The Lost Planet (Lost Starship Series Book 6)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “You do realize that I am easily angered, don’t you?” Strand asked, mimicking the other’s way of speaking.

  “I have heard reports, but few of us believe that.”

  “Why would you doubt it?”

  “You are a Methuselah Man,” Rose said. “That implies a measure of restraint and an understanding that survival demands an acceptance of harsh truths.”

  Strand did not care for the android’s mockery. The construct seemed altogether too easy in her demeanor. Strand had stayed away from androids as much as possible. Thus, he was unused to dealing with them and wasn’t sure what tack to take here.

  “Did you seek out Commander Lark?”

  “Of course,” Rose said. She grasped the edge of her cape and swirled it. As she did, her features seemed to come alive, as if the human protocols were finally online. That brought animation to her face, and it made her seem truly alive and more beautiful.

  “Sir,” Rose said, with lift and lilt to her voice. “I believe I should get to the point. I joined the commander because of his route. I believed you would intercept his craft because Lark was going through this star system. I wanted to be here so that I could talk to you.”

  Strand could feel his skin stretching across his facial bones. This was preposterous on so many levels. The implications—

  “You expect me to believe that?” Strand asked.

  “My dear Methuselah Man, you work under serious misconceptions. The most egregious is that you think your intellect is the highest in this region of space. While you have many gifts, mine dwarf yours. Frankly, there are several other androids with astonishing capabilities, much greater than those you possess. I hasten to add that you know nothing about them, or about me, for that matter. I realize this is a shock to your pride, but there it is.”

  Strand blinked several times, feeling as if there was grit beneath his eyelids. He found this beautiful, cape-wearing android irritating in the extreme.

  “You are my prisoner,” Strand said, “I am not yours. Or do you deny that?”

  “That is obvious. Why then would I want to make a false statement concerning it?”

  “I don’t understand how you can claim superiority to me,” Strand said. “I can snuff you out like that if I so desire.”

  “You’re implying that I think I can win a direct contest of might between us at the present time. Clearly, I cannot stop your human robots—correction, your ultra-men robots—from destroying me if you desire.”

  “Can you stop me from destroying you in any other manner?” Strand asked.

  “I believe so,” Rose said. “Otherwise, I would not have placed myself in your custody.”

  “How can you achieve this miracle?” Strand asked hoarsely.

  Rose smiled. “Do you care to join me in my cell so I can tell you?”

  “Certainly not,” Strand said. “I will remain in my citadel of strength.”

  “Then, your guards will hear this truth as I utter it.”

  Strand glanced at his golden-skinned guards. They seemed attentive in one way only: they watched the prisoner. Did Rose possess some hypnotic power, perhaps? Is that why the android wanted him to send the guards away?

  Strand squirmed in his chair. He hated this. The android was much too calm even for a Builder-made construct.

  Strand smiled slyly. He believed he understood the psychological ploy at play. Rose must have a long file on him. Somehow, Rose understood that such confidence as she displayed would upset the Methuselah Man’s equilibrium. Through an act of will, Strand would prove Rose wrong.

  “If you have something to tell me,” Strand said. “This is the moment. Otherwise, I will destroy you, as you strike me as a needless risk.”

  “I believe you,” Rose said.

  The android swirled her cloak a second time, and then cleared her throat. She stood as if she were a herald delivering a message.

  “I have come to inform you that your brother in training and mental processes has begun a journey into the Beyond. He hopes to reach a derelict planet containing powerful Builder artifacts. Your long-range communicator is representative of such devices. Professor Ludendorff desires a long-ranged scanner, able to survey a cubic hundred light-years at any one time.”

  Strand’s eyes glowed with anger. “You seriously expect me to believe such foolishness?”

  “Not without evidence,” Rose said.

  “You possess such evidence?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Produce it at once, and don’t tell me I have to be in the same room with you.”

  “You do not,” Rose said. “If you will give me a moment…I will show you.”

  Rose reached under her gaudy tunic and made several manipulations. Soon, a tiny holographic projector sprouted from her left palm. She began to play a holo-recording of the meeting between Captain Maddox, Brigadier O’Hara and the Lord High Admiral.

  Strand watched the holo-vid with absorption. When it ended, the Methuselah Man sat back, wondering about the validity of the recording.

  “I will need time to think about this,” Strand said.

  “I can appreciate that. However, you should know that it took me longer to convince Commander Lark to take this route than I had expected. It is important to remember that Starship Victory is possibly the fastest vessel in Human Space.”

  “I can travel just as fast.”

  “Then, you will have to hurry indeed,” Rose said, “as they have a head start.”

  “I’m already in the Beyond.”

  “True. But you’re on the wrong side of the Beyond. You will have to travel far and fast indeed if you hope to get to the Junkyard Planet while Maddox and Ludendorff are still there.”

  Strand studied the android. “What do you gain by convincing me to go?”

  “That should be obvious,” Rose said. “I want to go there with you.”

  Strand laughed dryly, shaking his head.

  “I have much to offer you,” Rose said. “I have considerable knowledge of the planet. Believe me when I say that I can help you.”

