Four on the Run Read online

  The hybrid went into action. Snatching the key from the guard’s hand, she threw her whole body against him, shoving him backward so that he tumbled into the guards behind him, blocking the path as they all tumbled to the ground driven by the first man’s superior mass. Then the Tatar, following Rastheln’iq’s plan, freed the plant man and the Delph. As the pair, restricted by grav-cuffs, shuffled for the rear of the transport where the shuttle was kept, the female began freeing every prisoner between her and the rear door.

  “Stop wasting time!” urged the Delph.

  “That’ll keep the guards occupied, thank you,” snarled the Tatar girl.

  “Quickly, child,” hissed Rastheln’iq when she arrived at the door. “The key.”

  Handing it over, the Tatar spat, “I’m not a child. I’m older than I look, Vir man.”

  There was no love lost between the two races, for they had been bitter enemies for most of the twenty-eighth century as time was reckoned in the Imperium. The Tatars, possessing adventuresome spirits, had raided Vir ships for sport. They had no interest in taking or holding territory, or in what sentient beings thought of as power. Until they’d been corrupted by it as part of the Concordat Federation, that is. The Vir, having been attacked, responded in kind, relentlessly. Finally, the Tatar Confederation, impressed with the warring ability of its enemy, made peace, which had led to the hybrid race’s involvement with the Federation as privateers – in effect, licensed pirates.

  “Everyone is a child to me, girl,” Rastheln’iq stated emotionlessly. His race was long lived, and its members continued to grow until some external force killed them. They were less prone to disease than animal life, but more sensitive to temperature. Larger specimens reached a height of thirty or more feet. The Vir stood almost six feet, indicating a relatively young age of two centuries.

  The Viridian scientist got the door open, and sealed it behind the trio as they entered the shuttle bay. The guards would be able to easily unlock the door, but, after a few moments, that wouldn’t matter.

  As the three boarded the small shuttle, Rastheln’iq said to the Tatar, “I assume you can fly this ship.”

  “Smooth sailing,” she returned casually.

  “Then let us be off.”

  The trio of escapees found no resistance as the shuttle left the bay of the transport and began to fly away. As Rastheln’iq searched the shuttle’s computer for any data regarding their location – and finding none – the Delph spoke first, “Now that we have relative peace, we should introduce ourselves. I am Indri of the Mindsinger caste. How did you know I was a Mindsinger, Vir?”

  “Do not all Delph possess psychomancy abilities? Are they not all mindsingers?”

  “All possess some psychomancy ability. But the term ‘mindsinger’ refers to one of the great old houses,” explained Indri. “In the olden times, there were twelve, constantly at war with one another. Mindsingers, a type of Delph who were greatly gifted with psychomancy, withdrew from global civilization, effectively becoming a thirteenth house, and isolated themselves from war while the other houses destroyed one another. Delphian civilization would have disappeared without the mindsingers, who guarded the knowledge of millennia. When society was rebuilt after the wars, it was dedicated to peaceful ways, and the Mindsingers became a caste, recruiting and breeding powerful psychomancers throughout history.”

  “Noomi Bloodgood,” said the Tatar, seated at the controls of the shuttle, once she was able to get a word in. “Of Fang and Claw tribe.”

  “Rastheln’iq,” the plant man said as he studied the astrographic scanner. This would tell him the status of any planets that lay in this star system. With this information, he could choose a destination.

  “Rastheln’iq,” Indri Mindsinger murmured. “That sounds familiar but I can’t place it.”

  “I am better known as Wormwood,” supplied the plant man.

  For a moment, the Delph said nothing, stunned into silence. Then, slowly, “Wormwood? The Wormwood?”

  Rastheln’iq nodded without averting his gaze from the monitor plate. “Yes.”

  “What’s a Wormwood?” asked Noomi Bloodgood.

  “A mass murderer,” answered Indri. “A war criminal. A butcher.”

  Glancing up from the scanner, Rastheln’iq said, “Do not presume to judge me. You were on the same prison transport as I, and you owe me your life.”

