The Lost Destroyer (Lost Starship Series Book 3)

  SF Books by Vaughn Heppner

  DOOM STAR SERIES:

  Star Soldier

  Bio-Weapon

  Battle Pod

  Cyborg Assault

  Planet Wrecker

  Star Fortress

  Task Force 7 (Novella)

  EXTINCTION WARS SERIES:

  Assault Troopers

  Planet Strike

  Star Viking

  LOST STARSHIP SERIES:

  The Lost Starship

  The Lost Command

  The Lost Destroyer

  Visit VaughnHeppner.com for more information

  The Lost Destroyer

  (Lost Starship Series 3)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2015 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  -1-

  A purple bolt of ionized magnetic force struck Starship Victory. The deflectors didn’t stop the attack because the shield was down. The collapsium armor darkened where the strand hit. Then a plate blew off the hull, tumbling into space.

  On the starship’s bridge, Captain Maddox rocked in his command chair.

  “Hard to starboard,” he said.

  “The ship isn’t responding, sir,” Lieutenant Noonan shouted from the pilot’s chair.

  “Galyan,” Maddox said.

  The holographic image of the alien AI said nothing.

  Maddox swiveled his chair to see what was wrong with the AI. The holoimage stood at its favorite spot on the bridge, but everything inside the shape’s outline was fuzzy.

  The captain swiveled back so he could see the main screen and the lieutenant at the same time. “Jump,” he told Valerie. “Get us out of here.”

  “The magnetic storm is shutting down our systems, sir. A jump under these conditions could destroy us.”

  Another bolt of ionized magnetic force surged out of the twisting mass. An indicator told Maddox the storm was over ten thousand kilometers in width, making it larger than most terrestrial planets. The bolt struck their vessel. Metal groaned ominously, and the bridge around the captain shuddered.

  “I may be able to use cold propulsion to move us,” Valerie said.

  “Do it,” Maddox told her.

  Valerie’s fingers played across the pilot board.

  A rear viewer showed Maddox that cold propellant ejected from the thrusters. Slowly, the starship turned away from the ion storm and began to gain separation.

  Another ion strand lashed out. Maddox tensed. This one missed the hull armor. A surge of electrical power must have struck, though. A bridge panel went dark. There was too much of that.

  Maddox swiveled around to check on Galyan again. The holoimage was still fuzzy. As the captain watched, part of the holo-outline faded away.

  What if they lost the ancient AI? “Will the storm damage be permanent?” Maddox asked.

  “There’s no way to tell yet, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  “I want greater acceleration,” Maddox said, raising his voice.

  “I understand, sir. When the engines come back online, I can do that. Until then, cold propulsion is all we have.”

  Maddox noted the strain in Valerie’s face, the tightness in her shoulders. The cold propulsion had been a good idea. Maddox knew he wouldn’t have thought of it.

  “You’re doing well, Lieutenant.”

  Valerie shot him a glance. A tremulous smile appeared and then a nod of appreciation.

  Just then, something caught Maddox’s eye. He stood, amazed and then perplexed as the faint image of a ship passed through the ion storm like the ghost of a gigantic vessel.

  Maddox checked the indicator. The vessel was a fraction of the size of the magnetic storm. Even so, whatever that was out there was huge, bigger than anything Star Watch owned, bigger than a Cestus hauler or a Spacer home-ship. The indicator showed the ghost measured an easy fifty kilometers in length and thirty at its widest. That dwarfed Starship Victory, which was considerably less than a kilometer in length.

  “Lieutenant, what do you see out there?”

  Valerie looked up at the main screen. Her head swayed back before she glanced at him. “T-The same thing you see, sir.” It was clear she didn’t want to commit to seeing something so strange.

  “Describe the sight to me,” Maddox told her.

  Valerie licked her lips. “I-I don’t know what I’m seeing, sir.”

  “It has a teardrop shape,” he said. “It’s faint, though, like a bad holoimage.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You see that, too?”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts, sir.”

