The Warden nodded. “They’re dead. All of them. I gave them a chance, but I was not about to let them harm those settlers.”
Karen turned and walked behind her desk, placed the ancient weapon on its glass surface. “That was a costly mistake. On my part. I would have let that little fellow from Janglu go if I’d known he would make straight for our next target. Now I’m in the red for eight security operators. But at least you brought my transport back. I suppose I should thank you for that, though these costs will be negligible once we’ve completed our tests.”
The Warden’s mouth hardened. “You don’t understand. You’re not just killing stars, you’re killing whole systems, whole stretches of the galaxy. Eventually those black holes you’re leaving behind will merge into a super hole, and all of the Frontier will die.”
Karen narrowed her eyes. “So? There is nothing out here but death and desolation. The Tuatha Wars saw to that. Those alien monsters destroyed their own civilization rather than allow the U.P.C. to conquer them. They wiped themselves out and any chance we might have of ever colonizing this part of space in a dozen lifetimes.”
“That isn’t all that long in the grand scheme of things, believe me. And these Undocs you’re talking about are doing it. They are actually making a viable living on these so-called desolate worlds. In a few generations, they will be the ones who will have made it possible for the Frontier to become part of the Civilized Worlds. And your Sun Smasher is destroying that possibility, that future.”
Karen sneered. “All those Undocs are doing is killing themselves and their children slowly. What right have they to come out here and defy the laws of the U.P.C.? They should be back where they belong, in the Civilized Worlds, earning wages, paying bills, and buying merchandise to finance real innovation and exploration. What gives them the right to rebel against a system that has made Earth the economic center of the galaxy for centuries?”
The Warden tilted his head as if he were speaking to a child, annoying Karen to no end. “They’re people, just like you and me. That alone gives them every right in the world.”
“Get him out of here. Put him in a holding cell until I decide what to do with him.”
Alone in the office, she picked up the blaster and shoved it back into its holster. She traced the etched logo on the belt buckle. A single world silhouetted against a bright star, the planet’s orbit a silver ellipse balanced against six golden rays of the sunburst.
“The Last Star Warden, huh?”
---
The Warden paced his holding cell for over an hour before she came. He waited as she dismissed the guards. She was not wearing the smart business suit she’d worn in the office. Her new attire looked something like an evening gown made of stars and distant galaxies, sparkling like her dark eyes. Her raven hair was freed from the severe bun she’d sported earlier, the thick tresses cascading over her toned shoulders.
“Miss… I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”
She smiled, playfully now, not mean or angry. “And I still don’t know yours, Warden.”
“That’s good enough for me. So, do I call you Miss President, Miss CEO, or something else?”
She laughed. It was a pleasant sound. “I am Karen Reeves, Senior VP in charge of Research and Development for SuperCorp. But Karen will suffice.”
“Well, Miss Reeves,” the Warden said. “Are you going to a party? Or do you always get dolled up before sentencing your prisoners?”
“You intrigue me, Warden. Not many men do. Most of them are so obvious, so clumsy in their attempts at getting what they want. So desperate to gain approval, to be told they are good little boys. So afraid of failing, but more afraid of actually succeeding.”
“Sounds like you’ve mistaken something else for men.”
Her smile widened. “Where do you come from, Warden? Not Earth, surely. A lost colony on the Frontier perhaps, isolated by the Tuatha Wars and the subsequent Frontier Preservation Acts? Somewhere that builds real men and not the simpering, obsequious, milquetoast specimens we now have in the Civilized Worlds?”
The Warden took a deep breath. “I’m from Earth. A small town that’s probably not even there anymore.”
She frowned, trying to remember something. “Your accent… Are you from the North American Collective?”
The Warden shrugged. In his day, it had still been called the United States of America. In any case, his origins, now lost to time, were no business of hers. “So, are you going to tell me why you’re here? Why we’re alone and why you’re dressed like that?”
She ran a hand slowly along his upper arm, her long-lashed eyes looking him up and down. “I could use a man like you out here, Warden. A man with the skill to take down eight troopers singlehandedly and the gall to try and sneak aboard this ship alone… well, such a man could demand a very handsome price for his… services.”
The Warden didn’t have to stretch his imagination to understand her double meaning. “I don’t fight for money, and I certainly don’t do the other for it, either. Peddle your wares somewhere else, Miss Reeves, ’cause I ain’t buying.”
She stiffened, her nostrils flaring. “I thought you were a bit slow, Warden, but I didn’t suspect you were downright stupid. Don’t you realize I could have you killed with a word?”
He nodded. “Just like the word you gave to kill those Undocs on Janglu. Just like the word that will kill the settlers on Kleppin 3. The difference is, you’ve actually seen me, spoken to me. I’m real to you now, and that reality will haunt you for the rest of your life if you kill me. And then you’ll start to feel the weight of all the other souls you’ve consigned to eternity with your words. That weight will crush you, destroy you in the end, Miss Reeves.”
She spun to face the wall, her hands knotting into shaking fists. “I hate the Undocs,” she said in a low, husky voice. “I’d kill them all if I could. Lousy, grubby, murdering bastards.”
