The Last Star Warden - Tales of Adventure and Mystery from Frontier Space - Volume 1

by Jason McCuiston

  The Warden cleared his sore throat. “It was foolishness. It was madness. But I can understand what drove you to do it… And I am sorry that the organization I once served did what they did to your people…” He thought of Maximo Ryan. “I have my own regrets. Mistakes were made… Tragic ones…”

  The Tuatha tilted its glowing head toward the ceiling. Yes. Mistakes were made on all sides… But you are right. We must all choose to be the civilized people we hope to be, even if we are not there just yet.

  Augustus and Maria Sandoval drew near, supporting the dazed Marcus between them. The miner stared at the Tuatha, but gone was the servile reverence of moments before. “You are… Belgu. You helped us build Cibola Seven… and then you did this.”

  Belgu nodded, its thoughts touching all present. Yes, I have erred. But if it is at all possible, I hope to make restitution for my actions. To that end, I will return to my home world and see if there is some positive aspect of my people’s culture which I might cultivate and share with the galaxy… That is, unless you think I should be punished for my transgressions here…

  Maria hugged her husband tighter and glanced at the Warden. “I’m sure there’s been a crime of some kind committed, but as we say on Cibola Seven, we recognize no law but our own. As for me, I’m just glad to have my family back… I don’t have any room in my heart for vengeance now.”

  The Warden looked around at the confused but unharmed people now being ministered to by the security bots. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin with such a case… Unless I learn otherwise, I was the only one to actually kill someone in all this mess.”

  Belgu shifted to a softer hue of blue. You and Maximo Ryan were both under the influence of my madness at the time. You were drawn into this scenario against your will. You should not hold yourself responsible.

  The Warden shrugged, looked at his gloved hands. “He’s still dead.”

  As are my people... Should we seek justice for that, or can we not acknowledge it for the tragedy that it is? Can we not try to move forward and make the galaxy a better place, having learned from the experience? Tell me, can you not move forward, having learned from this?

  The Warden took a deep breath and nodded. “Still, I should face Cibola Seven’s justice. I should stand trial.”

  Augustus Sandoval shook his head. “Warden, look around. If you hadn’t come here, hadn’t kept digging for the truth, there is no telling what we would have done to ourselves. The First Five Citizens, including myself and Ryan, were far more culpable in any wrongdoing than you… There is no justice, no punishment to be had here save what we have already inflicted on ourselves. I’m sure you can understand that?”

  The Warden grunted, knowing he would spend the rest of his life punishing himself for the death of Maximo Ryan. He looked down the corridor and saw the familiar lanky silhouette of Quantum staggering into the chamber. He nodded to the Sandoval family and to the Tuatha.

  “Best of luck to you all. Right now, it looks like I’ve got a friend who could use a hand.”

  Quantum met the Warden with a weak, confused grin. “I understand what has transpired, due to my psychic connection with the Tuatha… I am… I am glad you did not forget about me as so many others were forgotten.”

  The Warden slapped him on the back with a relieved smile. “I could never do that, my friend. Come on, what say we go get that bite to eat now?”

  Escape From Hulk 13

  “What’ve you got?” the Last Star Warden asked as he drifted into the Ranger VII’s command chair.

  Quantum’s antennae twirled. Pulling up a display on the forward view screen, he said, “Does this look familiar?”

  The Warden stared at the enormous void slowly devouring a distant system. He nodded, feeling a cold fist close around his gut. He saw the singularity not as it was at that moment, but as it had been over a century before: the battlefield of the largest interdimensional invasion in recorded history. At least in this universe. He saw men and ships consumed in fiery conflagrations as the hulking Mechtechan cruisers emerged from the event horizon, particle cannons blazing.

  “It does. Frontier Singularity One. What about it?”

  “Since our time, it has been given a new name: Draconus Prime.” Quantum turned to face him. The Mechtechan’s big, expressionless black eyes did not blink, and his undersized mouth showed no hint of emotion. “What if I told you I think I can use it to open a wormhole back to the time of the battle?”

  The Warden’s jaw dropped. “I’d say being wired up to that Tuatha scrambled your egg. Why in the worlds would you ever want to do that?”

