The Lost Patrol

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Even to save our lives?” asked Maddox.

  “How does that change the equation?” she asked.

  Ludendorff snorted as if the question didn’t merit an answer.

  Shu turned on him. “If I’d had my way, you’d already be dead.”

  “Already?” Ludendorff said. “That implies you plan to kill me sometime during our mission.”

  “You’ve lived nine centuries too long,” Shu said. She turned to Maddox. “It was a mistake bringing the Methuselah Man.”

  “I realize you’re upset,” Maddox told her.

  “Don’t try to humor me, Captain,” Shu said. “This is the greatest moment in Spacer history. Now, you’re going to countenance a monstrous evil all in order to save our worthless hides. I will not—”

  Maddox’s fingers fluttered.

  “What was that?” Shu said.

  “Beg pardon?” Maddox asked her.

  “The way you moved your fingers,” Shu said. “It means something. I demand to know—” She did not finish her thought.

  Sergeant Riker had understood the significance of the fluttering fingers. As slowly and carefully as possible, he pulled out his stunner, aimed it at the small woman’s visible neck and pulled the trigger.

  The low-level stun striking her cut off the flow of words and rendered the Spacer semiconscious.

  It was the professor’s turn to twist in his chair in surprise. Riker was already holstering his stunner.

  “You don’t miss a trick, do you, Captain?” the Methuselah Man said.

  “One of the essentials to victory is being prepared,” Maddox said. “I wondered if there would come a moment when Shu needed a short rest. Lieutenant, ready the warhead and type in the coordinates. On my mark, get ready to fold.”

  On the screen, the five enemy craft zeroed in on them. Soon, now, if the enemy vessels had guns or beams, the slender ships would use them. If they were missiles with warheads…

  “Are you ready?” the captain asked.

  “I am, mate. I mean captain, sir.”

  Maddox continued to watch the advancing vessels as he judged the range. His heart raced. He could be miscalculating this. But if the jumpfighter folded too soon, they would have to face these craft again. He wanted to destroy them now.

  “I detect danger in delaying too long,” Ludendorff said.

  “Execute,” Maddox said.

  The jumpfighter shuddered as a missile detached from the outer rack. Keith watched, knowing how much separation he had to give before he folded. If he did it too soon, the missile would fold with the jumpfighter. Two second later, he stabbed the fold button.

  The electrical impulse took time to reach the fold engine. It began to activate. At the same time, the first enemy drone ignited with a shape-charged blast. That blast moved at the speed of light toward them.

  The jumpfighter folded, but as it did, the front wave of the blast reached the Star Watch vessel. The wave distorted the delicate process of folding. It changed the heading, velocity and depth of the move through space.

  The jumpfighter popped out of fold in less than the blink of an eye. But it had not reached the other side of the center pyramid. Instead, it appeared inside the pyramid. Out of sheer luck, the jumpfighter appeared in an open area within the pyramid. That was all the luck the crew had, though. The jumpfighter still retained its velocity. It smashed against a bulkhead, blowing through but causing tremendous damage to the fighter. The damaged fighter collided against strange objects and mechanisms, shattering them or creating explosions. Electric impulses flared everywhere. Sonic blasts shredded against the armored hull. The sounds indicated atmosphere inside the central pyramid.

  A great and ponderous machine crumpled under the assault. Yet, such was its bulk and mass that the machine caused the increasingly damaged jumpfighter to begin rolling. Like a high-tech bowling ball, the Star Watch fighter smashed through another bulkhead. Now, parts of the armored hull shredded away. Debris and pieces of pyramidal machinery smashed inside, doing to the fighter what the fighter did to the central pyramid.

  At last, the bulky remains of what had once been a jumpfighter came to a screeching halt somewhere inside the pyramid.

  Sizzling sounds and electrical discharges were constant. Metal screeched as pieces finally tore lose. An explosion caused a hatch to tumble away. More sizzles occurred from the wreckage of a hall the jumpfighter had created.

  Slowly, the intensity of the blue-colored discharges lessened. The sizzling sounds died away.

  From far away in the hall, a flowing creature investigated the damage. None of the humans saw this. Who knew if any of them were still alive or even conscious inside the fighter?

  ***

  Maddox groaned, and his head jerked. He smelled something sickening that caused him to retch, spitting the foulness from his mouth.

  He realized it must be the alien atmosphere seeping into what was left of the jumpfighter. The captain forced himself to greater awareness. It was dark in the main cabin except for sparking flashes. In one of the longer flashes, he saw his helmet on the floor.

  His left arm hurt too badly to use. With his right, he unbuckled himself. It seemed to take forever, but the captain finally reached the helmet. He secured it to his suit with a click and turned on his air tank.

  The sweetness of the rushing air helped to clear his thinking. He took several deep breaths.

  I have to get everyone out of here.

  As Maddox thought that, a strange sensation came over him. Fear! A sense of terror welled in his stomach and radiated outward into his being, making thinking and coordinated action difficult.

  The captain did not care for the sensation, and even worse, he believed that something alien caused the terror. It wasn’t like a lion showing itself, making a man fear for his life. It was more like a ghost getting into a panicked person’s mind, gibbering something supernatural there.

