Book 2 - Starfishers by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

watching. On St. Augustine he had
worn his uniform.
    There were different rules for scalp hunters. Beckhart’s
friends and enemies both played by the war rules. The blood
rules.
    And for reasons Niven did not understand, Beckhart’s
command was involved in a war to the death with the Sangaree.
    Niven had had all the indoctrination. He had endured the
uncountable hours of training and hypo-preparation. He even had the
benefit of a brutal Old Earth childhood. But somehow his Academy
years had infected him with a humanism that occasionally made his
work painful.
    A tendency to prolonged introspection did not help, he told
himself wryly.
    The campaign against the Sangaree could be justified. Stardust
destroyed countless minds and lives. Sangaree raidships pirated
billions and slaughtered hundreds. Through front men the Sangaree
Families obtained control of legitimate business organizations and
twisted them to Illegitimate purposes.
    The humanoid aliens had become a deadly virus in the corpus of
human civilization.
    Yet the very viciousness of Navy’s counterattacks caused
Niven grave doubts. Where lies justice, he wanted to know, when we
are more barbarous than our enemies?
    Mouse was fond of telling him that he thought too much and felt
too little. The issue was entirely emotional.
    Morning brought an indifferent mood. A depression. He simply
abdicated all responsibility to Mouse.
    “What’s the program today?” He knew his
partner meant to break routine. Mouse had had Room Service send up
real coffee. Niven nursed his cup. “How are you going to get
this past the auditors?”
    “My accounts go straight to the Old Man. He stamps the accepted .”
    “Must be nice to be the Number-One Boy.”
    “It has its moments. But most of them are bad. I want you
to hit the Med Center again. Business as usual. But try to audit
their offworld drug traffic if you can. There’s got to be
records of some kind even if they only give us a side view. I think
most of it is going out of the Center labs, so it’s got to
leave some kind of paper trace. If we can’t find the source,
maybe we can pinpoint the ends of the pipes.”
    “What about you?”
    “I’m going to spend some of the Old Man’s
money. For hidey holes. For tickets out. You know. The insurance.
That new Resident will show up pretty soon. We’ve got to be
ready when it hits the ventilation.”
    “Are you getting close?” Feelings warred within
Niven. He wanted out of Angel City and the mission, but not right
now. There was Marya to get to know.
    “No. Like I said, just buying insurance. I’ve got
the feeling this’ll get tight fast when they have somebody to
tell them what to do.”
    “What do you mean, get tight? It already is. I had
sticktights all day yesterday. Some of them stayed so close we
could have worn the same shoes.”
    “That’s what they get for using local talent. But I
think that’s part of their camouflage. We’d figure a
place this important would have a battalion of high-powered types
baby-sitting it. If somebody hadn’t gotten onto S’Plez,
they might have rolled along forever.”
    “I’ve got a feeling too, Mouse. And it ain’t a
good one. What happens if we get caught in a crunch between them
and the Starduster?”
    Mouse whipped a finger to his lips. “Let’s not get
back to tertiary cover yet,” he breathed. Then he grinned.
“Going to suicide? Look, if you have trouble, make the
fallbacks. If I can’t make them myself, I’ll drop you a
note somewhere. Otherwise, I’ll catch you here tonight. It
should be our last here, anyway.”
    Niven hit the lobby convinced that Mouse knew a lot more than he
was telling. But that would be typical. Mouse was Beckhart’s
fair-haired boy. His perfectly expendable fair-haired boy.
    He glanced back at the holorama. It was portraying one of the
furious electrical storms in Ginunga Gap on Camelot. A herd of
wind-whales quartered toward him through the rain and
lightning.
    For Beckhart the