  “We’re Star Watch officers,” he said. “We must make an objective analysis of whatever we see without referring to superstitions.” Something caught Maddox’s eye on her pilot board. “Lieutenant, what’s that blinking light on your panel mean?”

  Valerie looked down and tapped her board. “Sir, someone has opened Hangar Bay Three’s outer door.”

  Why would anyone do that during an ion storm? Maddox immediately distrusted this news. It smacked of subterfuge.

  “Sir,” Valerie said, looking up in dismay. “The jumpfighter has cold-launched from the hangar bay.”

  “Someone launched our jumpfighter?”

  “Yes, sir,” Valerie said. “It’s now outside the starship.”

  Maddox still considered himself an Intelligence officer more than a Line officer. Odd events stirred his curiosity and made him suspicious of motives. An ion storm, a giant ghost vessel inside it and someone launching Victory’s only jumpfighter, these things weren’t coincidences.

  “Hail the jumpfighter,” he said. It was time to find the underlying cause of this action.

  Valerie opened channels. Harsh static was the only response.

  Maddox’s face became bland.

  The captain was a handsome man with angled features, considered by some as the best Intelligence officer in Star Watch. He had his skeletons in the closest, more than most, in fact. He was half New Man and half human, a hybrid that too few people on his side trusted fully. When his features took on a distant, seemingly disinterested cast as it did now, it meant his mind whirled at high speed.

  The storm, ghost ship and launched jumpfighter—had the pilot chosen this time for that reason? The captain didn’t like mysteries when it came to his starship and crew.

  Victory had just jumped into an unpopulated star system in order to use one of the Laumer-Points. A few terrestrial planets made up the inner system where they were now. None of the rock worlds here had an Earthlike atmosphere. There weren’t any mining colonies either. Where would the jumpfighter go in order to reach safety? The craft had a limited range. It couldn’t travel to another star system.

  “I’ve got it on the main screen, sir,” Valerie said.

  Maddox turned his attention back to the screen. The jumpfighter was a tiny vessel, a modified strikefighter. At the beginning of the voyage, Victory had carried two jumpfighters. One had wrecked on Wolf Prime several months ago. The unofficial name for the vehicle was a “tin can” because that’s what the experimental craft resembled. Jumpfighters could fold space for a limited distance, and Star Watch hoped to use them against the New Men to initiate close range attacks and then quickly jump out of harm’s way.

  As he watched, the jumpfighter fold
ed space and engaged its engine, disappearing into the fold.

  Valerie gasped.

  Maddox understood the significance. A wink of brightness appeared near the faint vessel in the ion storm. The jumpfighter had gone to it. Maddox wanted to know why.

  Before he could comment, several magnetic strands writhed out of the ion storm. Two of them struck Victory. The bridge shuddered under Maddox’s feet. To his left, although out of sight, metal made twisting, groaning sounds. A second later, the bridge lights went out. The only illumination came from the purple storm outside the ship showing on the main screen.

  Grim suspicion gripped the captain’s mind. If the jumpfighter had raced to the ghostly vessel, it implied that someone had planned for the event. That meant someone aboard ship had brought Victory to the punishing ion storm on purpose, maybe by corrupting the flight computers. That person or persons had threatened Star Watch’s most important starship, and they had done so under Maddox’s nose.

  With every faculty alert, Maddox watched the ghostly vessel. What was it? How could it maneuver through the magnetic storm? Why was it here at this precise moment?

  The giant ghost ship slid through a dark opening in the center of the storm. The vessel disappeared as it dropped through the vortex. Then, the dark opening began acting like a fantastic vacuum cleaner, sucking the ionic storm into it at a prodigious rate. There was no jumpfighter in evidence now. The twisting mass flashed with power. Long strands writhed madly. They no longer lashed at the starship, though. Instead, the strands twisted “upward” in relation to Victory.