  “We could return to our own time. Our own people.”

  The Warden inhaled. It had not been easy, but he had finally come to grips with his place in this new era. Clearly Quantum’s recent and traumatic sojourn on Cibola Seven had not had the same result. “I’m sorry you’re the only Mechtechan left in this reality, my friend… But that’s just too dangerous to even comprehend. Even if you could do such a thing, what are the odds your people wouldn’t take advantage and launch a new invasion?”

  Quantum turned back to the ship’s controls. “They were defeated by your relatively small force of Wardens over a century ago. The United Planetary Council now has several fleets of more impressive ships in its Star Cav. That should prove deterrent enough.

  “Besides, if my calculations are correct, I could actually open a one-way portal for each of us…”

  “If—? What calculations? What are you basing this on?”

  Quantum glanced at him. “I kept the data gathered on the station in HPL-37. I’ve been constructing theoretical models ever since. And while connected to the impressive mind of the Tuatha, I was able to make some valuable insights into the specifics of the multi-dimensional superstring geometry involved in such an undertaking.”

  The Warden closed his eyes and shook his head. There were too many nightmares associated with that accursed space station and with the Cibola Seven case, and now Quantum wanted to use those hellish experiences for this new madness. The casual nature with which Quantum proposed the idea bothered the Warden in a deep and surprising way. It was as if there were suddenly an aspect to his friend’s personality he had yet discovered—a cold, detached, and unsettling one.

  A blaster bolt arced past the forward viewport as the proximity alarms sounded.

  “We’re under attack.” Quantum’s observation was as unemotional as it was unnecessary. “By four assault craft. Star Cav by their ident codes.”

  The Warden grabbed the controls and pushed the Ranger VII into a high-speed evasive maneuver. “What in the Sam Hill does Star Cav want with us?”

  Quantum opened the coms to the attacking ship’s hail. “Attention, Star Warden. This is Lt. Commander Drake of the S.C.S.S. Oreto. You are under arrest by the authority of the United Planetary Council for violation of Star Law. Stand down and surrender or we will destroy your ship.”

  The Warden glanced at the sensor readouts, checked the distance to the closest Einstein-Rosen bridge, and did the math. “There’s no way we can outrun those fast-attack ships. They’ll cut us off before we can make it to an ERB.”

  “We could fight,” Quantum offered, his hand hovering over the weapons system controls. “If we disable one or two, we increase the odds of escape. But we will have to strike fast and decisively.”

  The Warden powered down the ship’s engines. “I’m not fighting Star Cav without a very good reason. Besides, maybe they’re right. Maybe I am guilty of breaking Star Law.”

  Quantum’s antennae flicked. “I believe the incident to which you refer was a clear case of self-defense, or as the officials on Cibola Seven declared it, Justifiable Homicide. You were exonerated.”

  The Warden didn’t completely agree. He knew he would be haunted by the mad, tortured eyes of Maximo Ryan for the rest of his days, no matter what timeline he occupied.

  He activated the coms. “This is the Warden. We surrender.”

  Lt. Co
mmander Drake’s voice responded. “Prepare to be taken in tow. We will escort you to Hulk 13 for processing. If you attempt to power up your weapons or engines, we will destroy you.”

  “Understood.”

  Closing the channel, the Warden turned to Quantum. “They’re not boarding us. That’s odd… And Hulk 13? Isn’t that the prison ship that keeps a constant irregular course on the outskirts of the Frontier?”

  Quantum nodded. “Yes. Once the largest warship built during the Tuatha Wars, the S.C.S.S. Arioch was later decommissioned and re-designated as a prison for war criminals and deserters. Soon after, Hulk 13 was privatized when the U.P.C. turned over all penal facilities to corporate interests.

  “In the ensuing years, as its size and inmate population grew, it gained a somewhat nefarious reputation as the worst place in the galaxy. I believe it is commonly referred to as the ‘Ship of the Damned’ or the ‘Hell Ship.’”

  “A simple ‘yes’ would have sufficed.”