The Warden raised his chin in sudden understanding. He stared at her quivering back and said in a low voice, “The Breakthrough. I’ve heard about it. You were there?”
Reeves turned and faced him, her chin set defiantly. No tears marred her cheeks, but her dark eyes glistened in the fluorescent light. “Twenty-five years ago, when the Star Cav blockade first tried to seal off the Frontier at the end of the Tuatha Wars. My parents were officers aboard the Falk-Moore, one of the battleships in the blockade.
“The fighting had been over for several months. No one thought there was any danger, no one thought to evacuate the non-combatants from the warships. No one expected an entire armada of Undoc blockade runners to launch a suicide attack in their mad dash for the Frontier. Two thousand civilian ships pitted against sixty-four U.P.C. warships. To this day, no one knows how many of the bastards got through…”
She touched a glimmer at the edge of her left eye and sniffed. “I was one of twenty-two survivors aboard the Falk-Moore, found by rescue crews four days after the battle. I don’t know if I dreamed it, or if it was real… but at some point, in those four days, I saw my mother’s frozen corpse drift by the porthole of my sealed compartment…
“So, believe me, Warden, I’ll not shed a single tear nor lose a single moment’s sleep for the death of any number of those Undoc scum.”
The Warden shook his head. “I’m sorry for your loss. But there are children on Kleppin 3, children who will suffer just as you suffered aboard your parents’ ship. And if one of them survives, he or she might be filled with that same kind of hatred, and in twenty-five years, we could be facing another Breakthrough, or something even worse. You have a chance to end the cycle here and now.”
She laughed bitterly. “Well then, I guess we’ll just have to make sure no one escapes this time.” She turned to the door and shouted, “Guards!”
“Please,” the Warden said. “Yours is the power to give life and peace. That is an awesome responsibility and a very precious gift. Please, don’t squander it.”
Reeves sneered as she
told the guards, “Take him to the nearest airlock and space him.”
The armored men grabbed the Warden and hauled him from the cell. Reeves said, “I’ll be looking out my office window, Warden, watching for your frozen corpse.”
When the four troopers crowded him into a service lift, the Warden said, “You guys realize this is wrong, don’t you? This has got to stop before anyone else gets hurt or killed.”
One of the men drove the butt of his blaster carbine into the Warden’s ribs, still sore from his tussle with the pirates. “Shut up, weirdo.”
Wincing at the pain, the Warden took a deep breath. “Look, this doesn’t have to end bloody. If you help me, we can take over this ship without a struggle—”
“I said shut up!” The trooper swung the weapon again, but the Warden moved.
His hands were bound by the gravity shackles in front of him and he was surrounded by four armed and armored mercenaries. But the Warden’s head and feet were still free. In the tight confines of the elevator, it was not a fair fight at all.
When the lift reached the airlock level, the Warden stepped from the smoke-filled car. The four unconscious guards lay on the floor along with the gravity shackles. The Warden held a blaster carbine in each of his freed hands.
Scanning the floorplan layout beneath the elevator’s keypad, he devised the quickest route to the ship’s command center. Then he went to work.
---
“He’s taken the bridge,” Captain Kirby announced over the com. “He incapacitated the posted guards and forced the command crew out at gunpoint. I’m sorry, Miss Reeves, there’s nothing we could do.”
Karen rubbed the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. She would see Kirby ruined for this, but right now she had to solve the bigger problem. “I want every able-bodied trooper armed and ready for a full assault on the bridge in two minutes. Issue sidearms to everyone else and have them stand in reserve. In the meantime, you and the bridge crew meet me at the auxiliary command center.”
“Ah…” There was a staticky pause on the other end of the channel.
“What is it, Captain?”
“Well, Miss Reeves, I’m afraid the auxiliary command center is not fully operational. It was not deemed necessary for the initial tests.”
Karen slammed her fist onto the glass-topped desk. She’d find out who had made that decision and have them join Kirby in the unemployment line. “Well, get a crew down there and see what functions can be commandeered. Immediately!”
Karen ended the call and headed for her quarters. The crisis at hand required something much more functional than her best evening gown.
The com chirped. It was a ship-wide announcement. “This is the Star Warden. I have taken control of this ship. I will be powering down the engines and contacting the nearest Star Cav flotilla, informing them of the illegal nature of this craft’s function and operation. I advise all crewmembers to return to your quarters and await the arrival of duly-appointed officials. There is no need to further involve yourselves in the crimes of your superiors. That is all.”
Karen glared at the speaker. “The hell it is.”
---
“I wish Quantum was here,” the Warden growled. Despite his announcement, he found himself unable to operate the controls of the titanic spaceship. Just like the communications array on the transport, the bridge controls were DNA locked. Only now did the Warden realize that whatever Quantum had done to the transport had allowed him to even get it off the ground in the first place.
The only reason he had access to the coms was the system was still running when he’d taken the bridge. The other stations’ operators had had enough time to shut their systems down.
“I’m over a hundred years behind the tech curve,” the Warden sighed. “I should have kept a crewmember just to use his thumbprint.”
