Starfishers Read online

  Strange that a Sangaree should be familiar with His Banners Bright and Golden . . .

  Sangaree. He had to remind himself. He had shared her bed. There had been feeling in it during those hungry days on The Broken Wings.

  She might willingly share beds again, but . . .

  In the end she would drink his blood. Sangaree nursed their hatreds forever. For generations, if rumor was true.

  “And the Rat, too, eh?” Meaning Mouse. She would have a special hell set aside for him. But the feeling was mutual. BenRabi knew Mouse would plain love a date with her in a medieval torture chamber. “All you Confies and beekies and McGraws pretending you need Seiner money . . . Orbit in an hour, Gun. See you upstairs.”

  More gunmetal smiles as she took her gunmetal-hard body toward the Ladies.

  She would see him upstairs.

  No doubt. He wondered if he could conjure up a Mark XIV Combat Suit real quick. Or spider’s eyes so he could watch his back. This mission was going to be Roman candle all the way.

  And he had hoped for a vacation operation. For nothing to do but loaf and work on Jerusalem.

  Two: 3047 AD

  The Olden Days, Angel City

  A whisper swifted on lightning feet through Angel City’s underworld. It said the Starduster was on The Broken Wings.

  A private yacht had slipped into Angel Port after making a surreptitious worldfall. It was registered to a Dr. Gundaker Niven. The cognoscenti in the outfit remembered that name in connection with a blow-up on Borroway that had set the Sangaree back a billion stellars.

  Port workers with connections started the excitement. The bounty on Gundaker Niven was immense. The Sangaree would not sit still for a billion-stellar burn from God Himself.

  The dock workers passed the word that the Lady of Merit boasted just two passengers. One was Caucasian, the other a small Oriental.

  That got their attention downtown. Niven had something to do with the Starduster. He might even be the Starduster under an alias. And the Starduster’s number-one man was an Oriental, one John Li Piao.

  These men, though, looked like Old Earth shooters, not the masters of a shadow empire rivaling that managed by the Sangaree.

  Nevertheless, heads nodded in the board rooms of crime. Orders went out to the soldiers.

  The Starduster was a unique creature. He was a man in limbo. A crime czar who had built a kingdom independent of the established syndicates. He preyed on his own kind rather than pay a single credit for Sangaree-produced stardust.

  His was the most feared name on the Sangaree hate list.

  Sentences of death had been pronounced on a dozen worlds. Open, often redundant contracts approaching a hundred million stellars existed.

  Time and success had made of him an almost mythic devil.

  He had been claimed killed a half dozen times. But he kept coming back, like a thing undead, like a dying wizard’s curse. Hardly would the jubilation end before his invisible hand would again strike swiftly and viciously, ripping the guts from another syndicate pipeline of profit.

  Was there more than one Starduster?

  The Sangaree Heads, to whom most organized crime could be traced, sometimes suspected that he was not a man at all, but a role. Perhaps Piao was the real Starduster. The handful of men who had been pinned with the Starduster name were as diverse a group as could be selected from a good-sized crowd. Short, tall, thin, fat, white, black.

  The Sangaree family dictators knew only one thing for certain. The Starduster was human. Sangaree might be contentious, piratical, greedy, and short on conscience, but only a human who hated would slash at them as bloodily as the Starduster did.

  Even his motives were obscure. The narcotic he stole did not always find its way back into trade channels. Greed had no obvious hold on him.

  The yachtsmen rented a groundcar and vanished into Angel City’s warehouse district. Gundaker Niven was a chunky man of medium height. He had hard, dark eyes of the sort that intimidated civilians. He had thick, heavy hands. He jabbed with forefingers for emphasis whenever he spoke. A wide scar poured from his right ear down over his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth.

  “Take it out with a kilo of D-14,” he growled, punching a finger at a dilapidated warehouse. His words came out slurred. The right side of his mouth did not move. “Burn them and run.”

  His driver was a small man with Fu Manchu mustaches. He had the same cold eyes. “But this ain’t no shatter run. All that would do is show us how good they die.”