  “I was a political prisoner,” objected the Delph.

  A dull, grating sound emanated from Rastheln’iq.

  “So was I,” Noomi said quickly, not realizing that the sound the plant man was making was laughter.

  Indri Mindsinger cast a stern look in the Tatar’s direction, but spoke in an even tone when he said, “I am not joking. I am a member of the movement for the Delph Consortium to leave the Imperium.”

  Noomi Bloodgood snorted. “That’ll never happen.”

  “Nevertheless –”

  “Everything but escape is irrelevant at this time, do you not agree?” Rastheln’iq asked Indri Mindsinger.

  Thoughtful, the Delph nodded. “Yes, but I plan to part ways with you as soon as possible.” Among Wormwood’s victims were Delph.

  “Almost every intelligent species known to us experiments on lower life forms. My only crime was that in my case, the lower life forms did not consider themselves to be lower life forms.”

  “Neither did the courts,” reminded Indri.

  “We do not have time to debate at this moment,” Rastheln’iq pointed out.

  The trio fell into silence.

  Behind them lay Perga, a large dun-colored ball not far from a large yellow sun. But now that they were free, new problems loomed.

  “Now where to?” asked the Tatar.

  “I am thinking,” Rastheln’iq replied as he studied the scan of the system. It seemed barren, as he’d expected. There were planets but none showed any indication of industrialization. The sensors had yet to return any data on life forms, but the lack of technology hindered the plant man’s ideas for escape.

  “You mean to say that you had no plan for after we escaped?” asked the Delph.

  “Not knowing where we were, I could not,” admitted the plant man without embarrassment or guilt.

  Slits of eyes glancing at the instruments, the Tatar announced, “The transport’s coming after us.”

  “Not unexpectedly,” Indri put in in an accusatory tone.

  “There is an asteroid field ahead. Perhaps we can lose them there,” said Rastheln’iq.

  “For how long?” asked Indri, knowing it was but a temporary solution.

  Ignoring the two men, Noomi sent the shuttle toward the field. Moments later, a signal reached the ship, coming from the field ahead. It began with a warning header.

  “Oh, no,” she spat as she read the message on the screen.

  “What is it?” asked Indri, moving beside the Tatar. When he, too, saw the message, he said, “We can’t go in there. There’s anti-matter debris among the asteroids.”

  “You’d have to be crazy to go in there,” announced Noomi.

  Something approaching a smile came over Rastheln’iq’s thin, green features. “The transport would be foolish to follow us in there then, would you not agree? Take us in, girl.”

  “One strike by an anti-matter particle could ruin this ship, and we’ll die,” objected Indri.

  “I would prefer a quick demise rather than a slow death on Perga,” retorted Rastheln’iq.

  The Delph had no response to this, and remained silent as the Tatar took the shuttle into the danger-laden asteroid field, the warning beacon coming within visual range within a few moments.

  Behind the shuttle, the larger transport slowed, then stopped as it, too, received the warning. Rastheln’iq closely watched a monitor to see the ship wait at the boundary indicated by the beacon.

  Satisfied that it was not following the shuttle, he returned his attention to the scanners looking ahead. He was looking for anything that might be useful. Being de
signed for short flights between ships or a ship and a planet, the shuttle possessed emergency supplies only. Glancing at the Delph, he said, “Indri Mindsinger, can you take inventory of our supplies?”

  The gray-skinned man moved to do so. Shuttles normally had stock inventory, and he knew what he expected to find. But it was better than waiting. Indri felt useful doing something. That was part of the racial psychology of the Delph. They were descended from herd animals that lived in the sea but were mammals, with each playing its role in the survival of the herd. This thinking continued to the present day. It was a quality that made the Delph race well suited to serve in the military of the Concordat Federation. They made excellent officers, outside of commanders of ships, though at least one served in that capacity.

  Indri found the standard complement of tools in a kit, along with medical supplies that had been gotten into, but was still quite full, and adequate for its purpose. There was the usual emergency gear, stowed in lockers. This included two atmosphere suits for the pilots, and rations for two man-days. That was not much time in the vastness of space, especially if one did not know where one was.

