaise has bought ships from the Network and paid with this House. The Network is coming to take possession."

"They have raised every objection. They've run out of stalls!" Taj sang out.

"Congratulations, Tis." Zabb came raging back. "You brought them here, you --"

"And I doubt they would be quite so assiduous in their efforts to take possession if they didn't have a little unfinished business to settle with you. So let's not be quite so self-righteous, shall we, Zabb?" Tisianne paused, sifted the chaotic thoughts tumbling through her head. But out of chaos sometimes comes inspiration, and it came now. "He's overstepped himself this time," she said almost to herself.

Zabb ignored her. "Taj, you command the honor against the ships going to Vayawand. I'll handle the ones headed for Ilkazam."

Tis intercepted Zabb as he darted back across DefOp. "Take me with you!"

"You're out of your mind."

"Please, it's my home, my world. Let me defend her."

"Tisianne was an exemplary pilot... better even than you," Taj said in unexpected support.

"Prince Tisianne was an extraordinary pilot because he was an extraordinary telepath. She's almost mind blind. I'm not turning her loose in a half-wild fighting ship." Zabb grabbed Tis's shoulders, spun her around, and shoved her back into the center of DefOp. "Stay here. Be safe."

She whirled on him. "There is no safe place. If you fail, the Network comes here. We will fight, and we will die. At least let me die with you."

They hadn't talked since that night on the mountain. Now the spoken and the unspoken were evident for everyone to read. "What do you think you can do?" Zabb asked.

"Talk. We're going to need help."

"And whom do you suggest calling, cousin? We haven't an ally left on Takis."

"An hour ago that was true. Now... I expect we'll find many friends in many places. We'll ship link to the Raiyises of Houses Ss'ang, Alaa, Tandeh, and any others who aren't held by the Vayawand by conquest."

"What's your thinking?" Taj asked.

"Blaise has just fissured his precious alliance. Now all that remains is for us to drive the wedge. It was one thing to forge an alliance against Ilkazam. It's another to invite in Takis's bitterest enemy."

"It might work," came Taj's cautious support.

"It will work," Mark said.

Zabb stared down at her, smiled, and said, "I love you." Tis went red. "Now come along."

"I'm coming too." Everyone stared at Trips. He wiggled uncomfortably like a puppy in a holiday crowd. "Starshine will really dig fighting uncontrolled capitalism."

In the center of the bridge of Zabb's flagship StarRacer, a hologram of Takis was lazily spinning. Each satellite, station, or weapons platform was carefully detailed. The Network starship was an obsidian ball. As they watched, the ball calved, producing forty tiny replicas of itself. Tisianne bent over the scanner.

"Warships, roughly analogous to our destroyer class."

Zabb, using both a telepathic ship link to his other captains, and a conventional tight-beam, laser-pulse communication system, issued his orders. Ilkazam's ships, indicated as tiny white stars, broke off by twos.

It hadn't taken much to enlist the aid of Ss'ang and Alaa, and they were coming, elegant fireflies of green and blue. The hologram now resembled a tangled skein of yarn. Tis supposed there was some sort of order to the patterns, but it eluded her, which was why Zabb had ended up military leader of House Ilkazam and she'd ended up a research scientist.

A mental nudge from the ships informed her that telepathic communication had been established with Yimkin, Raiyis of House Tandeh. Tisianne quickly outlined their current dilemma.

Ancestors know I sympathize, Prin... er, Tisianne, but this is no slow-moving Network scow loaded down with prophylactics and miracle cures to sell to a credulous load of groundlings. This is a Network starship built to fight. And that madman of a grandson of yours is crazy!

Yimkin had always had a gift for stating the obvious three or four times in the same sentence.

Absolutely, he's trying to give us to Network.

But if I desert him, he'll be coming after me.

The Network, Blaise, or me? Which is it to be?

God's abortions. I suppose it must be you. You breed a strong precog line in Ilkazam...

