Roy Dudley

THE PIRATES OF ILARION Page 1

Chapter 1

   Keith Jamison stared unseeingly at the blank walls of his cell, his mind millions of miles from the cold reality represented by the tiny cubicle in which he found himself. Once more, he was Quinn Austen, second officer and pilot of a small exploration cruiser of the Galaxy Patrol. The ship was on special assignment, making an exploratory survey of animal life on the Planet Omir.

   Omir was a small planet hugging the outskirts of Galaxy VI, and largely unexplored. This mission's particular concern was in a thorough search for intelligent life. The Galaxy Council was very explicit on this issue. Galaxy law required a survey before opening a planet to exploitation. The presence of intelligent life automatically barred exploration by member worlds.

   Keith was a highly trained member of a team, his forte extra sensory perception. One of the few humans gifted with extra sensory perception to a measurable degree, that his gift was many times stronger than tests indicated was his carefully guarded secret. Any aberration far from the norm automatically made one a suspect, a possible mutant, one whose genes might combine in unacceptable combinations. The old days of the witch hunts were long past, but mutants were undesirable to the body politic and cast off. Those unlucky enough to be caught were sent to an uninhabited planet where they were to live if they could. Usually they died. In many ways, this exile was crueler than the summary executions so common after the atomic wars.

   His slip in character had been deliberate, a calculated risk, one that had saved the lives of the crew. This betrayal of his powers had also cost him his future in the Patrol. The night had been dark, the crew gathered about a small fire in comfortable silence. Of the crew, Keith alone was aware of the gathering of forces hostile to the ship's company. Feeling an immediate sense of danger, he had glanced at the dark forests surrounding them. When this revealed nothing unusual, he quested the area, using his other senses. He discovered the camp to be surrounded by a pack of club wielding sub-human monkey men.

   The crew was totally unprepared, an unexpected attack meaning almost certain death to many of them. Without too much thought of possible consequences, Keith had sounded the alarm. Soon after the attack had been repulsed, Commander Oggarty had questioned Keith with stubborn persistence. In Oggarty's narrow opinion, any mutation was an unspeakable affliction that must be eradicated. It was not a question of good or bad, or of any advantage the mutation had gained for the men under his command. It was simply regulations. In the course of the questioning, Keith's biggest problem had been in a warning that proved to be too accurate in its description of the foe. A short period of fencing convinced Keith that the Commander had no intention of dropping the matter. In Oggarty's opinion his mutation was a serious matter, one he must report to the Galaxy Council.

   Keith confessed to a superior night vision, believing this was the lesser of two evils. Such a mutation should be considered less reprehensible than his exceptional mental perception. He was wrong. In mutation there were no degrees. A mutant was a mutant, the punishment the same. That had been three long months ago.

   "Prisoner Jamison," a voice outside his cell announced with a snap of authority. At the use of his adopted name, Keith glanced up in disinterest.

   A guard stood at his cell door. Resplendent in the regulation gold and gray of the Galaxy Police, he regarded his prisoner sourly. This was the guard's normal expression. Attaching no great importance to this, Keith came slowly to his feet, totally ignoring the guard. Today his formal sentence would be pronounced, a verdict that had been decided months ago.

   He ran a halfhearted hand through his hair and brushed his drab prisoner's clothing, smoothing the wrinkles without much success. After straightening, he stood patiently, waiting for the guard to open the door.

   A second guard joined the first, this guard no happier than his companion. Keith was in no mood for their usual ribald comments and appreciated this lack of conversation.

   With a veiled sneer on his face, the latest guard carelessly pushed Jamison's old Patrol uniform through the bars, allowing it to drop to the dusty floor. The uniform had been neatly pressed, was comfortably worn, but with the insignia removed. The dark patches of black where his insignia had rested contrasted with the faded black of his uniform.

   Without ceremony and with no unnecessary words, the guards herded Keith to a sonic shower. Here the dirt and grime of prison was magically wafted away. A second machine furnished the regulation Patrol haircut, and a third passed quickly over his face, removing the few whiskers remaining from the last treatment.

   Keith emerged from the ministrations of the machines looking immaculate and nearer his twenty-six years. His natural optimism had returned, and with it, a renewal of his determination to escape or die in the attempt. He would choose the time and place.

   The two surly guards fell in to either side of him to escort him down endless and antiseptic corridors, down empty and silent halls. The slight noise made by their rubber heels was a seeming violation of this sealed and silent world.

   In due time, the trio reached a huge double door before which Keith's two guards halted smartly. Although nominally at attention, one of the guards extended a stiff arm in front of Keith to stay his advance. All very military. Two bored sentinels, nominally in charge of the door glanced up, asked a few perfunctory questions and waved the party through the portal. So much for military correctness.

   The room Keith entered was large, much too large for the small assemblage gathered there. Twelve hooded beings occupied a dais, each of them reclining comfortably in an air cushioned chair, each of them dressed in shapeless, flowing robes of velvet.

   Keith repressed a shiver of revulsion. They reminded him of nothing so much as black vultures ready to devour a dead carcass. Deliberately, he allowed his attention to wander from the seated figures at the far end of the room.

   Facing the twelve hooded figures from the foot of the dais, was a tall and slender woman, neatly sandwiched between her own two female guards. She glanced at Keith incuriously, her face pale and wholly devoid of emotion. Other than being obviously female, her expression left little to interest Keith. He ignored her in turn and focused his attention on the birds of prey occupying the dais.

   At an unseen signal, the woman's guards stepped two paces to the rear with immaculate precision. Keith's escorts rather rudely stationed him immediately to the woman's right and stepped back as smartly as the first two had done. The precision of this charade made Keith definitely uneasy. This precision indicated a long and accepted routine. However, this charade held no resemblance to the sentencing as he had visualized it. This, of course, made him more uneasy. Why was the woman here?