  The Delph turned up a holdout Zam gun that had fallen under one of the seats in the fore compartment, which served as an airlock besides being a small passenger compartment. This was no doubt an unauthorized back-up weapon of one of the guards, which he could not report missing when he couldn’t find it. The secure aft compartment, used to hold prisoners, was naturally bare, and bereft of anything useful.

  Returning to the cockpit, Indri began working on the grav-cuffs of the three escapees. They came off fairly easily with the tools he’d found, but he had barely completed this job when a klaxon blared. The Delph recognized it, as did his two compatriots – it was the universal alarm for hull breech!

  Foregoing the opportunity to say to Rastheln’iq, “I told you so!”, Indri rushed to the prisoner compartment to search for the leak, while the Vir did the same in the cockpit and fore compartment. A breach there could have devastating consequences if a control mechanism became damaged.

  Normally, such a rent in the hull is easy to spot. A microscopic breach, such as one caused by a particle of anti-matter, was not. The shuttle’s internal monitoring systems would locate the breach, eventually. Indri did not intend to wait.

  His black orbs scanned the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Nothing. Then, his questing eyes spotted it: Tiny debris, missed by the last cleaning crew, began moving toward the almost-imperceptible hole.

  Indri tore a thin cushion from a seat and held it over the growing hole in the hull. It was nothing more than a temporary patch and the Delphian priest knew it. He threw his gaze about the chamber for something more permanent. When he thought he’d found it, he called out, “Noomi Bloodgood! I need your help!”

  A moment later, the Tatar girl appeared in the doorway, having left Rastheln’iq at the controls. Her cat’s-eyes went to the trembling cushion, pinned to the wall by the vacuum of space. Though it had halted the dangerous leak of atmosphere, it was slowly shredding under the pressure.

  “If you can get the door loose,” Indri suggested to Noomi, indicating a panel in a wall that concealed a storage closet.

  The girl understood immediately, and, taking hold of it, tore it loose from its fastenings. The Bringle were stronger than humans, and Tatars stronger still. Even a young female like Noomi was mightier than nearly all full-grown human males, and she had little trouble prying the panel door free.

  Going to the wall where the remnants of the cushion fluttered, the Tatar gazed at Indri, and nodded. The Delph tore what was left of the cushion free as Noomi slapped the small metal door over the growing hole, which was now large enough to be visible to the naked eye. The pull of airless space was sufficient to hold it in place as Indri Mindsinger rushed to the toolbox to retrieve the fuser he had seen within it.

  The metal plate of the door was rattling when the Delph returned. Noomi pressed on it to keep it still as he activated the fuser and began melding the two metal surfaces together in a way that was infinitely more secure and stronger than mere welding. The molecules of the two objects fused together as if they had been cast as a single piece. This was similar to broken bones knitting back together stronger than before the break. Still, the irregularity of the repair would eventually prove problematic – assuming another anti-matter particle didn’t strike the shuttle first. This seemed the greater probability to Indri Mindsinger. Threading asteroids was one thing, invisible anti-matter another.

  Minutes passed without further problem. The Delph kept his eyes peeled for further breaches even though the alarm did not sound. He wanted to be ready when it did, for in his mind, it was not an “if” but a “when”. But the alarm never came. Or rather, Rastheln’iq’s voice sounded first, some twenty tense minutes later.

  “Mindsinger!” called out the Viridian scientist in a remarkably calm voice under the circumstances. “We have found something.”

  As the Delph entered the cockpit, Rastheln’iq indicated a screen with a long green finger. “A ship of some sort. Neither of us recognizes its configuration.”

  The shuttle, being a small ship without Overdrive, did not possess sophisticated sensors. These gave the silhouette and power readings of the other craft, which was fairly large but powered down. Its shape did not match any ship in the shuttle’s standard records.

