Authors: Vaughn Heppner
The burning question
about his origins rose to Maddox’s lips again. He shook his head, refusing to ask the New Man. Maybe they would meet again someday. Maddox tapped Valerie on the shoulder. She cut the connection.
The captain returned to his station. The holoimage looked up at him. The simulacrum’s eyes seemed to gaze with intensity.
“The star cruiser has almost reached its outer beam range in relation to us,” the holoimage informed him.
“We can’t do anything about
that,” Maddox said. “So I want you to ignore the cruiser for now.”
“Noted,” the holoimage said.
Keith shook Maddox’s shoulder. Once the ace had his attention, the younger man told him the next maneuver.
The destroyer headed for the atmosphere. At the same time, the starship’s main bay doors opened. Like a Great White shark, it came behind the destroyer. Instead of jaws, Keith Maker used
Victory’s
open bay as a maw.
“We have to do this exactly,” Keith said
, with his eyes fixed on the view-screen.
Maddox related the ace’s instructions to the AI.
While traveling at great speed, the starship scooped up the destroyer, seeming to swallow it whole. Because
Victory
moved faster,
Saint Petersburg
smashed against parked alien shuttles and interior bulkheads. The entire starship trembled violently from the collision.
Maddox shook in his chair, waiting
for the outcome. Were they dead? Was Per Lomax right? No! The destroyer finally came to a halt inside the starship. The shaking and metallic screeching stopped.
“Close the bay doors,” Maddox
told the AI.
Without giving anyone a warning, Valerie pressed the jump button.
Victory
shook even more as it entered the planet’s upper atmosphere. A million kilometers away, the cruiser fired its main beam. Each act was all for naught—because the starship jumped once again. It bypassed the fourth planet. The beam slashed empty space, sizzling into the atmosphere. And
Victory
left the star system three light years behind.
They hadn’t
touched down for food. Neither had they found any spare parts on the planet.
“What we do have,” Maddox said, after the jump ended, “is a
n SWS starship under our control. We’re going to raid its stores, use its tools and hook up its star charts. Best of all, we’re going to use the destroyer’s Laumer Drive to open wormholes for us. People, I have good news, it looks like we’re going to get home after all.”
Six light years away from the fourth planet and in the void, Captain Maddox led the boarding team into the sideways-resting
Saint Petersburg
.
It would have been better if they had powered armor.
Instead, they wore vacc-suits and cradled assault rifles.
Victory’s
main docking bay looked worse than a junkyard. Smashed shuttles, ripped-up decking and torn bulkheads made it a twisted, metallic maze. Sparks and burning cables had put a thick drifting haze everywhere. The starship couldn’t take any more damage. It was amazing the vessel still functioned as well as it did.
Working through the docking bay, it took an hour before they reached the half-crushed destroyer. Another thirty minutes passed before they forced a hatch.
Maddox wasn’t sure what he expected to find inside the
Saint Petersburg
. The craft had been under New Men control for quite some time. In the end, the interior wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, if one considered a huge jumbled mess with everything thrown everywhere as regular. It took a day with the torch to cut through to the galley. Then they had plenty of ship’s stores to choose their favorite meals.
Maddox burped after splurging on prime rib and French fries with horseradish. It felt so good to be full.
Three days with cutting torches and bending bulkheads brought them to the Laumer Drive. It needed repairs. Meta, Riker and Keith began on them immediately.
The others worked through to the bridge. Dana attempted to hack the computer. Per Lomax or one of the
other New Men must have set up a self-destruct booby-trap. Detonations destroyed the hard drives when she started trying to manipulate them.
“I hope
the Goddess of Destruction devours their guts a worm at a time,” Dana said later.
From memory,
Lieutenant Noonan painstakingly wrote out a Laumer-Line star chart. She used old-fashioned paper and pen. A week of alien star drive jumping brought them to one of the tramlines. After that, they began using the Laumer-Points.
Meta and her team had made
the Laumer Drive in the destroyer operational again.
Tw
ice, Maddox ordered a star drive jump to escape the New Men. It didn’t make sense that the cruisers had caught up with them. The enemy could only use the wormholes.
Victory
used wormholes and star drive jumps to cross over to better situated tramlines. They should have left the New Men far behind in the Beyond.
