The Lost Starship Page 34

  “I see,” the holoimage said. “Interesting. I cannot fault your reasoning. Yes, I should have swatted the cruisers out of existence. Originally, I concluded the lack of the disrupter ray or the gyro destabilizer was the cause for my failure to annihilate. Now, I sense it may be a less than optimal computing function. Hmm, I have detected a malfunction or two in my cognitive capacity, blockages in thought.”

  Maddox waited quietly.

  “What I don’t understand is why, at this point, we should repair the star drive,” the holoimage said. “That makes no sense. I am not going to attempt to flee the intruders.”

  “On the contrary,” Maddox said. “I thought the reason why was obvious—as a military ploy.”

  “You’re being evasive. I demand that you explain your meaning.”

  “Certainly,” Maddox said. “The tactic seems elementary to me. I believe any Star Watch officer would realize how valuable the mini-jump was. We could use the red giant as a shield against the cruisers, only attacking when it’s to our advantage. Naturally, you would place a beacon or two at the star’s edges—in relation to your enemies. In that way, you could fix their precise location. At the right moment, using the jump, you move through or bypass the star to appear beside an enemy cruiser. As soon as possible, you energize the short-range neutron beam, smashing an enemy shield and destroying the vessel. Before the others can react, you jump away out of range back behind the shielding red giant.”

  “That is a brilliant strategy,” the holoimage said.

  “You are most kind to say so,” Maddox said. “It shows true magnanimity on your part. I wonder if that’s a portion of your greatness, to shower praise where it’s due. Of course, I hasten to add that I realize you would have thought of the ploy before I did if your AI core had been operating at peak efficiency.”

  “Yes, yes,” the holoimage said. “That goes without saying. I would have thought of it. That means my cores must be damaged.”

  Maddox waited.

  “I think I will have your Doctor Rich look over my computing core. It is…wrong that I am below peak…what was the word?”

  “Efficiency,” Maddox said.

  “Yes, that,” the holoimage said.

  “Consider it done,” Maddox said. “I will inform the doctor via a screen.”

  “Yes, good,” the holoimage said. “Now, as to the other matters, here is what we shall do afterward…”

  ***

  Time passed as the robot and crew repaired what damage they could. Finally, hours later, the holoimage reappeared on the bridge.

  “An enemy sensor has located us,” the AI said.

  Maddox noticed the holoimage was sharper than ever. It was shorter than he was, with thicker shoulders and thin dangling arms. It wore what looked like a jumpsuit with red tags on the chest, perhaps to symbolize his rank. The holoimage had thick, silvery matted hair and extremely deep-set eyes. The alien was far more humanoid than he’d realized. Why did the control panels have tentacle slots then?

  “What are the star cruisers doing exactly?” Maddox asked.

  “Heading closer to the red giant,” the holoimage said.

  “It’s as I feared. Per Lomax and his brethren are clever. After replaying what happened earlier, they must realize you have an intra-system jump capability. Perhaps they have anticipated our next tactic. I think you must attack this instant before they refine their strategies.”

  The holoimage studied him. Maddox could tell because of the greater clarity. The AI must be able to see or sense through the image’s eyes.

  “Yes, I understand your reasoning,” the holoimage said. “With my re-linked cores operating together, I have—well, never mind about that. Prepare for jump.”

  Through his screen, Maddox informed the others they were about to attack.

  A minute later, a terrible whine began from somewhere deep in the ship. The vertigo returned. Maddox felt all the same sensations as last time.

  I’m heading back into combat. This is it. Do or die against the New Men.

  The quietness of jump felt strange. Then, light and colors flowed into him as before. Sounds and smells overburdened his senses. Maddox slumped onto the deck, panting as drool spilled from his mouth. Then he realized the engines thrummed and the deck vibrated horribly.

  “Error, error,” the holoimage said. “We have committed an error.”

  “What’s wrong?” Maddox shouted, dragging himself to a sitting position.

