Stardeath E-Book

E. C. Tubb

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Stardeath
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 238

Beschreibung

Ships occasionally disappeared in hyperspace, regrettable sacrifices to the luxury of faster than light travel. But now one of the lost ships has been found and the wreckage is enough to terrify even the most cold-blooded witness.

The lucky ones on the lost ship are dead. The others have been turned inside-out in gruesome parody of human beings and they are still alive.
Disgraced Captain Kurt Varl is chosen to command a suicide mission to discover the cause of these disasters.

The enemy is unknown and the only way Varl can solve the mystery is to use himself as bait!

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

STARDEATH

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1983 by E. C. Tubb.

Reprinted with the permission of the Cosmos Literary Agency.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

STARDEATH

E. C. TUBB

CHAPTER 1

After an eternity when he could see again, Varl looked at his hands and stared wonderingly at the unmarked skin, the uncrushed bones, and the intact nails. He had known his hands as things of horror—burned, seared, the tips bleeding stumps, the knuckles crushed, splintered, shards of bone needling the skin.

“Here.” The figure at his side held out a cup containing a pale blue liquid. “This will help.”

The masked man was shapeless beneath an enveloping robe. A creature of studied anonymity, even his voice betrayed a calculated distortion. The cup he held in gloved hands was made of fragile plastic, which would shatter into a powder if broken. Varl ignored it as he did the man, concentrating on his own hands, remembering the things that had been done to them.

“Subjective punishment,” the robed figure explained. “An illusion created by the use of electronic stimulus on appropriate areas of the cortex. If the level had been too high, your protoplasm would have responded in psychosomatic mirroring. As it was, you only suffered mental anguish.”

Only? The agonies of hell itself delivered by means of fire and clamps and tearing steel. A time in which he had known the touch and taste, the sight and sound, the stench of calculated torment. Dimly, he remembered a frenzied screaming and sensed the soreness of his throat. Had he begged? Pleaded? Grovelled? Prayed?

“I suggest you drink this.” The robed man held out the cup again. “There has been some dehydration and loss of essential bodily chemicals, together with certain physical reactions associated with your recent experience. We do not wish for you to fall below optimum physical condition.”

“Why not?” Varl looked at the man. “Is there to be more?”

“Punishment? The courts—”

“You bastard! You sadistic bastard! You—”

“Steady!” The gloved hand thrust the cup forward. “Drink this! Drink it!”

The cup shattered, a blue shower rising to fall and darken the fabric of the glove and the robe of the man who wore it. He called out in sudden alarm as Varl rose, snarling, hands reaching to kill.

“Guards!”

Varl touched the robe and the flesh beneath, fingers stiffening as they began to dig into the flaccid throat. His grip locked as the paralysis seized him, and he toppled to one side, his temple striking the edge of the table. Blood welled from the wound to mask his cheek and jaw.

Then the guards were around him, freeing his hands and staunching the wound, adding more stings to the one that had fed the numbing drug into his veins. Needles brought a sudden darkness.

* * * *

When he woke, he was back in his cell. It was a box containing a bunk, a bowl, toilet facilities, and nothing else. A glowing plate in the ceiling provided illumination. The door was a solid panel. The cell was a place buried deep, isolated from life, insulated from sound—a tomb for the living dead.

Varl sat upright on the bunk, his back against the wall. His head ached a little, and his nerves were jumping from the aftermath of drugs and punishment. The wound on his temple, sealed beneath a transparent dressing, itched a little, but he made no effort to scratch it. Instead, he relaxed and closed his eyes and sent his senses to explore his environment.

Long ago, when young and eager to taste the adventure that was space, he rode the ships to new and exotic worlds where he had learned boredom and disappointment and, too often, the animal that lives within the skin of a man. But he learned how to kill time in space by picking up the vibrations created by every movement, every word. In a sealed environment nothing can be lost, and in space sound is caught and retained by the hull to be transmitted and circulated in fading murmurs that hang like ghosts in the whispering air.