“The
New Men cruisers must be faster than Star Watch vessels,” Valerie told Maddox. “It would appear they also have longer-ranged sensors.”
“
I’m beginning to suspect the New Men have fewer starships than we think,” Maddox said. “Otherwise, why haven’t they begun a full scale invasion of the Commonwealth? They took Odin, Horace and Parthia, and stopped there, challenging us to come and look at what they had done. Do they need time to construct more star cruisers? Should we be attacking them with everything before they’re ready?”
“We know they’ve infiltrated the Commonwealth
with spies and found traitors among us,” Valerie said. “Maybe they’ll try to start a civil war inside us just as Dana’s people once tried to do with Rigel’s Social Syndicate.”
Maddox
had told Valerie about that. He pondered the problem as the alien starship swept through the Beyond. Using the
Saint Petersburg’s
tools, Meta and Dana made badly needed repairs, keeping the vessel running.
Finally, after
two months of travel, they exited the Beyond and entered the Oikumene. They’d used wormholes that led in a roundabout way, skirting the Wahhabi Caliphate in an effort to reach Commonwealth territory.
In the Deneb System, their luck ran out. A
Wahhabi battle group hailed them. When they failed to answer, the battle group sheik ordered them to prepare for boarding.
Maddox ordered the
second-to-last star drive jump of the trip, leaving the Caliphate’s sailors far behind. By that time, Dana had shut down the AI for good.
“
Every second we had the alien computer on made me nervous,” the doctor told Maddox.
“Why didn’t you tell me
that earlier?” he asked.
“Didn’t want to give you a useless worry,” she said.
“We needed it, right? Well, we don’t anymore.”
Shortly thereafter, they entered official Commonwealth space
. Two Laumer-Points later, a Star Watch frigate on patrol in the Vancouver System hailed them.
Maddox stood on the bridge, using the screen to speak to Commander Kris
Guderian. She had short hair and a splash of freckles across her nose. She belonged to the Patrol Arm of the Star Watch, routinely making voyages into the Beyond.
“I am Captain Maddox of the Star Watch,” he said. He wore his dress uniform.
“If you have your recognition codes with you…”
“Just a minute, Captain,” Commander
Guderian said. She turned away, speaking quietly to someone unseen. Finally, nodding to someone else, she turned back to him. “I’m ready. Go ahead.”
“What color are you presently using?” Maddox asked.
“Indigo Green,” she replied.
Maddox thought a moment.
Ah, right
. “The fox is red and the hen is purple,” he said.
Guderian
waited, as she no doubt checked her records for the proper response. “I see,” she said. “You’re claiming priority clearance passage.”
“Negative,” Maddox said
, grinning. “And nice try. You Patrol people always were a suspicious bunch. I’m claiming a Star Watch emergency as your codebook says. You will escort us to Earth. Before we start, though, I have to know the situation with the New Men.”
“The last I heard, Star Watch Command is debating sending a second expedition
to Odin.”
“You know about the first
expedition?” Maddox asked.
“I take it you’ve been in the Beyond for quite some time, Captain.”
“Have you ever seen this type of starship before?” he asked.
“You know I haven’t,” she said. “When do we get started?”
“Immediately,” he said. “Two enemy star cruisers have been chasing us. They might show up again.”
Worry entered
Commander Guderian’s eyes. “Did I hear you correctly?”
“
You did,” Maddox said. “Two New Men star cruisers are on our tail. Those ships are fast.”
“Then how have you
kept ahead of them?”
“No more questions, Commander,” Maddox said. “If we can’t get this starship to Earth, we’ve never going to win the coming war with the New Men.”
Along the way, they picked up a second frigate, a destroyer and a missile cruiser. Two other SWS destroyers attempted to join them in the New Siberia System. With these additional vessels, Maddox had become increasingly nervous. He demanded the two new destroyer captains to recite their recognition codes. They did, but something struck Maddox wrong about them. He demanded that an armed boarding party on combat alert go to each destroyer to inspect the situation.
At that point, the two new
destroyers’ weapons went hot.
At Maddox’s orders, the neutron beam annihilated the first destroyer. The missile cruiser rushed to put herself between the last destroyer and
Victory
. The new destroyer detonated, obliterating itself in a quantum blast, crushing the missile cruiser. Fortunately, Dana and Meta had gotten
Victory’s
deflector shield working a week ago. The quantum blast turned the screen black, threatening an immediate overload.
