Sargasso of Lost Starships Rehidden Read online

  * * *

  Comrades, hear the battle tiding,

  hear the ships that rise and yell

  faring outward, standard riding--

  Kick the Terrans back to hell!

  The others were listening, women raised weary heads, an old light burned in their eyes and tankards clashed together. They stood up to roar out the chorus till the walls shook.

  Lift your glasses high,

  kiss the boys good-bye,

  (Live well; my friend, live well, live you well)

  for we're riding,

  for we're riding,

  for we're riding out to Terran sky! Terran sky! Terran sky!

  We have shaken loose our thunder

  where the planets have their way,

  and the starry deeps of wonder

  saw the Impies in dismay.

  Lift your glasses high,

  kiss the boys good-bye--

  The workwomen in the street heard it and stopped where they were. Some began to sing. The Imperial superintendent yelled, and an Ansan turned to flash her a wolfish grin. A squad of blue-uniformed Solanrian marines coming toward the inn went on the double.

  Oh, the Emp'ror sent her battle

  ships against us in a mass,

  but we shook them like a rattle

  and we crammed them--

  'Hi, there! Stop that!'

  The song died, slowly and stubbornly, the women stood where they were and hands clenched into hard-knuckled fists. Someone shouted an obscenity.

  The Terran sergeant was very young, and she felt unsure before those steady, hating eyes. She lifted her voice all the louder: 'That will be enough of that. Any more and I'll run you all in for lèse majesté. Haven't you drunken bums anything better to do than sit around swilling beer?'

  A big Ansan smith laughed with calculated raucousness.

  The sergeant looked around, trying to ignore her. 'I'm here for Captain Donovan--Earl Basille, if you prefer. They said she'd be here. I've got an Imperial summons for her.'

  The noble stretched out a hand. 'This is she. Let's have that paper.'

  'It's just the formal order,' said the sergeant. 'You're to come at once.'

  'Commoners,' said Donovan mildly, 'address me as 'sir.''

  'You're a commoner with the rest of 'em now.' The sergeant's voice wavered just a little.

  'I really must demand a little respect,' said Donovan with drunken precision. There was an unholy gleam in her eyes. 'It's a mere formality, I know, but after all my family can trace itself farther back than the Empire, whereas you couldn't name your mother.'

  Sam Olman snickered.

  'Well, sir--' The sergeant tried elaborate sarcasm. 'If you, lady, will please be so good as to pick your high-bred tail off that chair, lady, I'm sure the Imperium would be mostly deeply grateful to you, sir.'

  'I'll have to do without its gratitude, I'm afraid.' Donovan folded the summons without looking at it and put it in her tunic pocket. 'But thanks for the paper. I'll keep it in my bathroom.'

  'You're under arrest!'

  Donovan stood slowly up, unfolding her sheer two meters of slender, wiry height. 'All right, Wocha,' she said. 'Let's show them that Ansa hasn't surrendered yet.'

  She threw the tankard into the sergeant's face, followed it with the table against the two marines beside her, and vaulted over the sudden ruckus to drive a fist into the jaw of the woman beyond.

  Wocha rose and her booming cry trembled in the walls. She'd been a slave of Donovan's since she was a cub and the woman a child, and if someone had liberated her she wouldn't have known what to do. As batman and irregular groundtrooper she'd followed her mistress to the wars, and the prospect of new skull-breaking lit her eyes with glee.

  For an instant there was tableau, Terrans and Ansans rigid, staring at the monster which suddenly stood behind the earl. The natives of Donarr have the not uncommon centauroid form, but their bodies are more like that of a rhinoceros than of a horse, hairless and slaty blue and enormously massive. The gorilla-armed torso ended in a round, muzzled, ape-like face, long-eared, heavy-jawed, with canine tusks hanging over the great gash of a mouth. A chair splintered under her feet, and she grinned.

  'Paraguns--' cried the sergeant.

  All hell let out for noon. Some of the customers huddled back into the corners, but the rest smashed the ends off bottles and threw themselves against the Terrans. Sam Olman's remaining arm yanked a marine to her and bashed her face against the wall. Donovan's fist traveled a jolting arc to the nearest belly and she snatched a rifle loose and crunched it against the woman's jaw. A marine seized her from behind, she twisted in the grip and kicked savagely, whirled around and drove the rifle butt into the larynx.

  'Kill the bluebellies! Kill the Impies! Hail, Ansa!'