In his cell he heard the thin vibration of a crying voice, a plaintive wailing, which keened on and on as if a wandering soul mourned for the lost innocence of childhood. He heard a laugh which held the hate of a nation and a sigh which whispered like a wind between the stars, a scrape of a shoe and the padding of naked feet, a soft rill of running water, clicks more imagined than heard, and the rustle of what could have been the passage of electrons through a wire or the soft susurrations of a brush through a mane of silken hair.

He heard the dying shrieks of his recent ordeal.

He remembered the slow and agonizing crushing of his bones, the ripping torment as his nails were torn from their beds, the sizzling burn of heated iron. Things once done in the name of religion by robed familiars working in dungeons illuminated by guttering flambeaux were now done in the name of justice by cold, detached men working with meters, dials, and minute pulses of electronic energy. A different age, different means, but the motives were the same. And the cruelty remained.

To kill once had not been enough to satisfy the ire of kings. They had demanded multiple deaths as far as the limitations of the human physique had allowed: hanging, drawing, quartering, throttling to unconsciousness, reviving, dissecting, burning pieces of flesh before the living eyes of their victims, forcing molten lead down a throat, filling a rectum with acid; or slow immersion in boiling oil, or impalement. The records were filled with the diabolical ingenuity of torments devised by man to use on his fellows.

Finally, the ultimate had been achieved. The torments of hell could be visited on a victim again and again and again. Punishment could fit the crime in a manner never dreamed of by those who had proposed the value of poetic justice.

Varl stirred a little, easing a cramp in his right thigh, a growing ache in his left buttock. Small shifts of position were indiscernible to any who might be watching, and there would be a watcher, he knew. Someone manned the scanner that monitored his cell, checked his reactions, took notes, and gathered data on which to base an opinion—the unseen opponent in a game he could not hope to win.

Against his shoulders he felt a new vibration, an alteration in background level, which grew stronger as if someone traversed the passages leading toward him. Varl tensed imperceptibly, readying himself for potential action. Behind the blank mask of his face his mind spun. The sound could mean nothing or have another cell as its target—a routine visit from a medic or minor official to some unfortunate who had tried to kill himself and who had, as most of them did, failed.

Varl sharpened his senses as the vibrations grew stronger, hope flowering with the growing conviction that his cell was their objective. Not one man, that was hoping for too much. Not even two; he forced himself to relax as he counted three sets of footsteps. One in the cell, one just outside, the third placed some distance down the passage to act as general cover. He could kill one, perhaps even two, but the third would bring him down before he could get within reach. Unless the man could be lured close, tricked into dropping his guard in some way—if the chance came, he would take it!

He stretched and slipped from the bunk as the footsteps halted beyond the door. He swayed as he hit the floor and turned toward the bowl. As the door opened, he spun, one hand lifted to the dressing on his temple, to slump and lie sprawled on the floor.

“Careful!” The oldest of the two at the door snapped a warning. “He’s a killer, remember. Don’t take any chances.”

“Cover me.” His companion stepped into the cell and stooped over the limp figure. “He’s out. Delayed shock, I guess, and that crack on the head couldn’t have helped any.”

“He could be bluffing.” The elder guard looked up at the light inset in the ceiling. “Check wanted on recent actions—report!”

“Prisoner remained quiet after regaining consciousness,” the unseen watcher said over the speaker in the ceiling. “He seemed dazed a little and sat as if meditating. Slept some, I guess; at least I didn’t see him move.”

“Not at all?”

“Not while I was watching. I’ve fifty others on my panel to keep an eye on.”

“Then what?” The eldest guard frowned at the delay in the other’s response. “What happened when we arrived?”

“He got down from the bunk and headed toward the bowl. I guess he was thirsty. He stopped when you opened up and turned toward the door. Then he went down. Hell, you saw that. Could have been sudden nausea. He’s had it rough lately.”

