The Sea is Full of Stars

Null-Space, Six Days Out

Tann Nakitt was smoking his calabash in the lounge. it wasn’t something that was allowed in that area, but the little weasel-like Geldorian had been doing it regularly and nobody had registered an objection. There was a certain built-in threat the creature radiated, particularly when he thought he wasn’t going to like what you were going to say. Those beady eyes would light up as if on fire, and the multiple rows of sharp teeth behind the suddenly revealed fangs made one give pause before pressing a point.

Angel hated the smell the pipe gave off, and how it seemed to permeate everything around, but she had been trained by her sisterhood to tune out that which was personally offensive. You never knew who you might have to live and work around, or where.

She did not, however, feel particularly threatened by the Geldorian. Much of that spectacular facial stuff was for show, to avoid fights, since Geldorians were, after all, rather soft and vulnerable. Also, she’d managed to use the ship’s references to determine exactly how such a creature attacked if provoked, and was pretty sure she could handle him. The real threat was in the venom; if it got into the bloodstream it would knock most warm-blooded oxygen breathers cold; Terrans and a few other races had a worse reaction—they’d regain consciousness and agreeably do whatever a Geldorian asked them to do. The Geldorian venom had a knack for adapting to whatever form it was inside of, at least until the host rejected it. So she knew to hold one by the neck and not let it bite.

But she didn’t know if she should handle him; after all this time, most of the passengers were easy to categorize, but not this one. He didn’t seem anxious to socialize with anybody, and he did not volunteer information.

She decided he couldn’t be placed on the shelf any longer. Time was running out, and moves would be made by one side or the other.

Nakitt saw her coming right to him, and in his usual knee-jerk, pissed-off reaction, his eyes lit up and his teeth came out while he held his pipe in his hand. Almost immediately, though, he turned the display off, sensing that this strange, hairless Terran female felt no fear of him at all. That bothered Tann Nakitt; he was used to making everybody else nervous. It was more than a defensive posture—it was his hobby.

“We have to talk,” Angel said firmly, standing and facing him as he lounged on an ottoman.

Tann Nakitt took a drag and blew thick yellow smoke up and toward her face. “No we don’t,” he responded.

She looked around. There was nobody in the immediate area, certainly nobody paying attention to them or within conspicuous earshot. “You are wrong. I believe that if we do not have a talk, then there is almost no way you can survive the next full day.”

The needle-nosed snout came up, but he didn’t betray any emotion. “Are you threatening me?”

“Yes.”

He took another drag on the pipe, sensing that the smoke irritated her. “I thought you were some kind of priestess or something. I didn’t think your type fought battles. They just exhorted the gods and spirits to stir up other folks to go off and fight holy wars.”

The insult had the opposite effect of what he’d intended. She seemed more amused than upset by it.

“It is true that I could not harm a living thing by direct action,” she agreed, “but if there is a threat to life or the safety of others or my well-being, I am capable of doing whatever is necessary. I say what I say because you fit into one of three categories. You may be ignorant of what will happen, in which case the other side will have you marked for death. You may be on their side, in which case you will trigger my defenses. Or you might be a potential ally, in which case the situation is the same as the first—you are marked for death by the others.”

“And your object in saying this to me?”

“I want to know which category you are in. Since you neither seem surprised or alarmed by my description, I assume that you at least know what is building.”

“I have an idea of it, but I don’t think I’m in any of those categories. I am traveling on my own business, and I am known to some on what you call ‘the other side.’ I’m not involved in their business, but I suspect I can sidestep things and get where I want to go one way or another.”

Without warning, the Geldorian lunged at her with a movement so fast that it was unthinkable. It was, therefore, a totally bewildered Tann Nakitt who missed Angel’s arm and other parts entirely and went tumbling onto the floor. Even so, he was up in a flash, eyes blazing. But he suddenly froze. She was standing about a meter in front of him, holding his pipe.

“Filthy thing,” she commented. “Do all your people smoke these?”

He lunged again, this time making every allowance for her possible response. Only she wasn’t where she had to be; she was a step or two over. Again he fell on his face and rebounded, only this time he was breathing hard and felt a sore jaw. That—thing—had caused him to bite himself!

“This is impossible,” he said, putting a small hand to his jaw and trying to massage it. “No one moves that fast. How long did you spend on Geldor to know us so well?”

“You are the first Geldorian I have ever seen or met,” she told him. She tossed the pipe in the air in his general direction. Alarmed, he lunged for it, catching it just before it could hit the deck and perhaps break.

“What do you want from me?” he asked her sullenly.

“I cannot permit you to stand aside if needed. You might well join in, and certainly I am no match for several people acting at once. The choice to kill in self-defense would be automatic. Is that a narcotic in there?”

Tann Nakitt had been around and seen and interacted with many strange creatures, but this seemingly ordinary Terran female was the strangest person of any kind he could recall ever meeting. “What’s the difference what I told you?” he asked her seriously. “You would have no way of knowing if I was truthful or lied.”

“You must believe me when I say that I would know. Shall we both sit and relax? Or does that jaw need medical attention?”

“I’ll be all right,” he grumbled, getting back up onto the ottoman. She took a padded chair near him. “You are a telepath then? Is that how you do it?”

She laughed. “If I could read minds I wouldn’t have to ask questions, would I? Let us just talk some more. You would not understand how I did that, or would know truth from lie, if I were willing to tell you, and I assure you I am not. Let’s just talk. I am not in government or law enforcement, and whatever we say here is between us two alone. Even your venom could not get me to betray a private confidence.”

