“Cannot fail, eh?” Draco rubbed his greasy chin. “Those famous last words have preceded many a disaster, Kane. For instance, I notice that you have our attack fleet approaching the Inner City en masse, then blasting their Starfighters out of the sky by virtue of superior numbers. But what if we have to thread a narrow attack corridor? We would then be prey to their anti-warship batteries.”
“Believe me, your majesty, that has all been accounted for. I have followed the standard Draconian tactic of boring from within until the enemy’s defensive strength is completely neutralized. Earth will hardly need to be conquered—it will fall into our hands like a rotten apple falling from its limb!” He matched his words with a two-handed gesture, holding his fleshy palms upward as if to catch a tumbling piece of fruit.
“For the sake of the realm, Kane, let us hope that you are right,” Draco responded. “And also, I might add, for your own sake. If you have misled me as to the effectiveness of your plan, you’ll yearn for the ease and comfort of the stoker gang long before I grant you the boon of final oblivion.”
“Our plan will not fail, my Emperor.”
“We shall see.” Draco shifted back on his throne, placing his luxuriously shod feet on a footstool invisible to the occupants of the Draconia. “We shall see,” Draco repeated. “In the meanwhile, please extend my congratulations to the Princess Ardala as soon as she arises. I wouldn’t want her to miss the show this morning. My pretty little pigeon-princess. Oh, ho ho ho ho ho!!!”
“I will deliver the imperial message,” Kane bowed low.
With a sudden heave of his bulk, Draco rose to his feet, lifting his massive body from the throne where he had sat. For the moment his gross form and disgusting, self-indulgent mannerisms were gone. This man had not reached the absolute rule of the greatest empire the galaxy had ever known by being a fat and luxury-loving sybarite. That represented one side of his nature, true enough.
But within that flabby body there dwelled also a man of boundless energy, brilliant cunning, and unbendable will.
Suddenly that man stood before his throne, his PersonImage projected with holographic perfection to the control bridge of the Draconia. Suddenly that dominating, imperious figure raised one hand in the ancient symbol of conquest, the upright clenched fist.
Kane fell away from the PersonImage almost as if he had been struck a physical blow. The others scattered around the bridge gasped in surprise and awe.
“Valanzia!” the image of Draco roared, naming one of Draconia’s great military triumphs.
“Valanzia!” the occupants of the bridge repeated, their voices rising in a crashing chorus that echoed off the sleek steel bulkheads of the flagship.
“Mortibundo!” the magnificent Emperor Draco roared.
“Mortibundo!” the crewmen and guardsmen repeated.
“And—Earth!” Draco shouted.
“Earth!” the others echoed. “Earth! Earth! Earth!”
As the word echoed and reechoed through the steel-walled control bridge of the Draconia the PersonImage of the emperor slowly faded into invisibility.
As soon as the emperor’s form was fully gone, Kane pranced triumphantly back to the control chair whose image had been transformed into the imperial throne by Draco’s holographic projection. The oily courtier threw himself into the chair, a triumphant grin spreading across his face.
“That, my fellow Draconians,” he chortled, “is but a small indication of the favor which I hold with the Emperor Draco. And but a small sign of the authority I command in executing the invasion of Earth! Tomorrow at dawn I shall lead you to the beginnings of the greatest rise in the history of the empire. And you will all be with me!”
Like a mirror image of the absent Draco, Kane stood before the control chair, his clenched fist raised in the air. Like an echo of the emperor’s words, he shouted “Valanzia! Mortibundo! Earth!”
The others echoed Kane.
“Dispatch the armament crews,” he commanded. “Alert all warships for the attack! On my personal command—three—two—one—execute!”
With a final, ringing cheer, the Draconian warriors sprang to initiate the final and total conquest of unsuspecting Earth!
N I N E
An inconspicuous cargo hatch aboard the Draconia popped open. Two faces peered cautiously out into the corridor where young Draconian technicians, crewmen and troopers were pounding by, intent upon their assigned military tasks.
“This is no good, Twiki,” the owner of one of the faces complained to the other. “There are soldiers everywhere. And we don’t even know where to look for Captain Rogers.”