  Maddox cataloged everything as his features became even more composed. His eyes burned with a deadly light, however, belying his cool reserve. The dark opening began to close. As it did, a visible pulse of magnetic force expanded like a watery ripple. One edge of the ripple sped toward Victory.

  Maddox’s neck and shoulder muscles tightened with anticipation.

  “Come on,” Valerie said, tapping her panel. No doubt, she tried to raise the shield. At the last second, she looked up hopelessly.

  The ripple of power struck and then passed the fleeing starship.

  Maddox expected the last surge to shut down everything that had remained on so far. Instead, the opposite happened. An electrical whomp sounded, and the lights returned to the bridge. Some of the panels that had darkened reenergized. That caused a klaxon to blare with a rising and falling noise.

  Maddox’s head moved to track the source of the klaxon. “What’s causing the alarm?” he asked.

  Valerie got up and moved to a different board, tapping it and reading something that deflated her shoulders.

  She faced Maddox. “Sir, you’re not going to believe this. The New Man’s holding cell is empty.”

  In two strides, Maddox stood beside the lieutenant. The small screen showed the empty cell where they had kept Per Lomax. Their most dangerous enemy was free.

  Maddox whirled around as he unbuttoned the jacket to his uniform. He drew a long-barreled gun from its harness. Most starship captains didn’t go armed on their vessel, but Maddox retained the habit of traveling armed at almost all times from his days as an Intelligence officer.

  “Sound the ship-wide alarm,” Maddox said.

  The captain considered himself the universe’s premier realist. And the reality was that the escaped prisoner was superior to them in every way, smarter, faster and stronger.

  “We have to recapture Per Lomax before he picks us off one by one and takes over Victory,” he said.

  Valerie stared at him. “Sir, surely Per Lomax used the jumpfighter.”

  “That’s one possibility,” Maddox conceded. “The other is that he used the jumpfighter as a tactic to throw us off. It could be a diversion.”

  “But—”

  “Our starship is the greatest prize on both sides of the conflict,” Maddox said. “If the New Men capture Victory, our latest advantage over them will vanish.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Valerie said.

  Maddox headed for the hatch. One of his greatest strengths was acting faster than his opposition. He would use that here before Per Lomax could consolidate his position.

  “Don’t let anyone onto the bridge until I return,” the captain said over his shoulder.

  “Yes, sir,” Valerie said. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”

  “To figure out what just happened,” Maddox told her. Then, he darted out the hatch.

  -2-

  Maddox moved down a corridor with the silkiness of a jungle cat. His mind churned over the possibilities. Per Lomax was deadly and vastly clever, one of the New Men created in the Beyond, a genetic superman with delusions of godhood.

  By exerting himself to the limit, Maddox had defeated Per Lomax once. He wasn’t sure he could do it again. It wouldn’t be for a lack of trying, though.

  Starship Victory had a minimal crew and only a handful of passengers, less than twenty people altogether. The starship was an ancient Adok vessel, the last of its kind from a war fought over six thousand years ago. It had two huge oval areas and could have carried thousands of personnel. With Galyan, the Adok AI, presently down, Per Lomax could be hidden anywhere.

  Maddox had narrowed the situation down to three possibilities. Per Lomax had set the jumpfighter on auto as a ruse, Per Lomax had used the craft to reach the ghostly vessel or someone in the crew had fled the starship. He wasn’t interested in the third possibility, at least not yet. A free and vengeful Per Lomax was the great danger. Until he had eliminated that threat, nothing else mattered.

  From around a corner, Maddox heard a footfall. He froze, straining to pinpoint the exact location of the sound.

  The footfall did not repeat itself.

  Maddox’s eyes seemed to gleam. Slowly, carefully, like a great cat on the hunt, Maddox eased down the corridor.

  The ship-wide intercom system was still down, and none of the portable comm-units worked. That was damage from the magnetic storm. He was on his own against Per Lomax.

