The Lost Star Gate (Lost Starship Series Book 9)

by Vaughn Heppner

  He hated this underground confinement and he knew what he had to do. Others were already coming. He might have already sealed his fate by grabbing her.

  It was time.

  Maddox squeezed her again before releasing her, letting her drop to the ground. She landed and stumbled, catching herself a moment later.

  She turned to face him.

  At the same time, the space marine suit lumbered forward, both guns aimed at Maddox.

  “I should kill you for what you just did,” Lulu said quietly. “It was sacrilege. Ship custom bids me destroy you, an outsider. You are even worse than that, a heretical enemy of the Spacer Nation. Instead of a quick, clean death, I am going to use you in a manner you find revolting. You have made a terrible mistake, Captain.”

  Maddox waited like a coiled spring. He seemed tense, decidedly so.

  “I am about to tame the evil Captain Maddox,” Lulu said. “You will do things—”

  “No,” he said, interrupting.

  “Are you going to try to force me to kill you?”

  “It’s too late for that,” Maddox said. The coiled tension in him seemed ready to explode.

  Lulu cocked her head, and suddenly, she groaned and swayed. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Maddox said nothing.

  “What have you done to me?” Lulu asked hoarsely. She looked down at herself, noticing the lose flap on her left thigh. Her hand dropped there and tried to grasp a tiny thing in the hidden pouch. Instead, she dropped to her knees as her strength seemed to ooze away.

  Lulu’s head moved slowly as she swayed on her knees. She seemed to stare at Maddox.

  “You…” she said. “You have…”

  The Spacer Surveyor wilted then, pitching sideways onto the floor, gasping for air.

  “Die,” she whispered.

  Maddox dove forward as the combat suit’s guns opened fire. He was no longer in the line-of-sight as the heavy caliber slugs dug into the rock wall, ricocheting everywhere. Maddox crawled until he was under the armor suit, using it for shelter. Some of the slugs whanged off the suit. One of the slugs smashed against Lulu 19, killing her instantly.

  That caused the marine suit to abruptly quit firing its guns.

  Maddox crawled out from under the suit and pushed off the floor. He’d survived the ricocheting slugs, but little else had. The table and chairs, and most of the wall screens were shattered. Amazingly, none of the air-vents had been scratched.

  As Maddox surveyed the damage and the dead Spacer, he released the tiny needle that he’d taken from her hidden pouch. He had pricked her with it when she’d dropped to the floor.

  Had the substance been a killing contact poison or merely a strong knockout drug? Maddox didn’t want to know. He hadn’t had any desire to kill Lulu 19. He just wanted to remain free, to save Meta and Riker and to make sure that Star Watch won whatever present contest they were in.

  Pricking her had been his only option.

  With a start, Maddox lurched for the upright combat suit. Lulu had said others were coming. He had to be ready before the others opened the hatch. With the First Class Surveyor dead, he was sure the others who were coming would kill him.

  -12-

  Maddox steeled himself as the last lock on the space marine suit snapped shut.

  This was going to get ugly.

  First Class Surveyor Lulu 19 was dead, a mangled corpse in the cell with him. He had no idea if she had been lying or telling the truth. One thing he did know. A secret Spacer base was hidden in the Nerva Corporation Tower. He was fairly certain the Spacers were mining the unique crystals here. Lulu 19 had partly controlled his mind through her hyper-induction. It was quite possible she’d also caused Mr. Tubb to self-detonate, through transduction. Maddox was now almost one hundred percent certain the Spacers had face-shot the Strand clone in the wastelands. They presently held Meta and the sergeant prisoner, and he was deep underground with possibly only one way up to the surface.

  Even as he was processing all this, Maddox was checking the interior of his suit. It was the latest in combat armor, probably stolen from a Nerva Corp warehouse.

  A thought struck. There might be another Spacer who could practice a hyper-induction and/or transduction similar to what Lulu 19 had done. Such a process might interfere with the smooth operation of the combat armor.