  “Neither do I,” confessed Indri. “It vaguely resembles a Concordat Federation ship, but only vaguely.” As a Mindsinger, Indri was also a student of Delphian history, which included the race’s part in the Federation. “It does not match my knowledge of Imperium ships.”

  “It doesn’t belong to the Templars,” added Noomi Bloodgood.

  “Are you an expert on Templar ships, Tatar?” asked the Delphian priest innocently.

  Noomi laughed. “Something of one. I used to be a Templar.”

  “An unknown ship where none has any business being,” Rastheln’iq mused thoughtfully.

  “Pirates,” concluded Noomi. “They must be hiding.”

  “We’d best steer clear of them,” said Indri.

  Rastheln’iq turned to gaze at the Delphian priest. “We have limited supplies, including food, water and oxygen. They might welcome us.”

  “They might shoot us on sight,” countered Indri.

  “I would,” added Noomi.

  “On the other hand, they have almost certainly scanned us if we have detected them,” the Vir pointed out, “and they have not even powered up. The ship might be a derelict. It bears investigation.”

  For some moments, none spoke. Then Indri said, “You’re right. We have very little to lose.”

  “In we go,” said Noomi Bloodgood as she sent the shuttle in the direction of the larger ship, which did not lay far distant in astronomical distances.

  “The ship,” Rastheln’iq observed, “might be in fairly good shape. We have not encountered any anti-matter in some time. This area might be relatively safe. If so, the ship may be in good enough condition that we can salvage what we need to survive.”

  “That will depend on how long it’s been here,” remarked Indri.

  “Among other things,” nodded Rastheln’iq. “Only time will tell. There is no further need for speculation.”

  With that, the Viridian scientist fell silent.

  Once, it was gleaming white. Now, its hull was gray and dull with space debris, tarnished by who knew how many years of neglect. Underneath the grime was white, and beneath that, it could be seen in places, battleship gray, the color of the bare metal of the hull. This first impression left no doubt as to its occupancy. The ship had been abandoned.

  But if anti-matter had struck the derelict, the damage wasn’t visible. That gave the trio of escapees some hope that they might find something still useful aboard the craft, which, at more than four hundred feet in length, dwarfed the shuttle, even the prison transport, but was small compared to Imperium ships of the line, the length of which reached a thousand fe
et and more.

  The craft was an oval, with wing-like structures at the front that gave it a T-shaped appearance. Below this was a corrugated green-black hull. The upper surface was topped by a crest, the base of which was another green-black strip of rippling metal. Noomi guided the shuttle around the big ship.

  “You think that’s the Brobdingnab?” she asked nervously.

  “Unlikely,” Rastheln’iq replied. “If the Brobdingnab ever truly existed, it would be much larger.”

  “And this doesn’t look like a passenger liner to me,” added Indri.

  “And I don’t believe in superstition,” said the emotionless Viridian scientist. “If the Brobdingnab was real, sighting it is certainly not an omen of disaster.”

  “There are things beyond the understanding of sentient beings,” Indri Mindsinger warned.

  Noomi interrupted as the shuttle came around, the port side of the derelict came into view, sounding out the name of the derelict, which was emblazoned along one wing. “What’s a ‘Res Vishnu’?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Indri Mindsinger. Beside him, the Vir remained silent, studying the big ship.

  The name Vishnu was written in old script, barely understandable. The current common tongue of the Imperium, Lingua Galactica, had evolved from Englot, a mélange of Earth languages a millennium earlier, a melding of Spanglish and Mandarinese and the odd slang word from a dozen other human languages. During the intercourse with other races, new words came into use, and the language expanded until Englot terms became a plurality in the new common tongue. In addition to the name Lingua Galactica, it had several informal ones, depending upon which part of known space you were in. It had been called Standard, Basic, Common, the Language, and Pidgin, among others. While the writing on the derelict was still fairly legible, its meaning was not clear.

  The front of the craft was blunt, pot-bellied – there lay the hangar bay. Without being told, Noomi Bloodgood flew the shuttle toward the opening, handling the ship as if she were born to it.