  “Perhaps that’s true, perhaps it isn’t. What do you get out of this?”

  Rose smiled. “That is the crux, isn’t it? Frankly, I need some help myself. There is a device I desire, and it is deep within the planet, hidden behind several troubling guardians.”

  “No. I’m not buying that. If you wanted this device so badly, why haven’t you gone yourself in all this time?”

  “Traveling independently through space has not been our way for hundreds of years.”

  Strand scratched his chin. “Tell me more.”

  Rose looked away as if she seemed to consider what she should say. Finally, regarding Strand once more, she said, “There is a hole in my…thinking, my logic processors, if you prefer. I do not understand the protocol that has kept me from repairing the damage. The answer to that lies on the Builder planet. I am unable to travel there on my own, as I’ve stated, but it appears that I can go with another.”

  “In that case, why didn’t you join Victory?”

  Rose shook her head. “There is a secondary reason for my warning to you. We androids do not want the humans to gain the scanner. It will make them too powerful, but more to the point, they might discover our comings and goings then.”

  Strand had already reasoned out why Star Watch wanted the scanner. Why was that bad for the androids? Wouldn’t they fall in with humanity?

  “What if a Swarm fleet shows up in Human Space?” Strand asked. “What if the scanner could help Star Watch defeat the Swarm?”

  “I understand the thrust of your question. If the humans lose, we androids shall simply go elsewhere.”

  “Using spaceships that you claim you cannot use,” Strand said.

  “A Swarm victory in Human Space would change our protocols.”

  “If the New Men gained the scanner, they would win a renewed contest against Star Watch.”

  “That is not our projection,” Rose said.

&nb
sp; “Who is this ‘we’ you keep referring to?”

  “The android collective, obviously,” Rose said.

  Strand stood. His brain hurt with all these seemingly conflicting revelations. He did not like Rose, although she was easy on the eyes.

  “You can stew in your cell for a while,” he said. “I must think, truly think.”

  “Time is critical,” Rose said. “I haven’t told you, but maybe you’ve already guessed. Admiral Fletcher is closing in on the Throne World. Given the admiral’s present search patterns, he will find the Throne World in the next several months at the longest.”

  Strand gave the android a wintry smile. That was one way to pressure a man. Tell him he had to decide now.

  “Remember this, Rose. You need me. I do not need you. You risked your person in appealing to me. I may go to this planet, but perhaps I will dissect you first. What do you say to that?”

  “I have given you my case,” she said. “I now await your will, Methuselah Man. Know, though, that this united effort will benefit us both. Logically, I would not have come to you otherwise.”

  “Perhaps,” Strand said. He clicked his device. The screen went blank. Absently, he wandered to the hatch with his head already bent in thought.

  -8-

  Strand was hunched over his computer screen, tapping furiously and sipping strong coffee. He had saved thirty-eight different paradigms. Each had something in its favor. Each had something against it.

  Deciding was the issue. Which way should he go? The problem was that he had no one to ask, no one to bounce his ideas off.

  His course of action had been clear a day ago. He would capture a star cruiser, show its commander the outpost, the disruptor cannons and send the New Man on his way. That commander would scurry to the Emperor. He would inform the Emperor of everything he’d seen.

  Strand scowled as he read the thirty-ninth paradigm. This one did not have anything good to offer.

  The situation was thus. Admiral Fletcher led Star Watch’s Grand Fleet. The fleet had many Conqueror-class battleships. Those battleships possessed long-ranged disrupter cannons, which were better than the New Men’s fusion beams. If that wasn’t enough, according to Strand’s specs, the battleships had better shields than the star cruisers possessed. The only negative to Fletcher’s Conqueror-class battleships were their numbers. He only had eighteen of the superlative warships.

  Star Watch’s Grand Fleet had other potent vessels, though. There were carriers with the latest jumpfighters, older battleships, slow but heavy monitors, missile ships that launched antimatter missiles and the rugged, hard-hitting hammerships from the Windsor League. It was a bigger, tougher and more self-sustaining force than had pushed the original New Men’s invasion armada out of “C” Quadrant.

  The truth was that Fletcher could do horrible damage to the Throne World with that fleet. Could he destroy the Throne World itself?

  Strand doubted it. The Throne World possessed nasty surprises. But it would be a bloody mess. He didn’t understand why Star Watch allowed Fletcher this madness with the looming possibility of Swarm attacks. But that wasn’t his problem. It was the Emperor’s problem. And that gave Strand his opening.

  Thanks to Lore Fallows, Strand now possessed a small number of working disruptor cannons. Even more important, he could show the Emperor’s technicians how to mass-produce more disruptor cannons. If the star cruisers had disruptors instead of fusion beams…that would shift the balance of power back toward New Men superiority.

  The old-style humans—the sub-men—would likely have greater numbers for quite some time. The New Men therefore needed technological superiority as well as superior strategy and tactics.

  Strand stood, moving to a station with a tri-dimensional holomap. With a pointer, he moved different symbols from one location to another within the holomap.