  “Working for Beckhart is getting a meter too tall for me, Mouse. This underworld stuff isn’t my specialty. It’s too rough. Too complicated. Suppose the real Starduster has people here?”

  The smaller man laughed. “He does. You can count on it.”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “Hey! Working for the Old Man is an honor. When he asks for you, it means you’ve made it. Didn’t you get sick of that military attaché dodge?”

  “No. I was drafted into this.”

  “Come on! Engineering coups in the outbacks. How dull can you get? There’s no rise to give it spice. When things go broomstick you go hide in the embassy.”

  “You think it’s all champagne and ballroom conspiracy? I got my spleen burned out on Shakedowns. Inside the embassy.”

  “Still ain’t the same. Yeah. The Starduster has people here. But by the time the word floats up and the shit comes down we’ll be long gone.”

  “That’s what you told me on Gorki. And New Earth was supposed to be a piece of cake.”

  This was their third mission teamed. Admiral Beckhart’s specialized, secretive division of the Bureau of Naval Intelligence had found that they complemented one another well.

  “So you should be used to it.”

  “Maybe. Gundaker Niven. What the hell kind of name is that?”

  “You take what they give you. This ain’t the diplomatic service. You’re in the big time now.”

  “You keep telling me. But they don’t job you. You stay Mouse every go. They never crank you through the Medical mill. They don’t have the Psychs scramble your brain.”

  “They don’t need to. I’m not the front man. I’m just around to drag your ass out of the fire when it gets hot.”

  “I don’t like the feel of this one, Mouse. Something’s wrong. There’s going to be trouble.”

  “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.”

  “Holy shit! I’m looking for toilet paper and he throws the Bible at me. It’s sour, Mouse.”

  “Because we got no backup? Hang tight, Doc. We don’t need it. The Sangaree outfit here wouldn’t make a pimple on the ass of a Family like the Norbon. They’ve only got five or six people on the whole damned planet. They get the work done with local talent.”

  “Stickers can burn you just as dead as any Homeworld shooter. Beyond-the-resurrection. What’s out here, anyway?”

  “Got to go with you there, Doc. Not a million people on this rat hole. Three lousy domes, and enough swamp to supply the rest of Confederation.”

  “It even stinks in here.”

  “It’s in your head. Going to circle the block.”

  They idled on, learning the warehouse district’s tight, twisty out-of-the-ways first hand. Street maps and eidetic holo-memories had been given them, but only exploration made a place real. Every city had its feel, its color, its smell, its style. Psych’s familiarization tapes could not capture the intangibles of reality.

  Knowledge and preparation were the corner- and keystones of their trade.

  “I need a bath,” Niven complained. “I can smell swamp muck on me.”

  “Let’s head back to the Marcos. My stomach’s okay now. I’m hungry. And a game or two would get me back in the groove. Tomorrow’s soon enough to take the case.”

  The Marcos was The Broken Wings’ best hotel, and one of the best in The Arm. And that despite the limits imposed by the space and conservation regulations of a dome city.

  Dome cities are plan
et-bound space vessels. Which translates as uncomfortable.

  The lobby of the Marcos had been decorator-engineered to provide an illusion of openness. The wall facing the entrance was masked by a curving hologramic panorama from another world.

  Mouse froze.

  “What’s the matter?”

  The smaller man stared straight ahead. He did not reply.

  “The Thunder Mountains seen from Edgeward City on Blackworld,” Niven murmured, recognizing the scene.

  It was a stark view, of black mountains limned by the raging star winds of a pre-nova sun. Blackworld was one of the least hospitable and most dramatically beautiful of the outworlds.

  “Just surprised me, Doc.” Mouse glanced around the lobby. “It was the Cathedral Forest on Tregorgarth when we checked in.”

  People stared. The two gave the impression of being invaders instead of guests. Their appearance labeled them hardcases barely able to get by on their wits. Men of that breed belonged in the warehouse district, not at the watering hole of the genteel.