He thought a moment, trying to decide which way to jump on the matter, then looked around, saw nobody lounging around or eavesdropping, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “All right. Yes, this is a narcotic, but only to my kind. It is a blend of chemically treated plants that not only produce a general feeling of contentment and well-being, but also heighten concentration and the potency of my venoms. By varying the formula, I can make the venom work as I wish on other races as I could on my native world. After all, we’ve had a long time to experiment and test. This, as you probably guessed, would put any of your kind in a trance inside of thirty seconds. Of course, it would simply render other races unconscious or perhaps kill them, unless I alter the blend and give it time to displace the old formula in my body. The threats here are basically Terran in nature; the Rithians are in on it, but this bunch are fixers—they don’t have the nerve to do their own fighting.”

“Fixers?”

“Arrangers of things, mostly illegal, but they’re not above stooping to legitimate stuff, too, if it pays. You want a work of art? They’ll try and buy it, and, if that fails, they’ll find somebody to steal it. Want to buy a destroyer? They’ll get one for a price. Middlemen. They make a ton of money doing that kind of thing.”

“I see. And this is one side of the negotiation, in this area? The other side of the transaction is in the water breather sections?”

“You do understand it. Yes. Sometime tomorrow we were supposed to glide to a stop, going under minimum power requirements and thus ejecting back into normal space. This would cause a distress beam, but in the region where we’d come out there’s nothing much unless you expect us to be there. The Ha’jiz family meets the rescuers, gets what it wants, tells the newcomers where to find whatever they are paying for in the modules ahead, and that’s it. Then the Rithians give whatever they get from the so-called rescue ship to King Wallinchky, and they all get into lifeboats with preprogrammed navigation modules, leaving us here, and that’s that. The odds are they’ll blow us up as they leave.”

“ ‘King’ Wallinchky? What’s he the ruler of?”

“It is a nickname. The kind you get when you’re about as high up in the rackets as you can get. It’s a sign of real respect, and, in a sense, an acknowledgment of how much power he has over even life and death.”

She did not understand it, that people would commit this kind of murder and worse for mere possessions. She doubted that she would ever understand it. Still, she understood the mechanics and the implications.

“And he’s not afraid that this phony rescue ship won’t simply blow all of us up once it gets what it wants?”

“Not even this gang would double-cross on that scale. Nobody would ever deal with them again. It may sound odd, but the most important thing when you reach the upper levels of criminal activity is honor. Betray that, and you are worse than dead and unable to ever use the illegal underground. That makes you vulnerable, and ultimately visible, to the Realm. No, Madam Kobe, that’s not smart, and these people are smart. Besides, there’s a limited market for the Jewels of the Pleiades. You can’t ever wear them or display them. They are for an incredibly wealthy private collector who wants them all to himself. The Kharkovs are here only to clean and possibly reset some, which indicates a bit of damage. After all, the jewels were last seen in the midst of an explosion that essentially vaporized an entire city. You don’t cut these kind of gems.”

She had never heard of these legendary jewels, but he obviously thought everybody had. “And Wallinchky is the collector? What does he have to pay in return?”

“I’m not sure. A weapon of some sort. A top secret one. One the Realm probably doesn’t even know is gone.”

“The Rithians are that good, huh? So how did these Jewels of the Pleiades get into the hands of the buyers of this weapon? Do you know?”

The Geldorian gave a soft chuckle. “Well, their leader blew up the city about a century and a half ago. That’s how long they’ve been missing.”

She was almost sorry he’d said that, even though she suspected it herself. They were being monitored by the ship’s master computer, of course, and their conversation dampened to others, who would hear only unintelligible murmurs unless they came right up close. But Jeremiah Kincaid would have heard it. If not now, he’d certainly review it later. And he’d know that his ancient enemy was indeed at the center of all this.

“And you think that they’ll just give you a ride out?”

He shrugged. “They say so. The Rithians were also involved in getting me what I wanted, so they have no reason not to vouch for me along the line, or if need be, take me in theirs. What I carry is information that my people need but which is of no value to others. My people know I have it. I doubt if the Rithians want to get them angry.”

“Who are the bodyguards aboard? Do you know?” she asked him.

“Some. Maybe all. I don’t know. The Mallegestors are certainly hired muscle. Pretty intimidating muscle, too, I’d say. All they need to do is sit on you. And you have to get through two hundred centimeters of hide before they notice enough to say ‘Ouch.’ Beyond them, I’d guess the two females.”

“Those two? But they’re no more than pet prostitutes!”

“True, but some people train their pets to guard their homes and families. He’s incredibly rich and powerful and he’s above the law. The King has every means of conditioning—biochemistry, virtual reality conditioning, you name it. If you look close at them you’ll see that they are in superb physical condition, and I don’t mean just for sexual favors. They probably were empty-headed runaways from backwater planets, ignorant and without any sense of themselves when he or his people picked them. But I’ve seen that before, in both sexes, not only among your people but other races as well. He probably has a command, possibly verbal or gesture. Give that, and the conditioning takes over and they’ll become fearless and vicious protectors. I know a bit about conditioning people myself. I can only do it for a short period and only with the most elementary basics. Imagine what the wonders of science can do in his hands. The perfect bodyguards.”

She didn’t like that idea at all. There would be no way to read such a person’s actions. Still, if they were what he said they were, they could be dealt with.

“We’re not stopping now, though,” she said. “Surely everybody knows that. Kincaid is taking us straight through using grain cargo as fuel. What do you think they’re going to do about it?”

“Your assessment of what Kincaid will do tells me you have a lot to learn,” the Geldorian responded.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m referring to whether Kincaid will stop the ship for our supposed rescuers. They’ve had a lot of time to factor in Captain Jeremiah Wong Kincaid.”

“I’ve gotten to know him pretty well over the past few days,” she told him. “I trust him.”

Tann Nakitt stared at her. “You have no idea. I doubt if I have any idea. The hatred in that man is all there is beneath the surface.”