   What was her interest in the matter?

   The judges were quiet spectators, enduring the maneuvering of the guards and regarding the two prisoners coldly though slits in their masks. Keith rudely returned their stares with an impassive face, resentful of this detached scrutiny. He had learned this unsettling routine while a child in an orphanage, and recognized the same unwelcome atmosphere here. This failed to interest or irritate his audience.

   When the seated figures made no move, Keith ignored them once more and turned to examine the woman curiously. She was almost as tall as he was, and owned a pale face decorated with a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Oddly, the freckles added character to otherwise plain features. High cheek bones accented a generous but tight-lipped mouth, and abundant black hair framed a white face holding large blue eyes. An indefinable air of bitterness clung to her, a coldness of expression and manner that repelled any sense of kinship.

   She returned Keith's regard coolly, appraising his own slender figure with the jaundiced eye of a Morgainian ost trader. He had the definite feeling that he was on the auction block to be sold to the highest bidder.

   Unaccustomed to being so pointedly ignored, a disapproving rustle passed across the masked figures. Almost as if this movement of distaste were a cue, a voice as dry as the rustling of corn husks in a desert wind broke their mutual regard. The masks did not move, making it impossible to identify the speaker immediately.

   However, Keith was old at this game and quickly spotted the speaker by the irregular rhythm of his breathing. He made a point of focusing his full and rude attention upon each speaker as they spoke in turn. While acknowledging this as childish, it did make him feel better.

   "Prisoners Jamison, you have jointly been found to be mutants," the first figure droned. He pronounced their horrible affliction like an obscenity, uttering the word deliberately.

   "Your names have been changed to Jamison, Keith and Roberta, to protect your family and friends," a woman added, citing the words like a litany.

   A third began a tiresome tirade against mutants, her voice acid with distaste. Keith allowed his mind to wander.

   His one advantage lay in the fact that he had no family to dishonor. He was an orphan, a nameless waif picked from the streets and raised in an orphanage on the Planet Adair. Adair was a forbidding planet of great deserts and inhospitable to life, particularly human life. Despite these small defects, Keith felt a sudden nostalgia and longing strike him, a wish to inhabit this barren landscape instead of this barren room.

   The orphanage had been a fit training ground for the space cadets, the headmistress had been more arbitrary than the worst of the drill masters. Her recourse to sulfurous adjectives was the largest he had encountered to date, and she had possessed a faultless memory for new four letter words. She could explain her feelings explicitly in seven languages. Her vocabulary??.

   He glanced up at the repetition of his unfamiliar name. One of the human vultures addressed him.

   "Keith Jamison, you have not answered our question," the voice intoned with a semblance of patience.

   "I'm sorry, what was the question?" His voice utterly failed to convey the apology of his words.

   The judges stirred in disapproval. "You are to say, 'I do,'" announced a female scathingly.

   That was simple enough. "I do," Keith repeated dutifully. The hell with them, let them get the farce over with.

   The same sharp voice continued, "Do you, Roberta Jamison, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and???" Keith awoke with a sudden start, realizing the enormity of his unthinking answer. "Wait a minute, I'm not??"

   One of Keith's guards drew his stunner and depressed the stud, freezing Keith into immobility. With his nervous system paralyzed, Keith had spent too much time as a space hound to struggle.

   The voice continued its wedding march, but Keith no longer listened. Married! He was to take this woman into exile with him. He summoned up the face of the headmistress and as many of the seven languages as he could remember, then added a few words he had learned himself.

   The sharp voice insisted upon an answer from Roberta Jamison. And when repetition failed to produce this answer, a female guard passed in front of Keith with a drawn stunner. Keith's paralyzed muscles did not allow him to follow the movement of the guard, but he did hear the sound of a blow and a gasp from Roberta. A second blow quickly followed the first. This elicited a cry from Roberta. A sharp scuffle followed, then silence. Periodically a voice demanded an answer. There sounded more blows and more involuntary grunts of pain.

   After an interminable time, Roberta dutifully gave the expected answer. "I do," she muttered.

   After this portion of the ceremony had reached an abrupt and satisfactory conclusion, the guard released Keith from the paralysis of the stunner.

   Keith turned his head to glance at Roberta. Blood ran down her face from a cut on her cheek bone and a rapidly swelling bruise threatened to close one eye. She sported other and more minor abrasions. Although his face tightened in anger, he prudently held this anger in check.

   Another voice with no particular inflection took up the ritual.

   "You two have been selected to settle on Barrios, a planet uninhabited by civilized beings. Here your night sight will stand you in good stead. If your settlement is successful, a full study of Barrios will be made by the Galaxy Mutation Control Council. Council members will visit you once each two year period."

   "Keith Jamison," a cracked and aged female voice intoned, "due to your service in the Galaxy Patrol and the good recommendations given you by your officers, you are to be supplied with more than minimal requirements. Were it not for the intransigence of your spouse, you would be given more. That is all."

   Thus concluding the summary judgment, the judges came to their feet in unison and properly assembled. With but a cursory glance at the subjects of their judgement, they filed from the room, waddling in step like caricatures of death on the march. Their black robes brushed the floor, their bodies swaying grotesquely as they moved.

   Keith watched them bleakly, the temptation to spit on the polished floor almost overwhelming. The unity of locomotion reminded him even more of vultures, the great black birds of Comdath. They had the same swollen bodies and ridiculous conformity of motion. Carrion eaters--only he was to supply the carcass.

   Barrios was as barren as its name implied. It was a floating desert in space, uninhabited, uninhabitable, a slow, lingering death to anyone venturing there. He straightened stubbornly. There were worse ways to die and they had yet to deliver him.

Copyright © 1998