You want one?

Please.

Done.

Make sure she's pretty.

We don't breed them any other way.

Now.

Tis broke the telepathic link and studied the tactical holo. We'll need a new color for Tandeh, Tis thought. Zabb picked it up.

"You got them?"

"Yes."

"Did Yimkin demand the family jewels?" Zabb grunted, anxious that Tandeh had driven a hard bargain.

"Just a bride," Tis answered.

"There is no such thing as just a bride. Added together this will cost us dearly in land, wealth --"

"And lives," Tis interrupted.

Zabb just blinked at her. Not a Takisian consideration, Tis realized.

"I think it's time, Meadows," Zabb said.

Mark nodded and pulled out a vial filled with bright yellow powder. Tis laid a hand on his wrist.

"Be careful," she whispered.

"Don't worry." He patted her hand awkwardly. Downed his potion.

Starshine was a far bigger man than Mark Meadows. The extra mass had to come from somewhere. The easiest solution was to rob molecules of ambient air. A whirlwind wrapped itself about the writhing figure of the human. Light styluses, a loose glove, and any other unattached objects were sucked into the maelstrom. Tis staggered under the force of the wind, and Zabb grabbed her and hugged her against his chest. It was over in a matter of seconds.

Starshine was magnificent in his skintight yellow suit with the sunburst blazing on his massive chest, his curly blond hair tousled by his summoning. He dwarfed the Takisians. Puffing out his chest, the ace surveyed the bridge in ire. For a moment his square jaw worked as if he were trying to form words, or perhaps deciding against whom to launch them. His awful gaze fell upon Tisianne. It was inevitable. She was always the target -- of Zabb's lectures, Jay's lectures, Traveler's lectures, Cody's lectures, Taj's lectures ...

"It's fascinating, Doctor, how I am summoned only in cases of extreme emergency -- always generated by the actions of yourself, or your rapacious relatives. If it were not for the sake of the ordinary Takisian who should be free from the yoke of unbridled Network capitalism, I would refuse to help, but --"

"You won't," Tis supplied.

It threw Starshine off his stride for an instant, but he soon recovered. "I feel it is also incumbent upon me to point out --"

Zabb set Tis in the bridge chair. "Will this go on for long, or will he eventually get around to fighting?"

This interruption hadn't fazed Starshine. He was still pontificating. "...presence of these enemies in your midst is due entirely to your selfish desire to abandon the female persona in which you currently reside. It would have shown far greater courage to accept life as a woman after you have so brutally and callously preyed upon the entire sex --"

Tis discovered something. She was tired of feeling guilty. She crossed to the ace, dug her long nails into a bulky forearm to hold him in place, and delivered a slap with her free hand. It left a satisfying red mark against the white, white skin. Starshine's green eyes flew open, and he let out a strange stuttering sound. As if the blow had sent words tumbling back down his throat like children falling down stairs.

"Shut up! And go fight!"

Tis didn't wait to see if she was obeyed. She moved back to her position. A few moments later a faint squeak from one of the control techs brought her head around. StarRacer was giving them a picture of Starshine as he turned to face Takis's star and sucked in the energy. Pulling his arms close to his body, he became a yellow beam, a light spear on an intercept course with battle.

"And now, gentlemen and ladies, let us follow that audacious lead," Zabb said, and half closing his eyes, he dropped into deep rapport with his ship.

If Tisianne opened her mind, she could occasionally catch fragments of thought from the various ships and their captains and crews. But it was like listening to a symphony, a bebop combo, and a brass band tuning simultaneously. Sound signifying nothing. She watched the hologram and tried to determine if they were winning. Starshine had been added as a bright yellow star, and he was fighting to very good effect.

Zujj, military commander of Alaa, had even demanded to know what, by his ancestor's frozen balls, that critter might be. An Ilkazam crewwoman proudly reported it to be one of Ilkazam's Enhancer-augmented servants. She fell into abashed silence at Tisianne's furious look.

