Barrington Bayley - The Zen Gun

He lifted his head in surprise at a banging noise from the direction of the outer door. He heard footsteps in the corridor. Then there barged into the study a lean, agile-looking boar who stopped and darted his gaze ferociously from side to side. Behind him came several more animals and one human, a tall, pale young man in a red cloak.

The boar was Zheikass, Under-Secretary of the Home Star Department and effectively the administrator of affairs in Diadem. The young man was Heskios, a Council Member of junior rank but with no role, as far as Koutroubis could recall, in the Home Star Department. Koutroubis was puzzled. He also recognised two animals beside Zheikass: they were high-ranking civil servants too.

Blankly he addressed his fellow Council member. “Why, Heskios! What are you doing here?”

The other coloured slightly. But his gaze remained stony.

Zheikass spoke, in a stormy squeal. “ Councillor, you are under arrest! ”

Stunned, Koutroubis rose to his feet. Stuttering, he spoke again to Heskios.

“Are you really a party to this?”

“I happen to believe they are right, sir,” Heskios replied stiffly.

“And you , Zheikass.” Koutroubis turned his gaze to the pig. “I never realised you were a Whole-Earth-Biotist.”

The boar, already a large animal, seemed to swell even larger. He glared in outrage.

“Don’t you dare call me a Biotist!” he rasped.

In his grief Archier stumbled as he made his way through achingly empty concourses, ruined salons, wide echoing corridors from which bodies had been lately cleared. The air of dereliction was complete. It was as if the flagship, indeed the whole fleet, drifted unmanned.

In fact most of the crew were huddled in their quarters. The orgy of destruction was over, curbed by Ragshok when the two factions among the raiders—formerly defeated rebels, who felt some moral compunction, and outright pirates, who felt none—had begun fighting one another. Much life had been saved thereby, though the wanton killings of animals which none of the Escorians seemed to recognise as fellow beings, had continued apace.

The helplessness of the ship’s crew, once the raiders got aboard, had been nightmarish. No one was armed; even the commandos had been unable to reach their armouries. Still, they had managed to put up a resistance. Many an enemy had fallen to tooth and claw, though in the end this had resulted in savage reprisals.

He swayed, at the top of a gentle slope that led down to what had been, to all intents and purposes, an open-air café, bathed in sunlight, a blue sky above. The sunlamp, the hologrammed sky, were smashed. Tables were overturned and bore the dark stains of dried blood.

Suddenly two figures emerged from the interior of the café and began to mount the slope. They were Ragshok’s men. On their heads were the stolen hats of staff officers. Swarthy muscled bodies showed through skimpy wraps made of animal pelts. Both wore tawny close-fitting pants—lionskin, probably—and carried their scanguns insolently over their loins, like codpieces.

Clearly they had been sampling what the café had to offer for they walked unsteadily as they came up to Archier.

“Eh, it’s the Admiral,” slurred one. “Howdy, A’m’ral.”

The other grabbed Archier by the arm, swung him round and raised his fist to hit him in the face. “Whatcha doin’ still alive, Admiral?”

“ Leave him alone! ”

The peremptory female voice rang out, causing the pirate to jerk round in surprise. Hesper Positana came striding from the other end of the café area. Boldly she climbed the slope and waved the two men back.

“Clear out, or Ragshok will hear of it.”

The sight of her black and silver uniform seemed to have an effect on them. One grinned sheepishly.

“All right, sister, keep your vest on.”

The phrase was opaque to Archier. He allowed the girl to lead him down the ramp. Behind him, his assailants passed on.

“You’d be safer in your quarters,” Hesper told him. “Those two might have killed you if I hadn’t happened along.”

“This is my fleet,” Archier said stubbornly. “My ship.” He sighed. “They killed my adjutant,” he said blankly. “He was such a nice little chap.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” Archier said dolefully. “You’ve won. This is what you wanted.”

“You’ll have to believe me when I say that I never wanted what I’ve seen happen here. We fought to get you Imperials off our necks, that’s all. So as not to have to let our best men and women be carried off to Diadem. Not to have your fleets hovering over our heads threatening to blast us all.”

“It looks like you’ll have that. But in the process Diadem is going to be ripped apart by these people. It’s going to be ghastly.”

She looked at him sharply. “You mean you can’t defend yourselves?”

He shook his head. “Diadem is wide open. It’s completely defenceless.”

“But what about the other fleets?”

“They are out in the Empire. They’ve been ordered to stay out of Diadem, as a matter of fact. There’s… a political crisis there.”

She was silent for a while. “Look,” she said at length, “for what it’s worth to you, I haven’t got any time for these characters. Ragshok’s people are just scum. Shipwreckers… the ironic thing is, it’s the fleets that have prevented us from clearing the spacelanes of these pirates, by not letting us have proper policing forces of our own… And though the others wear the same uniform as myself, I don’t feel a part of them. They’re the dregs of the rebel forces, the garbage.” She stopped in her tracks. “Why, I’ve seen them rape children .”

Despite himself, Archier smiled. “I doubt if what you saw was rape,” he said.

The mainly male invaders had, it was clear, come aboard with the intention of making free with the flagship’s women. Initially they had been disappointed. All but a handful of the nubile human females followed the fad of facial senility, which the Escorians were unsophisticated enough to find repulsive. When things settled down a little, however, the Priapus’ People troupe, including the young girl trainees, had been more than willing to accommodate them.

“I know what I saw,” Hesper insisted. “You probably don’t understand these things. You people from Diadem are so innocent in some ways. Sex isn’t really a part of your lives at all, is it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say…”

She was thoughtful, not hearing him. “Isn’t there any way to regain control? I mean, I don’t want to see the fleet handed back to you, to the Imperials. But I would like to see it in responsible Escorian hands. If we had Ten-Fleet we could defend Escoria as a sovereign state, without doing crazy criminal things like rampaging around Diadem.” She reflected. “What happened to all the prisoners you took?”

“They’re still on the prison ship. Ragshok didn’t release them… he’s ahead of you.”

“So? How would we go about releasing them?”

Archier found he liked the Escorian girl. He admired her guts. But he shook his head. “There’s no way to get to them. The intermats are under guard. The only other way would be to steal a gig, but what with the way Ragshok lets people like me wander around he must be pretty confident that’s not possible either.”

In fact Archier had been in the Command Centre since the take-over. Ragshok had wanted him to explain how to mesh feetol bubbles and fly the fleet in formation. Although in fear of his life, Archier had refused: but it had made no difference. Handling the fleet was fairly easy, and Ragshok’s men had soon got the hang of it. Ten-Fleet was now heading for Diadem at top speed.