Treasure of the Silver Star

by Michael Angel

“Tally, can you take the communications position? You know how to work nullspace channels?”

  “Aye, Captain, that I do,” she said, flashing her impish smile as she took her seat.

  “Then prepare to send a message direct to Commander Ruger.” Drake paused and flicked the comm button on his chair to contact the medlab. “Kincaid, it’s Drake. You finish that bioscan report? I’m contacting Ruger on nullspace, see if we can’t nip this in the bud.”

  The medtech’s voice sounded relieved. “Sending it to the communications console now. It’s one-hundred percent clean, just as expected. So you transmit this to Ruger and tell him he’s full of bull—”

  “Right, Kincaid.” Drake motioned to Tally. “Send when ready. Then ask for confirmation on our last set of orders concerning the alleged quarantine.”

  “You got it. Sending now.” Tally hit the sequence of buttons that activated the transmitter. The Ranger’s nullspace antenna emitted a series of signals that bypassed the crawl of light speed that would’ve slowed their communications to Earth by several minutes.

  The reply channel remained silent. Drake had the message repeated, but there was no answer forthcoming.

  He steepled his fingers, waiting.

  A single ship lay in the direct path of the nullspace transmission. But it did not respond.

  It was sleek, bristling with the dagger-points of missiles and laser mounts. But the patched and battered hull gave it a distinctly unsavory look. The vessel’s name, Repulse, did nothing to dispel that impression.

  The communications officer looked up from his panel and addressed his captain.

  “They’re repeating their message.”

  “Yes, it’s about time that Drake figured out something was up,” Captain Mackall agreed. He leaned forward in his chair and scratched a pockmarked chin. “But who are they sending the message to?”

  Mackall’s officer checked. “Fleet Commander Ruger, back on Earth.”

  “Good old Benjamin,” Mackall chuckled. “Still trying to go through the proper channels, I see. Too bad.”

  A chime from the comm unit on Mackall’s armrest. “Engineering to bridge.”

  Mackall mashed the button peevishly. “What is it?”

  “We’ve been redlining it for several hours now, sir,” said the engineer. “I’ve recorded several disturbances in the main engine. If we keep this up we’ll have to go off line soon.”

  “Keep her together just another hour,” Mackall ordered. He spoke to his navtech next. “Has the Ranger changed position?”

  “Negative. She’s stationary.”

  “Good. Arm the missile launchers and power up the lasers. But no firing unless I give the order. This is to be a precision job.”

  He watched as the marked blip on his tactical screen grew closer and closer. Poor Benjamin. He’d be on top of Drake before he knew what hit him.

  Drake had to force himself to stop drumming his fingers on his armrest. “Any response?”

  “Not a peep,” Tally replied.

  “Maybe our subspace relay isn’t properly aligned,” Drake mused aloud. “Lieutenant Sebastiàn, bring us around to one-five mark four.”

  “Coming around, sir.”

  “Good. Let’s try our message again.”

  Tally made a startled noise, as if she had received a tiny shock. She hunched over the tiny screen on her instrument panel, flipped a pair of switches, and listened. There it was again. A strong pulse, a heavy thrum that echoed from her comm channel when listened for a reply from nullspace.

  “Are you all right?” Drake asked.

  “Yes, but…I think I’ve found something odd. It’s coming from the nullspace frequencies. An energy pulse, I think.”

  Something in her voice made Drake pause. He looked over to his navtech. “Lieutenant, transfer the data from the communications channel, put it on the viewscreen.”

  The visual representation of the pulse splashed across the screen in a brilliant field of color. Sebastiàn adjusted the readout so that the three dimensional image plotted the position of the pulse relative to the Ranger. A wave of bright yellow lay sunward of their position. A red-hot point of light lay right in the center of the wave.

  “That’s a huge disturbance in the nullspace energy field,” Sebastiàn observed. His heartbeat kicked up a notch as he realized what it had to be. “It’s moving fast, and it’s headed directly for us. Captain, I’ll wager my next month’s pay that it’s the propulsion spike from a starship.”

  Drake didn’t quibble with his conclusion. “ETA?”

