The Lost Star Gate (Lost Starship Series Book 9)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Although he was disinclined to say more on the subject, he felt she probably needed to hear it.

  “You saved my ship and my hide, Lieutenant. The antimatter attack was ballsy. At first blush, it seems like you went overboard. Upon further reflection…”

  Everyone listened closely, including the techs working on the screens.

  Maddox sighed inwardly even as he kept a calm outward demeanor. Perhaps this wasn’t the time to damn with faint praise. He did not like to praise too easily or highly, as he felt people should earn it. What someone earned, someone appreciated. What someone got easily, that someone soon expected as her right.

  “Upon further reflection, you did very well indeed, Lieutenant.”

  For the first time, Valerie smiled. She actually unbent, looking around. The captain had, for him, lavishly praised her in front of the bridge crew.

  “Now get to Medical,” Maddox said. “I want my second-in-command in tiptop shape. That’s an order.”

  Valerie nodded, turning toward the exit. She stopped, and regarded the captain. “Thank you, sir.”

  That sounded heartfelt.

  Maddox merely nodded. He wanted to get on with it already.

  Valerie coughed several times, possibly from smoke, maybe from the strain, and she finally headed for the exit, leaving the bridge.

  “Sir,” Galyan said. “I have something to report.”

  Maddox glanced at the main screen. It was still down. Presumably, the AI had direct access to all workable sensors.

  “Go head,” Maddox said.

  “I have been unable to detect any Spacer saucer ships or their signature gravity waves that reveal their cloaked position.”

  “You told me earlier the Spacers fled the system. Is that true or not?”

  “That was and is my opinion, sir,” Galyan said. “I hasten to add, that at this point it is merely an opinion and not substantiated fact.”

  “Understood,” Maddox said.

  “There is one other possible pressing matter.”

  “Yes?”

  “The Nerva Corp Hauler Sulla 7 is gone.”

  Maddox pinched his lower lip. “That’s the hauler that used a hard burn to leave Usan III’s orbit.”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “And you say that hauler is gone?”

  “Just like the Spacers are gone,” Galyan said.

  “You mean the Sulla 7 has fled behind the planet?”

  “I do not mean that, sir. I suggest that the hauler also had a star drive and employed it, leaving with the Spacers.”

  Maddox stared at Galyan even as gears worked in his mind. The hauler was gone. The Spacers were gone. The Spacers had attacked Victory as the hauler attempted to gain velocity.

  “I see,” Maddox said. “It appears the saucer ships attacked us in order to give cover for the Sulla to escape the star system.”

  “I give that an 83 percent probability.”

  “That low?” Maddox asked.

  “Given the exchange rate for crystals and varth elixir on the open market and the Nerva Corp predilection for—”

  “Never mind, Galyan,” the captain said, interrupting. “Let us operate with the 83 percent probability. The Sulla 7 is gone. And so, it appears, are the Spacer saucer ships. That would indicate the Spacers have pulled out of Usan III. Since we’re not going to give chase…it’s time to investigate the planet and see what we can discover about the Spacer operation that made it so important.”

  -22-

  The captain did not necessarily believe that the Spacers would stay gone. Pretending to leave was an ancient Achaean trick as practiced against the Trojans, when Odysseus had left the wooden horse for the overjoyed besieged to find. Just like the Greeks of that time, the Spacers might come back, trying to catch them by surprise.

  Victory took up a combat orbit around Usan III, sending several shuttles full of space marines to occupy the torchship-damaged defensive satellite. The takeover proved easy enough. An Intelligence sting quickly uncovered the personnel used by the Spacers. Brain scans did not turn up anything odd in those people; nor did the enemy agents have any coercive devices in their bodies. Might they have gone under the brain machine in Nerva Corp Tower? That seemed likely.

  Maddox ordered the compromised personnel brought aboard Victory, putting them in the brig for the psych people to study.

  Meanwhile, Victory repair teams worked overtime, getting the satellite back to combat-ready status within two days of their arrival.

