Barrington Bayley - The Star Virus

The rabble screamed with delight. The brown-garbed monk lifted the trumpet aloft, waving it in triumph. Again and again he blew in a frenzy of destruction, urging his slaves through the breaches which the vibrations of his instrument made in the walls.

Since then, he and his raggle-taggle army had been engaged in a hideous sacking of the city.

Rodrone’s enjoyment of this scene was interrupted by alarm calls that came simultaneously from Kulthol and the Stator ’s own warning system manned by Pim.

A sizeable Streall fleet was bearing down on them. As Rodrone saw the angular ships speed into view on the detector screen he felt a cold but thrilling shudder pass down his spine.

There was barely time to put into effect the prearranged battle strategy. The Stator took its place in the motley collection of spaceships, which spread out to form a ring, the ring elongating continuously into variously shaped ellipses according to a computer-operated program, so as to confuse the Streall ranging mechanisms.

The ploy worked well at first. The Streall ships, closely formated, lunged into the ring almost before realizing it and were subjected to a rapid barrage of fire from all sides. In reaction the Streall ships disengaged their various sections and broke up into sub-units, thus losing their chance of adopting a concerted battle plan. For some time the crowd of units milled around, punished by the continuous and deadly fire from the encircling ring.

But gradually the Streall’s superior firepower told. The units spread out, oblivious to losses, until the gathering extended as far as Rodrone’s ships.

Rodrone considered giving the order to scatter, but quickly realized it would be a mistake. There were enough Streall units here to pursue every one of them, pinning them lethally down.

The Stator clanged and stank with the fury of the battle, but received relatively few hits; the deadliners, he thought, seemed to have an understanding with the Angel of Death. Or perhaps their practice at nuclear Brag, the same that had enabled Jermy to manipulate the lens, gave them a head start when it came to picking off approaching missiles. Their manner of fighting was bloodcurdling: the iron interior of the ship echoed to their screams of enjoyment as death crashed all about them, to their hoots and yells of expectation as their own shots were let loose.

But Rodrone’s tally board told a depressing story. The Revealer gone. The Mendicant gone. The Maire Rodex-5 gone. Towards the end, the battle assessor computer became confused. It was no longer possible, in the far-flung junk heap of Streall sections, wreckage, ships and fragments of ships, to tell what was functional and what was dead.

A silence descended, as the surviving units of each side scanned the enemy in attempts to determine where there was still life and the ability to attack or defend. At least, that was what the Stator was doing. The occasional explosions grew rarer, then ceased altogether. No one was firing, for fear of revealing himself.

Nevertheless Rodrone located several functioning enemy units. But so far he had no evidence that anything of his own squadron still lived.

Jermy tugged at his arm. “ We can get away, you know.”

“Eh?”

“Our drive is indetectable.”

Doubtfully Rodrone regarded the assessment board. Somewhere out there some of his people might still be alive and needing help, or perhaps injured in crippled ships. But what could he do to help them? Any move to go to their aid would mean his being blasted out of existence.

“All right,” he agreed reluctantly, and prepared to make the maneuver. Unobstrusively they slipped behind a floating wreck, then while masked from the Streall watchers, switched to main drive. In minutes the Stator ’s silent, mysterious mode of propulsion had whisked them to safety.

Out of curiosity they began to tune in at random to space-tensor broadcasts. Everywhere the story was the same. Fighting, battles, landings on alien planets. All over the Hub the tension between man and Streall had broken into open war as the two races locked in a titanic struggle. The news filled Rodrone with a sense of dread. He had expected it to happen gradually. The suddenness of events made him feel like an incendiarist.

Still, he told himself, now man would never be intimidated.

For some reason he felt even more anxious to see his wife.

A few weeks later they pulled into the Land system. Rodrone’s joy increased as he saw the gentle violet sun and found the traceries of eleven planets on the miraculous picture-plate behind the desk console. On one of those traces, the fourth from the sun, lived his wife.

But as they penetrated deep into the system he knew that something was wrong. The planet seventh from the sun was smoking . Lurid streams of poisonous vapor rolled out from it into space as it moved in its orbit, the deadly pyre of what had once been a fair world of fifty million inhabitants.

Horrified, he moved closer in to the sixth and seventh worlds. They, too, were blasted lifeless, their atmospheres transformed into radioactive soups. His brief inspection of them brought his anxiety to certainty. After that, he moved on to Sunder almost as a matter of formality.

Jermy and Jublow were with him in the control gallery when they edged close to the planet and Rodrone was able to see it for himself. The Streall had come and gone, blasting the Land system to hell. Sunder was ravaged, blackened, practically ripped apart and scorched down to the very rock mantle. It was inconceivable that even a bacterium could still be alive down there.

Jermy looked at the sight and grinned. “Another dead ’un, eh, Captain?”

Rodrone’s fists clenched convulsively. Seeing the expression on his face, Jermy added, “It’s happening all over, Chief. All over the Hub, on our side and theirs. Don’tcha remember? We picked up lots of pictures.”

“Yeah!” Jublow butted in with little-boy glee. “Lots of planets blowing up!”

Rodrone felt an impulse to kill them both, but he restrained himself and nodded absently. He could hardly expect a deadliner to grieve over either death or parting.

Counters clicked and hummed. In the distance, the atomic explosion flared briefly like a lighted match, sending an expanding wave of light and radiation into the eternal night. Patiently Rodrone waited for the debris of released energy to disperse, then the Stator moved silently in, probing with its radar fingers.

A tight little dot appeared on the radar screen, traveling swiftly to zenith-east from the force of the explosion. Effortlessly the Stator tracked it, closed in, extended waldo arms.

Rodrone sighed. The lens was intact. No radiation, no signs of burning, not even a hairline crack on its glossy surface. Spinning unconcernedly in space, it displayed its never-ending picture show to the void.

Apparently the lens was indestructible. Appalled by the fate of the Land planets, appalled by the tales of holocaust that reached them every day from all over the Hub, he had come to the conclusion that it must not be allowed to exist.

In the past weeks he had tried everything. He had tried explosives, he had tried to dissolve it in acids, and he had tried to burn it away in an electric arc. But nothing worked. “Maybe it’s right , boss,” Feeldonet said as they hauled the undamaged lens inboard. “Maybe it should exist. Remember how it influences events. What would happen if we did destroy it?”

Feeldonet was the most intelligent of the deadliners. By watching the Streall technician he had learned the knack of understanding the Stator ’s drive, and having only recently joined the crew, he was not quite as far gone as the others. In fact, if he had not taken ship aboard the Stator he might eventually have overcome the personal tragedies that had made him turn his back on normal life. But there was no chance of a recovery among the company he kept now.