  “Ten minutes. No, nine minutes, twenty seconds. Whoever she is, she just jumped a point higher towards light speed.” Sebastiàn shook his head. “She’s really moving.”

  Drake pressed the comm button again, this time to contact Engineering. “Ferra, we’ve got a huge nullspace propulsion spike showing up on the scanners. Any chance you can figure out the engine type from the shape?”

  The woman’s voice sounded confident. “What is this, my graduate exam? Of course, sir.”

  “Sebastiàn,” Drake nodded, and the navtech transferred the data down to Ferra’s console in Engineering.

  Ferra snorted. “That heavy particle flow is a giveaway. That’s got to be from an old Tango-38 engine. A dirty one, at that. Which means...”

  “…the Repulse,” Drake finished grimly. “That’s Frank Mackall’s ship.”

  “You know him?” Tally asked.

  “Some.” Drake squinted at the screen. “Too much. He’s the type of person that would burn down the family house for the insurance money. Mackall’s one of Ruger’s class pets.”

  Tally let out a curse. “I was hoping that we’d be all wrong about the cover up. It looks like Ruger, or the people backing him, decided not to wait for the medical ship.”

  “Medical ship?” demanded Kincaid, who announced his presence by slipping into the seat at the bridge sidebar. “Who in their right mind is going to call an Avenger-class destroyer a medical ship?”

  “Ruger, apparently,” Drake replied.

  Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “Is what I hear right? We got Frank Mackall heading up the crowd to bring us to heel?”

  “It sure looks like it.”

  “And he’s coming awfully close to burning out his engine to get here,” Ferra’s voice echoed from the comm speaker. “I’m seeing point leaks in his engine core.”

  “He wants to get the jump on us.” Drake shook his head in disbelief. “What in the world is he doing? I don’t want to start a shooting match out here!”

  “Can we take him?” This from Sebastiàn. He gripped the sides of his console, and Drake could see a terrible eagerness in his eyes.

  “There is one possibility…” Drake considered for a moment and then made his decision. “Ferra, pipe up the design specs for the Avenger-class destroyer to Lieutenant Sebastiàn’s console.”

  A blink, and the schematic popped up on the screen as Drake continued. “An Avenger-class ship is roughly double our size and mass, but with a similar engine. So Mackall’s ship is just a little bit underpowered. It’s an old design, that’s why they took her out of service.”

  “I wouldn’t call the Ranger a spring chicken either,” Kincaid scoffed.

  “Be nice to my baby, or you’re walking home,” Ferra warned.

  Now it was Sebastiàn’s turn to frown. “It looks like the Repulse has got a lot more firepower than us.”

  “Then we don’t get into a slugging match with her, Lieutenant,” Drake pointed out. “Mackall’s been putting his engine into the red for at least seven hours. And it’s already showing signs of serious strain. I think we can use that to our advantage.”

  “I’d like to hear how, Captain.”

  “Ferra and I have been aboard the Repulse. Mackall’s engineer doesn’t know how to do anything but read dials. The ship’s core’s a mess, hasn’t been updated in fifteen years. If Ferra can see core leaks from this distance, then I’m sure that our targeting system can do it closer
up.”

  “You want me to take her paint off, I’ll do it,” Sebastiàn said confidently.

  “Arm the weapons.”

  Sebastiàn’s face broke out in a vicious grin. “Yes, sir!”

  “Ready a single torpedo. Set it to detonate only when it senses a ship hull within a one-hundred meter radius.”

  “But that’s not close enough—”

  “I know,” Drake acknowledged. “That’s not close enough to do any real damage. But I want to rattle them. Lieutenant, we are not, I repeat, not going to take the first shot for blood so long as there’s a possibility that we can find some other way out of this mess.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Sebastiàn checked his readings. “Weapons armed. Loading tube one...no, tube five.”

  “Why are you arming our rear torpedo launcher?” Kincaid inquired.

  “I’m following the captain’s tactical decision,” Sebastiàn explained, as he maneuvered the ship around. “If the Repulse fires on us after our torpedo detonates, I want as much distance as I can get in a hurry. After that, we’ll need some maneuvering room to fight.”