  During that time, Intelligence teams with space marine bodyguards swept through the remaining commercial and private orbital ships. There was some complaining by the ship owners and captains, and Maddox listened via screen for a time. Finally, the captain asked, “Would you rather stay in a brig aboard my starship?”

  The complaining always ended there, if not the sore feelings over what some called, “Highhanded Star Watch actions.”

  The medical teams had their hands full aboard Victory. Nineteen people had died from radiation poisoning. Thirty-seven were on the critical list. One hundred and twelve listed themselves as sick but able for duty.

  The damage repair teams were working harder and having less notable outcomes compared to the others. Realistically, the starship could use a week or two in a space dock. Even that might not prove enough.

  Valerie drove the repair teams. The captain had given her the assignment, demanding she have Victory ready for regular duty in ten days.

  Under normal circumstances, Maddox would have overseen the work himself. He was down on the planet, though, heading the Intelligence teams searching the corporate buildings, the casinos and the crystal mines dotting Usan III.

  The brain machine that had been inside Nerva Corp Tower was gone, every piece of it. None of the teams found any Spacer corpses anywhere, although one team found traces of Spacer DNA in the underground cell and corridor where Maddox had shed Spacer blood.

  “They were thorough,” the captain told Riker in their planetary headquarters in the Star Light Casino. “But they weren’t magicians. They left traces.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, I don’t understand how they cleaned up so well so fast. Did all the ship crews come down to help?”

  That was a good question.

  Maddox kept gnawing at the question like an angry dog with a meatless bone.

  The breakthrough came when they put some of the Nerva Corp people under a psych probe. Until that point, the Nerva Corp people had sworn they had been doing their jobs like normal. None of them had seen any Spacers.

  The story changed with the use of the probe. The problem was that four Nerva Corp people went into violent seizures after undergoing the probe. Two died, one sustained brain damage and the last slept for three days but otherwise seemed fine.

  “We can’t keep using the psych probe,” Andros said. The Chief Technician was a master at the delicate machine. “I can’t be responsible for killing more people, especially now that I know it could easily happen.”

  It seemed clear that the Spacers had set up triggers in selected people’s minds. The Spacers had no doubt done so with the brain machine.

  Because Andros was so adamant, Maddox let the Chief Technician sway him, although he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that was a wise idea. So far, he’d learned that the Spacers had indeed mind manipulated everyone in the tower. Could they learn more about Spacer techniques if they kept probing? Most certainly. It would come at the cost of more Nerva Corp dead, though.

  Maddox used a shuttle and went to the desert location where he’d originally found the Strand clone corpse. It was gone, every vestige of it. Had the planet and its denizens removed the corpse, or had the Spacers made a quick trip here and burned it or possibly taken it with them?

  The crystal mines proved easier to crack in the sense of what exactly happened. The Spacers had taken tons of crystals with them, loading fast with Nerva Corp shuttles. Those shuttles had all gone to the Sulla 7. The hauler was gone, clea
rly, gone with the saucer ships.

  A thorough search on the planetary varth market showed that the Spacers had bought or stolen the entire supply of the two-pronged elixir.

  “It’s hard to say, sir, which the Spacers wanted more,” Riker said as they flew back to Capricorn in a shuttle.

  The two men had spoken with Mount Carter, the chief varth hunter on Usan III. Carter represented the majority of the varth hunters, keeping their united supply hidden from all elixir thieves.

  Carter admitted to Maddox that someone had secretly stolen the hoarded supply. Under normal circumstances, it would have meant Carter’s head. The Star Watch Intelligence investigation was actually proving useful to him. He could point to the Spacers as the culprits.

  That had made Mount Carter cooperative, something highly unusual for any of the secretive varth hunters.

  “Elixir and crystals,” Maddox said, piloting the shuttle. “The Spacers wanted both. Was this a one-time operation or do they plan to tap Usan III again?”

