“At once,” she pressed him.
“Yes, very well. At once.”
“A good decision, Kane.” She rose to her imposing height, the exposure of her body as ignored as if she were clad in full military array instead of a filmy wisp of negligee. “Now, get out of here and go issue your commands. I wish to be alone while I dress.”
T E N
The communications bridge of the Draconia was bathed at all times in an overwhelming, gloomy murk. The darkness was no accident of poor star-ship design or construction. It was a deliberate and planned aspect of the starship’s architecture, for in this room the dim red lights of dials and the green and yellow tracers of ’scope surfaces were monitored constantly by some of the most highly trained communications engineers and technicians of the Draconian realm.
They needed the darkness to give maximum visibility to their screens and dials and dimly flashing lights, and their skill was so highly prized by the Draconian officer corps that they were required to undergo a special hour-long period of accustomization to the darkness before the beginning of each of their shifts, and a similar period of reacclimatization to normal lighting at the end.
The room beeped and hummed and chattered to itself as messages came from every part of the giant ship and from every remote spacecraft and planet with which it was in contact, to be read out, translated, processed, stored, manipulated, retrieved, recoded, and retransmitted to its assigned destination.
Communications shifts were long, and in exchange for their sacrifices, commo crews were pampered by the ship’s quartermaster. No other duty station received catered meals while at their assignments! The chief communications console operator sat with his eyes glued to a red tracer screen, muffled earphones clapped to the sides of his head. An empty food tray stood forgotten on top of his console, nearly full containers of condiments and spices resting among the emptied dishes of roast Betelgeusan swamp hen and iced Plorusian slug-jell.
The console operator’s seat was located on one side of the big, desklike contrivance. The other side of the console was an area of simple darkness and no particular purpose except to provide access to service panels for maintenance work on the console when it was taken off-line.
From this darkness a small, metallic hand rose, felt silently and unnoticed among the condiments and spices on the meal-service tray, finally found the shaker of ground black pepper. A small, rounded, metallic head rose over the edge of the console. A pair of artificial optical sensing devices focussed on the console operator.
The hand swivelled on an electronically powered and computer-circuit-guided arc, lifted the pepper shaker and sent a small cloud of pepper-grounds, invisible in the murkily lit communications room, floating toward the operator. The metallic hand silently placed the pepper shaker back on the meal-service tray. The head and the hand both disappeared back into the shadows on the service-area side of the communications console.
The operator’s concentration on his screens and the hums and carrier tones in his earphones was interrupted. He found his eyes beginning to itch, then to burn and water. The images of the screens and tracer beams before him swam and wobbled through the tears. His nose began to itch, too, and a terrific sneeze drowned out the signals in his earphones. He sneezed again, then again.
He pulled off his headset, rubbed his burning eyes with smooth knuckles uncalloused by other than mental labor over the years. He scribbled a note on his log, jotting down the chronometer reading of the moment, as best he could make it out through his running tears, wrote next to it, in a disorganized scrawl, Temporary relief, personal needs, and his initials.
He headed for the nearest lavatory to get some running water and rinse the mysterious irritant from his eyes and nose.
As soon as the technician was out of range, Twiki scuttled around the end of the console and hopped up onto the operator’s stool. At his height of three feet, the quad was as tall as the operator was when seated on the stool.
“Quick now, as we planned,” the rich voice of Dr. Theopolis sounded. But it sounded in a tone little above a whisper so it was inaudible to the other technicians in the room over the hum and clicks and chatter of the scientific instruments, and just as Twiki and Theopolis, protected by the murk and gloom of the commo bridge, would be virtually invisible except to someone approaching close to the temporarily vacated console.
Twiki, using his astonishing deft and fast-moving mechanical hands, began setting switches and adjusting tuner-knobs on the console. Theopolis said again, in his low tone, “Good work, Twiki. Now set me down close to the microphone so I won’t have to talk any louder than this.”
The drone carefully removed Theopolis from around his neck and set the box of flashing lights down on the console’s surface. He reached and adjusted a directional microphone so that it was as close to Theopolis as he could get it, and pointed directly at his voder-circuit.