  “I concur, Lieutenant,” Drake said approvingly. Sebastiàn had taken his idea to the logical conclusion. The lieutenant was thinking ahead instead of merely following orders. He turned to speak to Tally. “Are you sure you don’t want to get to safer quarters?”

  “And miss what’s going on up here?” She shook her head. “Besides, if Sebastiàn’s got his hands full, I can operate the comm or the sensor array for you.”

  The Ranger came to a stop. Her bow pointed away from the debris field and into the starry dark. Sunward, a bright point of blue-shifted light grew larger as it approached.

  A shudder ran the length of Mackall’s ship as it shivered to a crawl. Captain Mackall leaned forward, his eyes intent on the screen as if he alone could ferret out the shape of the Ranger from the starry background.

  “Ready forward missile tubes! On my mark—”

  “Captain,” the navtech called, “we’ve got no target lock on the Ranger. They’re not at their last reported position.”

  “Where the hell are they, then?”

  “Sir, picking up ship emissions on the port side!”

  “Bring us around!”

  The Repulse lurched violently to the side. Her engine sputtered with a cough of blue flame. The engineer hit the bridge comm panel, his eyes wide with panic.

  “We’re coming apart at the seams down here!” he screamed. “Captain, you’ve got to let me reduce the strain on our engine!”

  Mackall ignored the man and snapped the comm channel closed. The stars outside flew by the viewscreen in a blurry dazzle. He opened his mouth to give his next order when the dreaded cry came from the navtech.

  “Missile inbound!”

  “Evasive! Take her—”

  The incoming torpedo sped on straight and true into the crosshairs of the tactical viewscreen. With a hellish white light, the warhead detonated a hundred meters from the Repulse’s forward sensor array. The explosion shredded the metal casings and blew out the sensitive electronics.

  On the bridge, Mackall instinctively raised his arm to his eyes; only this saved his vision. Most of the rest of his bridge crew had their retinas protected by the automatic shielding, but they could see little but blinding blue flashes for now. Captain Mackall was a stubborn man. He stumbled like a drunken man to the navtech’s controls, where his crewman pawed at his eyes, cursing. Mackall threw the ship into a sudden acceleration. He fired a trio of missiles back along the path of the reported emissions.

  Sebastiàn paused a moment to admire the havoc wreaked upon the larger ship. He quickly plunged his patrol vessel into a steep dive out of the line of direct pursuit. The warheads from the Repulse passed harmlessly overhead. Like a bull in the fighting ring, Mackall’s ship charged blindly towards the Ranger’s last position.

  “Captain, they’ve fired on us!” he exclaimed.

  “That tears it,” Drake declared with an air of finality. “Lieutenant, open fire on the enemy vessel.”

  Sebastiàn spun the ship about, arming one of the forward torpedo tubes as he did so. With a final pulse of the maneuvering jets, he brought his ship down the Repulse’s starboard side. That action led to Captain Frank Mackall’s final mistake. The lateral sensor arrays were still working, but his destroyer had no weapons to bear against a flank attack.

  “They’re coming alongside!” cried Mackall’s navtech.

  “We’ll see about that, Drake!” Mackall snarled. “Port thrusters on full, now! Bring our forward missile tubes to bear!”

  Mackall’s last maneuver strained the core leaks from his engine and opened them wide. Those spots bled heat from the engine like open wounds. And the sensor array on the Ranger fed Sebastiàn’s targeting computer those exact points. The Lieutenant opened fire as soon as he had a lock. In the space of four heartbeats, the torpedo blazed across the short distance and exploded on the enemy vessel’s engine housing.

  The Repulse’s engine overheated in the blink of an eye. Automated systems on board the destroyer ejected the engine’s core into space, moments before it exploded. What wasn’t vaporized in the blast turned into a deadly, expanding sphere of red hot shrapnel which peppered the entire port side of the ship.

  “Bloody hell...” Kincaid gasped.

  A large piece of shrapnel sheared the main engine compartment of the Repulse from the main body of the ship. Metal fragments then punctured the two crew compartments farther forward. Drake heard screams from the crewmen inside on the open transmission channel, along with the sizzling sound of force containment fields being snapped on. The fields would give the occupants just enough time to escape from the vacuum. He hoped.