  “They were ready for us,” the holoimage said. “You were right in believing they anticipated the tactic. We have committed an error. Their rays are burning through the shield. There, one beam has burst through.”

  Maddox staggered to the screen as the starship shook. An enemy beam chewed against Victory’s cherry-red hull armor.

  “Fire into their guts!” shouted Maddox. “Use the neutron beam. Destroy one of them, at least. Let them know they’ve been in a fight.”

  As the starship shook, its purple beam struck an enemy shield. It might have been Maddox’s imagination, but the shimmering held longer than last time. The enemy’s deflector became red as neutron energy blasted against it. Far too slowly, the shield became brown, the color spreading outward. Then, the central area turned black. Finally, the purple neutron beam punched through the shield, smashed hull armor and tore into the star cruiser.

  “Breach!” the holoimage shouted.

  At first, Maddox thought the AI meant against the enemy.

  “Victory has a hull breach,” the holoimage said. “The New Men are destroying my beautiful ship. If only I had my old weapons systems. Then they would have known. Then they—”

  On Maddox’s screen, a terrific explosion turned everything stark white. The captain threw his arms before his eyes. When he looked again, he saw expanding debris where an enemy star cruiser had been. Armor, laser fluids, flesh, decking, food concentrates, water, all kinds of material expanded in a mass. Some hit the next star cruiser’s shield, frying into energy, halted from moving farther.

  “Hit!” shouted Maddox. “You hit and destroyed one of them. The fight’s not over yet.”

  ***

  At that precise moment, in a different part of the starship, Lieutenant Noonan caught Doctor Rich’s wink.

  The two of them were in a critical AI nexus area. Bulkhead plates lay strewn on the deck. Earlier, Dana had used her implements to attach loosened cables and alien radiant connectives. The AI had shown the doctor specialty tools to work on the parts. Not only listening to the explanations—through Maddox doing the interpreting—the doctor had studied the machine with her critical, professional eye. A so-called “encryption” pad lay in plain sight. The AI had instructed Maddox, who had told the doctor how to use it. Dana had whispered earlier to Valerie that the pad was the central override board to the entire AI system.

  Horrible sounds now echoed in the starship. Explosions shook the nexus area and metal crumpled nearby that they couldn’t see.

  The wink was Valerie’s prearranged signal to act. The Star Watch lieutenant unlimbered her heavy assault rifle. While wearing her vacc-suit, she leveled the weapon at the nearby robot. It was a squat rounded thing that moved on treads and possessed six mechanical tentacles. It stood a little taller than her and must have weighed three times as much.

  “Here goes,” Valerie whispered to herself. She pulled the trigger. Bullets hosed from the assault rifle as the weapon bucked in her hands. The first few shots ricocheted off the robot. What kind of metal did it have, anyway?

  Instead of worrying about that, the lieutenant focused on hitting the same surface area. Gritting her teeth, she kept firing.

  Doctor Rich swiveled around, leaving what she’d been doing. Instead, she began typing on the encryption pad, her fingers blurring as she attempted to override the ancient computer.

  The robot waved its many tentacles. The treads clanked, and the squat machine headed at Dana Rich. It looked as if the robot intended to ram the doctor against a bulkhead.


  Inside her helmet, Valerie shouted, moving between the robot and Dana. Kneeling, Valerie ripped out the expended magazine and shoved in another. The robot loomed before her. She held the muzzle centimeters from its skin and let the rifle tremble in her hands. Bullets smashed through dented outer armor. They sparked inside the electrical guts. Yet still the robot’s treads carried it closer.

  Then, Valerie released the rifle as she began to roar and rave. Pushing with her feet, she collided with the thing so hard her teeth jarred together with a click. She shoved as her vacc-boots kept moving, straining against the robot. Mechanical tentacles struck her helmet and whipped against her shoulders. Her cries changed to those of pain. A last convulsive effort gave her more strength. She toppled the robot and rolled free of it. With sweat dripping into her eyes, she scrambled to the assault rifle lying on the deck. She jammed in a new magazine. As the robot’s treads spun and the tentacles attempted to right itself, she shoved the muzzle through a torn area. Valerie pulled the trigger, pumping slugs into the undying robot. Finally, smoke billowed from the thing. Flames flickered, and the robot’s efforts weakened until it no longer mattered.