“You are wrong. There’s a real person deep inside there. I’ve seen him.”

“You have seen the pragmatic Captain, but it sits atop the hate, like a thin film of scum atop a pond. The hate is the pond, and he does not control it. It’s irrational, single-minded, obsessive. If Kincaid wanted to save us from the bad guys, he could do it. He’s got full control back, he knows the score, and we’re pretty helpless in fighting him. You have no idea what absolute control a ship’s master has if the computer’s neural net recognizes him as master. That was why they had to deal with the original captain. You think Kincaid was here by accident? Who knows how he learned of this plot, but he knew it out of the gate. What little he didn’t know he filled in. Your gods didn’t put him here to save us and fight sin. His demons put him here to get to his sole object of hatred. Wallinchky could have called this off at any time, too. He hasn’t. That’s because he knows that Kincaid will stop. He’s counting on it.”

“I can’t believe I was fooled by him, but just in case, you and I will need to speak again.”

The Geldorian gave a very Terran shrug. “I’m hardly going anywhere, am I?” He took another drag on his pipe. “You sure aren’t telepathic, are you? At least with your own kind. You may be able to tell lies from someone who is merely deceitful by nature, but you are helpless against psychopaths.”

Captain Kincaid was waiting for her in the big command chair on the bridge. Since she was the only one who could come up there, all others being blocked by the computer from access, he didn’t even bother to turn around when she entered. Still, he said, conversationally, “That was some kind of move you made against the Geldorian. You really can take care of yourself! I had to put the recording on the slowest tolerable speed to see you move! I’m impressed!”

She didn’t respond to his compliment, nor was she in the mood for flattery. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Is it true? Are you going to stop for them?”

He paused a moment, then said, “Of course. They hope I will, anyway.”

“But—why? Is Tann Nakitt right? Are you insane?”

“Possibly,” he admitted, as cheerfully as if he’d commented on a good wine. “Most think that I am.”

She felt real anger against him for the first time. “Why? Why will you do what they want? Will it please you if they go through all this and then this ship gets blown up with all remaining aboard so you can go chase your demon Emperor?”

He swiveled the command chair around slowly and faced her. “I think I can prevent that. I hope so. If I’m wrong, a few unhappy bystanders will die and I will add more innocent blood to my record. I can guarantee that Wallinchky’s lifeboat won’t respond to his orders, or those of anyone we know connected with him. Doesn’t matter which lifeboat he picks, either. That means he either helps this ship get out of here or he goes with the rest. He’s a very smart man who’s lived a long time, and, as your friend says, it would be very bad for future business if he got blown away on this operation.”

“Then—why?”

“If we go right on by, we may be met at the next destination by more tugs with thugs. Wallinchky walks away and either the Rithians will get their cargo back before Customs, to try it again on another trip, or it’ll all blow up as soon as they’re off. Either way we gain nothing. We change the names and faces of those who will die, and we delay them a couple of weeks.”

“If they blow it, whatever it is, up, that’ll delay them longer than that.”

“Not much. They have the prototype, yes, so it would be inconvenient to lose it, but they have the entire plans and specifications and even the operator’s manual, as it were, and that is far more valuable. It simply means that the customer will have to arrange to have one built on the black market out on the frontier where it won’t be noticed until it’s too late. Either way, the first solid lead pointing directly to Josich Hadun’s hiding place in more than a dozen years will have been squandered. How many more will he kill before that chance comes again?”

She didn’t like this at all. “I see no moral choice but to save the innocents here and try again. And what of the innocents in the water-breathing modules? I cannot get to them.”

“I don’t think there are many innocents there, but if they are, they’re dead no matter what we do. We might as well make their deaths mean something.”

That was not a proper answer, she thought, but she was beginning to see how useless reason was with him now. Still, she had to give it one last try.

“You have no guarantee that this will lead you to your enemy, but there is a great probability that some will die,” she argued.

“You can’t stop it. Tomorrow we will stop, just where that Ghoma ship expects us to be. The distress signal will be sent. Of course, we won’t really be out of fuel or in distress, but it will be pretty convincing. They will come. During that fallow time, you and others you trust must get all those not involved in this to lifeboats and get the boats away. They are preprogrammed. The Ghomas likely won’t detect you, but if you use the cryogenic settings, you’ll reach a Junction or Starbase or a known hospitable Realm world in due time. Do it as quickly and quietly as you can. The computers will help you.”

“And you?”

“They need a tug to get the module out. I’ve found it and I now control it. Where that ship and that module goes, I will go as well. Unless they have their own freighter, they won’t be going all that far with a module that size. In fact, I already suspect where he is. I just have to get there.”

“And not be killed.”

He smiled grimly. “I can’t be killed. I’m already dead.”

It didn’t seem there was any way to talk him out of it. The only choice she could see, morally and otherwise, was to count on him for cover and get out those who had to go. If she understood any of this complicated mess or could argue well with the computer, she would have chosen to disable Kincaid and just arrange not to stop. Being unable to do any of that, she knew she would have to do it his way.

And she would have to do it fast. The ever-present countdown clocks said there were only hours left to go.

Angel didn’t use those hours idly, nor waste them in sleep or recrimination. She had a Situation, as her trainers would have called it, and it demanded that choices be made and stuck to.

One by one she contacted the cabins of those she’d determined were just ordinary passengers. As crisply and professionally as possible she explained the basics of the situation, and that their only chance was the lifeboats, which Kincaid could protect and launch remotely. Some refused to believe her. Some simply were too scared or convinced that this somehow didn’t apply to them and would blow over if they ignored it. She didn’t have much of a choice with the latter. They were told they would get one chance, and if they did not take it, they were on their own.