  The bridge on board the Ranger had fallen silent. The crippled ship spun end over end, a wobbly bottle filled with wounded men and women.

  “Open a comm channel to the Repulse,” Drake said quietly. A hiss of static, and it was done.

  The bridge of the Repulse was a mess. Her consoles lay exposed in a tangle of wires and optical circuits, spilled out into the compartment by the force of the nearby explosion. Drake spotted a medtech helping a female crew member to her feet while holding a bandage over her eyes. Mackall and his crew looked like they’d taken a beating, but at least there were no bodies lying still on the deck.

  “Hello, Frank.” Drake was careful to keep his tone neutral. “What’s the condition of your ship?”

  “Drake?” Mackall squinted at the monitor. It wasn’t working well on his end. “You should know well enough. Why ask me?”

  “Because I want information,” Drake spoke patiently, as if explaining something to a small child. “If you blow up, suffocate, or freeze to death before you tell me anything useful, then I’m going to get annoyed.”

  Mackall gulped, and then recovered a little of his bravado. “We’ve got eighteen wounded, six missing.” He fiddled with a toggle on a panel. “Our entire engine core is gone, along with power for everything except short-range communications and life support.”

  “How’s your battery power?”

  A pause as Mackall conferred with someone off camera. “Seventy two hours’ worth, if we can seal those two damaged compartments. Half of that if we can’t.”

  “Well, then. Let’s start with the basics. Why did you fire on us?”

  “You damned traitor! You fired on my ship first!”

  “They promoted this idiot to captain?” Tally remarked, from off screen. Drake motioned for her to be quiet.

  “I’ve got gun camera recordings showing it was a shot across the bow, Captain Mackall,” Drake kept his expression impassive, but his ears had perked up at the word ‘traitor’. “You had no business trying to sneak up on our position. And from the look of your inbound course, I’d say you were trying to get the jump on us. So no more games. I want to know what Ruger’s up to.”

  “You can go to—”

  “Careful, Frank. I’m losing my patience.” Drake
spoke to his navtech. “If the captain of the Repulse is unwilling or unable to answer us, I don’t want to leave any witnesses. On my order, fire our new plasma torpedo from tube ten. That should be powerful enough to vaporize whatever’s left of his ship.”

  Sebastiàn gave him a quizzical look. “Tube ten?”

  “You heard me, Lieutenant! Arm and prepare to fire!”

  Mackall’s voice went up an octave as he scrambled for the comm channel.

  “Wait, Drake, wait! Ruger didn’t tell us much. We’re supposed to bring you in, alive if possible, to turn over to the Terran Security Counsel. Really, I didn’t want to, but Ruger was going to—”

  “Was going to offer all of you fat promotions, no doubt,” Drake snapped. “Maybe even tickets all around for you to get out of the Terran Home Guard and into a real military unit.”

  “I really didn’t have much of a choice.” Mackall’s voice suddenly took on a pleading tone. “Look, you’ve won this round fair and square. But my ship’s systems are starting to fail. Can you help me get my people off this ship and to your medlab?”

  “Yes, I think we can...” But Drake’s eyes bored into Mackall’s face. His jaw went tight as he rattled off a series of orders. “Engineering, give me every ounce of speed you’ve got! Helm, get us out of here!”

  “This is Engineering,” Ferra called in, “Captain, the Repulse has no power, it can’t be doing anything to—”

  “Later! Lieutenant, what’s the nearest Chandrakasar gate?”

  Sebastiàn frantically scrolled through the system chart. The nearest star gate showed up as a brilliant purple circle. “Gate two-oh-two. Exit point only, destination gate point Trapezium.”

  “Best possible speed,” he demanded, and he felt the ship lurch into motion. “Give me an ETA to that gate.”

  “Twenty-five minutes, Captain.”

  “Captain, this is ridiculous!” Kincaid objected. “You can’t leave Mackall’s crew out here! Well…Mackall, maybe, but not his crew.”

  “He didn’t need our help,” Drake explained. “He was buying time. I’ll bet everything I own that Ruger’s gunning for us now. And he’ll be bringing the rest of the folks to the party.”