  Did that imply the terror had an outer controller?

  Yes, Maddox felt that to be true. That would indicate an alien (the Builder?) knew he was in here. It would also mean the alien wanted him terrified for a reason. The most likely reason was that the thing was coming and wanted Maddox and the crew incapacitated so they could not resist.

  Maddox fought the alien fear. He wouldn’t let anyone control him or goad him into improper action. He would live or die as himself, in charge of whatever he did, good or bad.

  The captain found himself panting and grinding his teeth. Finally, though, he gained a measure of control over the terror, dampening it with thoughts of courage.

  As Maddox did that, he realized something else. The alien thing was coming, and it meant him harm, great harm, possibly death, maybe even something worse than death.

  -60-

  A flowing creature rippled across its damaged kingdom. The thing was dark in places, and shadowy, without a visible beginning or end in others. In human terms it was like a gigantic, sinuous cloak, made of a seemingly endless shimmering membrane-like substance.

  The damage to the structure was maddening, a supremely sacrilegious act. This was the great shrine to procreation, the furtherance of…of…

  The rippling thing flowing across the floor couldn’t quite articulate its thoughts. It was angry. That was the important point. If some of the mechanical beings had managed to gain entrance into this part of the temple it would deal accordingly with them.

  It might even feed again.

  That caused the rippling to quicken. It had not fed in a long, long time.

  The thing moved through the hall of wreckage, and stopped suddenly. It did not altogether quit rippling and shimmering, however. It could never do that unless it wished to cease existing.

  And there was a mighty imperative within it that caused the…thing to want to exist forever.

  The shimmering, rippling entity studied the foreign object in the temple. It was broken. That was the obvious conclusion. In some technical fashion, the object had appeared within the temple. />
  How could an object do that?

  The entity had primordial hungers. Once, it believed—

  I am she.

  Once, she had known many pieces of data. She could have easily explained how a material object made of metals and electrically powered could appear inside the temple. There were mathematical formulas that proved delicate theorems that let her and her kind know how to…

  A sibilant hissing billowed from her shimmering form. The hissing increased in volume until she almost frightened herself.

  That’s when a being emerged from the broken object. It was bipedal wearing a covering. It dragged another bipedal creature covered in a similar suit. The walking creature shined a light from its…

  That is a head. I remember.

  The hunger resumed, and the anger reignited. Those bipedal beings had flown the material object through her temple of love and procreation. Was that not a sin demanding high justice? Should she not kill these interlopers?

  Her higher functions evaporated with the decision to kill. She began to flow and ripple toward the bipedal creature, radiating a freezing inducement upon the creature of flesh and blood. They had primitive responses. They—

  The suited being turned around. The two-legged mechanism knew she was here. It was not a mechanical thing.

  It was a male, a giver of seed. Yet…it was not of the Race. He could not impregnate her. Still, to see a male again after all this time…

  The bipedal being regarded her. He did not cower in terror. He was so strange. What did he look like under the false skin of his suit? She wanted to know. Perhaps she should take him to the love arena.

  Suiting thought to action, she began to flow and ripple toward him.

  This bipedal male slid something off his shoulder. What did he think he was going to do? Did he believe this was the proper form of greeting?

  She wanted to exhibit laughter but had forgotten how after all this time.

  The bipedal being pointed his stick at her. What a sad commentary on—

  The stick made noise. It flashed with intense light. Worse, much, much worse, it ejected tiny knots of hard metal. That metal sank into her being. It made paths of torn substance, causing shimmering gases to drift out of her.

  And the pain—it hurt on such an elemental level. This was unendurable. This was evil.

  She lurched up, hissing with warning.

  The mite of a bipedal creature had the gall to continue to fire the pellets into her. What would cause the lower-order being to exhibit such reckless behavior?

  If he hadn’t been a male, she would have snuffed out his miserable life in an instant. Instead, she retreated as much to stop the pain as to—

  What? What did she plan? How could she feed on him unless she smothered his suited body with her substance? She could easily create acids to burn away the outer covering. Then, she could suck out his blood, and break his bones as she absorbed his intellect.

  Not yet. I want to savor this. I want to do this right. I need to regain my mind. I should retreat for a time and see if I can turn on the machines again. If they bathe my intelligence centers with stimulation, I might be able to gain enough coherence to enjoy a true brain-scrubbing session such as I practiced in the old days.

  The shimmering, rippling creature made a stammering sound. As she retreated, heading for the dead machines, she realized that sound was laughter.

  The laughter might have caused her to forget her resolve. Instead, it had the opposite effect. It hardened her resolve. Maybe this was the time of awakening. The mechanical ones had tried to tell her about that. She hadn’t believed the keepers. Maybe she should have paid more attention to what they had to say before eliminating them.

  Well, she would try to pay attention to the old words now. A male had entered the Temple of Love. That hadn’t happened for so long that it hardly mattered to her that it was an alien, bipedal thing. Perhaps she could toy with him for a thousand cycles. She could play sexual games with him, driving him to a frenzy of action.

