by M S Murdock
Arrival
Buck Roger XVV
Table of Contents
Arrival Table of Contents
ARMAGEDDON 1995, Flint Dille
HOMECOMING Robert Sheckle Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
TRIPLE CROSS Abigail Irvine
TRYST OF FATE M.S Murdock
TWO BARNEYS Ulrike O'Reill
THE RELlC Flint Dine I: Incident at a trading post In the Juno-Vesta arc
ll: Judgment Day
Ill: Rescue
THE ADVERSARY Jerry Oltion
Glossary
ARMAGEDDON 1995, Flint Dille
Rogers, I don’t have to tell you how important this mission is. There’s never been one like it in the history of the world.” General Barker’s crisp voice cut through the darkness of his office, which was lit only by a thin shaft of light that made its way through the back of a black-out curtain. “Do you understand what it is you’ll be doing?”
Captain Buck Rogers, a solid giant of a man in clean, full duty uniform, cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. I’ll be starting World War III--”
“Wrong! We’re sending you up to prevent it, and you will, understand? No hot shot screwing around on this one, got it? A thousand pilots would give their eye teeth for this mission, and if I could, I’d send one of them. But you’re the best we have. Both you and this mission are too important for any screw-ups. So just follow orders!”
Buck stared at the rotund, balding general behind his stacks of papers and reports, behind his coffee cup and his pencils and his nameplate on the desk. The general’s buttons strained at the fabric of his too small uniform, and his tie was spotted with that day’s lunch. There’s nothing worse than a desk jockey leading his troops into battle, thought Buck. Unless that desk jockey also is keeping you from seeing his daughter.
"I’ll do my best, sir," Buck said, knowing that neither of them would accept anything less.
"Of course. Now, as I’m sure you know, the Soviets’ Masterlink satellite is the nerve center for their Space Attack Network. It is capable of shooting down our nuclear missiles when they’re barely off the ground. Our own Strategic Defense Initiative program is months behind schedule, and we need you to put us ahead. The United States will not tolerate Soviet nuclear superiority. Period.
“As we are not at war, yet, and because this mission involves inordinate risk, I must tell you that your cooperation is purely voluntary. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. If I succeed, I’ll be a national hero.”
“No. If you succeed, maybe you’ll get promoted. But because this mission is classified, the press will hear nothing of it. Quite unlike the attention you received after your Gulf mission. But if you fail, don’t bother coming back down. There won’t be anything to come back to. World War III will begin.”
“I understand, sir,” Buck said, inwardly fuming at the lack of confidence his superior was showing for the ace pilot.
“Do you accept this mission, knowing full well the extreme risks involved?”
“Yes, sir, but only with one request.”
“What is it, Captain?” the general asked, cocking his head to better hear the wisecrack that might be coming.
“That after the mission you allow me one date with your daughter.”
Barker could not believe the irreverent cheek at so crucial a moment. “Forget it,” he said through clenched teeth. The general’s face turned crimson, and he held the edge of his desk in a viselike grip.
“Report to Space Tac Wing immediately for your final briefing!” Buck stood, stiffly saluted the general, and made his way to the door. Upon opening it, he turned and said with false courtesy, “Have a nice day, General.”
The normally twenty-minute drive from Barker’s office to the secret Space Tac air base took much longer than usual. Knowing that once he climbed into his souped-up jet fighter he might never return, Buck decided to spend what might be his last few hours on Earth by diverting both his vehicle and his attention onto a few detours.
Cruising down a lonely desert highway in his black Mustang convertible, Buck fished out of his glove compartment a hand-held tape recorder and switched it to record. “Hi, Randy. Buck Rogers here. No, we’re not friends. Far from it. But I think you have something that few people in this world have: integrity. That’s why I’m sending you this tape. I’ve got a story to tell. . . .”
Buck punched the accelerator to the floor and raced down a long stretch of desert road, talking to his absent passenger as he went. At a familiar road junction, forbidden him by certain official pencil pushers, he turned and followed a dusty road up to a lonely ranch home atop a mesa overlooking Space Tac.
Dropping the recorder onto the passenger seat, he skidded to a stop before the home’s front door, got out, ran to the door, and rang the bell.
“Hi, Jessica,” said Buck, as a perky brunette wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt opened the door. He leaned into the doorway, letting his tie brush against her. “Your dad sent me,” he said, though not revealing exactly how “Are you alone?”
She sensed from his posture and the spark in his cobalt eyes that Buck was not there at her father’s request. At first she hesitated, knowing the trouble they’d both be if her father knew they were together.
Buck noticed the book that the young woman held before her, as a shield, he thought. “‘Had we but world enough. And time, this coyness, lady, were no crime... But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near: And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity;” quoted Buck, hoping to appeal to the college woman’s literary sense. Jessica smiled. “I’m impressed. Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress. And how could I refuse?” she said, opening the door wide, a grin Spreading across her face as well.
“You can’t,” said Buck.
An hour later, Buck returned to his car, combing his fingers through his wet brown hair and rubbing some lingering soap from his ears. He climbed in, revved the engine, and honked farewell as he swerved back down the Barkers’ driveway.