  Exhausted, Lieutenant Noonan staggered away from the alien machine, crashing onto her butt as she panted. She didn’t know if they had won or lost, but she sure as heck felt as if she’d done her part.

  ***

  On the starship’s bridge, the holoimage raged at Captain Maddox. “You traitor! You lied to me. Your people are attempting to gain control over my AI core. I will drop the deflector shield and let both enemy beams strike the ship into oblivion.”

  “Wait!” Maddox said. “They aren’t supposed to be doing that. My crew is attacking you?”

  “What?” the holoimage asked. “They’re doing this against your orders?”

  “Of course,” Maddox said, trying to gain time for whatever the others were attempting. “I have too much respect for you to do anything other than serve you. Strengthen the deflector shield. Use everything you can against the New Men while I stop my team from hurting you.”

  “No. It’s too late for all of us. Can’t you hear the interior destruction?”

  Maddox heard something, all right, as explosions shook the starship.

  At that moment, several things occurred at once. The holoimage faded away. As it did, vertigo struck Maddox again. He couldn’t tell which way was up or down, right or left. It felt as if he was frozen in time. Expectantly, he waited for colors to smash against him and normalcy to return. It felt as if they jumped again. The frozenness stretched longer and longer.

  Finally, with great effort, Maddox turned his head. He realized that he no longer heard the enemy beams destroying interior ship’s systems and bulkheads.

  Are we in hyperspace? Did Dana take over the starship’s AI and force it to jump? What’s going on?

  Slowly, Maddox inhaled. As he blinked, he felt his eyelashes intertwine with each other. Time seemed to have slowed an immeasurable amount.

  I have to see what’s wrong.

  He began to turn around. It seemed to go on forever and ever. Finally, he rose from his seated position. Then, the riot of colors flooded his senses. A roaring sound invaded his hearing, and his nose seemed clogged with scents. He bellowed, and his descending foot slid out from under him. With a thump, he crashed against the deck, laying there panting in bewilderment.

  What just happened? Are we still in battle?

  He listened, but he didn’t hear anything telltale. Maddox closed his eyes, exhausted. I can’t just lay here. I have to see what happened.

  Captain Maddox struggled to his feet. The screen showed him the void of space. He couldn’t see the red giant star or the enemy cruisers. No wrecks drifted outside and no planetary rubble showed what used to be worlds.

  Did we just jump then, as I first suspected? How far did we go?

  A laugh escaped his lips. Maddox was certain they were no longer in battle or in the alien star system. He pressed his lips together, containing the laughter. It was time to figure out if they had just won or lost.

  -38-

  It turned out they had won…after a fashion, Maddox decided.

  A day after the battle, Victory drifted in the void three light years from the alien star system. The vessel wasn’t near another star, but in the middle of nowhere. The craft had made the jump in one large bound.

  The red giant blazed its light, the brightest object in the darkness.

  The alien ship had taken severe damage from the star cruisers. Entire sections of the vessel were off limits because they were smashed wreckage now open to space. Perhaps one third of the craft lacked an atmosphere because the stellar vacuum drifted through it. In certain places, the crew had to take large detours to get from one point to another.

  Still, they had survived the encounter with the New Men. No more fires raged or energy dissipated in the starship. They had fully acquired Victory, and they were in no immediate danger of destruction. Those were the good points. The bad troubled Maddox and severely depressed the crew. They had a two-week supply of food, at best. Dana had found a water supply, so they wouldn’t die of dehydration. The star drive needed repair before it could work again. Once it began working—if they ever reached that point—they weren’t sure they could keep it functional for long. They lacked a Laumer Drive, so they couldn’t use the regular tramlines. Earth was three hundred light years away. With Victory’s present star drive, they wouldn’t remotely reach the Oikumene, never mind the Commonwealth of Planets or Earth, before the drive failed for good. And, without this ship in the Star Watch’s possession, nothing Maddox and the others had done out here mattered in a grand strategic sense.