  “Depends on if the Spacers are going to stick near Human Space or not,” Riker said.

  “That is one possible precondition, but not necessarily a needed one. I’d rather know how important the elixir and crystals are to their society.”

  Riker grunted agreement.

  For a time, Maddox stared fixedly out of the front window. Mako 21 had suggested the Spacers had also come here to speak to him. How much credence could he place on that? If it was true, he needed to tell others. If it was a momentary statement meant to befuddle him, he needed to forget it.

  What had the First Class Surveyor Senior said? She’d told him to beware—yes! She had told him to “Beware the Methuselah Man.”

  Maddox’s grip tightened on the controls. By the Methuselah Man, had Mako 21 meant the Strand clone he’d found dead on the sands? Had she meant Strand the original as a prisoner of the Emperor of the New Men? Or could she have referred to Professor Ludendorff?

  Maddox hadn’t seen Ludendorff since the grim affair at Alpha Centauri during the Swarm invasion. The professor seemed to have held a grudge against him for what had happened there.

  Maddox shrugged. Mako’s cryptic comment likely meant nothing. Spacers liked to appear mystical. They were cultists—capable cultists who had developed a form of mind power through their technological modifications.

  “Sir,” Riker said, as he manipulated the comm panel. “There’s an incoming call from Victory.”

  “Put it on the screen, Sergeant.”

  Riker tapped the panel.

  Valerie’s face filled the tiny screen. “News, sir,” she said.

  “Yes?” Maddox asked.

  “Five ships have just dropped out of the nearest Laumer Point.”

  “Are they Spacers?” asked Maddox.

  “No, sir,” Valerie said. “It’s a Star Watch flotilla headed by the Moltke.”

  “A Bismarck-class battleship?”

  “Yes, sir,” Valerie said. “Brigadier O’Hara is in charge of the flotilla.”

  “Really?” Maddox asked, surprised and delighted.

  “And Professor Ludendorff is with her,” Valerie said.

  “What?”

  “The Iron Lady wants to rendezvous with you right away,” Valerie said. “She says it’s a matter of interstellar importance. You’re to head immediately to Victory. We’ll star-drive jump to meet them.”

  “That seems like excessive haste,” Maddox said.

  “The Iron Lady was quite clear, sir.”

  “It’s Brigadier O’Hara,” Maddox said. “You will accord her the proper respect and not use her nickname on an open channel.”

  “Yes, sir,” Valerie said. “I’m sorry—”

  “No need for that,” Maddox said, interrupting. “Just remember the proper form of address. If anyone would, it should be you, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Please tell the brigadier that I’m on my way,” Maddox said.

  “I will.”

  “Maddox, out,” he said.

  The screen went back to its dull color.

  “Ready, Sergeant?” the captain asked.

  “What do you think this is about, sir?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Riker glanced at him.

  Maddox didn’t like the way the sergeant did that, as it indicated that Riker understood that he—Maddox—was upset about something. He liked others to see him as calm and collected.

  Beware the Methuselah Man. Maddox had a feeling that Mako 21 had been referring to Ludendorff. What was the professor up to this time? And maybe just as importantly, how had the Spacers known that Ludendorff was coming to the Usan System?

  -23-

  From the bridge of Starship Victory, Maddox studied the five-ship flotilla. It had come out of the Laumer Point near the first planet, a tiny rock world smaller than Mercury.

  The flotilla had already moved to an area midway between the orbital locations of the system’s first two terrestrial worlds. The captain noted the impressive bulk of the Moltke. It was the only battleship in the flotilla. He noticed with a start that only one other ship of the group was a Star Watch vessel—the Defiant, a missile cruiser.

  The other three ships appeared to be armed freighters. They were almost the same size as the Defiant but lacked even its modest armor. The missile cruiser was a hit-and-run vessel, quite different from the Moltke. The battleship had stout armor and shields; the missile cruiser was under-protected in both areas. The Defiant’s operational procedure called for unloading its missiles at a safe distance from any enemy and then running away to resupply. The missile cruiser had speed, but nothing extraordinary.

