Rowley

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THE VANG:
THE BATTLEMASTER
CHRISTOPHER ROWLEY
CONTENTS
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
OUTMATCHED
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ith shocking suddenness, a bizarre creature dropped upon them from the ceiling. It was dark gra
with pink streaks, and a beard of green polyps matted its chest region. It had two humanlike legs and a
number of long, narrow tentacles.
The thing struck with the hardened tips of tentacles that stabbed flesh as effectively as spears. Men
were eviscerated, beheaded, amputated of one or more limbs in a frenzied but brief struggle.
Then Janodo of the Gate hit it with a shotgun blast, in the chest, where green polyps were thick.
Blood and fragments spattered the floor.
The men stepped back, expecting the thing to fall dead. With another loud hiss, it seized Janodo and
bounded out of the cowshed.
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CHAPTER ONE
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HE UNIVERSE IS A THING OF LACY TEXTURES
,
SUDDEN EXPLOSIONS
, cold vastness, frozen foams.
On these insubstantial threads and tatters lost in the boundless void, primitive life survives by accident, a
thing of the merest margins.
Through the slow tick of time, species have come and gone, their viability tested by climatic change,
by asteroid impact, by evolutionary wedging.
The merest handful of species has ever risen beyond their evolutionary envelopes, the limited
horizons of their home-worlds.
Of these, a tiny fraction have reached the stars.
In the midst of the fifty-fifth century of spaceflight, the third millennium of the ITAA Era, the human
species, originating in the Sol system, was the dominant intelligence within the local galactic arm.
This position had been achieved, however, only through the lucky discovery of the Starhammer
weapon. Without this technology bequeathed from an ancient war, the human species would never have
broken free from the domination of the laowon, the other Orion-arm bipedal spacegoing species of this
era.
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owever, the discovery of the Starhammer had brought humanity face-to-face with the terrible re
for the great machine's existence, the ancient enemy to all other life, the self-termed Gods of Axone-
Neurone.
This complex and largely parasitic lifeform, which had been destroyed by the Starhammer builders in
self-defense, was not yet entirely extinct.
A few fragments persisted. Fortunately interstellar space is so vast and empty that most derelicts from
the ancient space-reefs of war were lost forever in the dark.
And yet, here, there, they offered a terrible threat, like mines waiting to explode upon the unwary.
In this, of course, we see no more than another roll of the cosmic dice. A form of evolutionary
wedging on a galaxy-wide scale. This kind of life, or that; either was possible.
Two thousand years terrestrial standard had passed since the events on Planet Saskatch. Again the
dice tumbled from the cup.
The door to doomsday opened a crack once more and went unnoticed. A bleak unsympathetic light
flashed out to illuminate the worlds of humanity.
It began with a trifling incident, in the barren hills of the Ruinarts, on Planet Wexel in the Scopus
cluster.
Here, on the exposed face of some ancient sandstones, an autopick was drilling in search of gypsum
deposits. The bore holes were spaced a couple of meters apart, probing downward toward what on the
satellite mineral maps appeared to be a cave system.
Suddenly there came a harsh screech as the autopick's drill hit something harder than mere rock.
This autopick was a Daiko 400, very durable and somewhat stubborn. It pulled out the drill and
inserted its hammerpick and hammered at the unbreakable thing for a full minute while rock powdered
and blew away in the wind.
Finally it gave up and carefully checked its files. The rock face was a resistant sandstone from the
Upper Karavian, some eighty million years old. The geo-survey showed no evidence of volcanics or
harder rocks. And even the hardest rock would have given way under the hammerpick.
Baffled, the Daiko called for help.
The message was downloaded at Castle Karvur, fifty kilometers to the south. It was studied by the
Karvur Autome, and then left for Count Geezl Karvur's personal attention. The Autome, a programming
masterpiece from the Ienjii Software Period, knew that Count Karvur would be interested.
Eventually the count, a tall, gaunt-faced man in extended mid-life, returned from a rampage on his
estates.
