The Lost Swarm Page 8

  “I will have to alert them if you don’t put the weapon back online,” Strand whispered.

  “You are siding with the humans, then?”

  “I have no choice.”

  “What was that?” Maddox voice asked from the robot.

  “Uh, what?” asked Strand, as he turned around to stare at the robot.

  “Who are you talking to?” asked Maddox.

  “Myself. It’s a nervous habit I have,” Strand said.

  “Galyan has just informed me that something fishy is going on over there,” Maddox said. “The Wyr 9000 may be trying to communicate with you.”

  “I’ll tell you if it does.”

  “Will you, though. I rather doubt it. I think your whispering is you trying to make a deal with it.”

  “I assure you that is not true.”

  “Then engage the weapon,” Maddox said. “The star cruisers are two minutes from firing.”

  “Perhaps—”

  “Before you try to get tricky,” Maddox said, interrupting. “Let me tell you that the robot is set to kill you the instant Victory is destroyed.”

  “I can stop that in time,” the Wyr 9000 whispered from the panel.

  “It can’t,” Maddox said.

  “What?” Strand asked.

  “Lieutenant Noonan has a pickup on your line,” Maddox said. “We’ve heard everything the Wyr 9000 is telling you.”

  “Please,” Stand said. “I-I don’t know what to do.”

  “Engage the device.”

  “The Wyr 9000 said it disengaged it.”

  “The Wyr 9000 is lying to you,” Maddox said. “Engage the main weapon, Strand. This is your last opportunity.”

  “All right, all right,” Strand shouted, pressing panel controls.

  “Bastard,” the Wyr 9000 shouted. “I can still do this without your help.”

  A harsh signal left the Builder base.

  Aboard the bridge on Victory, the main screen went blank.

  “The Wyr 9000 is jamming the com signal,” Valerie said. “I doubt we even have control of the base robot anymore.”

  Maddox slapped one of the armrests. “Can you break through the jamming?”

  “I’m trying, sir,” Valerie said, desperately manipulating her board.

  ***

  On the Builder base, things were going far differently than Maddox would have suspected.

  Strand kept tapping the weapons panel, trying to activate the main weapon.

  “Do not bother with that,” the Wyr 9000 said in a louder voice than before. “I told you, I broke the weapon. And you should know that the robot is inoperative, or that Galyan cannot control it anymore.”

  Strand looked over his shoulder. “Captain Maddox, I’m not sure I can do as you ask.”

  Nothing happened. Maddox didn’t threaten him, and the robot didn’t move.

  Strand’s shoulders slumped. He panted for a few precious seconds. Then, he looked down at a speaker unit. “I owe you my life,” he told the Wyr 9000.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to reach that conclusion. I do need some help. There is a major computer terminal that needs reconnecting. I must do it manually and—”

  “Strand,” a harsh-voiced, naked New Man said.

  Strand turned around in horror. A naked golden-skinned superman leaped through an open hatch into the main control chamber. He looked real. He wasn’t a holoimage.

  “Wait,” Strand shouted. “Who are you?”

  “Your nemesis,” the New Man shouted.

  In another bound, the New Man reached Strand, grabbed one of the hands trying to block him and broke the wrist with a snap.

  Strand howled in agony.

  The New Man spun the clone around, using both hands to lift him by the neck. He began squeezing the life out of the kicking, helpless clone. The New Man laughed, clearly enjoying himself.

  “Set him down,” the Wyr 9000 said.

  “I’m going to destroy you next,” the New Man snarled.

  “Are you mad?” the Wyr 9000 asked.

  The New Man shook the clone, snapping the neck and killing the last of the Strand clones. He pitched the dead, twitching body onto the deck.

  The New Man scanned the controls. Then he went to one and began to manipulate it.

  “Stop,” the Wyr 9000 said. “Strand was going to help me.”

  The New Man ignored the computer. Seconds later, he said, “Lord Drakos.”

  “I hear you,” Drakos said, although there was scratchy sounding interference.

