01. Balshazzar’s Serpent by Jack L. Chalker

Author:Jack L. Chalker
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction/Fantasy, eBook, Si-fi
Published: 2012-02-01T00:55:02+00:00

* * *

They didn’t need to complete the journey before Captain Sapenza knew he was licked. The ship was already well out of sight over the horizon, and the captain had no planetary tracking equipment or orbiting satellites to tell him just where the fleeing quarry was nor how far it could go.

“They blew up the arsenal at the same time,” Gregnar told him. “That lift shot so far in the air it came down five kilometers away in the middle of a maize field.”

“Figures,” Sapenza commented in an almost disinterested tone.

It was only when Almarie, his longtime chief woman, started nattering that he showed what was going on inside him.

“Yeah, sure. Kidnap ’em. The Holy Joes’ll freak and give us our ticket. Torture a few to make ’em scared. They scared real good, didn’t they? You couldn’t have tried it straight with them first? Maybe cut their throats later if it didn’t work? No! You hadda screw ’em from the start! Now we’re stuck here! You happy now?”

Sapenza sighed and said nothing, but he took out a small pistol and shot her at point-blank range on maximum blast. Her whole form shimmered and then there was only the smell of burnt flesh and a little pile of gray powder where she’d stood.

Gregnar and the rest moved back several steps.

The Captain turned towards them and they all froze, half expecting this to be their last moments anywhere. Instead, he said, “Can we still contact them?”

“Yeah, boss. They use standard frequencies. You just call them and if they’re out of range it’ll be intercepted by their orbiting ship and passed along,” somebody told him. “But, boss—you start broadcasting, you tell ’em just where we are.”

“Who the hell cares now?” he asked them. “Get me to a transceiver.” They quickly brought him to a communications terminal inside one of the camouflaged gun emplacements. Not a shot fired, he thought ruefully. Maybe their God really is somebody. Or maybe we just blew it.

“Captain Sapenza to Doctor Woodward,” he called. “Patch me through if he’s available, please, anyone who picks this up. Repeat, Captain Sapenza to Doctor Karl Woodward.”

“Just a minute,” came a young man’s voice over the speaker. “We’ll hail him and see if he wants a patch.”

Woodward did indeed.

“Well, Captain! If you hadn’t killed so many innocent people I might well be in a very good mood right now,” the Doctor responded. “As it is, I’m royally pissed.”

Sapenza couldn’t help but smile. Who’d ever have thought that his match would be a pot-bellied white-bearded evangelist? He almost felt like the whole damn universe was sniggering behind his back.

“Good to talk to you directly, Doctor,” he responded in his calm, businesslike but friendly tone. “I don’t suppose we can talk repentance?”

Woodward did manage a chuckle. “I would and could discuss it with you all day if need be, but it’s between you and God. It doesn’t cut quite so much ice between you and me at the moment, though.

Problem is, unlike the Almighty, I don’t have any way of knowing the sincerity of repentance.

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