It was hard to blame her for chattering. For the crew it was a time to hold onto their hats and wait to be useful. So far StarRacer hadn't taken a substantial hit, so there was no damage to repair. No weapons to manually fire. The only real evidence they were in a fight was the subtle recoil when the ghost lances fired.

A Takisian space battle was very much the province of the captain and his or her ship. Some of the largest cruisers required a TacNet -- three or four telepaths and the ship in close link -- to run a successful combat, but such a unity of purpose wasn't very Takisian, so the tendency was to breed single-pilot ships.

A white star flickered and went out, and Tis winced. She wished StarRacer would show her the battle rather than this dry video-game display; then she realized why the ship didn't -- the focus of the crew might be pulled to the pictures. It was probably better that only Zabb could "see." Still, it didn't make her happy. She wanted to know that Mark was still safe.

As she watched, the Network destroyer StarRacer was pursuing fragmented, seeding tiny black bloblets. A hit from an Ilkazam ship? She looked eagerly to Zabb and registered his grim expression.

"They've just dropped seven Ly'bahr legionnaires," Zabb sang out, and the entire crew jumped for their helmets.

It was the worst news imaginable. The metallic warriors were capable of reconstructing their bodies into small shuttlecraft with a contingent of Kondikki workers aboard for damage control and repair. It was as if seven inorganic Starshines had just waded into the combat on the side of the Network.

Tisianne felt the lances firing in quick succession, the pressure translated through the soles of her boots, the palm of her hand as it rested on a console. Suddenly StarRacer shuddered, and Tis's imperfect shields buckled under an onslaught of pain. She doubled over and fought for control over her heaving stomach. It was bad policy to retch in combat armor.

The holograph gave a picture of their situation: the white star that was StarRacer, and in close proximity, closing by the second, a pair of black discs representing Ly'bahr warriors. The yellow star that was Starshine suddenly reversed direction, heading back on an intercept with StarRacer and the Ly'bahr.

The ghost lances fired again. One Ly'bahr flickered, then recovered and continued its advance. Double hits, and StarRacer bucked so violently that Tis and most of the remaining eighteen members of the crew were thrown to the floor.

StarRacer was in her death throes, and Tis screamed because it hurt so much. The floor and walls of the living ship had gone viscous and sticky. As she watched, a crewman was trapped between benches that were suddenly extruded by the ship. His blood was smeared into the secretions of the ship.

A white-hot, molten rain began dripping from the ceiling. Tis looked up and watched a beam cutting through the hull of the ship. Suddenly the artificial gravity maintained by the ship cut off, and Tis went floating. Zabb yanked her out of the way just as a section of roof peeled back. He flung her hard at a distant wait, and she managed to get twisted around so her boots struck first, caught, and held. Tis glanced back and up at the looming shadow of a Ly'bahr warrior blotting out the stars.

Takisians maintained lockers filled with archaic bladed weapons just to repel boarders. It didn't do to fire a coherent light beam or high-energy projectile weapon within the skin of your own living ship. But StarRacer was dying, so a veritable light show erupted from the bridge as the Takisian crew hosed down the Ly'bahr.

The creature's gleaming skin reflected back the laser fire, adding to the deadly beauty of the moment. Another crewman went down screaming. Lasers were obviously a bad idea against Ly'bahr, and Tis didn't feel very optimistic about hitting that bulbous multilimbed body with a sword. She chambered a self-propelled grenade into the adjunct barrel of her laser rifle and fired.

It hit the creature dead amidships, and exploded in a very eye-satisfying display. Tis's helmet darkened to prevent momentary blindness from the flash. The grenade didn't penetrate the Ly'bahr's armor, but it did rip five of its appendages loose from their grip on StarRacer's hull. Tis didn't stay around to admire her handiwork. The barrel of several weapons were coming to bear on her, and in their current position the Takisians were just so many fish in a barrel.