“Earth Directorate Emergency Channel,” Theopolis said into the microphone. His voice was pitched low but its tone was incredibly urgent. “Earth Directorate Emergency Channel. Top priority, Computer Council, Inner City—Rating A-A-A-Zero-One. Urgent!”
A thousand miles below the flagship Draconia’s synchronous orbit, the Earth Directorate Communications Center—by a cosmic irony, the virtual duplicate of the commo bridge of the Draconia—was also kept in 24-hour operation. Normal commercial and administrative messages could wait for regular business hours, but the emergency channel was kept open at all times, and the technicians monitoring it were on duty in unbroken rotating shifts.
The duty officer at the central communications console picked up the covert transmission from the Draconia and responded to it at once. “Computer Counsellor Theopolis and Quad Twiki, you are cleared for immediate transmission on emergency channel. Please proceed.” Turning aside to a smartly uniformed cadet-orderly, the duty officer snapped, “Get on the low-frequency local console. Shoot off a message to Colonel Deering and make it fast!” The cadet leaped to comply with his instructions.
Even before Theopolis could initiate his message there was a beeping from the low-frequency console and the cadet called to the duty officer, “Colonel Deering on line, sir.”
“Dr. Theopolis, Colonel Deering,” the commo officer said, “I’m patching you both through now so you can exchange information via my console without delays. On line!”
He snapped a red toggle switch and the circuit hummed into life.
“This is Dr. Theopolis, ex-officio representative of the Council of Computers,” the rich voice said softly.
“Yes, doctor,” Wilma replied. “This is Colonel Deering. Where are you? How did you get on the emergency channel?”
“I’m on board the flagship Draconia. I followed Captain Rogers as you ordered, Colonel. Now hear this: the Draconia is not—repeat, not an unarmed vessel! She’s filled with bombers and she’s about to launch a full-scale attack on the Inner City!”
“But how—” Wilma gasped. “Where did they come from? I was there. I personally inspected the landing bay and found it empty!”
“There’s no time to discuss it now, Colonel! You’ve got to scramble the Intercept Squadron—right now, at once!”
“Yes, doctor, of course you’re right. Good luck to you!” Colonel Deering clicked off the patched transmission and punched buttons on her personal communicator control panel. As soon as the new commo linkage was established she spoke breathlessly into her minimike. “Dr. Huer—Permission to scramble fighter craft! I was right about Buck Rogers—that traitor! The Draconians are about to launch an attack!”
She was entirely right, as the scene aboard the Draconia’s command bridge gave testimony. Kane was in full command, military chief of the ship under imperial authority from the Princess Ardala. From his command post he addressed the entire ship via electronic linkage. “Battle stations! Marauders prepare to launch! Stand by at my countdown. Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . attack!”
The tiger-striped marauder craft s
hot forward from the flagship, each menacing shape jolting into the vacuum as its catapult launcher delivered it the initial thrust that would start it into space with the velocity required to start its rocket engines. At one side of the Draconia’s launching deck Buck Rogers, still arrayed in imperial uniform, smiled a grim, expectant smile.
In the Draconia’s commo center Theopolis remained where Twiki had placed him. The console operator’s earphones were now affixed incongruously to the audio pickup circuits of the computer-brain.
His lights flashing with grim urgency and dedication, Dr. Theopolis whispered to his quad associate, relaying messages as they arrived through his earphones. “War is declared, Twiki,” Theopolis said huskily. The drone nodded solemnly, indicating that he understood the gravity of the situation.
In the deeps of space two forces of sleek fighting craft sped on collision course. One was the Intercept Squadron, launched from Earth’s Inner City and rocketing at top speed for the Draconia and its deadly parasites. The other was the lurid red and black striped pirate marauders launched by the Draconia’s catapults.
With imperial discipline the marauder pilots simultaneously clicked on their rocket-fuel feed-lines and tapped their engine-starter controls.