The other of the pair squeaked his reply.
“Of course not, Twiki. I don’t want to get caught either,” Theopolis agreed. “But there’s something terribly wrong here, I’m afraid. Those men are wearing battle gear. Helmets and armor. And carrying weapons. I thought the Draconia was an unarmed ship of commerce. We’ve got to find out what’s going on. Come on, now, Twiki, come on.”
In the royal stateroom of the Princess Ardala, Buck Rogers had crept from the barbarically furnished bed and stood silently looking down at its remaining occupant. The Princess Ardala slept soundly, her negligee still clinging to her in disarray. She was almost bathed in luxurious, exotic furs that she used for bed furnishings. A smile of blissful satisfaction was on her heavily sensual lips as she slept the sleep of one drugged by doctored Vinol.
Buck reached out with one hand and caressed her long, gleaming tresses. He breathed a sigh of fatalistic yearning, then drew back his hand and moved away from the bed, crossing the room to the door and stealthily drawing it open by the merest crack.
Outside the stateroom Buck saw Ardala’s Tigerman bodyguard. The giant mutated creature stood faithfully on guard, his back to the door, his arms folded impassively. From his great throat there emerged a low rumbling sound that might have been composed half of a subliminal growl, half of a pleased, abstracted purr. Buck would never have wanted to face that guardian when Tigerman was alert for his attack. But Tigerman was guarding the stateroom now against intruders from outside—not protecting himself from attack within the stateroom!
Buck reached forward, cautiously lifted Tigerman’s laser gun from its holster. Tigerman remained blissfully unaware of Buck’s presence. The earthman examined the laser, set its dial for stun, raised it again and carefully squeezed the trigger. The giant bodyguard stiffened in his tracks, then toppled massively backward into Buck’s waiting arms. Buck dragged the huge, still form into the darkened stateroom and tiptoed back into the corridor, drawing the stateroom door silently shut behind him.
Buck moved stealthily along the corridor, opened a well-marked hatch and descended a circular ramp. As he passed the levels of the Draconia he carefully observed the level designations marked on successive bulkheads in brilliant incandescent orange and black symbols. Beside each Draconian symbol was lettered the official designation of the flagship section located on that particular level of the ship.
With a jolt Buck halted before the designation he had been seeking. The symbol was a sinister one; the lettering said Fightercraft Launch Deck, Magazine Section Red (1). Buck carefully slipped through the open hatchway onto the fighter launch deck, concealing himself in the shadows behind a pile of equipment crates. He peered out at the activity taking place on the deck.
The deck itself was chiefly in darkness, but a large number of overhead-mounted spotlights picked out a veritable beehive of busy activity. Crewmen in varicolored jumpsuits, each suit keyed to its wearer’s assigned duty, swarmed over a full squadron of fighters, preparing them for combat launch.
Carrier-carts loaded with laser weapons and explosive missiles trundled by Buck’s hiding-place; the earthman was able to see every feature of the cart-driver’s intent face. The driver might have seen Buck lurking in the shadows had he turned at the right moment, but he rolled intently by, thereby saving himself from the quick stun-blast that Buck was prepared to deliver to prevent premature discovery.
The ships themselves were arrayed in mathematically precise echelon-rows. The crewmen who swarmed around them wore Draconian gear, Draconian uniforms marked with Draconian insignia. Each battle-jacket bore a large reproduction of the familiar Draconian coat-of-arms stitched colorfully upon its back.
But the ships themselves were not Draconian!
With a gasp, Buck recognized the fightercraft being prepared in the Draconian flagship for combat duty. They were pirate marauder ships! The ancient emblem of piracy, a grinning white death’s-head, was blazoned large on the snout of each of the pirate ships.
And the livid red and black stripes in which the fuselages were decked, gave the strange impression, here in the shadowy light of the launching deck, of an ancient symbol of death and destruction and sheer, malevolent evil, that Buck remembered learning about in his history classes back in the early 1980s.
They were formed like the evil, broken-limbed cross, the ancient swastika!