The remaining crew were firing the maneuvering jets on their combat armor. The Ly'bahr was picking them off in a grotesque display that reminded Tis fleetingly of bug zappers in action.

Then Starshine popped up next to the Ly'bahr. Using his augmented strength, he drove his finger deep into one of the creature's optical sensors and projected the power of a star through his tissues.

The effect was stunning. Sparks came spitting through the joints and seams of the Ly'bahr's protective case. The weapons turret, set like a head atop the body, collapsed and then detonated, and Starshine wisely put several hundred meters between himself and the Ly'bahr as the entire bulbous body exploded in an eye-searing display. Armor casing flowered outward like petals unfurling, and in among the hard bits were softer body pieces of tiny Kondikki workers.

Cheers echoed in Tisianne's mind and radio as the surviving crew abandoned the trap of the shattered bridge.

Save it! came Zabb's curt order. There's still another one to fight.

As if it had been summoned by Zabb's telepathy, the second Ly'bahr rose slowly over the edge of StarRacer's back. A beam of light resolved itself back into Starshine. This time the Ly'bahr was prepared, and its speed was comparable to Starshine's when the ace wasn't traveling at light-speed. Starshine released a beam of directed energy at the Ly'bahr, but the warrior was already moving, and it glanced harmlessly off the gleaming red surface. Maneuvering jets firing wildly, it spun like a dervish and fired several times at Starshine. His biological forcefield sucked the energy; but on the fourth and final round it flickered a degree less brightly.

The Takisians tried to help, but both Starshine and the Ly'bahr were moving so fast, it was difficult to aim. Zabb hung about the outskirts of the fight firing quickly and methodically at any protrusion, indentation, or antenna that might conceivably be a sensor or a weapon. Tis was a good shot, but she had never been trained for free-fall combat. She didn't know how to use the recoil of her own weapon to set her up for her next shot.

One of the crew was very sensibly screaming both telepathically and audibly over the radio for help! Starshine and the Ly'bahr were continuing to exchange laser and energy fire. Then suddenly the Ly'bahr spun and snagged Zabb with a long, trailing arm that ended in a claw. It was seeking to grapple, but the gadfly Takisian was too fast. Not fast enough, however, to avoid the blow. One claw tip caught Zabb's armor, and there was a quick white puff of escaping air. It lasted only seconds until the suit had made repairs.

Tis made a mental inventory of the weapons aboard StarRacer. She dived back into the now-dark interior of the dead ship. Switching on her lights, she groped through the corridors, down to the armory. A great wave of frozen ship material had been thrown up in front of the lockers. Tis cut it away with her laser. Opening the locker, she pulled out a contact mine and made her way back out of the ship.

Starshine and the Ly'bahr were locked in a bizarre embrace, the Ly'bahr seeking to crush and break this strange flesh-and-blood creature. Starshine had both hands on one of the creature's encircling limbs. His teeth were set in a grimace, and his face had gone beet red as he exerted every bit of wildcard-enhanced strength he possessed. The Ly'bahr's arm ripped loose from the body, and Starshine spun free. His forcefield was flickering fitfully. It was a brief escape. Another metal arm lashed out like an uncoiling whip and caught the ace by the ankle. He allowed the creature to reel him back in; then he laid a hand against the Ly'bahr's "head," and gave it a jolt of his power.

"The stomach!" Zabb screamed. "Their brains are buried deep in the internal cavities of the body!"

Tis wasn't sure if Starshine could hear. Maybe he had caught that telepathic bellow. High, and to her left, Tisianne caught a glimpse of a Takisian ship.

The cavalry, she thought. But probably too late.

Clutching the flat disc of the mine to her chest, she approached from "behind" and "below" the Ly'bahr and prayed to the ancestors that Zabb had managed to damage some of its sensors. The monster clearly wasn't in very good shape, and as much as one could tell with a cyborg, its focus appeared to be totally on the tiny figure of the ace that had dealt it such damage.