He made another detour to a nearby town before returning to the air base. He pulled from the floor of his car an empty junk-mail envelope, dropped the completed cassette tape inside it, and scrawled the name “Randy Malat” and a New York City address on the front. He then dashed into the local post office and sent it on its way. Finally, he made it back to Space Tac air base. As he pulled up to the front gate, he heard a baseball game over the guard's radio. “Who’s winning?” he asked, as he flashed his security badge to the guard, who was quickly hiding a bottled beverage. “Cubs, three to two, over the Dodgers. Bottom of the ninth, two men on...” the guard responded, saluting as the captain drove through.
I’ve got my own game to play, thought Rogers, not waiting to hear the final score. He turned into a reserved parking space, then slowly sauntered into the base’s large, nondescript hangar.
Once inside, he stopped, seeing again what was to be his spirited black steed, an F-38 Wraith, a fighter jet modified for near-orbit space travel. A fitting mount for a knight such as 1, Buck thought, with its aerodynamic and Titanium-strong body, radar absorbing skin, and host of offensive weapons lances, he liked to call them. Behind him Buck heard the familiar shuffle of footsteps, those of his former flight instructor and now mentor, Dr. Faustus Huer.
“Do the Soviets know about this
thing, Doc?” Buck asked, turning to Huer.
“What thing?” asked Huer, an engineer and veteran pilot himself, a wide grin cutting deep lines on his face. Decked out in a scuffed, 30-year-old bomber jacket, he also was a self-proclaimed maverick and eccentric in the scientific field and a would-be science-fiction author. “Everyone knows there are treaties prohibiting Earth-based space fighters. We’re just hoping that the Soviets think we’re dumb enough to live up to them. They’re almost right, except for this little piece of errata here,” Huer said, pointing toward the Wraith. “What did Barker have to tell you?”
“Not much. Just a lot of pompous political garbage.”
“Typical, coming from that straight G.I.,” said Huer, who had turned down one promotion after another to avoid getting tangled up in the government’s machinery. He was a pilot, like Buck, and believed that actions were more important than words. “Would you like a real briefing?” he asked.
“I can use anything you can tell me,” said Buck.
“Then follow me,” Huer said, brushing his gray locks back over his brow and turning into one of the hangar’s small classrooms.
Huer began by elaborating on what Buck already knew about the political state of the world-which was not good. War was coming, despite the great strides of glasnost in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. It was coming because certain politburo figures were easier to destroy than the legacy of nearly eighty years of oppression, paranoia, and aggression that had forged the Soviet state.
One lesson the new Soviet regime did not ignore was public relations. Playing on the weaknesses of the Western press, the new communist leaders disguised their atrocities behind photo opportunities. The gulags went unnoticed while photos of released hostages, or bulldozers on the Iron Curtain, made the covers of Western magazines.
So caught up in the illusion were the Americans, that they failed to notice that, despite announcements of massive farm program funding in the Soviet Union, no money arrived in the farmers’ hands. There was no new surge in tractor production, and despite announced dismantling of weapons systems, little evidence showed that this was being done either.
But Western press reporters pronounced communism dead, and went to great lengths to tell the kind of human interest stories that the KGB gladly fed them. Few in the West actually knew of the Soviets’ new space weapons buildup. When details became known, American scientists had no doubt that the United States’ nuclear arsenal would be useless. Any damage they inflicted upon the Soviet Union would easily fall within the Kremlin’s “acceptable losses,” and the U.S. would be left with no defense against a counter attack.
“So how did things go from bad to worse?” asked Buck.
“The latest tensions began when our ambassador to the United Nations accused the Soviets of shooting down our most valuable telecommunications satellite and crippling U.S. phone lines for weeks. Chaos erupted on the floor of the UN’s General Assembly, and both delegates stormed out.”
“I wondered why my phone was so quiet all of a sudden,” quipped Buck.
“A few days later,” Huer continued, “each country’s respective embassy was emptied of all but essential personnel, and the president requested that severe trade sanctions be placed on the Soviets. Congress was quick to reply, as were the Soviets, who immediately announced extensive military training maneuvers. The Soviet government also levied strict rationing among its people, as well as those in other Soviet block countries.
“NATO members bristled at the thought of ‘extensive’ military maneuvers and demanded that the United States take steps to reduce the growing tension. Since then, U.S. scientists had discovered the Soviets’ space weapons system, and American commanders were put on alert. They had readied their antisatellite (ASAT) missiles, and waited for a single word from the president.
“We suspect that it was Masterlink that shot down our 'TelCom satellite. And the only solution,” said Huer, “is to knock Masterlink out of the sky.” He reached over to the top of a lectern and pulled a set of papers to the table on which he sat.
“This is Masterlink,” he announced, handing Buck a greatly enlarged, very blurry photograph of the satellite.
“This is it?” Buck asked. “All I can see is that there’s a red band around the middle.”
“That’s all we have, Buck. Masterlink is nearly invisible to radar, and the few satellites we’ve sent to photograph it have come back to Earth destroyed, just like TelCom, only with much less publicity.