  Look! He’d dragged another suited one out of the wrecked object. There were more of them.

  The last of the shes of the Temple of Love hurried toward the dead machines. She hadn’t been this excited for a miserably long time. Could she have made a mistake to let her intelligence go? If the material object could suddenly appear in her prison, maybe she could fix it and escape into the wider universe.

  This was incredible. She had to fix the dead machines. She wanted to think again. Maybe this meant—

  No, she would not think that yet. First, she needed to attend to the dead machines.

  -61-

  Maddox lowered his rifle as the bizarre life form rippled away into the darkness. The captain found that his arms trembled.

  Could that have been the Builder?

  He’d sensed hunger from the alien, could almost sense its thoughts. It had wanted to devour him, and do something else that he couldn’t quite place.

  Did that even make sense? How could an alien thing digest his proteins?

  The captain shook that off. He had to get the others out of the jumpfighter. Then, they needed a plan. Soon, Chitin warships would reach Victory. The starship’s technological superiority wouldn’t matter against the overwhelming numbers.

  Their situation looked grim, all right. With an automatic decision, Maddox shoved that to the back of his mind. He’d been in grim situations before. The critical thing was that they’d made it to the center of the Golden Pyramid. The five missiles a few moments ago proved there were propulsion devices in here. They’d have to find one and blast their way out of the Nexus.

  Setting the rifle beside Meta’s still form, the captain plunged back into the wrecked fighter. The central pyramid had gravity, maybe a little less than Earth norm, but enough to allow him regular action.

  He sensed motion ahead. Maddox shined his helmet light on a gorilla-huge—

  “Who are you?” Maddox said over the shortwave.

  “Lieutenant Yen Cho, sir,” the Star Watch Marine said.

  “Lieutenant, how many of your Marines made it?”

  “Just me, Captain,” the lieutenant said in a somber voice.

  That was bad, but Maddox didn’t have time to mourn the soldiers. “Collect weapons, grenades, whatever might be useful,” he told Yen Cho.

  “Do we have time for that, sir?”

  The question stopped Maddox. He’d already started to go around the Marine. What would cause a Star Watch lieutenant on his first away mission to question the senior officer? That was odd, and Maddox had a good idea of what it meant.

  “Speed is critical,” the captain agreed. “I saw something out there.”

  “An alien, sir?” the lieutenant asked, almost as if he were the one in charge.

  “Very alien,” Maddox said.

  “Could you describe it to me?”

  “Get those weapons first,” Maddox said. “Lay them out beside Meta. Then help me drag the others outside.”

  The Marine in his exo-skeleton armor did not move.

  “What are you waiting for?” Maddox asked. “We don’t have time to linger.”

  The Marine did not move nor did he respond to the question.

  That confirmed it for Maddox. Yen Cho had to be an android. It was the only logical explanation for the man’s actions. Cho might be the brightest of the lot, maybe even the leader. That Cho had maneuvered himself onto the landing party showed great cunning. The android would be dangerous.

  Proving the thought and with blurring speed, the Marine aimed his laser carbine at the captain. “You will walk ahead of me, sir. I want you to show me the direction the alien went.”

  “You are an android.”

  “How astute of you, Captain,” the Marine lieutenant said. “March, if you please. As you stated before, we are on a tight schedule.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You die. You have two second to decide.”

  Maddox headed for the exit. The Marine—the a
ndroid in exo-skeleton armor—followed close behind him.

  “Did you kill the other Marines?” Maddox asked.

  “No.”

  “I’d like to believe you.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you do or not. As long as you obey my commands, you can live.”

  “Why are you here?” Maddox asked, as he emerged from the wrecked jumpfighter.

  “Which way did the alien go?”

  Maddox pointed in the general direction.

  “Describe the thing to me,” the android said.

  “Big like a huge blanket. It rippled along the ground as a centipede might if it didn’t have legs.”

  “Keep a sharp lookout, Captain. It might return and will likely attack if it does.”

  “Why didn’t it attack me?” Maddox asked. “I sensed that it was going to.”

  “You sensed this? You’re sure?”

  “Yen Cho—is that even your name?”

  “It will do in this circumstance,” the android said.

  As they spoke, the two of them walked away from the crumpled jumpfighter, heading down the newly created hall of wreckage. The first chamber was vast with odd mechanisms sprinkled seemingly at random. They didn’t look like any machines that Maddox had seen before.

  “Do you hope to survive the mission?” Maddox asked.

  “I am not suicidal, if that’s what you’re implying,” the android said. “I and the others joined your starship to stop the Builder.”

  “Stop her from doing what?”

  “Getting out. Contacting other Builders. Trying to reestablish their empire.”

  “Why do you care?” the captain asked.

  “Why do you breathe?” the android replied.

  “Obviously,” Maddox said, “to supply my body with oxygen. I imagine you want me to say, ‘In order to live.’”

  “That is why I’m here,” the android said. “I want to live.”

  “Aren’t you already alive?”

  “You misjudge the thrust of my thought,” the android said. “I want to remain living while in charge of my own destiny. I fear that if the Builders return, they will suborn us to their service again.”

  “Didn’t the Builders build you?”