In each case, once told, the life module’s computer isolated them from the lounge and public areas. They could get deliveries to their rooms, but that was all. They would have to watch their cabin clocks; when instructed, they were to proceed, following the lifeboat signs, and board.

She was particularly gratified by the few who offered to stay and fight it out with Kincaid, but she rejected that course. This wasn’t their battle, and the opposition was far too powerful. In this case, dying just wasn’t a particularly productive strategy, and even if you could take some of the nasty ones with you, well, what was the long-term point that was worth lives?

Ari Martinez and Ming Dawn Palavri were two she felt confident she could place in charge of individual lifeboats. She planned on taking the third out herself. Tann Nakitt was still something of a question mark, but she allowed him to make his own decision, although he was, of course, monitored to ensure that he tipped off none of the bad guys.

Not that they needed to be tipped off. Jules Wallinchky sent the Rithians and Mallegestors on an all-out search to find out where the hell everybody had gone. When they determined that almost everybody had remained in their cabins for the last day and night, Wallinchky knew something was up. When he determined that the lifeboats would not respond to the general emergency access panels, he had the plot pretty well figured out.

“What do you want to do?” Teynal asked him. “If we can’t get off, we will have to go with them. Inconvenient, and they are water breathers.”

Wallinchky seemed singularly unworried. “We’ll take care of it. You know I never go into a place unless I have good protection and multiple exits. They can shut off corridor access to us when they need to, so I say let ’em go. If they can’t be picked off, so be it.” He did, however, palm and pass several pieces of paper between his people and himself, actions that could be observed by the monitors but not read by them. In all cases, they ate the messages, so there would be no reconstruction. Clearly he wasn’t going to give away his game plan to Jeremiah Kincaid.

Sealed off on the bridge with his monitors, Kincaid was frustrated by this most primitive of devices, nor could he be certain from that vantage point what conversations of theirs were for real and which ones were for his benefit.

It was simply a matter of waiting that eternity until the clock ticked down and they were ejected from null-space back into the normal universe. In the meanwhile he could only try to anticipate everything and wonder what he’d missed.

When the clocks read seven days, twenty hours, fifty-one minutes, no seconds, there was a shudder that shook the entire ship, and everyone once more had that feeling of falling into a deep, bottomless pit. Alarms went off then, and the ship’s “voice” said, “Attention! Attention! We have experienced an emergency, and to avoid loss of life and minimize discomfort we have been forced to reenter normal space short of our destination. Please remain calm. For your safety, all passengers are directed toward the lifeboats designated for their immediate sections. Do not be alarmed. It is a routine procedure. In the event of a life-threatening situation, the lifeboats can take you without harm to safety. This will probably not be necessary, but to ensure that everyone is where they should be, please follow the flashing lines in the direction they indicate to your lifeboats now.”

In the lounge, Wallinchky nodded to the Rithians and whispered something in the ears of each of his beautiful companions. All of them immediately set off into the corridors, while the Mallegestors took up protective station with Wallinchky in the lounge.

Kincaid couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, but he spoke into the two-way in his environment suit on a channel only he knew was operational. “Execute final option, priority code Ahab. Good luck, City of Modar. You are on your own.”

“We will do our best, Captain,” came the response from the control panel. “Good luck.”

Jeremiah Kincaid had to stifle a chuckle at that, even at this most tense of moments. A computer had just wished him good luck. He wasn’t sure he liked discovering that computers believed in luck.

The area they were in represented a huge amount of space, and he had only an approximation of where the other ship would emerge. Even a few seconds here or there could mean tens of thousands of kilometers; minutes might turn into millions.

He’d turned off the ship’s local distress calls, but the other ship would have something, probably from the water sections.

Almost as if on cue with the thought, his sensors picked it up, the scanners locking in on the frequencies. There was no way to break their code at this point, of course, but he noted with some approval that the ship seemed to be having some success in either jamming or dampening their signals. The more time the better.

Back on board, Angel saw that the loading of the lifeboats was going pretty well. A few didn’t come, but most did, particularly that family Angel had worried so much about. The computer had instructions to launch as soon as the lifeboats were filled, and at least one, with Ari in command, Angel hoped, had already left. She went down to the second one to check on it and saw Ming at the entrance but making no move to board.

“Why aren’t you aboard? You must leave!” Angel cried urgently to the other woman. “I will go back and catch any stragglers.”

Ming shook her head. “Sorry, can’t do it. I wanted one last check to see if anybody else was coming, then I’m sealing it up.”

“But—why?”

“Because I’m a kind of a cop, that’s why, and because my job is to prevent the transfer of that device even if I have to blow it up.” She turned and stuck her head in the door. “Everybody just follow the instructions of the holographic boatswain and you will be fine. Good luck!”

Angel almost moved to put a martial-arts-style kick on Ming’s rear that would have propelled her into the lifeboat, but for some reason she held back. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it.

The hatch swung shut, there was a loud hissing sound, then vibration as the lifeboat detached from its moorings and fully powered up, the corridors shaking as well, and then the lifeboat was gone.

Angel looked at Ming and saw that she had a full-power laser pistol stuck in her belt, which she now removed and checked. “How—How did you even get that on board?” Angel asked her.

“They set it up to smuggle their weapons aboard, so it wasn’t that hard to use the same system,” Ming replied. “Now, let’s check on the third boat and any missing passengers.”

“You should get on the third boat!” Angel pleaded with her. “This is suicide!”

“Maybe, but I know what this sucker is. You don’t. And don’t ask what it is, either. Just trust me that it’s worth a lot more lives than Kincaid’s and mine to keep it out of anybody’s hands, particularly Hadun’s.”