Closer, closer. The body was only three meters away. Tis cut her maneuvering jets, allowing inertia to carry her the rest of the distance. There came a flash of terror as Zabb noted her position, then a mental hiccup as he forcibly kept his shout of alarm from reaching his lips. He didn't want to alert the Ly'bahr, undoubtedly monitoring their communications.

Tis, I'll kill you!

She frenziedly explored the disc with her fingertips, finding the incised writing on one side. Just like a claymore -- "this side toward enemy."

There was no warning. Just an overwhelming wash of pain and terror that doubled her into a ball. Starshine! The mental thread that had been the ace snapped and was gone. The body of the Ly'bahr was wavering as she blinked tears. Her gloved fingertips brushed that shining body. She set the shaped charge against the side. Felt it take firm hold. Tis planted a boot against the Ly'bahr and shoved. Kicked in with her jets, backpedaling desperately. She had set the fuse for the shortest possible time.

One of the Ly'bahr's flexible limbs touched the mine. The other, which it needed to actually remove the device, had been torn away by Starshine. There was a spectacular explosion as the mine pierced the Ly'bahr's armor and ignited the air inside the shell. The Ly'bahr went tumbling end over end, away from Tisianne, propelled by the detonation.

Zabb and the surviving crew had surrounded Starshine. He was floating limply in space. The forcefield was down, there was nothing between the ace and vacuum. Tis wanted to scream at Zabb to do something! but there was nothing he could do.

Then the whorled gray walls of a ship slid up beside them. A lock cycled open, and the crew of the flagship StarRacer, towing a dying ace, shot aboard.

As soon as the outer door had closed, Tis tore off her helmet and began administering CPR to Starshine. There was a large hole where his left hip ought to have been. The leg was hanging by skin and ligaments. There wasn't much blood. The icy lick of the vacuum had acted as a cauterizing agent.

"Breathe, breathe," she murmured as she applied pressure to the unmoving chest. She was losing him. She'd seen too many people die not to know.

Denial choked her. Again she pressed her mouth over his. Something strange was happening beneath her lips. Tis drew back and watched in horror as the Starshine flesh began melting away like a high-speed film of decomposition.

She spun away and found Zabb there to catch her. Welcome arms around her, a chest against which to bury her face. Tis felt him stiffen.

"Ideal."

She looked back. The rot ended, leaving Mark Meadows sprawled on the floor of the air lock. The inner door opened, and two crewmen tumbled through carrying an emergency medical kit. The bells in their beards were ringing wildly.

Tandeh, thought Tisianne as she ripped open the kit. Thank you, Yimkin.

You are welcome. Now send your cousin up here. We've still got Network ships to massacre.

Zabb went. Tis crammed a pressure bandage into the wound. She saw the shine of intestine before it was veiled by material.

She began CPR again. Lift the neck, clear the throat, breathe, begin. Eventually a pulse beat in the throat as the wound began to weep sluggish blood.

An hour later it was over. Ilkazam and her newfound allies rendezvoused back on the Ilkazam Ship Home. Zabb came searching for Tisianne in the infirmary. There wasn't an empty bed or biogerm bubble.

Tis was checking the readouts on Mark's bubble. Naked and suspended in the nutrient gel, the human had the look of a grotesque Halloween skeleton.

"I thought he was dead," Zabb said.

"Dead meat won't grow," was Tisianne's laconic reply.

"We saw Starshine die."

"Starshine's not Mark."

"Then what the hell was he?"

"How should I know?"

"You're the virus expert."

That raised too many contradictory emotions even to address. Tis changed the subject. "What did this little victory cost us?"

"Sixty ships, and one hundred twenty-three crew, but we gave them such a walloping that those bugs will be busy for weeks building new ships."

"Then they'll try again?"

"I'm rather afraid so."

He held out his arms to her, and she accepted the comfort offered.