Overhead a Raider ship moved in a leisurely arc across the sky, and Lee knew it was searching for her and V’c Torya. It would be sweeping the area with detectors, locating heat signatures, listening for heartbeats and breathing, and sorting out its findings, one from the other. Sooner or later it would pick them out and what then? It was a poor question; Lee knew the answer to that one. She pressed close against the stone wall of a ruined house and tried to plot her strategy. How much time did they have, anyway?
Not much. With luck, an hour before the searchers located them. That was all she could count on. An hour. Could they do what had to be done in so little time?
The question was foolish. They had to do it whether there was time or not. There was a reprieve, however. The ship’s course was taking it away from here, for now. Though she had no way of being sure, it was not likely it had detected them on the first sweep. They had kept to shadows and the protection of overhanging ledges and the ship had
never been directly above them. How long before it swung back?
It didn’t matter. Lee had to assume the worse and hope for the best.
She could see the municipal palace not three buildings away. Unlike other structures in this part of the city, it did not seem to have been beaten into rubble by bombs and rays. It was too big a building to have been accidentally missed; the Raiders wanted it whole for some reason.
Lee and V’c Torya darted out of their hiding place and across the plaza to the cover of another ruin, where they pressed against the cold, dead stone for a moment to see if they had attracted attention. Insects buzzed and the wind picked up handfuls of dust and carried them several feet and dropped them, only to go back and pick up more. Otherwise the day was still, and heavy with the quiet of the grave.
While the Raider ship prowled above…
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The Dominion spread along the base of one arm of the Galaxy, streaming upward along the spiral toward the distant stars of other galaxies, and along this part of the frontier the settled worlds were sparse. Isleus was at least a week away from the nearest base of the Dominion space force.
The Raiders had begun with a single ship, four years ago. It’s captain, Shar Kaso, selected small, isolated colonies and attacked them swiftly and ruthlessly, bombing and strafing them into submission, then landing and taking from the beaten worlds whatever they might have of value. Gradually Shar Kaso added ships and men and his lone ship became a small fleet of four or five, his poor crew an organization. Now he was a serious threat to the well-being of the frontier.
Though out here the Dominion forces were stretched thin, a task force of almost thirty ships had been formed and assigned the job of finding and stopping Shar Kaso and his raiders. The problem was that even here on the frontier, there were too many settled worlds for a mere thirty ships to deal with. Shar Kaso could pick and choose his victims, but the task force had to worry about all the worlds.
By luck, Lee and V’c Torya arrived in their ship two days ago on a routine administrative mission. They were the only off-world ship on this isolated planet at this time – unless you counted the Raiders. Like everyone else, they had been taken by surprise. Shar Kaso’s flagship and three
others had swarmed down out of space and demolished the spaceport, destroying the space force ship and its hyperspace radio, as well as the emergency hyperspace radio located in the spaceport’s control center. Thus, supposedly robbed of the means of communicating with the other worlds of the Dominion, Isleus was at the mercy of Shar Kaso.
But there was another subspace radio on the planet, in the municipal palace. And it was the intention of Lee and V’c Torya to reach it before the Raiders learned about it.
They were just two Dominion Force junior officers, though well-trained and experienced. Lee was human, born on Earth itself. V’c Torya was from Rigius, one of the planets humans had contacted in the early days of their galactic expansion. Strong and well-built in the humanoid mold that the evolutionary process seemed determined to choose for most sentient species, V’c Torya’s genetic ancestry had not been simian as Lee’s had, but rather bovine. And while she had the soft dark eyes and stolid manners her genetic ancestry might suggest, V’c Torya was highly intelligent, witty and quick both of decision and movement. Together, she and Lee made an outstanding team.
All seemed still. There was no sound but the wind that moaned among the rubble and blew the small dust clouds around, and the sound of their own breathing as they pressed against the wall. There was no sign of life or movement or opposition. There was only quiet.
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Too much of it.
“It feels like a shoe’s about to drop,” said V’c Torya, easing her blaster in the holster at her hip.
“Look around at this mess,” said Lee. “About a million shoes have dropped. What’s another one more or less?” She took a deep breath. “Let’s go for it.”
Lee drew her pistol. V’c Torya had lost her own weapon in the scramble to get away from the bombing raid of last night. They darted away from cover, across the open, uneven ground and came to the steps of the palace and there Lee turned, gun ready, and scanned the ruins while V’c Torya darted up the steps. One of the huge doors at the top was half open, showing shadowy darkness within. V’c Torya stopped, stood to one side, and peered in as best she could. She had huge, soft brown eyes and good vision but Lee didn’t think she could see much better in the dark than Lee herself. After a moment V’c Torya motioned for Lee to come up. Lee ran up the stairs and pressed against the wall beside her friend.