  Despite Maddox’s resolve, his stomach tightened. The iron realist in him whispered a terrible truth. No one could match a New Man one on one.

  The captain stopped, gripping his gun tighter. Per Lomax might be unarmed or only possess a knife or a knife-like shank. At close quarters, a knife could be just as deadly as a gun, though.

  Maddox debated options. He only had a few. Time was his enemy in this. He could not relinquish control of Victory.

  The starship raced home to Earth from the Tannish System in “C” Quadrant. The vessel was far ahead of the survivors of Admiral Fletcher’s Fifth Fleet, which the starship had saved from destruction. Interstellar messages could only travel as fast as the fastest spaceship. The ancient vessel with its star drive was faster than any other Star Watch ship. Maddox raced home to give High Command the good news.

  I should have demanded a platoon of space marines from Fletcher before I left the admiral.

  Maddox’s head twitched in a quick negation. Could have beens were useless.

  His lips peeled back to reveal white teeth. In these situations, one could move too cautiously. Maddox inhaled. It was truth time. He charged, turning the corner.

  Maddox saw his mistake immediately. A waiting shooter leaned against the wall, aiming a stunner at him. Maddox’s trigger finger tightened. At the last millisecond, he eased pressure so as not to shoot.

  The barrel of his gun was aimed at Sergeant Treggason Riker’s forehead. Maddox would have put a bullet hole in his Star Watch Intelligence aide. Fortunately, the captain’s superior reflexes allowed him to catalog the “shooter” as friendly and lower his weapon just in time.

  As Maddox did so, Riker twitched in surprise, no doubt at the captain’s swift appearance, and pulled the trigger of his weapon. The stunner ejected a nearly invisible blot of force. Maddox began to dodge, but not even he was that fast.

  The stun blast knocked the captain backward onto the deck plates. Maddox groaned, although he managed to keep hold of his
gun, which lay on the floor with him.

  “Captain,” Riker said in a gravelly voice. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. I thought you were the killer.”

  As Maddox struggled to remain conscious, he refrained from groaning a second time. His body ached, and he couldn’t move yet. The stunner must have been set on medium. At low, he would have been able to sit up already. At high, he’d be either unconscious or dead.

  “Can you hear me, sir?” Riker asked, peering down at him.

  Sergeant Riker was an older man with leathery skin. He had a bionic eye and a fully bionic arm. The man had lost the eye and arm in a blast many years ago on a desperate mission on Altair III. The sergeant was an old dog in the Intelligence Service, handy with a gun, possessing a cunning tactical sense and fierce loyalty to Star Watch.

  Clearly, Riker had set an ambush for someone. Even as Maddox waited to “thaw,” he considered that. Did the sergeant know about Per Lomax’s escape? Wait, Riker had just said he thought Maddox had been the killer. Had Per Lomax already killed someone?

  Maddox strove to move his lips.

  “You should try to relax, sir,” Riker said. “If you fight it, the stun lasts longer.” The older man frowned, hesitated and finally added, “You’re going to feel sick for a time.”

  Maddox already knew that.

  The older man backed away. By the sounds, he checked his stunner charge. Then, Riker cleared his throat and muttered something unintelligible.

  At last, Maddox’s chest unlocked. He sucked down a shuddering gasp of air. He took the sergeant’s advice, relaxing his muscles until he was limp. That made breathing easier, which in turn helped him wait.

  Finally, Maddox whispered, “Who’s dead?”

  “One of the slarn trappers, sir,” Riker said.

  Maddox closed his eyes. The trappers were Professor Ludendorff’s people. They hunted slarns, a vicious predatory beast on Wolf Prime prized by people throughout the Commonwealth for their fur. In a few good years, a trapper could become wealthy. Ludendorff had been on Wolf Prime studying an ancient Swarm hive and the various alien cave etchings and artifacts found there. Ludendorff had two archaeologists and two slarn trappers with him aboard Victory. Make that one slarn hunter now.