They were moving at a fast walk along the corridor, circling to the other set of boats. As they came to each cabin door, it unlocked and slid away into the bulkhead. They could then check and see if anybody was still in any of them. So far, they’d found a couple, and those had both decided to exit with them. Now, however, they were approaching Boat Station Three.

This was the most dangerous of the positions; the two lifeboats on the side they’d just left were easily accessed by most of the passengers they wanted to reach, and could be blocked off to Wallinchky’s crowd, most of whom had cabins on the far side, basically flanking Wallinchky’s super-luxury suite. The lifeboat nearest that cabin suite at Boat Station Four now had its power off; it could not be turned back on without a complex series of passwords or direct authority of the City of Modar’s computer net.

The other one, however, was kind of a border location. Ari’s cabin was on the wrong side, as was Tann Nakitt’s. Hopefully they were both inside now so that the access could be sealed off, but if not, there could be trouble.

Ari was standing in the lifeboat, frowning, as he watched them approach. His face showed some surprise when he saw Ming with Angel, but he was all business, getting the two stragglers in and settled. Then he came up, out of the lifeboat, and spied Ming’s pistol. “What’s that for, doll?”

“Long story. Anybody missing?”

“No, we’re as good as we’re gonna get. Come on!”

Angel reached the hatch, looked in, then turned and frowned. “Where’s Tann Nakitt?”

“Long story,” he responded, bringing up his own pistol and firing on Angel. Her body was bathed in a sudden glow and then she collapsed, unconscious, to the deck.

The action was so automatic it caught Ming by surprise, but she brought her pistol around on her old friend immediately. That was the problem—he was an old friend, and onetime lover. You don’t pull the trigger that fast on somebody like him when your pistol is set to kill.

That allowed two stun blasts from the Wallinchky women behind her to strike and knock her instantly as out-to-the-world as Angel.

Ari looked down at them. “Take them to the lounge. Any barriers, start shooting up the electrical plates. Move!”

He leaned into the now terrified lifeboat and said, “This does not concern you. I’m closing and you will launch as per normal. Just follow the boatswain’s instructions. Maybe some of us will live through this to explain it all to you. Go with God!” He pulled back, sealed the hatch, and heard and felt the lifeboat detach and shoot away.

He hoped they would make it. They knew virtually nothing about this, and interrogation wouldn’t bring much more in the way of details useful to the authorities. Creatures like this Hadun bastard never cared how many innocents they killed, but he didn’t believe in gratuitous violence. He was particularly sorry about Ming. He’d wanted her to take her lifeboat and be well away when she had the chance. It was only because she showed up here, and with a pistol, that she made her fate inevitable.

The whole module suddenly lurched, throwing him momentarily off balance, and the lighting went on and off erratically for a half minute or so while the cabin doors eerily slid open and closed, open and closed. Then it was over, at least for the moment.

Ari made his way down a spoke corridor to the center lounge. The rest of them were already there, waiting for him.

“What the hell was that?” he grumbled.

Jules Wallinchky was as unflappable as ever. “Don’t let it get to you. We managed to tap in and get some interference going. I don’t think we can rehijack the module computer, but we tapped it enough to remove all those nasty force fields.”

“We have Boat Four on its own power,” one of the Rithians announced, returning just in back of Ari. “Boats Five and Six were never blocked, and our soggy friends are away from the ship and on station. Hard to tell if everybody else is in the other boats and heading out, but it looks like the bulk of the passengers will make planetfall sooner or later.”

“As will we, my friends,” Jules Wallinchky assured them, one of his girls lighting a big, fat cigar for him.

“What do you want me for?” Tann Nakitt grumbled. “I can’t hardly go to the cops, and I don’t give a damn about your deals. Ask the Rithians.” He was now bound hand and foot in what a Terran rancher might call a hog tie. He wanted to bite somebody, but the only one in range was one of the huge Mallegestors, and he’d just break his teeth on it.

Wallinchky blew smoke in the Geldorian’s face, causing the little creature to cough, giving the victim what he’d so recently been fond of handing out. “I know all about your little expedition, and the poison formulas for all sixty-eight races of the Realm that you carry in that memory bubble implanted in your neck. I also know you’d sell out your entire planet if you thought it would get you out of something.” His voice had risen menacingly, and was now filled with rage. “But what I know most is that you knew about all this plotting and planning against me and you did nothing! You said nothing! At least, not to me. To her, to this—this— nun you tell the whole deal! For that I’ll have your fangs and all your countless other teeth extracted one by one and put in a sack with your fingers and toes and other extraneous parts!”

“I didn’t betray you, you bastard!” the Geldorian snapped back, too angry to be scared. “I had no interest in your doings and just wanted to be allowed to continue no matter who won! And I sure hadn’t heard any good offers from you!”

Wallinchky rose, as if he would go over and strike the smaller creature, but then he sat back down and seemed to regain control.

“You hadn’t heard anything from me because I hadn’t decided about you, Geldorian,” the crime king told him in his usual calm, deliberate mode. “Now I have. Don’t worry, though. I have an honorable streak in me. Yes, I do. I might send your people that bubble anyway. Maybe I’ll even send them your whole head. I could use a few favors in that quarter.”

Tann Nakitt said nothing, not even demonstrating that his incredible limberness extended to his arms and wrists and that he could already slip in and out of his bonds at will. There would be time to either try and escape or at least gain revenge; right now it didn’t seem there was anywhere to run, so he decided it would be best to allow them to carry him someplace worth escaping from.

“I can understand me, but why her?” the Geldorian asked, trying not to provoke the big man any further. And if Nakitt could get the subject off the fate of certain Geldorians, it would make the next waiting period a bit more tolerable and probably less painful.

It wasn’t as if any of them could do much until the rescue party arrived, so Jules Wallinchky didn’t mind being the center of it all.