  Why was the brigadier traveling so far from home in such an underpowered flotilla? Could one even call this a flotilla?

  What was he missing here?

  Maddox snapped his fingers. He should have seen it sooner. This had to do with Professor Ludendorff. The professor had been ultra-careful throughout the years at keeping out of the hands of Star Watch. The Methuselah Man had made an exception in the past with Victory and during parts of the Swarm invasion. That he traveled with O’Hara was nothing short of amazing. It meant something profound.

  Would the professor have demanded an underpowered Star Watch presence as part of his “price” for agreeing to join the flotilla with the three freighters? Maddox was assuming those were his vessels.

  To ask the question was to answer it. Ludendorff was one of the most paranoid people Maddox knew. Of course, hundreds of years of existence might make one so, especially as all the other Methuselah Men had been hunted down and slain with the exception of Strand.

  “Galyan,” Maddox said. “Scan the freighters. Tell me what’s unusual about them.”

  The AI holoimage stood perfectly still with his closed eyelids twitching. Suddenly, he opened his eyes.

  “I am detecting highly advanced shield generators,” Galyan said. “Each of the freighters also has an exotic component. If those components, or their orifice originators, worked in synchrony—”

  The AI abruptly stopped speaking.

  “What is it, Galyan?”

  “Sir, I believe the freighters working in synchrony might be considered as a single Q-ship.”

  “I have no idea what that is supposed to mean,” Maddox said.

  “A Q-ship, also known as a Q-boat, decoy vessel, special service ship or mystery ship, is a heavily-armed merchant ship with concealed weapons. The first known use of a Q-ship was in the 1670s on Earth, Pre-Space Age. The HMS Kingfisher was specially designed to counter the attack of Algerian corsairs or pirates in the Mediterranean by masquerading as a merchantman, hiding her armaments behind false bulkheads.”

  “I see,” Maddox said.

  “The most notable use of Q-ships occurred during World War I. Then, they were supposed to lure German submarines into making surface attacks. That gave a Q-ship the chance to open fire and sink them. In 1915—”

  “Galyan!” Maddox said sharp
ly.

  “Sir?”

  “If I wish to know more, I will let you know.”

  “Did I say too much, sir?”

  “Far too much,” Maddox said. “But you stopped when I asked you, so that was good.”

  “I am still learning tact, sir.”

  “Right,” Maddox said. “Now, give me a moment.”

  Galyan fell silent.

  Maddox drummed the fingers of his left hand on the armrest of his chair. Three freighters that could spring a powerful weapon when working in synchrony. That was good in case Spacers or others attacked the brigadier’s battleship, but just how good were Ludendorff’s freighters? He still assumed they belonged to the Methuselah Man.

  “Galyan. Have you located the professor yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have you scanned the Moltke or the Defiant for him?”

  “I have scanned all the ships, sir.”

  Maddox became thoughtful. “Do you suspect Ludendorff can cloak himself from you?”

  “I give that a sixty-six percent probability.”

  “Are there jammers aboard the freighters?”

  “Not that I can detect, sir. If you will remember, I was able to find the exotic equipment. That should mean I can locate the professor—but I cannot.”

  Maddox inhaled deeply through his nostrils. He was going to have to deal with Ludendorff again. He huffed out the breath. He and the professor had not parted on good terms after the victory over the Swarm invasion fleet. An evil spirit entity, the Ska, had also attacked back then. Star Watch had been powerless against it. A Builder from long ago had put the answer against the Ska deep into Ludendorff’s subconscious for just such a time as they had then faced. Had the Methuselah Man by now learned to deal with the Builder programming embedded in him?

  Since it was Ludendorff, Maddox suspected the answer was yes…and no. He recognized the utility in the last two Methuselah Men. But he did not care for either of them anymore. Strand was worse, but Ludendorff was no prize, either.