Stardeath

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