“She’s the Captain’s friend and known to the ship’s computer net,” the crime boss explained. “Kincaid can undock the tow from us and then blow us to bits, you know. That’s why we tried to ensure that nobody would be up there when we stopped. He’s perfectly capable of doing that, and even more so now that the innocent passengers are gone.” He raised his voice and looked toward the ceiling, more as a dramatic gesture than because anything was really there. “But not all the innocents are away, are they, Captain? And while you might gladly do any of us in, even her, if it meant getting closer to your enemy, we aren’t your enemy, are we, Captain? What do we care about Hadun? So you go at him, Captain, but leave us alone. I understand your viewpoint even though almost nobody else does. You’re no murderer— you’re an executioner. That’s okay with me. Go at them, Captain. But remember her and leave all of us out.”

There wasn’t any response. Wallinchky didn’t expect one. Still, he knew he’d made his point.

The crime king looked back down at the still unconscious Angel on the deck, her hands and feet tied behind her and together in much the same manner as Tann Nakitt. “Besides,” he added in a lower, menacing tone, “I saw how she moved and could fight. Not at all the Sister Helpless she appeared at the start of this trip. And she’s got a pretty good body there. Erase the memories, reinforce the skills, and she might be a nice addition to my personal staff. As for the lady cop, I’m positive she’ll change sides.” Ming, too, was trussed up like Angel and still out cold.

A tone sounded from a small communicator on Wallinchky’s belt. He unclipped it and said into it, “Yes?”

“We have a signal response on the proper frequency with valid codes,” a strange, distant, flat voice told him.

“Very well. I’m moving everybody into Boat Four now. Cover us in case there are any surprises.”

“Will do.”

He reclipped the communicator and looked at the large party that had been sitting around. Each of the two Mallegestors picked up a Terran prisoner in one hand, carrying them as if they were no more than a small bag of snacks. One of them picked up Tann Nakitt with the other.

“Hey! Watch it, jumbo!” the Geldorian snapped. “I bruise easy!”

The Mallegestor gave a loud snort which could have been a kind of laughter.

Behind them, first the Kharkovs, then the Rithians, followed, and finally came Wallinchky and his pair of bodyguard mistresses.

Ari Martinez was already in the lifeboat, and he had the forward control panel disassembled and a set of small cubes with internal flashing light points set into the boat’s electronics.

The four Rithians took the rear seats, two on each side, then the Mallegestors eased into adjusted seats that could hold them, one on each side, with Nakitt in the port empty seat, hemmed in, and nobody in the starboard empty. Next, Wallinchky sat in front of the Mallegestor on the starboard side, and his two pretty companions took the seats on port and starboard side in front of the crime boss. The two Terran prisoners were quite literally hung from the two other seats next to the bodyguards, the seats in front of them providing a kind of stake through the bound hands and feet so that they were held against the seat backs, looking aft. The front of those seats, the empty ones on each side, were for the drawn and frightened-looking Kharkovs. Ari Martinez had the jump seat, next to the jury-rigged console and facing aft himself, although more comfortably.

He got up, closed and sealed the hatch manually, then took his seat again, reaching down and picking up a tablet the size of a large notebook. He pressed some areas on it, and the lifeboat’s forward screen came to life, showing the boat moving off from the larger vessel and the connector pulling off and remaining there, half extended, as if waving goodbye.

“Any trouble in getting Kincaid’s stuff out of the guts of this thing?” Wallinchky asked him.

“No, not really. It was pretty basic, but it couldn’t be done until after it was activated. I’m not sure it occurred to him that no power in the boat also meant no power to his monitors.”

Wallinchky chuckled. “His mind was on other things.” He turned as he heard a moan from his left, just forward. “Ah! The sleeping beauties are coming around!”

It had felt to Angel as if she were falling down a long, dark tunnel at breakneck speed, only occasional flashes of light here and there and terrible distorted sounds breaking the otherwise monotonous free fall. Now the noise increased, became an increasingly louder rushing noise, like white or pink noise gradually increasing in volume to nearly unbearable levels. Then she came to, but wished she hadn’t, as every muscle in her body seemed to protest in throbbing or sharp pains, and there was tremendous disorientation. Her arms and legs were in particular pain, and she tried to move them but found that she could not.

Angel opened her eyes, but they wouldn’t focus and showed multiple whirling visions of a lot of people she didn’t want to see very much. She shut her eyes, tried to slow down the room or wherever it was, and began a series of calming and breathing exercises that seemed to help somewhat.

Next was tuning out the pain, or as much of it as she could. Then she brought her head back up and opened her eyes to an almost steady scene, although she still had blurry double vision.

“What? Who?” she managed, her voice sounding like the croak of the walking dead even to her ears.

“Welcome back!” Wallinchky said with smug cheerfulness. “I see your lovely friend is also coming around. It’s no use trying to struggle against the bonds. We know how to tie them right, and they’ll just tighten and get worse. If you struggle, it’ll cut off your circulation and you might lose some limbs, which may not be worth regenerating in a med-tank. That depends on how much trouble you are. Oh— terribly sorry! I forgot. I am Jules Wallinchky, the Realm’s greatest collector.”

“Collector?” Angel managed. “Of what?”

“Why, of everything, of course. Art, wealth, knowledge, people, services, political power, great inventions—you name it, I got it. Some folks in the past went out to conquer their world or their system or even the entire Realm. They all failed, in the end. Even Alexander the Great died a mere youth, mostly because he felt there were no new worlds worth conquering. Fortunately, our physical and personal universe is infinite, so for me conquest has never stopped being a source of fun and satisfaction, maybe because, unlike this Emperor Hadun, I have no desire to conquer the universe itself. Someone else can do that. 1 don’t conquer it, I acquire it. Or anything within it that I want. I have whole planets devoted just to storing and displaying my most private acquisitions.”