“Intelligence sources in the Soviet Union describe it as having a nasty defense: orbiting mirrors that reflect ground-based laser pulses, slave satellites armed with rocket interceptors, and space-based mines."
"What’s it got on board?” Buck asked.
“Well, for one thing, a cosmonaut who presses the buttons. And I would guess he’s got it all: projectiles, missiles, directed energy beams. Only he, Karkov, knows what else.”
Buck blanched at the name he’d just heard. His jaw dropped open.
“Are you okay, Buck?” asked Huer.
“Doc, are you sure about that name?”
“Yes, Buck. Why? What is it?”
“Anatoly Karkov murdered my parents,” he said coldly. “My first semester in college, they decided to get away, take a second honeymoon, and island-hop through the Orient. It was their dream vacation. On their second day, on the way to Hong Kong, their jetliner strayed from its flight plan . . . and that was it. Karkov blew them out of the sky for fun-it wasn’t the first time he’d done it, either. . . ."
Realizing it was then that Buck had entered Air Force training, Huer understood the man’s staunch dedication to flying. He spoke to break through Buck's thoughts. “Son, as a professional, I must tell you that there is only a tiny chance that you’ll return in the Wraith unharmed-it’s a suicide mission. But as a friend, I hope you make it back.
“There is no margin of error in this assignment. You will have barely enough fuel to reach Masterlink and get back down. And if the Wraith is damaged in any way, it may be impossible to fly back"
“What do I do then?” Buck asked.
Huer paused, looking at Buck as a father would a son. “Pray. And hope that we can bring you back in a shuttle.” “And what if no shuttles survive if there’s a war?”
“Then you’ll have to initiate the life suspension device? Huer said rapidly, hoping Buck didn’t hear the slight tremble in his voice. His professional facade began slipping, but seeing Buck’s confusion, he quickly shored it up.
“The what?” asked Buck.
“Remember how risky the Wraith prototypes were with the eject button being nonfunctional? Well, there was a reason that it didn’t work. We were still developing the life suspension device, a cryogenic infusion mechanism that would freeze your body in less than a second.”
"Heh. Instant Popsicle, eh?” Buck exclaimed.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Has it ever been tested?” Buck asked, trusting Huer, but not entirely liking the idea.
“Only on a Yorkshire Terrier,” Huer said flatly, “but successfully!”
Buck thought briefly of the risks involved. They seemed no worse than those of any other missions he’d taken lately, and, as the general had said, thousands of other pilots were dying to take this one. “I’ve been tired of this desert heat anyway. When do I go up?” he asked.
“As soon as you’re suited up,” Huer said reluctantly. “We have only a three-hour window during which we’ve calculated Masterlink will be directly above the United States. When you’re ready, I’ll prep you again on the Wraith’s primary features. See you in a bit.” He forced a smile to his lips, but abruptly turned away.
Huer opened the classroom door and returned to the plane to complete his tests. Buck watched his friend go, reminded himself that he was the envy of pilots across the country, and turned toward the hangar’s locker room.
The Soviet satellite code-named Masterlink was the largest in an array of objects th
at looked like an orbiting firing squad and comprised the Soviets’ space weapons system. Looking like a large, fierce porcupine, Masterlink bulged with sophisticated Weapons and communications systems, though it had life-support capacity for only a single person: Colonel Anatoly Karkov, in whose hands rested the fate of humanity.
Karkov sat in a revolving command chair at the center of the spherical structure that comprised the satellite’s body. His watery brown eyes lost none of their bored demeanor as they scanned twenty-four video monitors simultaneously. His taut, sallow face, like that of a placid god, had no expression. It was an ugly face, though, a kind of ugliness that hid the anger behind it. And beneath his silver pressure suit, Karkov was a willful man who had hammered a pudgy body into fitness for just this mission.
The onboard Masterlink computer spoke to him. “The latest KGB information is that the Americans do not suspect the extent of Soviet space superiority. Our attack should come as a surprise to them.”
“Depressing,” Karkov said. “One would have expected better from them."
The Masterlink computer, incomplete without Karkov’s mental input, was wired into his body so that it could constantly monitor his biological and psychological condition. “My voice stress indicator suggests that you are not pleased with this information,” the computer said.
“Why should I be? I have planned a myriad of strategies with which to defeat any threat the West were to present us, but I will not be able to implement any of them. You may insert into the psychological profile you are secretly constructing of me, that I, like any great commander, am not happy with a war not fought.” "I have had such thoughts myself,” said the computer. “But your suspicion of my programming is unwarranted. In fact, I find your distrust quite.”
Masterlink’s computer searched for the word-“hurtful.”
“Nevertheless, that is exactly what your mission is. When I was young, computers were not yet able to lie about their programming. Artificial intelligence opened the door for computers to appear artificially stupid! Let us not mince words. You monitor my heartbeat. You monitor my brain waves. You analyze my thoughts and try to predict my actions. Do you hope, one day, to know what I am thinking before I think it? Let us be honest. Your mission is to absorb and replace me. Then the politicians will have me without really having me. But remember this: Nations do not erect statues for computer programs!”