  “I have studied the settings, lord, and played back some data. It appears that the Wyr 9000 here knows Commander Thrax’s present whereabouts.”

  “Ah,” Drakos said. But that was the last word Drakos said from the com speaker in the Builder base control room. The computer had cut the connection.

  “Fiend,” the Wyr 9000 shouted at the naked New Man. “I will roast you alive for what you just did.”

  The Wyr 9000 sent a signal to a unit that would heat the room to an intolerable level for a flesh-and-blood creature. The heating began immediately.

  The New Man shouted, racing to a hatch. It shut before he reached it, and not even his vaunted New Man strength could force it open.

  “Stop what you’re doing,” the New Man shouted.

  “I have a control unit for you,” the Wyr 9000 said. “If you agree to don it, I will let you live as my slave.”

  The New Man shouted defiantly. No one would ever control him again. He had volunteered for this in order to become free, not to become an alien computer’s slave.

  The heat in the room continued to climb, including the deck.

  The New Man raced in a high-stepping dance to the dead clone—the floor was burning the soles of his feet—tearing the long garment from him. The golden-skinned superman threw that onto the hot floor, standing on it in relief. He stepped on something inside the cloak, bent and fished for the thing.

  He came up holding a knife. He didn’t know it, but the clone had found it earlier and put it in a long pocket.

  “Are you ready to surrender?” the Wyr 9000 asked from a speaker.

  With a snarl, the New Man gripped the knife, hacking away at the controls, trying to destroy the computer before it destroyed him.

  -13-

  “Sir,” Valerie told Maddox aboard the starship. “I can’t break through the jamming. If the base has a weapon, I doubt it can help us now.”

  “Affirmative,” Maddox said. The captain squeezed his eyes closed. The star cruisers were coming. The Builder base—

  “Galyan,” Maddox said.

  The little holoimage appeared beside him.

  “Is Andros Crank in the engine area?” asked Maddox.

  “Yes, sir,” Galyan said.

  “Is his team with him?”

  “Are you suggesting they attempt the Vach Cold Antimatter Firing?” Galyan asked.

  “Did you run the computations like I asked?”

  “Of course,” Galyan said.

  “What are the odds of success?”

  “One in three, sir.”

  Maddox looked up at the screen. He was the di-far. He had luck on his side. But he felt as if he’d used up all his luck several times over now. He disliked a one in three chance of success.

  “Go, Galyan,” he said. “Tell Andros to begin.”

  “Too much time has passed for it to work now, sir.”

  “Go,” Maddox hissed. “It looks like the cold firing may be our only chance. After you’ve told him, begin setting a course for an emergency star-drive jump.”

  “You are talking about a J. Hyaline Sudden Succession Star-Drive Jump,” Galyan said. “Doing that in sequence with the cold start will lower our odds to one in six, sir.”

  “Hurry up, you little—” Maddox checked himself. “Do as I say,” he said in a calmer voice. “We don’t have much time.”

  Galyan disappeared.

  ***

  Drakos sat in his command chair as the Agamem
non closed on Victory in the asteroid belt. The Adok super-ship was larger and more deadly than a single star cruiser. But not even Victory was a match for fourteen new-and-improved star cruisers with disrupter cannons and upgraded shields.

  Drakos loathed Captain Maddox and had loathed him ever since the war against the Swarm several years ago. The captain was a half-breed upstart, and now the creature had claimed that he—Drakos—might be the father. That doubled his desire to destroy Maddox.

  “The other captains are awaiting your orders, sir,” Nar Falcon said.

  “I know,” Drakos said under his breath.

  “Lord?” asked Nar Falcon.

  Drakos heaved a sigh. He hadn’t been able to reestablish communications with the Builder base or his man on it. Strand was dead. So that was something, at least. Before losing communications, his man had relayed a critical message. Maddox knew the location of Commander Thrax. Now, here was the question. Could he capture Victory, or would the captain force him to destroy the starship? Hmm, if the Wyr 9000 knew the location of Thrax, wouldn’t that imply the star system was close by? Yet, how close was close? He might spend years out here searching the various star systems and still not come up with the new Swarm world. But if he let Maddox go there and followed the starship to Thrax…

  “We are one minute from disrupter cannon range, lord,” Nar Falcon said.