In the command ship of the Intercept Squadron, Colonel Wilma Deering radioed her pilots. “This is Blue Flight Leader. Attack bombers as they launch. Then well go after the mother ship.”
She received a startling reply from her forward observer pilot. “There are no fighters to attack, Leader. Take a look in your distance scope!”
“That doesn’t make sense!” Wilma exclaimed. But she followed her eff-oh’s recommendation and snapped on her distance scope, just in time to see the greatest fireworks display in the history of explosives.
In perfect unison and in perfect formation, the entire fleet of Draconian attack bombers disguised as pirate marauder craft, blossomed into a precision array of orange and black puff-balls, silently filling space with their vaporized metal while shooting off showers of white-hot fragments that were too massive and were blown away from the bombers too rapidly to have time to vaporize.
“They’re dying of their own deceit,” Wilma whispered. “I don’t see how, but somehow their entire force of bombers has blown itself to smithereens! All right!” Suddenly she was no longer the wondering observer but the crisply effective military commander. “All Starfighters regroup,” she spoke over her radio link, “form attack arrays and prepare to finish off the Draconian mother ship!”
The Draconia, gigantic though she was, had endured considerable damage from the force of the exploding marauders and the impact of a sizable number of heavy, high-velocity fragments that acted exactly like shrapnel when they impacted. The launching deck itself was the most heavily effected area. On it the forms of dead, wounded, or simply trapped Draconian personnel lay pinned in the wreckage of the catapults and service cranes.
One of the bodies was not that of a Draconian, although it wore Draconian garb. It was Buck Rogers. Buck moved a little, moaned once, then was still.
In the communications center, the console operator had failed to return to his station, sidetracked by the violence and surprise of the destruction of Draco’s pirate marauder squadron. Instead of the regular operator, Twiki and Theopolis continued to man the console. Theopolis was saying to the drone, “Did you hear Wilma, Twiki? She’ll kill Captain Rogers. We’ve got to stop her! Come in, Colonel Deering, come in!”
He heard the pop of her line opening to receive his call. “You can’t attack, Colonel,” Theopolis pleaded. “You’ll kill Captain Rogers!”
“That would be no great loss, doctor!” Wilma swung her Starfighter into a surging, swooping bank. The remainder of her Intercept Squadron maintaining careful formation, Wilma swept into a devastating laser run against the great, lumbering hulk of the Draconia.
Aboard the giant starship Princess Ardala of the Draconian Realm stood before the portal of her stateroom, gaping in shock at the ravening fury of the explosions outside as her fleet of attack bombers, painted in their pirate ship disguises, were utterly destroyed. The door of the stateroom swung open before the furiously booted kick of Kane.
“This is your doing, Ardala!” Kane snarled angrily. “I ought to leave you on the Draconia to be blown up by those cursed Starfighters, but I’m going to keep you alive and drag you before your father so he’ll know who is responsible for this disaster! I have an emergency escape pod ready to launch. It can carry us far enough for your father’s ships to find us.”
“Never!” the princess gasped, white-faced with shock.
“Oh, no! You’re not going to escape your medicine! For once I’m going to enjoy this,” Kane growled. In long, eager strides he crossed the room and smashed the princess across the face with his fat, open-palmed hand. She staggered beneath the force of the brutal attack. He grabbed her by her long, glossy tresses and dragged her, shrieking in helpless fury, from the room.
Meanwhile the attack on the Draconia was proceeding with all the unleashed deadliness of the Intercept Squadron’s Starfighters. Buck Rogers had recovered consciousness and struggled from beneath the rubble on the launch deck. Realizing that the Draconia was doomed, he began to run, searching frantically for Twiki and Dr. Theopolis.
An ammunition storage bunker on the flight deck exploded into a thunderous cloud of smoke and flame. Buck was knocked flat, again unconscious. Flight deck technicians scattered frantically; a damage control officer clicked into the ship’s loudspeaker system and cried, “Clear flight deck immediately! Burning bunker fire threatens to spread to main ship’s magazine!”
