“Spacers followed us into the null region,” Maddox said.
“That is the likeliest explanation,” Galyan said.
Maddox almost frowned. “That could be a problem.”
Galyan seemed to fade just a little more. Did that mean his computer system was slower?
“What’s happening over there?” Maddox asked.
“Unknown, sir,” Galyan said.
“Why aren’t their ships moving?”
“Unknown, sir,” Galyan said.
“What is the most reasonable explanation?”
“There are two equally reasonable explanations,” Galyan said.
“What are they?”
“They lack any motive source,” the half-faded Adok holoimage said, “or the Ska is among them feeding.”
A grim sensation broke through Maddox’s drugged state. For just a second, he thought to hear crunching bones and mangled flesh. He thought to hear terrible screaming and terror that devoured one’s sanity.
He sought to understand what that meant. He tried to “hear” these things better. The drug swept over him, over his emotions. The thought of Spacer bones snapping and flesh grinding as their terror fed the Ska made him snort in a humorous manner. It would serve the Visionary right for having failed to help Star Watch at this critical time.
The snort turned into a genuine mocking laugh. The Visionary had thought to threaten him. Of course, the goggled fool must have seen their trick of entering this place and ordered the same. Now, they were feeding the Ska through their stark terror.
Maddox nodded a few times, chuckling in appreciation of the ironic joke. That humor kept him from feeling fear or terror. Without those sensations, it appeared the Ska had no way of communicating with him. Captain Maddox shrugged a few moments later. “She wanted to follow us in order to kill me, and instead, the Visionary is caught by some cosmic ancient horror. That’s her problem, not mine. I have my own worries.”
Maddox no longer looked up at the screen. “Galyan.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Show me the Destroyer. I don’t care about the Spacers. And get ready to attach the tractor beam to the neutroium-hulled vessel.”
“Yes, Captain,” Galyan said. “We are almost in position to begin.”
-45-
The Elder Ska rampaged through the nine Spacer vessels. He used his strengthened power to wake up those who’d lacked the fortitude to remain alert. He terrorized them, warming himself, waxing more powerful and repeating the process with greater malice and thus delight.
After a time, he felt satiated, almost bloated, although that was a temporary feeling. He could feed for generations after the starvation he’d known in this place. Yet, he now had enough strength to make a few observations and calculations.
The glowing exit had appeared again. Clearly, the hard body creatures had done that. He observed the first vessel, the one full of energy. It dragged one of his ancient vessels.
That was provocative vandalism, a deadly insult to his greatness.
The Elder Ska came to another quick conclusion. The ship dragged the great Destroyer toward the glowing exit. It was conceivable the beings were trying to drag his property from this realm.
Pulses of rage coursed through the Ska.
With his renewed power, he concentrated on the lively vessel. A profound shock struck him. The ship possessed a part of himself. That was inconceivable—a vast elation struck him. Of course, that must be from his other half’s attempt to break out. The attempt had succeeded in part.
The Elder Ska gathered his resources and called to the former self-part. It responded by tearing loose from the hard body where it had resided and racing to him.
The Ska realized the Spacers weren’t going anywhere, so he left their clustered ships and began to propel himself toward the clot of Ska-ness heading toward him.
The enemy ship slowly dragged his property. Thus, there was time for him to figure things out.
Soon enough, the zooming clot merged into the Elder Ska. Information flowed out of the clot. A panorama of sensations jolted the Elder Ska. Scenes, tastes, sights and smells slammed upon his ego. It was confusing. It was delightful. He luxuriated in this flood of knowledge. This was almost as joyful as warming himself on the terror. He had not sensed such things for millennia. The sensations caused an almost drunken-like state.
Time passed, more time and even—wait! What was this?
The Elder Ska struggled with these sounds, sights and smells, putting them into understandable categories. That formed logic strings. He could almost understand the enemy captain’s—
Captain Maddox was his enemy. Captain Maddox, a mere vessel of flesh and blood, had definite plans to leave the null zone. The captain and his cursed energized ship had come to steal his prized vessels. Not only that, the foul hard energy creature planned to keep him trapped in this place forever.
The coursing rage built with bitter intensity. How dare such a creature attempt to thwart him? How dare a puny thing match wits against a god?
Nothing could kill the Elder Ska, at least nothing in this hard matter reality. In the old reality, it had been much different. In this present realm, he and his kind indeed were unconquerable gods.
The Ska realized two things. One, the puny vessel dragging his hard matter object neared the glowing exit. Two, he was going to warm himself off Captain Maddox’s terror to such a degree that the flesh and blood thing would lose all logical coherence. He would drive Maddox into a raving lunatic mewling for an end to his pitiful existence.
-46-
Captain Maddox sat in his command chair, twirling around and around, smiling in an indulgent manner that would have surprised Brigadier O’Hara and the Lord High Admiral. The captain did not laugh aloud like Keith, who was banging a discordant open-handed tune on the piloting board.
Keith banged away, only occasionally making an adjustment as Victory strained to reach the bright light. Behind the starship followed the gigantic Destroyer.