“Well?”
“It’s pretty dark.”
“I say again, ‘Well?’”
V’c Torya shrugged. “It’s probably a trap, but what the heck.” She kicked the door the rest of the way open and went in.
She dived to the floor, disappearing into the shadows and Lee went in
behind her, darting to one side as soon as she was through the door so that she wouldn’t be outlined against the daylight.
She stopped and waited for several minutes, but nothing happened.
Then Lee saw movement at the far end of the room, just a heavier shadow against other shadows, and then the muzzle flare of her pistol and the short, sharp buzz of the discharge, accompanied by enough light to outline what it hit, and the shadow in the far end of the room gave out a pained yelp and fell with a clatter among some debris.
“It’s one of Shar Kaso’s pirates,” V’c Torya exclaimed.
Lee moved as quietly across the floor as possible and crouched down beside the fallen man. Taking out a small flashlight and shielding the light as much as possible, she played it on the figure. Sure enough he was wearing spaceman’s overalls of the same green color favored by the Raiders, and on his sleeve was their emblem. He was an earthman, alive, but breathing shallowly, unconscious.
Lee had shot him with a stun gun. He was out for the rest of the evening and probably wouldn’t have much fight in him for a day after he came too. V’c Torya said, “What is he doing here?”
“The hyperspace radio,” Lee said grimly.
“Come on,” said V’c Torya. “It’s upstairs.”
“Hold on,” said Lee. “Take his gun.”
V’c Torya took it away from him. It was no paralyzer,
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but a quick-charge energy blaster whose shot was almost always fatal and never pleasant. She considered it a moment, then opened it up, yanked the chip out and smashed the gun down on the concrete floor.
“I don’t like these things,” she said. She tossed the mangled gun across the room. “Let’s get to the radio.”
Hyperspace radios were important to a colony world, but they were heavy and expensive, too. It was vital to set one up on any world as soon as it was opened. But once there was one on any world, other materials became more important and the delivery of any more would often wait until the planet’s manufacturing economy was sufficiently advanced that a hyperspace radio could actually be constructed there. Add to that the fact that every ship that traveled interstellar space was equipped with one, and getting the third or forth one in place didn’t seem anywhere near as important as getting the first one installed.
The problem was that the scattered worlds, being so far out on the frontier of the Dominion, and so undeveloped, they didn’t yet attract much commercial traffic. Very often the spaceport radio was the only one on the planet for the first several decades of the world’s operation. Put that out of commission and the planet was essentially isolated.
Isleus was an exception because one of the early settlers had been wealthy enough from investments on more flourishing planets, and wise enough from experience, to bring in a second one and set it up in the government building. Access to such a radio would prove valuable to the government of a developing planet and allow them an advantage over other planets with which they competed economically. But even with that advantage, Isleus was so
recently opened that there was not yet a lot of outside investment, or much evidence of the tacticaladvantages the second radio gave to the planet’s officials. The existence of the second radio was not widely known as yet, and Lee had hoped the pirates were unaware of it.
Because not five light years from here, six of the space force’s finest warships were maneuvering. If they could be contacted, help could be here in a matter of hours, with more help on the way. At worse the Raiders would be on the run, with a squadron of warships hard on their trail, before they could successfully finish looting the world. At best they would be trapped.
But if the Raiders knew about the hyperspace radio …
They heard voices before they had gotten very far.
They had reached this floor by the stairwell. The corridor was lined with doors, most of them open, and while there was no power, daylight came dimly into the hallway from the windows of the offices on either side. The voices were faint and too muffled to understand, and it was evident that they came from one of the offices farther along the passageway. The space force officers paused and stepped to the shelter of a doorway to listen for a moment.
Then Lee stepped cautiously into the hallway again and moved forward, pausing to look into the next doors on either side and moving on to the next door beyond. V’c Torya followed.
The voices became louder and they could understand the words that were being spoken.
They could even recognize the voices.
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It was not hard. Right after the first attack, Shar Kaso had broadcast an ultimatum which was carried all over the settled part of the planet. They had heard recordings of him many times in the past, recordings of such ultimatums given on many planets. So Lee knew she was listening to the voice of the leader of the Raiders.
The other voice she recognized also, though she had not heard it before arriving here. She and V’c Torya had spent most of the afternoon yesterday in conference with that man. It was the president of the colonial government, Alton Reid.
It was Reid who was speaking. “There’s more money than that to be made. There’s that warehouse near the spaceport. Last week a ship left off a cargo of machine parts worth a fortune.”
“Machine parts,” said Shar Kaso. “So I’m in the hardware business now, am I?”