  Maddox put the idea in storage. There were too many unknowns regarding that. Maybe the only mind manipulator on the planet lay dead in the cell.

  “Let’s get started,” Maddox said to himself.

  He powered up the suit, faced the hatch and put a powered glove on the latch. It did not budge.

  Should he tear the hatch open?

  That would alert the others if they were already here.

  In the suit, Maddox turned around, searching the shot-up cell. He did not see any spy devices or cameras. Oh yes, he did see them. The screens had been recording events, but there were all shot up now. Hopefully, any watching Spacers had lost reception.

  Score one for the good guys.

  Maddox stepped back from the hatch. He would wait. As he waited, he rechecked the suit, finding the batteries at 78 percent power, the ammo supply at 89 percent capacity and rockets—no. The suit lacked rockets.

  Perhaps that was just as well, given that most of the fighting would take place underground.

  Maddox glanced at a chronometer. Two minutes and thirty-two seconds had passed since he’d donned the combat armor. How long was it going to take the reinforcements to get here?

  Maddox did not glance at Lulu’s corpse. He had a job to do, but he was beginning to feel worse about her death. He reminded himself that the Spacers were fanatics. They had also done more than simply run out on everyone else when the Swarm Imperium had invaded with eighty thousand warships. The Spacers had tried to hinder the rest of humanity from surviving the bugs.

  According to some Star Watch analysts, the Spacers would side with the bugs, if it ever came down to a choice for them.

  Maddox checked the chronometer: three minutes and seventeen seconds had passed since—

  A lock clicked on the hatch. It began to open.

  “They have your wife and best friend captive,” Maddox told himself. “Either you save them, or Meta and Riker will die.”

  With an exoskeleton-powered glove, Maddox grasped the hatch and flung it open. It crashed into a provost guard, a small Spacer in a blue uniform with dark goggles over his eyes and a glistening projac that flew out of his left hand as he struck a corridor wall.

  Maddox charged through the hatch.

  Other provost guards waited in the corridor. Some shouted at each other. A provost marshal cried out at the sight of the suit. Two of the guards aimed their projacs and opened fire at the marine armor.

  Maddox reacted, opening fire with the twin arms of his suit, blowing down the guards and the marshal. In seconds, it was over. Had he killed them before any of them had warned others upstairs?

  Maddox had no idea. He clanked down the corridor, hoping to reach Meta and Riker before the enemy used them as bargaining chips.

  It might already be too late to save them. But he was going to damn well try. There was one thing he knew. The Spacers here were going to know—if they didn’t already—that they were in a fight to the death.

  “To the death,” Maddox whispered in the helmet.

  He clanked down the corridors, recalling the route Lulu 19 had used earlier. Once he reached his former cell, he traced the route from memory back to the elevator.

  So far, he had not seen anyone else. He’d slain four provost guards and a provost marshal, maybe a real one instead of a fake. He’d also slain a First Class Surveyor. Was—had—Lulu 19 been the highest ranked Spacer on Usan III? Maddox would guess not, as someone had prohibited her from certain actions.

  The elevator door opened and it was empty. Maddox had been pressing buttons to get it here. He entered the elevator, studied the control unit and tapped the console. The doors closed, t
he elevator lurched and Maddox in the latest space marine combat suit headed up, presumably, for the Nerva Corp Tower.

  -13-

  Maddox had half-expected a Spacer to contact him via a helmet comm channel. He’d also expected to hear thoughts in his head that were not his own.

  Neither happened.

  The express elevator reached its destination and opened. No one greeted him in the tower elevator lobby.

  Maddox lowered his arms, thus lowering the sleeve guns. He made a quick adjustment to his plan. Instead of charging like a rampaging robot, he marched smoothly as he’d seen the four combat suits doing when they’d first exited the tower, pretending to be a suit under transduction-control.

  He passed a Spacer, a woman walking the other way. She did not appear to be in any particular hurry.