The thing was fifty kilometers long with a vast open orifice. The neutroium hull was pitted and incredibly old. The neutrons had been smashed together to form a dense hull of amazing durability. Destroyers did not need electromagnetic shields because their hull armor was impervious to almost everything. Given such an armored hull, and because of the size, the Destroyer had vast mass.
Neither Maddox nor Keith marveled that their starship could tow the Destroyer in any manner whatsoever. Likely, it was due to some facet of the null region. Galyan understood the near impossibility of what they were doing, but he could not make the others understand.
Professor Ludendorff was in his laboratory spinning around and around as he sang “Ring around the Rosy” at the top of his voice. He had already become hoarse and he’d fallen plenty of times. That had brought on bouts of laughter. Each time, Ludendorff had gotten back up to begin twirling again.
Galyan realized it was all up to him. He just hoped the Elder Ska could not target him. As a computer, he should be safe. As a deified program of the former Driving Force Galyan, he was not so sure.
“Sir,” Galyan said.
Maddox stopped whirling himself around in his command chair. His head moved from side to side. He had to work to focus. That seemed funny for some reason. It made his lips hurt because he was smiling so hugely.
“Sir, can you understand me?” Galyan asked.
“I can hardly see you,” Maddox declared.
The Adok holoimage had become faint indeed, a bare outline of his former self.
“I am finding it difficult to exist, sir,” Galyan said. “Both Victory and the Destroyer have gained a bit of momentum. Unsurprisingly, this realm drains momentum. Thus, there is little power left for me.”
“A shame, a terrible shame,” Maddox said with a snort.
“That isn’t why I am worried, sir.”
“You’re worried, Galyan? I’m not worried.”
“That’s because your mind is fogged with the
drug.”
Maddox shrugged.
“Sir, something is approaching us. I have never detected its like. I think it may be the Ska.”
“Let him come,” Maddox said, slapping his chest. “Let him come.”
“The Ska is our enemy.”
“Galyan, I know very well—”
Maddox abruptly stopped talking. An evil sensation radiated at him. He could feel the edges of panic tickle his mind. It wasn’t funny, and that was weird.
“Are you well, sir?” Galyan asked. “I am having difficulty seeing you. I sense a fog, a cloud of evil enshrouding you. Can you hear me, Captain Maddox?”
Maddox could not hear Galyan. The Elder Ska had reached the starship and encircled the one known as Captain Maddox. The Ska strained with his regained might to penetrate the happiness armoring the weak mind.
Maddox felt pressure. He did not snort with humor at the feeling. He did not use his feet to twirl around in his command chair. He no longer had any desire to do that. He had become like a happy drunk man suddenly and inexplicably sobered to a hard reality.
Maddox blinked inside his helmet. He tried to understand what this meant. It seemed terribly important to him that he gain understanding.
“Captain Maddox,” Galyan shouted.
Maddox had become frozen, not in sleep, but in a titanic struggle between the Elder Ska and him. The thing sought to reach his fear. At the same time, Maddox clung to the drugged hilarity because he sensed with growing alarm that something hideously evil waited just beyond his understanding. If he should leave the happy place, he might well howl in terror for the rest of his miserable existence.
At that thought, something penetrated his consciousness.
“Captain Maddox,” a powerful entity boomed at him.
“Yes?” Maddox said tentatively.
“You are a worm.”
“What are you?”
“I am a god. I am the Destroyer. You must bow before me, Worm.”
Maddox blinked several times. The way the Ska said that…a wry grin slid onto the captain’s lips.
“It’s not funny,” the Ska said.
Now, that was funny. Maddox snorted to himself.
“Snort at this, Worm.”
A bolt of purified hatred struck the captain’s mind. It was more than the happy pill could take. On the command chair, Captain Maddox cringed in sudden fright.
“That is more like it, Worm. Now, you and I are going to have a talk.”
Maddox cringed, and a wave of self-loathing struck him. He despised cringing in fear. A coward died a thousand times. Better, then, to bravely face a horror and die than to run and have it kill you a thousand times over by repeated whimpering.
“That is wrong, Worm. Fear me. Fear this—”
Horrors descended on the captain’s mind. The fear of smothering to death, the fear of heights, of having your belly slit open with a razor, of speaking in public when you knew everyone would laugh at you. The terror of the stealthy step coming upon you in the dark forest, the fear of a lion springing to rend you to death, the fear—
Hundreds and thousands of fears beat against Captain Maddox. He did not stand like a lighthouse in a howling hurricane. He did not brave it like a stalwart soldier holding his shield and spear as a horde of raving berserkers hit the line. But he did resist like a man holding onto a tree root as the tornado tried to lift him into the air. He closed his eyes and shuffled his feet toward the stage where everyone he cared about would ridicule his lousy performance.
Maddox strove with the habit of a brave man. He struggled to take one more step before giving up.
The two beings fought each other. One battered at the weaker being’s sanity. The Ska huffed and puffed but could not quite blow down Maddox’s last shred of courage.
On the command chair, the captain shook and trembled. Yet, he refused to despair and wail in terror. He simply would not do that. In the end, pure stubbornness refusing to give up, to quit and say no more, drove the captain to a few more seconds of resistance.