  The watery-eyed bellhop, who watched them stroll through the hologram to the elevators, did not belong either. He limped when he walked, but he was too solid, too macho, to be staff. His uniform was a size too small. His stance was a centimeter too assertive.

  “Something’s gone broomstick,” Mouse said. The elevator doors closed with startling severity, as though issuing a declaration of war.

  Meticulous preliminary research characterized a Beckhart operation. They had seen holos of, and reports on, all regular hotel staff.

  “I saw him. What do we do?”

  “Cut out a floor short.”

  Why not just get the hell out? Niven wondered.

  “Well take the stairs. We’ll catch them from behind.”

  “You’re taking a lot for granted.”

  “Anything to save a kick in the teeth.”

  Their floor was the fifth. The penthouse level. It contained four suites. Only theirs was occupied.

  “The empty car will tip them,” Niven remarked after Mouse had punched Four.

  “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “So?”

  “Tell you what. Let’s slide down and see if we can snatch the gimp. Shoot him with Nobullshit and see what he’s got to say.”

  That was pure Mouse thinking, Niven reflected. Running was an alien concept.

  They were both in Old Earther role. Holonet stereotype Old Earther role. But they had not received a full Psych-brief. Their speech patterns tended to meander between that appropriate to the role and that of Academy graduates. Their mission-prep had included only a limited Psych-brief. They remembered who they were. They had to think to maintain consistent images.

  “We’re getting sloppy,” Niven observed. “Let’s tighten up.”

  The elevator stopped on Three. They exchanged glances.

  “Better stand back, Doc.”

  Mouse’s eyes and face blanked. A subtle air of crouch, of tenseness enveloped him. He seemed to have gone to another world.

  He had entered “assassin’s mind.” Which meant that he had become a biochemical killing robot.

  Mouse was a physical combat specialist.

  A dowdy, blubbery woman with two poodles and a make-believe fortune in cultured firestones waddled aboard. “Five, please.” And, before Niven caught the wrong note, “You’re new. Offworlders?”

  Niven responded with an affirmative grunt. He had to think of some way to distract the woman while Mouse relaxed.

  “How marvelous. Let me guess. One of the Inner Worlds?”

  Niven grunted again. He stared at the door, hoping rudeness would be distraction enough. He took Mouse’s arm gently as the door opened on Four.

  “Stay where you are!”

  A tiny needlegun peeped from a fat hand. The woman sloughed the dowager character. Suddenly she was as hard-edged as they.

  “Move together.” The doors closed. “Thank you.”

  Niven looked beyond costume and props and saw the enemy.

  She was the Sangaree Resident for The Broken Wings, Sexon S’Plez.

  Christ, you’re slow, he told himself. The fat alone should’ve warned you.

  Plez was suspected of being a proctor of the Sexon, which was one of the First Families of the Sangaree. That would make her the equal of a Planetary Senator . . .

  The assignment of a heavy-duty Resident to a backwater world was what had stimulated Luna Command into sending in its shock troops.

  How had she gotten onto them so fast? Niven wondered.

  Two nervous heavies in ill-fitting hotel livery awaited the car on floor Five. They were a tall, pale, ginger-haired pair who had to be brothers.

  “Which one’s Niven?” the older asked.

  “Out.” The woman gestured with her weapon.

  Wavering guns peered from all the brothers’ four hands.

  Careful, Niven thought. He raised his hands slowly. These men were amateurs. They might start panic-shooting.

  “Chunky’s Niven. The gook must be Piao.”

  The Starduster’s associates were as shadowy as he, but one of the few names known was John Li Piao, reputed number-two man and chief bone-breaker. The face of the man who wore that name, though, was as much an enigma as the Starduster’s.

  “I don’t want you should get upset,” Niven said, trying to project terrified and outraged innocence, and having no trouble with the fear, “but I think you’ve got the wrong . . . ”

  “Stuff it, animal!” the woman snarled.

  The Old Earth cant is catching, Niven thought.

  The brothers’ eyes narrowed. Their lips tightened. The insult included them. Animal was the Sangaree’s ultimate racial slur.