  Wocha charged into the squad, grabbed a hapless Terran in her four-fingered hands, and swung the woman like a club. Someone drew her bayonet to stab the slave, it glanced off the thick skin and Wocha roared and sent her reeling. The riot blazed around the room, trampling women underfoot, shouting and cursing and swinging.

  'Donovan, Donovan!' shouted Sam Olman. She charged the nearest Impy and got a bayonet in the stomach. She fell down, holding her hand to her wound, screaming.

  The door was suddenly full of Terrans, marines arriving to help their comrades. Paraguns began to sizzle, women fell stunned before the supersonic beams and the fight broke up. Wocha charged the rescuers and a barrage sent her giant form crashing to the floor.

  They herded the Ansans toward the city jail. Donovan, stirring on the ground as consciousness returned, felt handcuffs snap on her wrists.

  Imperial summonses being what they were, she was bundled into a grounder and taken under heavy guard toward the ordered place. She leaned wearily back, watching the streets blur past. Once a group of children threw stones at the vehicle. 'How about a cigarette?' she said.

  'Shut up.'

  To her mild surprise, they did not halt at the military government headquarters--the old Hall of Justice where the Donovans had presided before the war--but went on toward the suburbs, the spaceport being still radioactive. They must be going to the emergency field outside the city. Hm. She tried to relax. Her head ached from the stunbeam.

  A light cruiser had come in a couple of days before, H.M. Ganymede. It loomed enormous over the green rolling fields and the distance-blued hills and forests, a lance of bright metal and energy pointed into the clear sky of Ansa, blinding in the sun. A couple of spacewomen on sentry at the gangway halted as the car stopped before them. 'This woman is going to Commander Jansky.'

  'Aye, aye. Proceed.'

  Through the massive airlock, down the mirror-polished companionway, into an elevator and up toward the bridge--Donovan looked about her with a professional eye. The Impies kept a clean, tight ship, she had to admit.

  She wondered if she would be shot or merely imprisoned. She doubted if she'd committed an enslaving offense. Well, it had been fun, and there hadn't been a hell of a lot to live for anyway. Maybe her friends could spring her, if and when they got some kind of underground organized.

  She was ushered into the captain's cabin. The ensign with her saluted. 'Donovan as per orders, sir.'

  'Very good. But why is she in irons?'

  'Resisted orders, sir. Started a riot. Bloody business.'

  'I--see.' He nodded his dark head. 'Losses?'

  'I don't know, sir, but we had several wounded at least. A couple of Ansans were killed, I think.'

  'Well, leave her here. You may go.'

  'But--sir, she's dangerous!'

  'I have a gun, and there's a woman just outside the door. You may go, ensign.'

  Donovan swayed a little on her feet, trying to pull herself erect, wishing she weren't so dirty and bloody and generally messed up. You look like a tramp, woman, she thought. Keep up appearances. Don't let them outdo us, even in spit and polish.

  'Sit down, Captain Donovan,' said the man.

  She lowered herself t
o a chair, raking him with deliberately insolent eyes. He was young to be wearing a commander's twin planets--young and trim and nephew looking. Tall body, sturdy but graceful, well filled out in the blue uniform and red cloak; raven-black hair falling to his shoulders; strong blunt-fingered hands, one of them resting close to his sidearm. His face was interesting, broad and cleanly molded, high cheekbones, wide full mouth, stubborn chin, snub nose, storm-gray eyes set far apart under heavy dark brows. A superior peasant type, she decided, and felt more at ease in the armor of her inbred haughtiness. She leaned back and crossed her legs.

  'I am Hal Jansky, in command of this vessel,' he said. His voice was low and resonant, the note of strength in it. 'I need you for a certain purpose. Why did you resist the Imperial summons?'

  Donovan shrugged. 'Let's say that I'm used to giving orders, not receiving them.'

  'Ah--yes.' He ruffled the papers on his desk. 'You were the Earl of Lanstead, weren't you?'

  'After my mother and older sister were killed in the war, yes.' She lifted her head. 'I am still the Earl.'

  He studied her with a dispassionate gaze that she found strangely uncomfortable. 'I must say that you are a curious sort of leader.' he murmured. 'One who spends her time in a tavern getting drunk, and who on a whim provokes a disorder in which many of her innocent followers are hurt or killed, in which property difficult to replace is smashed--yes, I think it was about time that Ansa had a change of leadership.'

  Donovan's face was hot. Hell take it, what right had he to tell her what to do? What right had the whole damned Empire to come barging in where it wasn't wanted? 'The Families, under the queen, have governed Ansa since it was colonized,' she said stiffly. 'If it had been such a