“The bastard asked for it.” The guard glowered at his companion busy over the slumped figure. “Any change?”

“None. Skin flaccid and chill. Some perspiration. Breathing shallow. No response to pain stimuli.” He displayed the pin he had used to dig beneath a nail. “Maybe if we got him on the bunk it would help.”

“It would look better.”

“Well? I can’t manage him alone.”

“And my back won’t allow me to lift a weight like that.” The older guard yelled down the passage. “Hans! Give a hand here! Hurry!”

“Sick?” The third guard looked at the prisoner when he arrived. “Or did you deck him?”

“He hasn’t been touched. Give Frank a hand to lift him on the bunk.” He stepped back. “All right, you two, get on with it.”

He watched as they stooped, heaving, to lift the man from the floor and rest him on the bunk. A moment later, they relaxed, easing their backs and stretching, forgetting the danger inherent in a desperate man, realizing it too late.

Hans dropped, retching as a stiffened hand rose to stab at his throat, his breath a harsh and laboured rasping as he fought to draw air through a ruptured larynx. Frank joined him, unconscious, the nerves in his neck impacted by the side of a hand like a blunted axe. The older guard backed as Varl rose and lunged toward him; his mouth opened to yell a warning, one hand fumbling at his belt. The hand froze and the warning remained unuttered as he felt a hand grip his throat and the ball of a thumb come to rest just below his right eye.

“Make a sound and I’ll blind you,” Varl said. He moved the thumb a little, lifting his index finger to threaten the other eye. “On your knees. Move!”

“Crazy,” the guard said. “There’s no need for this. We—”

“Shut up!” Varl dropped his hand from the other’s throat and snatched the needle gun from its holster. “Up and out!”

“I told you—”

“Out!” The darts in the gun would not kill, but the weapon itself could crush a skull if swung by a powerful arm. “Down the passage and head upward. Do it, damn you!”

It was madness, a gamble he could not win. But even so the game was worth playing for the one slim possibility that, despite all logic, he would be able to get clear and make his way to the open, the sun, the freedom that was the prize. He had to take the chance no matter what the cost.

They let him climb three levels before gassing him down.

CHAPTER 2

She was tall, blond, and blue-eyed, with a good figure and a mouth twisted as if she had tasted something bad. Her voice and eyes matched her uniform: crisp and cold.

“Kurt Varl, you disappointed me. I’d hoped to find an intelligent man.”

“Captain Varl.”

“Your licence was rescinded when you were sentenced to corrective punishment—for multiple murder and wanton destruction of private property. Or are you going to protest your innocence?”

“Execution is not murder.”

“And you killed in your capacity as captain in order to prevent a mutiny.” She shrugged indifferently. “As I said, Varl, you are a fool.”

“And you, Major? What are you?”

“You recognize my uniform?”

“I can read your braid.”

“And admit I outrank you?”

“Not where it counts.” Abruptly, he was tired of the game. “In the Venegian Sector we had a name for women like you. They were all well built and good-looking and all had tailored uniforms and high rank. The only field of battle they ever saw was between the sheets.” He caught the hand she swung at his face, his own fingers digging hard into her wrist. “Whose battleground are you, Major?”

For a moment their eyes met and then, with surprising strength, she jerked her wrist from his grasp. “An animal,” she said bitterly. “I should have expected it. A beast walking on two legs. What else could have killed nine people and destroyed a valuable cargo? You belong to the Dark Ages.”

He made no comment, looking instead at the room, and at the tall window which gave a view of rolling hills in the far distance, of clouds, and of the ground a long, long way below. The sun was low in the sky, dying with flaring streamers of crimson and gold, scarlet and amber, pink and orange. The colours touched his face and highlighted the cheekbones as they accentuated the hollows, dusting the eyes and giving the whole a resemblance to a pagan mask. Studying it, she thought of primitive idols wreathed in the smoke of sacrificial fires, their nostrils flared to catch the scent of newly spilled blood.