  Niven put on a bewildered face. “What’s going on, anyway? I’m just a social researcher. Studying the effects of dome constriction . . . ”

  The brothers laughed tightly. One said, “Crap.”

  Mouse had gotten caught in the limbo between normalcy and assassin’s mind. The state was one of semi-consciousness. It would take him time to push himself one way or the other. Niven knew which way Mouse would go. His stomach knotted.

  “ . . . to study the effects of dome constriction on immigrant workers.” Mouse needed a distraction. “For Ubichi Corporation. This man is my secretary. We’re not carrying any cash.” That was the course, he thought. Protesting innocence of a connection with the trade would cause laughter. Protesting being robbed might make them hesitate the instant Mouse needed.

  He did not feel that Mouse was doing the right thing. But Mouse did not know how to back down. He was a hitter. It would get him killed someday.

  It might get them both killed, but he could not change Mouse’s ways.

  The older gunman wavered. “The yacht was a Ubichi charter.”

  “Cover . . . ” the woman began. Too late.

  Mouse exploded.

  Flying, with a scream that froze them an additional second.

  A fist disarmed the woman. Her weapon dribbled into the elevator. One foot, then the other, pistoned into the older brother’s face. He triggered. Needles stitched the wall over Niven’s head.

  The younger brother managed only a half turn. Mouse bounced into him. He chopped weapons away with his left hand. His right went for the man’s throat.

  A gurgling scream ripped through a shattered windpipe.

  Knowing what would happen did not help Niven. Mouse was fast.

  The woman was running before Niven recovered her weapon. He crouched, trying to aim.

  He was too sick to hold his target.

  She had kneed him savagely. The agony numbed his mind.

  He hit the button for One, left the brothers to Mouse. Maybe he could get her in the lobby . . .

  Reason returned before the doors opened.

  There was nothing he could do. Not in front of fifty witnesses. Aching, helpless, he watched the fat woman collect her limping accomplice and depart.

  He began shaking. It had been close
. Too damned close.

  Mouse was human again when Niven reached Five. He was shaking too. “Get her?”

  “In the lobby? With fifty witnesses?”

  “From the elevator. They couldn’t see you through the holo.”

  “Oh.” That had escaped him. “What about those guys?”

  “Got to do something with them.”

  “Hell, turn them loose. Won’t make any difference . . . ” He took another look. His sickness returned, centered higher. “Did you have to? . . . ”

  Defiantly. “Yeah.”

  Mouse was driven by a murderous hatred of everything Sangaree. It splashed over on anyone who cooperated with them.

  He refused to explain.

  “Better get them out of the hall. Staff might come through.” He grabbed a leg, started dragging.

  Mouse dabbed at bloodstains.

  “The outfit won’t like this,” Niven said as he hauled the second corpse into the suite. “Number’s going to be on us now.”

  “So? We’ve been on the bull’s eye before. Anyway, we bought some time. They’ll want to salvage the fat broad before they move. And they’ll bring in somebody new. They’re careful that way. We’ll hustle them meanwhile.”

  “How? The number’s on. Who’ll talk? Anybody who knows anything is going to know that we’re dead.”

  “You ain’t dead till they close the box.”

  “Mouse, I don’t feel right about this one.”

  “Doc, you worry too much. Let it stew. We keep our heads in and our backs to the wall, maybe a little something will blow our way. Just be on your toes. Like they said in the olden days, when you get handed a lemon, make lemonade.”

  “I don’t think the hardcase course took,” Niven said. “You’re right, I mean. I shouldn’t be so worried.”

  “Know what your problem is? You ain’t happy unless you’ve got something to worry about. You’re spookier than an old maid with seven cats.”

  Three: 3048 AD

  Operation Dragon, Blake City Starport

  The terminal’s sounds crowded benRabi. The smells and swirling colors dazzled him. The nervousness started.

  It always did at the mouth of the lion’s den. Or, this time, the dragon’s lair. The briefing tapes had claimed that starfish, seen in space, resembled dragons two hundred kilometers long.