Klaxons blared, sirens screamed, the few surviving Draconians fled frantically up and down the circular ramp, hoping to get away from the main ammo dump before it went up.
Kane entered the main command bridge of the Draconia, still dragging the Princess Ardala, by now limp and almost unconscious, behind him. Kane pulled himself together enough to demand a situation report from the duty officer of the bridge.
“I—I don’t know what’s happening, sir,” the officer stammered. “Our ships—they launched perfectly—everything was going according to plan. Then suddenly—all at once—I don’t know what happened, sir. They all just—exploded. All of them!”
“That’s impossible,” Kane grumbled in the face of the evidence. “All right, we’ll look into that later. Right now, we’ve got to fight with what we have left. Direct all batteries to engage those Starfighters in direct anti-spacecraft fire.” Kane turned and headed for the command seat.
Before he could reach it a form materialized in the seat, the functional shape of the furniture transforming itself into an ornate imperial throne. The figure was that of the Emperor Draco, and he was already in mid-bellow and full, red-faced wrath when he appeared. “What in the name of the realm is going on?” he demanded. He raved and smashed his fists against the arms of the throne. “I’m still five thousand miles away and you’ve initiated the attack! I want to know why!”
Kane stood trembling before the emperor. “I—I—” he stammered. Then, in the midst of his confusion, an inspiration struck that might yet get him off the hook and shift the blame for the day’s debacle onto another. “I was just following orders, your majesty,” he purred in sudden self-composure.
“You were following orders, Kane?” The emperor roared. “You? I thought you were in charge of that ship. Top military administrator. Now, whose orders do you think you were following—the Earth Directorate’s?”
“No, your worship. I was following the orders of the imperial crown representative on this ship, the Princess Ardala.”
“The princess?” Draco bellowed. “And did she order you to have all of my ships disintegrate before they could even get into the battle? Do you know what a marauder costs, Kane?”
“Your Majesty, I—that is, sire—” Kane broke down, unable longer to face the wrath of Draco.
“I’ll tell you something, Kane. Yes, Killer,” Draco hiss
ed, and somehow his hiss was more terrifying than his shout. “Yes, I know they call you Killer. Well, you’re going to get a taste of your own medicine, Kane. If either you or the Princess Ardala survive this debacle, I want you before me, scourged and in chains, within twenty-four hours. Then we’ll find out what fun really is!”
And, roaring with bitter, raging laughter, Draco faded slowly from the bridge of the flagship.
Wilma Deering’s Intercept Squadron had settled by now into a steady pattern, circling the Draconia, blasting at the giant hulk that quivered, now, without resistance, then banking away, zeroing in, and making another pass at the Draconia. Wilma herself led the attack, and from the cockpit of her Starfighter she saw a trail of flaming debris streaming from the battered starship.
Then there was a sudden opening where none had been before, a black cavity in the side of the Draconia, a puff of launching material, and an emergency pod streaked away from the battered hulk of the spaceship. Two tiny figures, far too small for Colonel Deering to make out from her Starfighter, huddled in the pod, in mortal fear that they might never be picked up by the minions of Draco and in equal fear that they might be found by those very forces.
On the ruined launch deck of the starship Buck Rogers regained consciousness a second time. His uniform was shredded, his skin bruised and bloodied, every muscle in his body seemed to be in agony and every bone was bruised if not worse. But he was alive, aware, and mobile. He struggled to shove aside the wreckage that kept him from escaping the flight deck.
Wilma Deering turned back to the Draconia; the escape pod was too small, too fast, and too far gone to warrant pursuit. But the main target was still at hand.
“The ship’s about ready to blow,” a Starfighter pilot murmured through the intercom, reaching Wilma and all the others in their ships.
“Withdraw from combat area, all ships. I’m going in to try and find Twiki and Dr. Theopolis.”
From the burning hulk a voice reached Wilma’s radiophones. Even through the roaring and the electronic crackle of space, Dr. Theopolis’ rich, mellow voice remained distinctive. “Forget us,” Theopolis urged, “we’re just machines anyhow. Try and find Buck!”
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