Commander
Guderian came online. Shock gave her a bewildered look. “The destroyers committed mass suicide,” she whispered.
“The New Men have
deeply infiltrated the Commonwealth and the Star Watch,” Maddox told her. “Now you know why I’m so careful all the time.”
“I
f I hadn’t witnessed this,” Guderian said, “I never would have believed such a thing possible.”
“
Humanity is in a conflict like no other,” Maddox said.
“
One thing keeps bothering me. How did the destroyer captains know about you?”
“That
’s an excellent question,” Maddox said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to jump again.”
“What do you mean
jump
?”
Maddox never explained it to
Commander Guderian. He gave Valerie the nod, and the star drive took them three light years away, bringing them to a new tramline.
In the Tau Ceti System, Maddox came upon a battle group commanded by Admiral Fletcher.
After the codes and identifications, the battleships took up escort duty. Each jump point took place under full combat conditions with a single caveat. A frigate went through first to warn any defenders on the other side. Afterward, high-grade thermonuclear drones went through, igniting in case any New Men were waiting by the Laumer-Point entrance on the other side.
A week later, they entered the Solar System. Four
Star Watch battle groups took up station in the Oort Cloud, far away from any wormhole entrance. There, Maddox and the others finally left the alien starship.
A fast cruiser whisked them to Earth. The voyage was over. They had found the needed vessel and brought it home again. Now, the Star Watch experts planned to study it in detail, seeing if they could duplicate alien technology to the Commonwealth’s advantage.
Captain Maddox
felt uncomfortable striding down the hall toward Brigadier O’Hara’s office. He was back in Geneva on Earth. It still seemed unreal. To have traveled so far and risked his life on an uncanny mission, and then to be home again in familiar surroundings—
Have I changed? Have I lost something?
Why do I
feel
different?
He couldn’t define it
to himself. The hall seemed to press inward, crowding him. Maybe he had acquired Ensign Maker’s disease. The ace loved flying in space. The Scotsman didn’t seem alive unless he was gripping flight controls, attempting an impossible maneuver.
I had a deck under my feet. I commanded a starship. Is that what I want
to do with the rest of my life?
Maybe he was simply feeling
post-mission depression. It would leave him soon enough. He would fully decompress, rest, gain strength and soon be ready for his next assignment.
A nagging doubt lingered. Captain Maddox wondered if only a line command on a starship could scratch a new itch. The New Men gathered. Humanity had to stand together and defeat the menace
, or they would succumb one by one as Odin, Horace and Parthia had fallen.
He reached the secretary’s desk. The man informed him the brigadier was waiting.
“Go ahead,” the secretary said.
Maddox opened the door. The Iron Lady was hunched over her
synthi-wood desk, scribbling something.
“Please, sit,” she said, without looking up.
Maddox moved to a chair before her desk, settling himself. He’d done this many times before. Yet, now it felt different, almost surreal. He glanced at the glass case of model starships. The feeling of unreality bit again. The room seemed to shrink, along with Brigadier O’Hara.
He concentrated on her. Her gray hair remained perfectly in place.
No doubt she used hairspray. Her veined hand scratched a stylus on a pad. Abruptly, she set down the stylus and looked up at him. Her eyes were bright and alive. They seemed to swell her stature. She no longer seemed small and cramped, but an energetic spider queen busy capturing traitorous flies and enemy agents.
“Captain Maddox,” she said. “You have returned. I congratulate you on a successful mission.
Well done.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Maddox said. “But that seems horribly anticlimactic for an operation that might have possibly just saved humanity from the New Men.”
She stared at him before saying, “Your flair for the melodramatic hasn’t changed a bit, I see. Still, I suppose you have a point. I imagine you’ll want the Lord High Admiral to enter, bend on his knee, grasp your hand and weep his thanks.”
“That would be more in keeping with my exploit, yes, ma’am
,” Maddox said, grinning.
Brigadier O’Hara pursed her lips.
“I would be happy to oblige you, Captain. Unfortunately, my thoughts and those of the Lord High Admiral are too dark for such joy. We have the alien wreck you brought back. I’ve read the reports. It’s falling apart even as the experts study it.”
