'He was a good man,' Alex said. 'And an honest trader.'
'He was a damn sight more than that,' Rafe said loudly, and spat. Alex dodged. The ghostly holoFac image shimmered and blurred slightly.
'What does that mean?'
Rafe Zetter leaned forward so that his grizzled features seemed almost able to kiss the younger man. 'He was a combateer, Alex. One of the best. No way should he have died like he did…'
'My father was a trader, not a combateer,' Alex said, startled and disturbed by what Rafe was implying.
'Guess again, sonny.'
'But it sickened him to fire shots in anger.'
'Maybe,' Rafe said drily. 'But it didn't stop him. How else do you think he made it as a trader all those years? Dammit, Alex, even if your cargo is sour-cream and pickles there's someone's going to try and take it from you.
Your father was a combateer of the highest calibre…?'
Alex swallowed heavily, staring at the quizzical features of old Rafe Zetter. 'The highest calibre…?'
Rafe nodded. 'That's right, Alex,' he said softly. 'You can be deadly, you can be dangerous, and you can end up as pet food in orbit around a dog's ass-of-a-world like Isveve. But if you're йlite, and you die, then there's a reason for your death…'
What was this old man saying? Elite? An йlite combateer? Alex's head span.
He knew all about the space pilots who'd earned that title, of course. Few of them did. To be йlite in combat was to be… well, as near invincible as made no odds. A great many pilots were 'dangerous'; you didn't last long as a trader if you weren't. Many more had earned the classification
'deadly'. So had a lot of mercenaries. So had a lot of pirates.
But йlites. Few and far between.
And his father, Jason Ryder, had been йlite, and none of his family had known!
'Jason was one of the very best. You probably never saw his ship, but it was like a fortress. He traded places that most of us would have had nightmares about.' Rafe shook his head admiringly. 'One of the best. A man of the highest calibre…' His gaze hardened on Alex. 'The question is…Can you be the same?'
'What makes you doubt it?'
'Jason never said anything about you. I guess he was trying to protect you.
The trouble is that it gives me nothing to go on: you're going to avenge your father's death — I can tell that from the look of you, and your tone, and your anger — but for all I know, that'll just mean one more Ryder will be stardust before he even manages to target a missile.'
Not liking Rafe Zetter's tone, Alex said bitterly, 'I've done hours of SimCombat. I score highly…'
Rafe laughed and spat voluminously, then became serious.
'Alex, there's something I've got to know. Maybe you're going to end up—'
'Pet food in orbit around Isveve!'
'Yeah. Maybe that. The only person who knew your talents was your father.
Tell me, Alex, and tell me true, now…Did he say anything to you…you know…in the moments before he died? Did he indicate anything, or say anything?'
'He said a lot,' Alex murmured, and felt a strong pang of grief as he remembered the look in his father's eyes, the greyness of his cheeks, and his desperate words, remember me, Alex…'I think he knew he was going to die. The last thing he said was the word Raxxla. I don't know what that is.
An alien, I guess…'
Rafe smiled, shaking his head. Suddenly there was a brilliant sparkle in his eyes: 'Raxxla's no alien, Alex. It's a ghost world. A planet. A legend…' He hesitated, staring quizzically at the younger man through the distant link between them, 'Jason really said that to you?'
Alex nodded. 'Moments before… It was the last thing he said.'
'Then he knew,' Rafe said with a nod. 'And that's good enough for me. Alex, get your frail shell to Tionisla and take a visitor's shuttle to the orbital cemetery there. Say you've come to see the grave of Starpilot Fleischer. And take a good look around. You do that, boy. Tomorrow. I'll be waiting for you.'
'Waiting to do what?'
Rafe chuckled. 'How're you going to hunt a Cobra? You going to hitch-hike?
Or use a big stick? You'll need a ship. Hunt like with like. Get to the wreckplace at Tionisla. I know just the vehicle you need. Don't speak to anyone. Just get to Tionisla.'
'But—'
'Au'voir, Alex!'
And Rafe Zetter spat for the last time before the holoFac faded.
Alex didn't flinch. Something whistled past his ear and struck the wall behind him.
Chapter three
The best way to see the wreckplace at Tionisla is to approach it from the Sun (a reasonably safe thing to do since Tionisla, being a Democracy has few pirates in its system). Tionisla itself is a bright yellow world, and the cemetery is always between the planet and its star. As you fly close, the whole strange graveyard seems to be expanding from the circle of the world behind.
The first thing you see is a shimmering, silver disc, a double spiral of tiny bright points. It slowly turns: it's a galaxy in miniature, with the same intense blur of light at its centre, because here is where the biggest tombs are to be found.
Come closer and soon you can see that the stars in this galaxy are markers, great lumps of metal, heavily inscribed with the words and symbols of a thousand religions. The cemetery is a bizarre and moving sight. The markers are rarely less than a thousand feet across. There are chrome-alloy crosses, titanium Stars of David, duralium henges, and all the strange symbolic shapes of the worlds, and the minds and the faiths that have come to die in this Star traveller's special place.
Tethered below this vast, rotating mausoleum is the dodecahedral shape of a
'Dodo' class space station, the home of the Cemetery Authorites. Here you go through security checks and get your visitor's visa. And as you stand in the queue, staring up through the translucent ceiling of the Customs Hall, you can see the battered, broken ships of many of the dead, still attached to the silent tomb that contains the body.
It's a good enough reason to come to Tionisla. There are pickings aplenty among the wrecks. The treasures of centuries might be revealed by pressing the right panel on the right cube of black, alien metal as it floats silently by.
Or maybe not treasure, just the tomb's defences…
A pit with a laser.
A robot guardian with knives where its hands should be.
A hyperspace vacuum that sucks you in and throws you out into another time.
You tread carefully among the wrecks in orbit about Tionisla. The creatures buried here — human and alien — had money enough to buy these prized resting places, and more than enough wealth to protect their property after death from the mercenary fingers of bounty hunters.
Formalities completed, his newly issued pilot's licence checked, Alex Ryder was given a small tour-ship, an oddly shaped and cumbersome vessel. He drifted quickly among the tombs, seeking the resting place of Starpilot Fleischer, following co-ordinates on the ship's cemetery plan.
He soon found what he was looking for. Whoever Fleischer had been, he was monstrously egocentric: his tomb was a great crystalline structure, a puff-ball of diamond-bright needles, literally hundreds of feet across. His body, dressed in the red uniform of an elite combateer, hovered in stasis at the centre of this great construct, illuminated by focused light from the sun.
Tethered to the simple monument of the grave next to this was the battered, blistered shape of a Cobra class ship, its insignia still proudly displayed, but all its vital equipment, its fuel-scoop, its extra cargo bays, its aft