Then he turned and the moment was gone. He was just a man again, one caught in a vicious trap, the victim of justice formulated to embrace different circumstances on a different world.

He said flatly, “If you’ve come to gloat, forget it. Men are dead and I killed them and would again if the need arose. They were scum and you know it. The courts knew it—but the cargo belonged to the Pui-Chi Consortium and reparation had to be made. So I got sentenced and the government paid and everyone’s happy.”

“You infer expediency?”

“That and stupidity—mine. I should have taken what was going and run. Instead, I acted the captain, brought in my ship, delivered my passengers, and faced the music.” He looked at his clenched fists. “The last time, Major. I promise you that.”

“You’ll be old before they let you out,” she said bluntly. “Old and broken and maybe insane. Nine men, Varl. That’s a heavy debt to pay, and you’re damned lucky it isn’t more. Those guards could have died. If the monitor hadn’t summoned medics without delay, they would have died and you’d be facing fresh charges at this very moment. Think about it. Just think.”

He drew in his breath and shook his head, then turned and paced the floor. The gas had left him a little weak and foggy but not enough for him to be unaware of the guards beyond the door. The woman had come for a reason; the guards had been sent to collect him; he had acted too quickly for his own good.

“I’ve thought,” he said. “So?”

“Just how badly do you want to get away from here?”

“So badly that if you’re having a game with me I’ll break your neck.”

“I believe you.” She met his eyes; her own were cold, calculating. “Do you think you could do it?”

“It would be fun to try.”

“Your kind of fun.” Contempt edged her voice. “To hurt. To kill. To force others to jump when you give the word. A child. A vicious, unthinking child.”

“An animal,” he said. “That’s what you called me. But even an animal has feelings. What do you want from me?”

“You.”

“Just that?”

“Can there be more?” She turned and poured wine from a decanter into a glass and lifted it to study the tints swirling behind the crystal. “A deal, Varl. Your sentence commuted in return for your full cooperation. I warn you now—you could be getting the worst of the deal.” She poured a second glass of wine and extended it toward him. “Do we drink to it?”

He shook his head.

“You’d rather go back to your cell? To sit and wait for what’s coming? What will it be the next time? Flaying? Being slowly immersed in boiling oil? Choking on molten lead? Does it give you a kick? Are you a masochist?”

Her voice was too high, its tone too harsh, and the set of her mouth and eyes betrayed her strain. She was a woman sent to do a job and already she had tasted the possibility of failure.

He said, “The continued application of pain can build a resistance to its stimulus, as witnessed by those addicted to the use of the whip. It can even cause an emotional transference. Who knows, given time I may run joyfully to the sessions, eager to taste the new thrill of broken bones and burned flesh. After all, it’s only in the mind.”

“You bastard!”

“Yes.”

She looked at her wine and said, abruptly, “We need you.”

“Who?”

“Earth Confederation. The Comptroller. The fleet. Every damned ship in space. Posterity. You want more?”

“Start with your name.”

“Major Erica Borken, Central Computer Division, Probability and Analog Section, Spatial Department, Special Assignment.”

“Why me?”

“The specifications.” The wine vanished as she lifted the glass and drank; a single droplet clung like a pearl to the full bloom of her lower lip. “We need a certain kind of man, and they aren’t all that plentiful. A primitive—but with a brain. A man with guts and the killer instinct—but who knows how to evaluate situations. Someone who has experience in space, who can handle people, who can give orders and make them stick. A fighter. A man who can survive. Someone who knows how to hate.”

“An animal?”

“That and more. You fit and we need you—need you enough to spring you out of this trap. But I’m not begging. There are others, maybe not as well suited, but available and a damned sight easier to find.”