“Yet
, the wreck, as you put it, is brimming with alien technologies,” Maddox said. “The improved deflector screen can withstand the New Men’s beams better than Star Watch shields can. Even better, the alien neutron beam can punch holes through the enemy’s deflectors. According to the AI, the starship possesses even more powerful weapon systems. The ancient vessel is a bonanza of technologies. It has a new star drive that bypasses tramlines.”
“We’re going to need every one of those weapons
if we’re to stay ahead of the New Men,” O’Hara said.
Maddox grew more alert. “There’s bad news, I take it.”
“Yes, Captain. The New Men have been busy while you were away. This is strictly confidential. They have sent envoys to the Wahhabi Caliphate. Certain factions in the caliphate’s court want to ally with the New Men. Others counsel a wait and see attitude, if there should be open war. They’re considering neutrality.”
“Are they mad?”
Maddox asked. “The New Men are simply using divide and rule tactics to try to pick us off one by one.”
“You are astute as always, Captain. The news is even worse, I’m afraid. Certain Commonwealth systems are
also considering neutrality. Chief among them is Rigel’s Social Syndicate.”
“Don’t they understand their very lives are at stake?”
“This is an interesting point,” the brigadier said. “Do you have proof for such a statement?”
Maddox frowned. “I’m not sure I understand you.”
“Captain, as I’ve said, the New Men have sent spies and envoys to many worlds. They speak soothing words, hoping to divide humanity, perhaps even gain allies among us. News of the Pan System Battle has made some people cautious toward antagonizing powerful enemies. We need proof as to what’s happened on Odin, Horace and Parthia.”
“With the new systems in
Victory
—”
“Ah,” O’Hara said. “You can duplicate them in our ships?”
“Me? Certainly not, ma’am. I’m not an engineer.”
“Reverse engineering a system takes time, Captain. Duplicating it takes even longer.
We have to build new starships. Unfortunately, building an ordinary battleship normally takes three years. That’s with systems everyone knows how to construct. How long will it take our shipyards to build alien weaponry that works?”
“Maybe you should repair
Victory
and use her as she is in battle.”
“We are exploring all options,” O’Hara said.
The brigadier closed her mouth and set her hands on the desk. Lines appeared in her forehead. She smoothed those away and smiled sadly.
“I’m sorry,”
the Iron Lady said. “You don’t deserve to hear my gloom. You have accomplished an amazing feat, Captain Maddox. I’m proud of you. With the alien starship in our hands, we have a chance against the New Men. We have hope. You’ve given us that. One way or another, it is going to be a monumental struggle. The New Men have exposed some of their prime assets among us in trying to destroy you when you left and then when you returned with your prize. Still, we have heavy work ahead of us. Your debriefing might take longer than you like. We have to know everything you can remember about them. We
must
find weak points that we can exploit.”
“I’ll do what I can, ma’am.”
“I know you will, Captain. I have faith in your abilities. After the debriefing, you will leave on another dangerous mission.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to hear about it, ma’am.”
“No,” she said. “I suppose not.”
“You know,”
Maddox said. “I do have a suggestion about the starship.”
“Yes?”
“You must find and recruit Professor Ludendorff. Most likely, he can tease useful information from
Victory
that no one else could.”
“I’ll keep your suggestion in mind.
Do you happen to know where we can find the professor?”
Maddox studied the brigadier. The way she asked that…
“I have no idea,” he said.
“Hmm…well, never mind. We’ll concentrate on your debriefing. Before you go, Captain, the
Lord High Admiral would like a word with you.”
He nodded.
Brigadier O’Hara stood. She was a small woman. She came around the desk. Maddox stood to his feet. She held out her hand and shook his.
“Well done, Captain. I’m proud of you and very glad you made it back in one piece. Don’t ever repeat this to anyone, but sending you on this hopeless mission has given me many sleepless nights.
I didn’t truly think you could do it.”
She squeezed his fingers. Then
, she released his hand and straightened her tunic. She almost seemed embarrassed. Heading to a hidden door, pressing a switch, she caused it to open. “Go down the hall and to your left. The Lord High Admiral is waiting.”
Maddox blinked several times. A tightening of his chest made it impossible
for him to speak. Instead, he inclined his head and then marched into the corridor. Behind him, the door shut softly.