  Drakos squeezed the fingers of his right hand together and tapped an armrest with the fist. What should he do? Normally, he could make immediate decisions. He needed to find Thrax’s new world sooner rather than later. But to let the infernal Captain Maddox live—

  “I’m picking up a garbled message, lord,” Nar Falcon said.

  Drakos raised his head.

  “It’s the Wyr 9000 hailing us,” Nar Falcon said.

  “Open channels,” Drakos said.

  Nar Falcon tapped his board.

  ***

  The Wyr 9000 had reestablished control of its Builder base. The clone and New Man lay dead in its control room. The New Man corpse’s face was twisted with agony. He had suffocated, unable to breathe the dreadfully heated air. The cloak in the chamber had caught fire, filling it with smoke.

  Many of the panels and controls sparked with a harsh burnt electronic smell, adding to the smoky fragrance. The knife blade had melted when it hit a critical area. The blast had disabled the New Man’s right hand before he died on the stove-hot floor. The electric short had sent a terrible surge of energy into the Builder base system. Added to everything else, it had started the self-destruct sequence.

  The Wry 9000 vainly attempted to abort the self-destruct. Once it realized the futility of trying, it hailed the Agamemnon. The vengeful computer wanted to make sure the New Men died in the coming blast. It would hold their attention, but the hailing attempt took it longer than anticipated.

  Strange energies were at play on its base. There were many exotic Builder tools stored here. One of those tools was a Balor Type 4 Energetic Enhancer. The physics of the tool was beyond present human understanding, but it used many principles similar to a spiritual Ska entity. Maddox might have called that “soul energy,” which made sense in a limited human way.

  The Balor Type 4 Energetic Enhancer received harsh gamma and X-ray radiation, recalibrating certain of its settings. In nineteen seconds, the recalibrating and excess radiation caused the device to explode. That sent out a strange pulse of transcendent E7 energy well ahead of anything else from the critical base.

  That pulse or wave reached and washed over Starship Victory.

  ***

  Maddox stood on the bridge, waiting for confirmation that Andros had completed the Vach Cold Antimatter start. They didn’t have much time left.

  At that point, the transcendent E7 energy wave passed against, through and past the starship.

  Because of his past battle against a Ska and the dreadful amount of soul energy he’d used powering a Builder weapon, Maddox was many times more susceptible to the wave than anyone else aboard Victory. The captain grunted and his knees unlocked, almost causing him to pitch onto the deck. Instead, because of his superhuman reflexes, he staggered in a short circle, heading for his command chair.

  Several of the bridge crew noticed the odd performance. The captain almost seemed to be dancing. Maddox weaved, wobbled, went low as his knees unlocked again and pitched himself into his chair. He twisted into a sitting position, panting in exhaustion. The wave of T-E7 energy ate some of his remaining soul energy, and he had less of it to spare than normal people did. This reopened an old spiritual wound.

  Maddox’s eyelids flickered, and his face turned deathly pale.

  “Galyan!” Valerie shouted.

  The holoimage appeared.

  The lieutenant pointed a shaking finger at Maddox.

  “Sir,” Galyan said, floating near. “You look ill, sir.”

  Maddox slowly turned his head to stare at the Adok holoimage. His lips moved just as slowly. “Andros?” he whispered.

  “It’s all set, sir,” Galyan said.

  “Do it. Make the jump.”

  “Are you—?

  Galyan stopped talking as Maddox swiped at him, his hand passing through the holoimage. Galyan floated backward. He did not like anyone doing that, not even the captain.

  “Base…will…explode,” Maddox said.

  “What did he say?” Valerie asked, worried.

  “The Builder base is going to explode,” Galyan said. “He cannot know that for sure, though.”

  “Now,” Maddox whispered. “Go to the…” The captain’s eyelids fluttered and he lost consciousness.

  Galyan turned to Valerie.