The twin daughters of a tenant in the West Ward had reached sixteen years. They were betrothed, and
the count had made sure to exercise his patronal rights immediately upon their birthday chime. The
weeping parents had been bound and gagged by his guards while Lord Geezl, the patrone of the district,
took the young maidens by force in their own bedchamber.
The Karvur Autome, a rather stuffy software, would not assist the count in such matters. The count
cared not, and employed a cameraman instead to film the proceedings for his later amusement.
All in all it had been an excellent break in the dreary life on the Karvur estates.
Now returned to the grim stone pile of Karvur Farm, the count examined his messages.
There were many, and they were all from creditors and lawyers and more creditors and collection
agencies, and he blipped them to oblivion with scowls and groans all except the one from the autopick,
tagged by the Autome.
The autopick indicated that something large and non-natural underlay the Karavian sandstones. In
addition this thing was built of extremely resistant material.
Intrigued, the count flew out to check for himself in his luxurious Baschlit VTOL jet.
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ressed in black rainslick and boots of human hide, Karvur stalked about the site.
He summoned a power shovel, at work a few miles away, and when it had chugged its way over the
hill, he put it to removing the sandstone cover over the hidden object. Then he flew away once more,
intrigued by this discovery, but not yet obsessed.
A few days later he returned to the site and found a flat surface, a floor, made of a smooth
indestructible material with the color of old bone.
Karvur's heart filled with a wild excitement.
It was also apparent that whatever this thing was, it was very large. There seemed no end to the
ramifications of it.
The excitement mounted.
For nigh on thirty years now he had been exiled to this drab life on the ancient family estate in the
Ruinart Mountains, doomed by a stupid mistake made in the rashness of youth.
He had spent those years searching Karvur Estate for something of value. Something that could bring
him enough credit to allow him to return to the old life-style, when he'd had money.
Once, the very name Geezl Karvur had glittered in the celebrity columns of Wexel's greatest cities.
He had owned three homes and a yacht with berths for two dozen guests. "Emperor" Geezl, his friends
had called him with affectionate mockery, on account of the lavishness of his hospitality.
Alas, poor Geezl had become the victim of a skilled trickster by the name of Lari Afriq. An incredible
twenty million in ITAA credits had been borrowed for a giant stock-market maneuver. The maneuver
failed; huge amounts of credit disappeared. Finally the collateral for the loan turned out to be entirely
Geezl's responsibility as Lari Afriq disappeared from the ruinous scene.
All Geezl had been able to retrieve from the wreck was the ancient Karvur farm in the rainshadow of
the Ruinarts.
His lavish homes in Cowdray-Kara City and Frentana Beach were lost, along with the family's
ancient mansion in Doisy-Dyan. His yacht was auctioned, his paintings and sculptures, his collection of
rare books and historical objects; even the Karvur wine cellar, which had held some magnificent
treasures from the Crook Islands, was sold.
The ancient stone farmhouse survived because it was held in trust by the family and never belonged
to Geezl personally.
With the farm came the income from the estate, which covered some five thousand square kilometers
of oak-infested uplands, and which provided a rather pinched sustenance for less than a hundred peasant
families. Anyone with any gumption had long ago fled these parts, and the Karvur peasants were much
beaten down.
When all traditional claims on this income were met there was scarcely enough to keep Geezl in fuel
for the purple skin-flake Baschlit VTOL jet that was his sole remaining treasure.
He'd sneaked it out of CK City Air&Space under the noses of the creditors, and thus it was the one
beautiful thing from the old life he had managed to hang on to.
And thus the count was left with nothing but the homely peasant girls to pursue for his pleasure and
the seedy bars in Yellowfork town for solace and wild cronies. These at least were some kind of
company. He had little else. His old friends were in the glitter spots of the Twin Continent, thousands of
kilometers away.
Furthermore, his own family was an unwelcoming lot. Little better than peasants themselves, they
regarded the city-bred lord of the family manor with suspicious eyes from the first.
The titled branch of the family had left the farm centuries ago and had rarely been seen there since.
There was little love between the branches of the family, and Geezl was now the last of the wealthy
Karvurs and was no longer rich. He had returned, impoverished, to live upon them on account of his
birth and title.
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