“Wallinchky, you bastard,” Ming managed in a voice that sounded as bad as Angel’s. “What are you going to do with us? Why didn’t your hired hand just kill us and be done with it?”

The crime king chuckled. “Weren’t you listening, my dear? I have no desire to kill two such attractive and capable young women. I’ve simply acquired you, you see. I’ll be taking you both home with me. There you will be— prepared—and properly set up to join my collection, just as the Kharkovs will be polishing and repairing the settings on my most precious gems.”

“I’ll see you in Hell first!” Ming snapped.

“Well, you’ll still be mine even if we go that route, but I doubt we will,” he responded. “That soreness and taste of blood in your mouth is from where we removed the poison while you were out. Ivan Kharkov is a wizard with all sorts of little things like that. And we won’t trigger your implanted death command. Far from it. I don’t want to ask you anything at all, so there won’t be any hot button to push. In fact, I think we’ll simply erase and replace. Probably for the both of you. It’s easier that way. Knowledge is only important if it’s useful, and I suspect that neither of you know anything I don’t.” Wallinchky grinned. “And it’s not your personalities that I find attractive.”

“God will smite you for this abomination!” Angel spat.

“I doubt it, but by all means pray silently for it to happen. I suspect you’ll find out what I did long ago as a child—that God answers every prayer, but the answer is almost always no.”

“Can’t you at least let us sit in seats and get circulation back?” Ming pleaded with him. “This is very painful.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to keep you in pain—I really don’t— but one of you is a trained undercover policewoman, and I’ve seen the other outmaneuver our Geldorian friend with some sort of impressive martial arts. Unless you’re under sedation or isolation from me, I don’t think I can afford to have either of you loose.”

“Ship coming in!” Ari announced. “Pazir class. A minor warship, but it’s got enough power to catch us and enough to tow a mod at least two light-years given a fuel hookup.”

Wallinchky frowned. “Our Captain won’t like that. Pazir class aren’t adapted to breathers.”

“I doubt if he expects the Emperor to be aboard or anywhere near here,” Martinez responded. “He’ll try and chase or get aboard.”

“A good point. Are we well away from the ship? I don’t know what they have in mind, but it would be nice to be on their side of their guns.”

“I can’t quite do that,” Martinez said, “but I don’t think we’re close enough to get harmed. I’m station-keeping with the two water lifeboats and they seem satisfied.”

A ship entering from null-space was an eerie sight; there was no bright flash, no spectacular opening in space-time, at least not that anyone could see. It was just as if a ship emerged from nothing, or from a narrow slit that nothing could detect. It was unlike going into null-space, where there was a substantial energy flow and discharge.

The warship looked like nothing so much as three large gunmetal-gray balls one after the other, with the center section ringed by smaller balls of the same type. Although huge when measured against the lifeboats, it was minuscule when contrasted to the massive City of Modar, whose engine and bridge section alone was a good forty times the warship’s size.

The small balls ringing the center section suddenly flared up with a blaze of yellow light that quickly went to white, resembling nothing so much as searchlights going out into space from the ship. As suddenly, the beams converged, and at the point of convergence well ahead of the warship a brilliant thin white beam so bright it overloaded the lifeboat cameras shot out and struck the City of Modar at and just forward of the bridge. A huge section of it vaporized; the interior, which had been under pressure, blew out, scattering debris, and the transparent tunnel and catwalk linking it to the passenger module was sliced off and twisted away from the blast.

The beam winked off, then quickly back on again, this time coming down on the hapless freighter like a knife through soft bread, slicing through the docking mechanism and connectors, literally severing the engine and bridge module, and the main computer, from the tow.

“I’m sorry you can’t see this,” Jules Wallinchky told his prisoners, fascinated by the sight. “It’s pretty impressive.”

The colors on the small balls now changed from white back to yellow, and then to a bright orange, converging again about a quarter of the distance to the now adrift but still station-keeping power plant of the big ship. A series of bright burning fireballs of the same bright orange emerged from the convergence, struck the City of Modar, exploded there, and literally pushed it away and on a different trajectory than the rest of the long train of modules. It got, perhaps, a kilometer away, and then exploded in a spectacular silent fireball.

“Wow! Now that was a good show!” Wallinchky enthused. He turned to the back. “Teynal? It’s your turn to take over negotiations here.”

“Why do they have to negotiate?” Ming asked, almost taunting him, even though speaking hurt her parched throat. “They have the train and maybe two weeks minimum lead time. They could just blow us away and take everything.”

The serpentine Rithian leader came forward and took the portable communicator from Jules Wallinchky. “Not exactly,” he hissed. “Even if they are thinking along those lines, now is the time to disabuse them of that.”

With that, the Rithian spoke into the communicator. It was in a local Rithian dialect and in code; translator modules couldn’t handle it, and all they heard were the deep, inhuman sounds the creature actually uttered.

There was a sudden flare at the connector between the now exposed passenger module and the next mod up the train. Small jets automatically fired, moving it away from the others, whereupon it exploded spectacularly on its own.

“Goodness me! I hope the Captain wasn’t in either of those units,” Jules Wallinchky said in a sarcastic tone that implied exactly the opposite sentiment. “I don’t underestimate him, though. I just wonder what his plan really is, out of plain curiosity.”

“You blew up the passenger mod? Why?” Angel asked him.

“It’s not like anybody who counted was left on it. I suspect it was evacuated fully,” Wallinchky replied. “And now they know we can blow up what they want, just as they can blow us up. It makes a wonderful basis for trust and mutual exchange. The Ha’jiz are the very best at their job.”

“Signal coming in!” Ari told him.