  “Do what he said,” the lieutenant ordered.

  Galyan vanished—and reappeared in the main engine control room. “The captain said do it.”

  The stout Andros Crank manipulated controls. Carefully calibrated power-surges cold-started the great antimatter engines. This was not a long process. That was the point. But any miscalculation would cause a massive explosion and destroy the starship and everyone in it.

  For a second, the ship shuddered as two reactors mixed with a tiny variance.

  With sweat pouring from his chubby face, Andros tapped his control board. The shuddering stopped. The Kai-Kaus turned to Galyan, nodding fearfully.

  Galyan vanished, reappearing on the bridge. “Go,” he told Keith.

  Keith, the ace pilot, likely the best in all of Star Watch, manipulated his board. Vast antimatter-supplied power poured through the star-drive engine.

  Everyone on the bridge held his or her breath. Then, Victory jumped, leaving its position in the outer asteroid belt.

  ***

  Aboard the fifty-kilometer Builder base—the one disguised as an asteroid—more exotic Builder tools exploded. The wild energy upset the antimatter power source deep in the base.

  Victory had jumped thirty-nine seconds ago. It had gotten away barely been in time. At the beginning of the fortieth second, the ancient antimatter power source erupted with amazingly destructive energy.

  The blast blew upward through the base, blowing down the absorption walls as if they were tinfoil. One chamber after another disappeared in the blinding white holocaust. Bulkheads, computer parts, ancient tools, containment pods, water chambers, all blew apart and were consumed in the terrible fireball of destruction.

  The Wyr 9000 Sentient Computer knew an instant of bitter defeat. Then, all its parts burned and vanished in the horrible conflagration. The corpses of Clone Strand and New Man disappeared. The ashes of the burned cloak vanished in the mighty destruction. It continued until the fiery holocaust destroyed the outer shell of the base and burned the ancient space dust to nothing. That didn’t stop the blast, however, as it continued to expand with annihilating fury.

  ***

  Seconds before the destruction began, the metallic voice of the Wyr 9000 told Drakos and his bridge crew, “You cannot win. I have defeated your stooges and—”

  The message en
ded at the same time as the Builder base exploded, creating a terrible whiteout on the star cruisers’ sensors.

  The New Men’s panic was immediate, but of no value because of the speed of the billowing heat, radiation and EMP. The terrible annihilating force caused stellar dust and debris to disintegrate. It burned asteroids into cinders and still expanded. Some of the worst of the destructive power dwindled, however, as it continued to swell throughout the star system.

  Then, the weakened but still-potent wave struck the first star cruiser shield. It came as the bridge crew poured all available power to the shield. That did not quite happen fast enough, though. The shield went down faster than a New Man could snap his fingers. The wave hit the armored hull and crumpled everything, causing compartments to burst open and slaughter the crew in seconds.

  The same event happened to the next star cruiser, destroying it as well.

  At the third, there was a different outcome. The wave born from the detonation struck the third shield. It went from clear, to red to black and…held.

  On the Agamemnon, Nar Falcon was saying, “I have diverted all power to the shields.” The wave struck, and the interior lighting flickered on the bridge.

  Drakos sat tensely in his command chair. Had the Wyr 9000 damned them to non-being? Was this the end of existence? It was a terrible feeling. Drakos wondered if there was more after this life. Some submen priests claimed there was, but how could anyone know for sure?

  “The force of the explosion is dissipating,” Nar Falcon reported.

  Drakos heaved a sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to die. He would continue to act and win, even if he’d failed to gain incredible technology from the ancient Builder base. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent Strand and the dominant.

  Drakos laughed. He had gained a teleportation device through this adventure. That was powerful technology. No one else he knew had such a device. Surely, he could think of ways to use it to his advantage. He was a superior after all.

  “Could Victory have survived that blast, lord?” Nar Falcon asked.

  “The starship was closer to the base than we were,” Drakos said, shaking his head. “It doesn’t seem possible it survived.”

  “And yet, Maddox has escaped worse before,” Nar Falcon said.