  Maddox made another quick evaluation. He didn’t immediately recognize her rank. She wore dark goggles, had short-cut dark hair and carried a computer slate under her arm. She struck him as a flunky.

  Maddox looked around, saw no one else, and turned back toward the woman.

  She must have heard something to alert her. She stopped and faced him.

  In three strides, Maddox reached her, scooped her up and pivoted. She sucked down air to scream, a natural reaction.

  Maddox’s faceplate whirred as it came down. “Don’t do that,” he said.

  Her eyebrows rose higher than the protective goggles as her features tightened in horror at the sight of him.

  “If you scream, you die,” Maddox added.

  The woman whimpered, and she wilted in his armored grip.

  By this time, Maddox had found and entered a side room. He closed the door quietly. There was a desk in here and boxes piled atop one another along the walls.

  She jabbered at him in a foreign tongue.

  “Use English,” Maddox said.

  She nodded rapidly. “English. Yes. I will speak English.”

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “I am an adjutant to Mako 21.”

  “Mako 21 is a First Class Surveyor?”

  “First Class Surveyor Senior,” the Spacer said.

  That told Maddox that Lulu 19 had not been in charge. If luck was with him, this Mako 21 had been with the provost guards he’d slain in the depths.

  “What is your name?” Maddox asked.

  “Risa Long,” she whispered.

  “You don’t have a number?”

  The shorthaired woman shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Maddox said. “Do you know who I am?”

  “The di-far,” Risa whispered in a tremulous voice.

  Maddox didn’t know if it was good or bad that she knew him. He decided to settle on ‘good,’ because it was better to remain positive in the middle of a desperate mission.

  “How soon until the fleet arrives?” he asked on inspiration.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “Just tell me how long?”

  “T-They’re already late,” Risa said. “The new Visionary was supposed to have already touched down on Usan III.”

  Maddox felt a jolt. Time was running out for him and for Starship Victory. He had to get upstairs—in orbit—and get back to his ship.

  “Where are Meta and Riker?”

  “I assume you mean the other two Star Watch agents.”

  “Precisely,” he said.

  At that point, Risa Long’s face screwed up. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “But I can tell you no more. I have already said too much.”

  “Risa,” he said. “That’s where you’re wrong. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll kill everyone here.”

  “What? No. You must…you must surrender.”

  “I am the di-far. I am loose. I am dangerous. You do realize how dangerous I am, yes?”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Kill me and be done with it. I can say no more.”

  “I have placed Mako 21 and Lulu 19 in a prison in the depths,” Maddox said. “I have also placed a timer with a bomb in the same cell.”

  “What?”

  “Unless my friends are freed, I will let the bomb explode.”

  “But-but—”

  “Quickly, Risa, tell me the location of my friends.”

  “You won’t kill the surveyors if I speak?”

  “They will go free because you acted wisely,” Maddox said.

  Risa hung her head and she trembled, but soon, she began to speak, telling him what he needed to know.

  The safest course would be to kill her, but Maddox could not casually kill like that. Thus, he bid Risa turn away. He tied and gagged her and exited the room, shutting the door behind him.

  If Risa Long was right, time was running out—maybe had already run out.

  Thus, he resumed his robotic pace, moving along the tower corridors. He passed others, but these were Nerva Corp people. They did not rush. They did not gape at him. Instead, all of them seemed glassy eyed, drugged, hypnotized…or, most probable, modified by Spacer hyper-induction. None of them seemed to notice him.

  Maddox increased his pace.

  Had the new Visionary come for the crystals? Or had the woman—he assumed the Visionary was a woman—come for a different reason? Might she have come because she knew he was here? How could she know such a thing?

  The old Visionary had claimed to be able to see into the future. Had that been true? Or was that Spacer mumbo-jumbo? If a Visionary could see into the future, she only seemed to be able to see as through a glass, darkly, as Visionaries had made many erroneous predictions.

  Maddox approached two combat suits flanking a door. The suits were immobile. Did that mean both first class surveyors were dead?