A blazing light along the edge of the sealed blast door caught his attention. He scanned the security terminals and saw the outer corridor filled with armored troopers. They used a plasma torch to cut their way into the bridge.
The Warden picked up the two blaster carbines and stepped behind a command station. He wasn’t sure how many charges each of the newer weapons carried, but he knew whatever that payload was, that was the number of mercenaries about to wind up in the loss column of SuperCorp’s ledgers.
“Unless there’s a better way.” He looked at the control panels one more time.
---
Karen stormed into the auxiliary command center with four troopers in tow, a blaster pistol strapped to her thigh. She wore a tailored version of the gray corporate jumpsuit issued to all members of the crew. “Captain Kirby, what is the current situation?”
The older man frowned, looked up from a console where a pair of junior officers frantically tapped out code. A trio of mechanics and engineers hurried to impart functionality to useless equipment under the other two consoles in the small room. “We’ve got communications, so there’s no need to worry about our guest calling the authorities. We should have helm control within the next ten minutes.”
“What about engineering? He still hasn’t cut power to the engines.”
“Working on it. Apparently, this Star Warden hasn’t been able to do much of anything since taking the bridge. The security teams are about to breach, so the situation may well be resolved before we’re finished down here.”
Karen thought about the man who had rejected her, the man who had challenged her to do the right thing while facing certain death. She shook her head. “I doubt that very seriously, Captain. Keep at it.”
A low moan thrummed through the ship. Karen felt a pit open in her stomach, as though she had just fallen a considerable distance. “What is that?”
Kirby looked at the control panel. “I… I don’t know how, but he’s caused the ship to accelerate to maximum speed. Beyond normal safety protocols.”
“Why would he do that?”
Kirby looked disturbed. “No idea. Our current rate of acceleration and trajectory will carry us into the Kleppin star within the next two hours. That is if we don’t shake apart first.”
Karen tapped one of the officers at the terminal on the shoulder. “Get me helm controls right now!”
The young woman looked up as her screen went black. “I’m sorry, Miss Reeves. All helm controls just went down. So did a lot of other systems. The entire command network needs to be rebooted.”
Karen looked up at the white star in the view screen as it grew larger and larger with each passing second. “We’ve got to get to engineering and shut down those engines.”
As she turned to go, a voice boomed across the ship-wide intercom. The shouted sentences were punctuated by the sounds of blaster fire and distant cries of pain:
“This is the Star Warden... Sorry things didn’t work out as planned… but it looks like this ship is headed for a collision course with the nearest star... I highly recommend everyone get to a transport or a lifeboat and get off this thing as soon as possible... That is all.”
The junior officers stared at her, then looked at Kirby. They jumped to their feet and led the technicians from the room in a hurry.
“Stop! I’ll have you all fired!” Karen shouted after them. She turned to her security detail. “Shoot them!” But the armored men were already following the crewmembers to safety.
Karen drew her blaster pistol.
“Miss Reeves!” Captain Kirby said. “Please, you must be reasonable.”
Karen leveled the pistol at him. “How long to shut down the engines once we get to engineering?”
Kirby stood straight and shook his head. “I’m afraid it is out of the question. We may shut the engines down, but without control of the retrorockets, our current momentum will still carry us into the star’s corona long before we can reboot the system. I’m afraid we’ve lost.”
Karen shot him.
The captain fell to the floor, his pale eyes showing more disappointment than surprise or even anger. Karen had anger
enough for both of them as she watched the man die. “That is but one of the many differences between the two of us, Kirby. I never lose.”
Holstering the weapon, Karen ran from the small room, headed for engineering.
---
The Warden crouched behind the smoking control terminal. He had yanked as many wires and cables from under the helm console as he could before the troopers had breached the room. Only his hurried announcement of the ship’s pending destruction had quelled the onslaught of armored men onto the bridge.
And none too soon. Both of his captured weapons were out of ammo. A score of corporate grunts scattered around the haze-filled room attested to the efficient use of that ammunition.
Rising from behind cover, the Warden realized he was alone on the bridge. As soon as one trooper had made the decision to save himself rather than face the meat-grinder in the control room, the rout had begun. Mercenaries could only be counted on to fight so long as they held the upper hand. Most men’s loyalty to a paycheck came up short somewhere before possible death or dismemberment.
The Warden scanned the few controls still operational and concluded that he had no chance of preventing the Sun Smasher from colliding with the Kleppin star. At least not without the aid of someone with access to the controls. Just as the security guards had fled, he was certain all noncombatant SuperCorp crewmembers would be boarding escape craft with as much alacrity as they could muster.
There was only one person who might still be willing to save this ship. The Warden snatched up another rifle from the floor and ran from the smoke-filled bridge. “If I can just convince her this time.”
Surprisingly, he met very little resistance on his way to Reeves’s office—just a few desperate pot-shots fired by fleeing troopers or scared crewmembers. Unsurprisingly, the senior vice president was not there as the Warden had hoped. Still, he was able to recover his Comets.
The Last Star Warden - Tales of Adventure and Mystery from Frontier Space - Volume 1 Page 3