Raiders from the Rings
by Alan E. Nourse
CONTENTS
Prologue
1. The Rumor
2. The Raid
3. Too Many Prisoners
4. The Black Belt
5. The Phantom Ship
6. The Face of the Enemy
7. Derelict
8. The Cleft in the Rock
9. The Maze
10. The Mauki’s Chant
Epilogue
Raiders from the Rings
Prologue
THE RAIDERS could hear the mauki’s chant from the moment they boarded the ship from Earth.
It came from somewhere deep in the heart of the craft, and they paused as soon as the outer hatchway had been forced, listening in spite of themselves in the darkness of the corridor. It came to them softly at first: a clear, sweet woman’s voice, sharp as crystal in their ears. Then it rose higher, mournful and shattering, and the words became distinct in the ancient, heart-rending lament that the raiders had heard so many times before. Urgent as their mission was, they could not help but listen for a moment, feeling the wave of sadness and longing surging up in their throats.
Beyond them the ship’s corridor was empty; there was no sound here other than the chant. Not even the throbbing of the ship’s generators was audible in the blackness. The raiders stood transfixed for a moment. Then Petro, the leader, took a deep breath and flicked on the battle lantern at his belt.
“She’s here, all right,” he said. “She must have the whole crew listening. Let’s go.” The three men moved down the corridor, flashing their lights cautiously. Petro pointed to an overhead conduit. “Jack, that must be the main power cable. Follow it down to the generators, and wait for the word. Tiny, you come with me. And be careful. We can’t assume that everybody’s listening to the woman.”
Silently they moved along to a corridor crossing, then ducked down a ladder into a storage hold. It had been ridiculously simple to break into this huge, clumsy ship from Earth. From the first fleeting contact a week before, the raiders had been stalking it, watching with contempt as it moved ponderously on its way through the Asteroid Belt, unaware that it had even been spotted. Finally it moved into the shadow of a huge chunk of asteroid debris and waited, obviously depending on its radar screens to pick up any approaching vessel. With the clumsiness so typical of Earthborn men in space, the crew of the Earth ship had overlooked the fact that the asteroid they were using for concealment was blinding them completely on one side.
It was then that the Spacer ship had moved in on its prey. Now the raiders were aboard, and the mauki was doing her part. Petro and Tiny worked their way through the pitch-black holds into the galley and down toward the brig area. They were big, powerful men but they moved like jungle cats in the darkness. Not once did they encounter one of the Earth crewmen. When they finally approached the brightly lighted mess hall just above the brig area, they saw the reason why.
The crew were listening to the mauki. The mess hall was crowded with men; still others were jamming the approach corridors and ladders down to the woman’s cell. Some smoked, some munched slowly on the remnants of dinner, shifting to new positions for comfort, but all of them were listening intently to the haunting measures of the chant, like men in a dream from which they could not escape.
In her tiny cell in the brig, the mauki stood gripping the bars, a tall, straight, proud woman, filling her lungs and throwing her head back as she sang.
Entranced, her captors had become captives, straining to hear her, drawn from all quarters of the ship, leaving their work to come closer as the chant struck home. Petro winked at his companion, and ducked down a side corridor leading to the brig area. “She’s got them hooked, all right,” he said. “The child must be in there with her. Got the cutting torch ready?”
“Yes. But I don’t see the kid.”
Petro clicked on a handset. “Ready, Jack?”
“All set.”
“Then let it blow.”
Abruptly, the power went off, plunging the mess hall into darkness. The same instant, the mauki stopped her singing, and the crewmen’s dream turned into a nightmare. Petro and Tiny dashed across into the brig, remembering landmarks, and dodged down the corridor into the cell block. A flick of Petro’s light showed a dozen barred cubicles. On the deck above shouts were rising. Men tripped over each other in alarm, and someone was yelping for battle lanterns. Petro searched the cells in the dim lantern light. “Mauki?”
“Yes, yes!” the woman said in the darkness. “Hurry.”
A cutting torch flared, and sparks flew up as the bars yielded to intense heat. Tiny held a tangle-gun in his hand, firing steadily as crewmen began tumbling down the ladder into the brig.
Petro felt the woman’s hand in his. “Quickly,” she said. “There’s another way out to the main corridor.
Your torch can cut the lock.”
“Where’s the child?” Petro asked.
“The child is dead. They jettisoned him without a suit.”
A growl rose in Petro’s throat. He whistled for Tiny and followed the woman back along the row of cells. As crewmen stumbled and cursed in the darkness, the raiders burst through into the main corridor and through the holds and storage bins toward the exit hatch, with Tiny holding the rear as Petro and the woman plunged ahead. Panic reigned in the quarters below; crewmen were fighting each other as the ship’s officers roared helplessly for order. Petro found Jack waiting for them at the exit. The raiders were scrambling across into their own fleet space craft while the Earth crew was still floundering. As he slammed the airlock shut, Petro saw that the woman was still clutching in her arms the empty hood and pressure suit of a five-year-old child.
Moments later, the raider craft shot away from the hull of the Earth ship, sliding back into the blackness behind the asteroid. “All right,” Petro said grimly. “Battle stations.” The tiny ship turned its six missile tubes to face the Earth ship. “Ready with one and two.” The mauki had been huddled in the corner of the cabin, sobbing. Now she looked up, tears still streaking her face. “What are you going to do?”
“What do you think I’m going to do?” Petro said harshly. “They’re butchers. Kidnapping you is one thing. Murdering a five-year-old child is something else. Well, they haven’t even got their battle lights on yet. We’ll gut them.”
The woman was on her feet. “No, please! Let them go back home.”
“So they can murder more of our children?”
“You don’t understand. They were afraid of him.”
“Of a five-year-old?”
“Yes, they were afraid—until they heard me sing.”
Petro stared at her, hesitating, while Jack and Tiny waited for the order. “Please,” the woman said, “let them go home.”
Petro shrugged and turned away, striking his fist viciously in his palm. “It’s idiocy. We have them helpless.”
“And if we killed them, we would be no better than they,” the woman said quietly. “Is that what you want? If there is ever to be an end to this war, someone has to rise above it sometime.” Petro and his men stared at one another. Then Petro sighed. “All right,” he said. “Close the tubes.
Head back to Central, while I try to think of something to tell the Council. And make it fast.” Tiny and Jack set the course. Slowly the ship eased back and away, then lost itself in the blackness of space, moving out toward the heart of the Asteroid Belt. Hours later, with generators repaired and power restored, the hulking Earth ship sneaked out of its hiding place, scanning the area for ambush, and began its long, ponderous orbit back toward Earth.