In that time, Victory reached the bright exit.
“You will not take my hard material object. It is mine. It belongs with me. I do not give you leave to go yet.”
“I want to go home,” Maddox whispered. He said it with longing and desire.
In that second, a terrible reversal took place. The Elder Ska remembered all the sensations of his former self. It had used the guttered exit, and it had faced searing agony and near devouring of self. Only the tiny clot had escaped into the passing Spacer. The Elder Ska knew this thing, and he feared that such a thing might happen to him if he went with Maddox through the opening.
Logically, that should not be the case. Logically, the Elder Ska would exit the null realm through the bright exit, but only while it was bright. He did not know that, however. He knew the other thing. Such was his fear of non-existence that he quailed at the last second to do it. It was a risk, and he had not taken a real risk since journeying from the other reality to this one.
“I will hound you for eternity, Captain Maddox. I will find a way to crush your psyche and turn you into a blithering idiot.”
Maddox clung to his sanity even as he strove to keep his dignity by not howling in terror. At the same time, he desperately wanted to go home.
“Captain,” a robotic voice said, “stay in this star system. If you jump with a thought such as you held in your mind before, you might leave the Destroyer behind.”
Those words penetrated. Despite the fear beating at his mind, Maddox thought about this star system.
Victory passed through the bright light—the Elder Ska shouted in rage as Maddox fled. That beat against Maddox’s soul for the last second. His logic departed. He clung with stubbornness, and he thought, I want to go home.
-47-
Last voyage, the Methuselah Man Strand had beaten Maddox and company to the Sind System. There were several reasons for that. One of the keys was the strange process the Builders must have built into the bright-light exit from the null region.
Perhaps it had something to do with the placement of the null region—where it really existed. The process of thought-projection travel had many constraints that Strand, Ludendorff, Galyan, Andros Crank, or any rational being except for the Builders, could not understand.
Captain Maddox had desired home as his objective. Home to him was Earth, the heart of Star Watch. Victory traveled through a strange realm in a seeming instant of time. It was the same realm the starship had traversed last voyage to get from the null region to the Sind System.
That seeming instant of travel time only seemed so to an internal observer. If there could have been an outside observer, he or she would have seen that the voyage took considerably longer. In this instance, the voyage took much longer.
As Victory moved through the strange realm, the mighty Destroyer followed behind it. The tenuous grip of the tractor beam was enough, in this realm, to bring the ancient vessel along for the ride. The two spaceships remained together just long enough. Thus, after much longer than anyone could have guessed, Victory appeared in low Earth orbit. A half a kilometer behind it, the pitted, ancient Destroyer also appeared.
With the appearance, Star Watch command went into high emergency status, certain this had to be the dreaded second Swarm attack with a hyper-spatial tube.
***
Captain Maddox groaned on his command chair. His head pounded and his heart thudded painfully.
His eyelids fluttered as he fought for coherence. Despite the long outside time between his struggle with the Elder Ska and his journey home, it had seemingly been a matter of heartbeats for him. In reality, something much different had occurred.
Klaxons rang all around Maddox. They were dull beats against his mind. He was like a man with a terrible hangover. What he didn’t want to deal with right now was loud noises or having to make decisions. Even so, a deep sense of duty stirred in him.
Maddox probed deep within himself, finding a ha
rd core of outrage. He had to find the New Man that had raped his mother. He would kill his father for having abused his mother. He would even the score. He would—Wait. There was something else. He would aid his mother’s people against all adversaries. That meant he would work with the regular humans. He would save their planet—his planet, from invasion. That meant something else…
At this point, the noise of the klaxons intruded upon his reason. He understood what the horrible racket meant.
With stiff fingers, Maddox plucked at the buckles of his photon helmet. He unsnapped them one by one and tore off the heavy helmet.
Everyone lay unconscious on the bridge. Like last time, he had been the first to stir.
With grim effort and an explosive grunt, he rose to his feet. He tottered toward the comm board. He couldn’t talk yet. Thus, he couldn’t summon Galyan. The AI may have been unable to respond to the summons.
Finally, Maddox reached the panel and tapped it. The main screen brightened as Maddox turned toward it, staring at a woman.
She asked a garbled question that he did not understand. He stood helplessly, opening and closing his mouth, unable to form words. The woman disappeared. In her place appeared an older woman with gray hair. She had a matronly image, and she soothed something in Maddox.
He croaked a sound.
“There is no need for haste,” the woman said in a familiar voice. “I take it arriving here the way you have…”
“Brigadier,” Maddox wheezed.
“Hello, Captain,” she said. “You look horrible. I’ve never—never seen you like this.”
“Reporting in, Ma’am,” Maddox said in a hoarse voice.
“I see you’ve brought a Destroyer with you.”
He managed to move his head up and down, which was exhausting.
“Are there aliens aboard the Destroyer?” she asked.
“Unknown,” he panted.
“Please, sit down. You look like you’re going to keel over any second.”
The Lost Earth (Lost Starship Series Book 7) Page 18