  Maddox worked on that assumption and went through the door, passing the armor suits. He found an empty room with security panels. There were no Spacers watching the monitors. Maddox examined the screens, and he froze, seeing Meta and Riker in one of the displays. Each sat facing the other, but neither spoke. Each had a metal band around their head, and electrodes were attached to their naked bodies. Meta and Riker both sat motionless, and although their eyes were open, it did not appear as if they could see one another.

  Maddox dampened his growing rage, as this was a time for straight thinking.

  Without conscious thought, Maddox clanked to the nearest door, a closed one, opposite the door he’d come through. He did not open the closed door, but smashed through using the armor, causing wooden splinters and metal to fly everywhere.

  Two Spacer guards whirled around.

  Maddox fired, their riddled bodies slamming against a wall.

  Afterward, the captain began to clank at speed, wanting to get Meta and Riker out of whatever programming machine the Spacers had hooked them into.

  -14-

  After smashing the lock, Maddox slipped into the programming chamber as softly as possible. He didn’t want to accidently send shards flying against Meta or Riker.

  He clanked toward a wall-sized machine covered with multicolored flashing lights and emitting soft humming sounds. Meta and Riker sat beside the machine. Each wore a metal band around their head, with leads attached from the machine to their naked bodies.

  There was something Maddox hadn’t noticed while viewing the screens. Both people twitched and made odd grunting sounds, as if the grunts were forced out of them, and their eyelids kept trembling.

  Maddox aimed the arm guns at the machine, readying to blast the hideous monstrosity apart. Might that send overload signals into Meta and Riker?

  Maddox spun around, looking for attendants to murder. There were none, although robot eyes cataloged everything.

  The guns chattered for a moment, obliterating the watching cameras.

  The exoskeleton arms swung down, remaining motionless. Locks began to unsnap. Like a giant turtle shell, the armor opened down a body-length seam. Maddox wriggled free, scratching his torso as his feet thudded onto the floor, and he regarded the grim machine.


  He needed Doctor Dana Rich or even the boastful Professor Ludendorff, although he supposed Andros Crank could have told him how to shut this thing down. He couldn’t tell on his own, though. He couldn’t just stand here doing nothing, either. The awful grunts and the eye twitching told him the machine was attempting to program their minds.

  It was time to gamble.

  Maddox stepped beside Riker, flexed his fingers and debated—no, no debate. He moved decisively, ripping the metal band from the sergeant’s head.

  In the interest of time, Maddox grabbed fistfuls of wires attached to the leads on Riker’s body and yanked them off.

  Maddox held his breath, wondering if the sergeant would go into a violent seizure. That was why he’d picked Riker first. He couldn’t experiment the same way on Meta.

  The seconds seemed to last forever as the sergeant just sat there with his eyes closed. The man no longer grunted and his eyelids stilled, so that was something positive.

  Abruptly, Riker gasped, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. He shivered—Maddox expected him to go into convulsions about now. Instead, the sergeant’s eyes opened, wide and staring as if half-mad. Riker gurgled in a choking manner.

  “I’m right here, Sergeant,” Maddox said.

  The head turned as if upon a rusted neck. The crazy eyes seemed to latch onto the captain. Riker tried to speak, but it came out as gurgles again.

  “This is real,” Maddox said. “You were hooked to a machine. I detached you from it.”

  Riker blinked, and some of the wildness drained from his eyes.

  Once more, the sergeant gurgled before he closed his mouth, cleared his throat and whispered, “It’s a horror show, sir. What I saw…”

  “What did you see?” Maddox asked.

  The sergeant frowned and cocked his head. “I…I can’t remember now. Isn’t that odd? It was so clear a second ago.”

  Maddox didn’t like the sound of that. If they survived, both Meta and Riker would have to undergo strenuous treatments to confirm that their minds hadn’t been compromised.

  That Meta would have to undergo such treatment for the second time in her life made it worse. Couldn’t he protect his woman any better than that? Maybe he should forbid her from going on more undercover assignments.