“It’s profitable, and that’s what matters. And you’d have never known not to blow that warehouse sky high if I hadn’t warned you to leave it alone.”
“Oh, yeah,” said the Raider leader. “We always blow up the warehouses close to the spaceport, just so we won’t have to carry off any heavy cargo.”
“Alright, so maybe you wouldn’t have blown it up, even if I hadn’t told you about it. But I told you a lot of stuff, including when that space force ship landed. I think that makes me worth my share in this.”
“I’m not denying that,” Shar Kaso said. He was a big man, of human stock, born on a colony world about twenty two light years from here. “I’m just pointing out that you earned what we agreed to, and no more than that. If you want to earn more you’ll have to join my crew and go on future raids.”
“I think I’ll be happier with a new identity and a peaceful but wealthy life on a nice, quiet world in another part of the Dominion.”
“Suit yourself,” Shar Kaso said. “It’s what we agreed to, after all.”
“Then I guess that finishes our business,” said Reid. “Will you want to blow up the hyperspace radio now?”
“Why the hurry?”
“There’s no hurry. I just thought you might want to go ahead and destroy it now.”
“We can blow it up as we take our leave of this fine planet,” Shar Kaso said. “Along with this whole building.”
“I think it’s risky leaving it till then,” said Reid. “It’s served its purpose, anyway. It’s not widely known that we have a second one, but it isn’t any secret, either. There have to be survivors among the military who know. And there’s those two space force agents.”
“We blew their ship up.”
“Good, if they were on it. But if they weren’t, then they’re out there
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somewhere, looking to cause trouble. What better opportunity exists for that than the radio? Besides, it won’t be difficult. All I need is a crowbar and there’s one of those in the radio room. It’s just at the far end of this hall.”
“Fine then,” said the Raider leader. “You go please yourself. I need to get back to the ship and find out how things are going. Meet me there when you’re done here.”
Lee and V’c Torya quickly but quietly moved back to the office they had passed just moments before, and slipped through the door. They heard footsteps in the hallway. Shar Kaso passed their office, heading back the way they’d come.
They waited to give him time to go. Then they heard other footsteps coming out of the next office, and walking toward the far end of the hall.
As they ducked into the hallway they saw the far door, half opened. There was no sign of Reid.
It was evident to Lee that Reid had assisted Shar Kaso, and probably he had arranged the whole deal, contacting the Raiders over the hyperspace radio in this building. He had probably informed them when the Dominion Force ship landed hours before.
Making as little noise as they could, she and V’c Torya rushed back to the room where Reid was preparing to smash the hyperspace radio.
Lights came on in the room before they got there. When she reached the door Lee saw Reid just picking up a crowbar from a shelf where tools were kept. He saw her and his eyes grew wide with surprise. He left the crowbar drop from his hand and clawed for a gun he had stuffed into his belt.
Lee fired before he could pull the gun free. The paralyzing blast caught him full in the chest and he slammed back hard against the shelf, rattling the tools. He slid to the floor.
V’c Torya said, “Get on the radio and let the squadron know what’s going on here.” Then she moved back to the wall beside the door.
Lee rushed to the radio and started powering it up. It took a few moments but finally the radio began emitting the hum that told her it was ready to broadcast.
“Not so fast, you,” said Shar Kaso from the doorway behind her.
She turned and looked at him. He was armed not with a paralyzer but with a much more murderous energy beamer.
Behind her the radio was buzzing, warming up. Shar Kaso came toward her.
He stopped when he saw Reid. He laughed. “I never thought he could handle himself.” He turned his attention back to Lee. “Well, congratulations. You almost did what you set out to do.
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Unfortunately for you, I found one of my men downstairs – shot. Just like you’re going to be.” He raised the gun and aimed it.
From behind the door where she’d been standing when Shar Kaso came in, V’c Torya gave a yell and lowered her head. She started running even before Shar Kaso could turn around.
He had no time to aim. He fired his gun in panic and the blast went high over V’c Torya. Her head slammed hard into the pit of Shar Kaso’s stomach.
The blow sent him rolling across the floor. Just for a second he lay there stunned and Lee thought he might actually be out. Then he moved, scrambling quickly to stand up and level his weapon at the same time.
But Lee had her paralyzer out and the blast caught him square. Shar Kaso’s gun fell from useless fingers and he rolled over onto the floor and lay still.
Lee walked up to him, pointing her gun cautiously. But he didn’t move. She turned away from him and went over to the radio set.
After she had made the call, V’c Torya indicated the fallen Raider leader and said, “Do you think he’ll be conscious in time to see them land?”
Lee smiled at her. “I doubt it. He’s just not as tough as you are.”
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