“Then get one,” he said. “But when you hand him over, be prepared to add that nice, neat uniform, your rank, your office, your career. The bastards who put me in here aren’t gentle. Fail them and you’ll find out just how hard they can be.”

“I know.”

The admission gave him victory, but he did not make the mistake of pressing it too hard. She could see him marched back to hell and think her career cheap at the price.

“Get me out of here,” he said. “Get me some decent clothes and take me somewhere I can feel human again. And tell me what all this is about.”

* * * *

The first took time, the second money, the third cooperation she was reluctant to give.

“My job was to get you,” she said. “The details will come later.”

“But you know them?”

“Some of them. Enough to know how important this is. Enough to be scared.”

They sat on the terrace of a hotel, which emulated a mountain in its soaring flight toward the stars. Facets of crystal caught and magnified the lights of distant beacons and the transient gleams of passing aircraft. Erica’s hair shone with burnished perfection in the brilliance; her face was angelic.

The illusion was created by too many lonely hours, Varl knew; he busied himself with the meal. The woman had ordered and the table was loaded with a profusion of dishes, each holding a succulent delight. Varl probed with the pointed sticks provided, lifting, tasting, recognizing flavours and discovering tastes he had never known existed.

“Luxury,” he said. “Who is footing the bill?”

“I’m allowed expenses.”

“That isn’t answering my question.”

“What does it matter? Call it reparation. A bribe. Compensation.”

“And you?”

“I don’t come with the meal.” For a moment her face froze to match her eyes. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Varl. You can push too hard.”

“I was curious as to who was backing you.” He speared a morsel of meat and chewed, not speaking again until he had swallowed. “The Pui-Chi Consortium valued that cargo at about three times its loaded worth. They might have had the idea that I cached it. A meal, a pretty woman, some money spent in bribes—some would think it a good investment.”

“Did you? Cache the cargo, I mean?”

His shrug matched the enigma of his smile.

“Not that you’d tell me if you had,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m working for Earth Confederation, and all expenses are taken care of. Incidentally, we leave tomorrow morning. Early, I’m afraid, but I didn’t think you’d object.”

“I don’t.”

“No.” She looked at the ground lying dark below the terrace, at the strings of lights, the condominiums, the shopping malls, the industrial complex. “Civilization,” she mused. “It looks so safe, yet how thin is the veneer. Sometimes, when I realize just how thin, it scares me.” Then, abruptly, she said, “Did you find it hard to kill?”

“I learned how in the Venegian Sector.”

“Things,” she said. “Insects—it isn’t the same.”

He made no comment, lifting his glass to sip at his wine; the light from the crystals adorning the building illuminated his face and gave it a harsh bleakness.

“You must have been young then,” she said. “During the war, I mean. Little more than a boy. And yet you learned to kill—or so you say. What did they look like? Wasps? Spiders? Ants?”

“Men,” he said. “You’ve been reading the propaganda. They weren’t men, but they looked like old-time knights in armor. Their exoskeletons were smooth and black and gleamed like polished metal, and when they bled they oozed red. Real blood just like ours. Only their shapes were different.”

“And their breeding habits.”

“And the way they looked after each other,” he admitted. “They put us to shame. The damned war should never have started, and it should have ended much sooner than it did. Too many men died out there. Men and Venegians, kids, babies, grubs, women, but people, all of them.” He emptied his glass and paused with his hand over the bottle. “I’ve had enough.”

“Go ahead if you want. I’ll take care of you.”

“Orders?”

“That, if you want.”

“I’d rather talk.”

“And I know what about. But leave it. The Comptroller will tell you what all this is about, and he won’t thank me for having interfered. Or for telling you about Polar North. In the meantime, I suggest you do your best to relax. You’re far too tense. Can you swim?”

They sported in water the temperature of blood, then plunged through misty curtains into a freezing chill to dive into tubes of electronic forces which spun them about and spat them into pools alive with golden fish and fronds of delicate weed. And later they walked on the upper promenade to look at the stars through panes of magnifying crystal, then went to sit in a garden heavy with the scent of nocturnal blooms.