Teynal’s cobralike head bobbed in satisfaction. “Put it on speaker. I will use this for responses.”

A voice came through the lifeboat’s public address unit, sounding a bit tinny but otherwise okay. “You’ve made your point,” it said in a high, reedy tone that gave no clue as to the race of the speaker. “So how do we make the exchange?”

“I assume you wish the entire module?” the Rithian asked him. “It certainly will be easier to move that way.”

“Yes, that is satisfactory. Any problems?”

If Rithians laughed, Teynal would have. “Some. You should know that Jeremiah Wong Kincaid was aboard and that he stumbled over our plans.”

There was a long pause, then, “Kincaid! Oh, they will love that! You dealt with him?”

“Probably not. My best guess is that he is still here, in this area, not on one of the lifeboats, but that he intends to somehow board you and have you take him to your leader, as it were.”

“Any idea where he might be hiding?” the suddenly worried-sounding voice from the warship asked.

“We have some ideas. The most logical is that he located our cargo and is hidden within the module somewhere in an environment suit. You will have to take it with you and thus him, and it would be ridiculous to try and ferret him out in this environment. I could be wrong, but it is the only idea that makes sense to me.”

The man on the warship considered it. “Sounds logical to us, too. All right, I think we can contain that. In fact, I suspect that His Imperial Highness will be overjoyed to have old Kincaid on our turf, as it were, now that we know he’s out there. All right. Which module is it?”

“Twenty-seven. It is, remember, wired—we shall transmit the codes in due course—but we can do an automated disconnect safely. Stand by.”

Again the Rithian spoke some noises none but one of his kind could speak into the communicator, using the preestablished command frequency. Well out in front, virtually too far up the tow to see, the magnetic locks slipped back, the module turned using small steering jets, and it rolled out of line, spinning, until the jets reversed and stopped it. Module 27 was now station-keeping about a hundred meters from the rest of the tow.

“We just scanned it, can’t pick up any life signs,” the ship reported. “Of course, he would have thought of that. Very well. We are going to catch it with a tractor beam and bring it into line with us. Remain where you are until we’re done.”

“Think they’ll pull a fast one?” Wallinchky asked, sounding worried for the first time in the operation.

“They better not,” Teynal hissed. “If they do, it will blow up on them. And I do not think that there’s another of those to be had.”

Angel could only hang against the seat and listen, imagining the sights they were watching on the screen behind her and also watching Jules Wallinchky’s face. He was in fact nervous, but he also seemed to be enjoying the stirring of his own fear. He’d gotten where he was by rising to the criminal top as a man of action and a consummate risk-taker; it probably had been a long time since he’d put himself on the line, and it was feeding some inner need in him. She had to wonder if personally taking these risks wasn’t necessary to his well-being, perhaps a better explanation for ventures like this than the desire to own the jewels or whatever else he might “acquire.”

Still, a warship shouldn’t be so easily fooled by a captain who’d had command only a few days and certainly was winging this. She was certain Kincaid wasn’t dead; she could feel his presence out here, somewhere, somehow.

And not on Module 27. As these crooks noted, that would be the logical and first place anybody would look.

So where else would you hide? she wondered. Someplace that would shield you from probes but give you a crack at boarding that thing?

There was a long period of tense waiting, then finally a crackling in the communicator. “We have it. Now, in turn, the three lifeboats will all dock at the designated ports on our ship. You will dock at Port Six, which you’ll see by a series of pulsing green lights on the rear section.”

“Hold it! That was not our deal!” Wallinchky growled.

“We were not to board you,” the Rithian echoed. “This is improper.”

“Well, you stick explosives all over, so our captain thinks we need a few more guarantees from your end. If you want your payment, come aboard and get it.”

“I do not like it,” Teynal told the crime king. “Once we’re docked, we’re at their mercy. We could hardly blow the module without killing ourselves.”

Wallinchky thought a moment. “Yeah, but they still can’t get at it without us, right?”

“Without several of us,” the Rithian agreed.

Ming had to laugh even though it hurt. “Double-crossed, huh? You’re stuck as much as we are!”

Wallinchky got out of his seat and struck her face hard. It didn’t matter. She was already so in pain it hardly registered.

Teynal was not deterred. This was what they paid him for, after all. “We do not consent. Send one of your small boats over with the goods. Know that Rithian honor would require us to die before handing anything over to you in such a nonguaranteed manner.”

There was again a long pause, followed by “All right. Stand by!” from the warship.

“I don’t like it,” Ari commented. “They agreed much too quickly.”

“Noted,” the Rithian responded. “However, we will be able to see the boat, and we can monitor our own status, I assume? They will not be able to leave a crippling bomb?”

“Not a crippling one, no. Not without us knowing. That would require them to either get in here or have somebody outside. I don’t think the latter can be done without me knowing about it. The former—well, the solution’s obvious. It’s crowded in here anyway. Do the business on their courier boat.”

“They’ll still blow us to hell the moment you give them the codes,” Ming taunted. “After all, why not?”

“Because I will possess the Jewels of the Pleiades,” Jules Wallinchky told her, “and the Kharkovs will authenticate them. The only reason for a double cross here would be to retain the jewels and get the trade. If they blow us up, the jewels are also blown up. Hadun’s like a lot of others, even me. He would kill an entire planet, but he’d do anything to prevent the destruction of unique and timeless art. If I wasn’t absolutely sure of that, this would never have taken place.”

A small courier boat was even now leaving the warship as the two lifeboats with the water breathers were heading in to dock with it.

Angel had listened to all of this, and now felt certain she knew exactly where Captain Jeremiah Wong Kincaid was, and just how he was going to manage it.

That did not, however, do her or Ming, or Tann Nakitt, either, much good.