Suddenly Buck’s attention was drawn away from the fighter craft by the approach of footsteps and the sound of voices engaged in low conversation broken by the nervous laughter of fighting men preparing to go into combat. Two helmeted Draconian troopers appeared near Buck. They were unaware of him, merely passing by the equipment crates behind which he was concealed. They stopped almost within arm’s reach of Buck, exchanged a final few words, then separated.
One returned across the launch deck.
The other looked toward the hatchway, moved in that direction as if to mount the spiral staircase to another deck—but that was a mistake for him! Soundlessly, Buck leaped from his shadowy station, threw an arm around the throat of the trooper and dragged him in an instant back into the shadows . . .
Things were moving quickly, now, toward a climax.
In another part of the Draconia, Kane, a grimly determined expression on his face, moved silently along one of the ship’s main corridors. Crewmen whom he passed recoiled in fear. They knew Kane, and they knew that he was in no mood to be crossed.
And in still another area of the flagship a stranger pair of beings scuttered briskly along, one of them on his short, mechanical legs; the other, hanging from the neck of the first. The two of them reached a key intersection of corridors just as the impressive form of Kane, his face showing his deep concentration on his own thoughts, entered the intersection from the other corridor.
Twiki and Theopolis ducked back into an access way, barely in time to avoid a collision with one of Kane’s heavily booted feet. “Look at that!” Theopolis exclaimed in a low voice. “Kane himself! Brrr!” His lights flashed faster than usual. “You mark my words, Twiki,” the computer-brain went on, “if anything improper is going on aboard this ship, that traitor to everything decent is at the bottom of it. I don’t like that Kane! I think we’d better follow him.”
Twiki squealed.
“Of course you’re frightened,” Theopolis replied. “Who wouldn’t be? But—we must follow Kane. It’s our duty!”
Twiki revolved one hundred eighty degrees and scuttled off as fast as he could go, completely in the opposite direction Kane had taken.
“Twiki,” Theopolis murmured furiously, “if the Draconians don’t get us, and we make it back to Earth, I’m going to report you as an even bigger traitor than Kane. Do you know what they do to drones who betray the Earth?”
Twiki stopped in his tracks, cocked his head to one side as if deep in thought. After several seconds of utter silence he squeaked loudly, whirled around one hundred eighty degrees and scuttled off after Kane.
“I knew it,” Theopolis said smugly. “I knew that once you’d given due consideration to duty and morality, Twiki, that your innate sense of patriotic obligation would prevail.”
Behind the equipment crate where he had dragged the unconscious body of the Draconian trooper, Buck stripped his clothing off and donned that of the helpless man. He adjusted the trooper’s helmet, fitting it carefully over his own head, then drew its curved polarizing filter-shield down over his face. Indistinguishable now from any of the Draconian troops moving among the deck crew of the flagship, Buck stepped out briskly onto the flight deck with its frantic but purposeful activity still in progress.
On the spiral ramp from which Buck had emerged onto the deck, the diminutive metal form of Twiki clattered downward, Theopolis attached to his neck. The drone halted in the shadowy portal and watched the activity on the deck. The two mechanical beings had arrived just in time to see Buck pulling his Draconian helmet on and adjusting its facemask. He was thus unknown to any of the personnel on the Draconia’s launching deck—but he had been recognized by Theopolis and Twiki.
The drone squeaked in distress.
“I know,” Theopolis answered in a low tone. “I know, Twiki, and I can hardly believe it myself.” The computer-brain gave a despondent low groan. “I wish I could deny it but I can’t, it was definitely Buck and he’s wearing the uniform of our enemy.”
Twiki squeaked.
“I don’t care how valuable our people think the treaty between Earth and Draconia is, Twiki. Those are warcraft out there on that deck That means that the treaty is a cruel hoax.”
Twiki squeaked.
“Yes, I’m afraid we’re finished, Twiki. I don’t see how we can do our duty and still get out of here alive. But we can still perform one last service for our country, Twiki, for the people who created us.” The flashing lights that made Theopolis’ computer-face blazed into an expression of anger and determination. “We can still deal with Captain Rogers!”
Only a few dozen yards from Theopolis and Twiki, a crew of armaments technicians were busily withdrawing heavy laser torpedoes from ordnance lockers and placing them on dollies to be transported to waiting pirate marauder craft. Each dolly had the following information stencilled on it in glowing, incandescent words. Warning, Live Ammo.