“The cargo was contaminated,” he said abruptly. “Do you know what a tenge is?”

“A parasite, isn’t it?”

“One yielding a rare and expensive compound. Not just a perfume but a scent keyed to the natural exudations so as to accentuate the pheromones. Wearing it, a woman—any woman—is irresistible to any partner she desires. And no woman can deny a man using it anything he wants. The Pui-Chi were smuggling a consignment of eggs in the cargo, but something went wrong. The things hatched ahead of time.”

“Parasites,” she said. “I begin to understand.”

“They use living creatures for hosts. When gravid, they vent their eggs into the bloodstream. Once distributed about the body, death is inevitable.”

“But newly hatched eggs?”

“They’d used a dog to harbour them. It had remained alive while being eaten away inside. I had passengers to think about, women and children. The scum I killed had been set to guard the consignment. Dead, they couldn’t argue.” In the shadows he saw the gleam of her eyes. “What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. The same, I guess—no, I lack your courage. Does that make me a coward?”

“No. You’d have done the same if you were faced with it.”

“I wish I could be as sure of that as you are.” Her hand found his own, fingers closing, giving comfort with their warmth. “So you destroyed the cargo—but why not tell what happened?”

“I did, but I’d done too good a job. No evidence,” he explained. “My word against that of the Pui-Chi and the lie-detector evidence was ruled inadmissible because of my space-service conditioning. Bribery, but it worked, and I’d carried a couple of bleeding hearts who swore I was a martinet. They didn’t like the way I’d ordered them around when they broke regulations.”

“It’s over now,” she said.

He was bitter. “Is it?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m out of jail but still have to pay the price. How long do I need to pay?”

“Maybe all your life,” she said. “But there are compensations.”

Later, in the snug comfort of her bed, she reached out to touch the hard contours of his body and found him sleeping like a child. But before dawn he woke her with his frenzied screams.

CHAPTER 3

Nasir Kalif was a hundred and thirty-two years old but artifice had lifted a barrier against the years. A mechanical heart beat within his chest, chemicals laved his blood, and fresh organs had replaced the old. Only his brain remained untouched—the unique organ that housed the mind and the conceptions it entertained, the power that had made him the Comptroller of Earth Confederation.

“Later you will be given a complete mental and physical examination,” he said to Varl. “For now, tell me how you feel.”

“Relieved.”

“At having left Voltan? I can appreciate your sentiments. A soft and congenial world but one cursed with peculiar customs.”

“Imported from Earth.”

“True.” Kalif made a small gesture with a hand as thin and as curved as the claw of a bird. “The Confederation embraces a variety of worlds, and on each we have stamped our imprint. Subjective punishment holds certain desirable attributes, but, like most things, it can be abused.” He paused. “I understand you don’t sleep well at nights.”

“I have dreams. Nightmares.”

“Of course. They will be taken care of.”

“By Major Borken?” Varl met the dull brown eyes of the old man. “I must congratulate you on your choice of messenger.”

“She is efficient.”

“And was hand-picked for the job.” Varl made it a statement, not a question. “You knew of my preference for blondes, for tall, shapely women, for a personality stronger than mush but not as hard as steel. Why go to so much trouble?”

“You don’t know?”

“She refused to tell me. Said that you would explain it all at the right time.” Varl looked at the room, the instruments it contained, the furnishings. “Here?”

“Later, but now let me show you my garden.”

It was a fantasy in ice. Mutated plants clung to blue-white surfaces, spreading flame leaves over chill hummocks, and sprouting in lacelike fountains from masses of frozen water. An elaborate maze of paths wound through Polar North.

“A place in which to think,” Kalif mused. “One in which to dream. You are comfortable?”

Varl nodded; beamed and focussed heat provided localised warmth.