  For quite some time now, Strand had wondered how he could lure the Emperor from the Throne World. His master equation had finally given him the answer. The possibility of gaining disruptor cannons had a fifty-nine percent probability of bringing the Emperor himself to inspect the possibility, especially with Star Watch’s Grand Fleet in the vicinity.

  Strand dropped the pointer and massaged his forehead. He did not want any distractions. Still, was Ludendorff really traveling to this amazing derelict planet?

  The professor had made several bold threats to him not so long ago. If Strand could capture or kill the professor on the Junkyard Planet, Strand would no longer have to worry about his old adversary.

  He rubbed his forehead. Was Rose as smart as she claimed? Could the android have predicted his actions with near certainty?

  If that was true, he needed to figure out how the androids had done that. They were not smarter than he was in pure intellect. They must have superior equipment or some hidden Builder technique.

  “What should I do?” Strand whispered to himself.

  In the old days, he could have talked to Ludendorff about this. They would have mulled it over for days, weeks or maybe even months. They had done so much together, lifted humanity out of its backyard place in stellar civilization.

  It was too bad that they had parted ways so many years ago. Ludendorff had become too cautious, too hidebound by old philosophies. The professor had suggested they not play God. “Men are not meant to wield absolute power,” Ludendorff had said.

  What a load of crap. He was Strand. There was no one he trusted more with power than himself. The power had not changed him. He had become wiser, more—

  “What’s the point in boasting?” Strand said softly. “I must think, really, really think.”

  He turned away from the holomap. He put the computer to sleep so he wouldn’t see the equation waiting for him. He went to his cot, pulled off his shoes and lay down. He put his left arm over his eyes and began to work through one piece of datum after another.

  He lay there for seven and a half hours, hardly moving. He weighed this with that. He tried to imagine the outcomes of one method versus another.

  Commander Lars Lark waited for him. Should he release the commander or take him into the operating chamber? Should he try to tear apart Rose or attempt to trick her? Would it be wise to contact Admiral Fletcher, or should he lead the dangerous old fool on a wild goose chase?

  There were so many decisions, so many ways he could do this.

  Would the Swarm really bother coming into this part of the galaxy? The idea seemed wrong to Strand. The bugs had better things to do than worry about humans. And yet…

  At the end of the eighth hour, Strand removed his arm. He sat up, padded to a pitcher of purified water and poured himself a glass. He drank deeply. He turned the glass in his hand.

  With a thump, he set it on the table.

  “Yes,” Strand said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  He felt tired, and his mind hurt. He would like to sleep for an age, but he had a lot of work to do before he implemented the next part of his long-term strategy…

  -9-

  Hundreds of light-years away from Strand, Captain Maddox stalked through Victory’s corridors like a tiger on the prowl.

  The starship had almost reached the limit of the Commonwealth and was coming upon the Beyond. Human Space or Known Space contained the Commonwealth of Planets, the Windsor League, the former Wahhabi Caliphate and the majority of the independent worlds. It also held some of the border regions. Throughout the years, people had coined the term “Beyond” for what lay beyond known space.

  The New Men lived in the Beyond, hidden from the rest of humanity.

  Captain Maddox wasn’t unduly worried about entering the Beyond. He had done it many times before. As a Patrol officer, one of his chief duties lay in mapping the Beyond. In fact, Maddox had gone farther into the Beyond than any human, including Strand and Ludendorff, who had both gone to the Builder Dyson sphere for internal modifications a long time ago.

  Maddox prowled the corridors—on the hunt—because so far, the security
teams hadn’t found any stowaways, spies or androids slipped-in among the crew.

  That was highly unusual given the experiences of their last several voyages. Due to the secrecy and the importance of this voyage, Maddox felt in his bones that someone had stowed away on the ship. The fact that he hadn’t found the stowaways only increased his certainty of their presence.

  “There you are.”

  Maddox spun around, his hand dropping onto his holstered weapon.

  Meta jogged toward him. She wore a tightfitting Patrol uniform, her jiggling breasts quite noticeable as she ran. Meta had a shapely figure, long blonde hair spilling out from under her cap and a face that could have launched flotillas of starships. She was a beauty. She was also one of the strongest persons aboard Victory. That came from her lab-altered genetic makeup, and that she had grown up on a 2-G planet. Meta had been many things throughout her life, including an inductee on a prison planet and an assassin. She was deadly, and she was the captain’s girlfriend.

  Maddox appreciated Meta for a number of reasons. She was different enough that he felt more comfortable around her than he did around others. He liked her toughness of character, and that it came in such a delightfully feminine package.

  Meta ran up to him, twining both of her arms around one of his. She began to walk with him, squeezing his captive arm.

  Maddox knew she wanted something, but he waited for her to ask.

  “When was the last time you lay down?” she asked without looking up.

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t give me that,” she said. “I know you know.”

  “It could be thirty-seven hours,” he admitted.

  “And you’re as alert now as you were then?” she asked.

  “Maybe I’m more alert now.”

  “Maddox,” she chided. “You have to rest.”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “I’ve never known you to have a case of nerves before.”

  “It’s not nerves,” he said.

  “What else could it be?” Meta asked.

  He glanced down at her. “Let’s switch arms,” he suggested.