Disguised in his Draconian trooper’s uniform and helmet, Buck Rogers strode up to the crew and joined in their efforts. They had brought an ammunition cart up to the front of one of the swastika-shaped fighter craft and were loading laser torpedoes into the forward firing tubes of the fighter. While the crewmen loaded torpedoes, Buck unobtrusively made his way to the rear of the fighter they were working on.
He hefted one of the heavy torpedoes overhead and muscled it into position in the focus-spot of the afterburner, secured it In place with a molybdenum bracket-winch and tested it with the weight of his body. No question remained—the ravening force of the torpedo was pent up, ready to be released at the crucial moment—but not at all in the way that the treacherous Draconian war-plan foresaw!
His face hidden behind its tinted plexiglass helmet-shield, Buck quick-marched from the tail of the marauder to the ammo cart and lifted another torpedo from it. On his way to the tail area of the next marauder fighter, he passed a Draconian guard corporal. The corporal, standing stiffly at parade rest, nodded to Buck as Buck passed him. The earthman returned the nod and continued his work.
Twiki and Theopolis, in the meanwhile, were working their way carefully along the wall of the launching deck, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, avoiding the scrutiny of the Draconian guard-troops as well as ship’s personnel and fighter crews. Theopolis was speaking to Twiki.
“It’s even worse than we thought it was,” the computer-brain mourned, “those are warships of some peculiar sort. I don’t know exactly what their markings mean, but they’re obviously up to no good purpose. And now they’re loading weapons and ammunition onto them! They’re going to bomb the Inner City, Twiki, that’s what they’re going to do!”
The drone squealed shrilly.
“No,” Dr. Theopolis said, more mournfully than ever. “Buck is on the Draconians’ side. I don’t know whether he was loyal to Earth before, and has gone over to the other side for some reason—or whether he was a Draconian agent from the start, Twiki, and had us all fooled until now. Oh, and I don’t know which solution is the more distressing. Not that it all really matters v
ery much anyway.
“But that doesn’t make any difference now, Twiki. Listen carefully.” Dr. Theopolis dropped his voice until he was almost whispering to the drone. “I’m going to ask you to do the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done, Twiki. Now stop it and hold still and listen to me, you can’t run away from this! This is for our country and our planet, Twiki. There, now that’s better . . .”
Kane, meanwhile, had been the object of Twiki’s and Dr. Theopolis’ surveillance, but the wily Kane, without even realizing he was being followed, pursued his habitual devious pattern of conduct and accidentally rid himself of his two unwanted followers.
He moved, now, through the corridor that brought him to the royal stateroom of the Princess Ardala. Outside the princess’ door he found a Draconian guard-trooper standing at rigid and attentive attention.
“Guard,” Kane snarled, “where is the princess’ bodyguard, Tigerman?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the guard-trooper replied.
“How long have you been at this post?” demanded Kane.
“Only a few minutes, sir. I was out in the enlisted men’s lounge, sir, off duty. Then I was told to report here for a temporary special assignment. Only the princess herself has the authority to relieve me from my post. And it is most important, sir. As you know, the princess is the only person aboard ship with the full authority to order the final assault on Earth.”
“And you have not seen Tigerman?”
“Not all day, sir.”
“That’s very odd, soldier,” Kane said accusingly. “You know the princess relies on Tigerman to protect her very life. She told you to guard her door?”
“No, sir. I haven’t seen the princess either. A guardsman corporal brought me the message in the E.M.’s lounge. I didn’t feel that it was my place to disturb the princess’ privacy, sir.”
“No,” Kane agreed for once, “it wasn’t your place. It’s mine! Something very queer is going on aboard the Draconia. Soldier, if you want to stay out of the stoker gang, you remain here on duty come hell or high water! Let no one enter this room—or leave it! Not even Princess Ardala herself! You’re under my personal command, and I’ll personally see to your reward if you do a good job—or I’ll nail your hide to the bulkhead and feed your insides to a nest of Algolian bookreviewer worms if you don’t!”
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