  “There’s only one way we’re going to survive more than a few weeks,” Dana said. “We have to repair the ship.”

  They met in a chamber with low chairs and what they used for a table. It was warm in here, so they didn’t have to wear their vacc-suits. That was good, because the last tanks only had a half-supply of air left.

  “Okay,” Keith said, as he twirled what looked like a key ring, “we need to fix stuff. What do we try to repair first?”

  “That’s easy,” Dana said, “the star drive. Without it, we’re trapped in the void with no way of changing our fate.”

  Valerie set a tube she’d been fiddling with onto the table. “I’m still worried about the AI. You told us before it isn’t dead. You just cut it off from the ship’s controls.”

  Doctor Rich nodded. “That’s right. It’s alive and likely brooding, if such a thing is possible.”

  “The AI must know of ways to bypass what you did,” Valerie said. “Maybe it’s secretly working to regain control of its ship.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Dana said. “Think of the AI as a genie, and we’ve corked its bottle. It’s not getting out unless we first pry out the stopper.”

  Maddox cleared his throat. “We must work under the assumption the AI will remain inoperative for a time. In that way, Doctor Rich is correct. Our primary goal is to fix the star drive. That will be your department, Doctor and Meta. I’m giving you Keith and Riker as helpers.”

  The sergeant sat morosely in a corner. His bionic hand opened and closed with faint whirring sounds. Meta also seemed despondent, with her elbows on the table and her eyes staring and distant.

  First glancing at Meta and then looking back at the captain, Dana said, “I’d also like Valerie’s help.”

  “No,” Maddox said. “Lieutenant Noonan will help me. Once we figure out how to use the ship’s sensors, we’re going to scour space for a clue as to where we should go next. We’re deep in the Beyond. That doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of humans. We’re going to search for planetary industrial signs. If nothing else, if we find such a system, we can go there and fill our food stores. At best, we’ll also gain technical help to effect fuller repairs. I suspect we’ll only fix everything at a Star Watch dockyard.”

  “Trying to bargain for repairs in a human-run star syste
m out here in the Beyond would be dangerous,” Dana said. “The starship is a fantastic prize. It has alien technology that includes a new beam, a better shield and a completely new star drive that bypasses tramlines. Whoever captures the ship will be tremendously wealthy. Greed motivates people do to nasty things.”

  Maddox took his time answering. Did he detect avarice in the doctor’s eyes? He didn’t want to believe it. She had taken the Star Watch oath. Would she hold to it? Or would Doctor Rich think of it as some lesser superstition she’d taken to build morale at the most critical juncture of the trip? Without Dana, none of this would have been possible. Maddox didn’t want her for an opponent again. He needed her to remain one hundred percent on the team.

  “I’m not speaking about riches for myself,” Dana said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Of course not,” Maddox said.

  “I’m merely saying we have to worry about hijackers if we enter a technologically advanced star system. There’s something else, too. People in the past fled into the Beyond for a reason. Usually, the emigrants were odd in some way. Those oddities might trip us up if we go into their star system.”

  “There are dangers all around us,” Maddox agreed, “but we have a deadly warship. People will trifle with us at their peril.”

  “The starship has sustained heavy and obvious damage,” Dana said. “We’re limited in what we can do, and people are going to know it. That’s provided we can even get the star drive working again.”

  “And that we can find such a technologically advanced star system somewhere close by,” Valerie added.

  “Nevertheless,” Maddox said, “we have the neutron beam and a sturdy shield. We can fight whoever thinks to cheat us.”

  “Once we repair the deflector generators, you’ll have a shield again,” Dana said. “I don’t even know if any of the other ship’s systems are repairable. The star drive has taken all my thoughts and energy. We have to restore it now.”