  ---

  Commandant Stanislaus King stood before the wall-sized 3D painting of The Battle of Draconus Prime hanging in his office. The scintillating, ever-changing two-meter by five-meter image depicted the climactic battle between the Star Wardens and the invading Mechtechan battle fleet. It had been painted by the master Roan Melrose almost a century ago and was now worth over six years of King’s salary.

  But King had paid only a fraction of that sum to have the painting’s previous owner framed for a crime. A crime which would have consigned the man to prison—King’s prison—for a lifetime. The man, a high-ranking corporate officer, was more than willing to part with The Battle of Draconus Prime to secure his continued freedom.

  King always got what he wanted, at least regarding his private passion. He had grown up on stories and legends surrounding the fabled Star Wardens. But by the time he was an adult, the once great service had fallen into disfavor and scandal. Still, being a man of action with a taste for adventure, he had joined Star Cav and risen through the ranks with honor.

  For a while, at least.

  He had never forgotten about those brave souls in the silvery sleek Ranger-class ships blasting into the uncharted dark, mapping the Frontier, protecting intrepid colonists, battling unknown foes, and enforcing peace in a lawless expanse of space. In truth, he was obsessed with them, and had come to be one of the leading authorities on not only the Wardens themselves, but also on the epic conflict with the Mechtechan, which had ultimately been their undoing.

  Of course, that was not saying much nowadays. Few cared to recall an old-fashioned and disgraced organization, much less put forth the time and effort in its study. The Star Wardens were a thing best left in the past, a naïve and romantic endeavor from a simpler, more prosaic time. They had no place in the modern worlds and the harsh Frontier of today.

  Though the Star Wardens had won the Continuum War, had driven the Mechtechan back to their own dimension and saved this one, it was a pyric victory. Their numbers and resources were so depleted that the United Planetary Council lowered standards to quickly rejuvenate the decimated Wardens. Quantity had replaced quality, inviting corruption and abuse of power, thus ensuring the speedy end of the once great agency.

  A chirp at the office door stirred King from his reverie. “Come.”

  “Excuse me, Commandant.” Ilsa Braun, King’s first officer, stepped through the sliding door. Like King, the tall blonde wore a crisp military-style grey uniform and polished jackboots. “We just received word from the task force. They have secured the target and are on their way to the ERB. They should be at the rendezvous in less than half a standard hour.”

  King inhaled sharply. He appreciated Braun’s loyalty and skillful performance of her tasks, but the way her womanly curves imposed on the fabric of her martial attire bothered him. “Very good. Have Jericho meet us in the docking bay with a detachment in heavy riot gear.”

  Braun snapped to attention and gave a crisp bow before departing to carry out the order. King watched her go and gave a grudging smile. She may be a woman, he mused, but she certainly knows her place. “Most underlings would have questioned why such a heavy guard was required. But then, perhaps my idle observations have imparted to her some understanding of the dangers posed by Star Wardens and the Mechtechan.”

  ---

  “Those are not Star Cav ships.”

  The Warden looked out the forward view port as they passed through the space-folding field of the Einstein-Rosen bridge. The brilliant coils of multi-hued energy spiraling around the spacecraft seemed to shimmer and glow in bright patches through the escorting ships. As he stared, the Warden saw the illusion of the Star Cav assault craft become transparent, revealing the grungy and irregular fuselages of private vessels. “Hologram cloaks.”

  “Bounty hunters. It would seem we have been duped.” Again, Quantum’s lack of emotion unsettled the Warden. “Though I am unable to find any record of a bounty on either of us in the usual channels.”

  The Warden pushed himself through the hatch leading to the crew quarters. “Well, there’s no way out of this now, in any case. I guess we just have to wait and see who hired them and for what purpose.”

  Pulling on his spacesuit, the Warden was glad Quantum had not pointed out that his suggestion to fight had been the right decision. On second thought, however, he realized that a human companion would have most likely done so, if even in jest.

  But jesting was one thing Quantum rarely ever did. At least not intentionally.

  Donning his multi-spectrum visor, the Warden glanced into the cockpit and watched as his Mechtechan friend locked down the Ranger VII’s controls. The two of them had been through so much together, more than probably any other pair of comrades in the entire galaxy. They had met as enemies in the heat of battle, but an unexpected act of humanity had made them allies while a vagary of interdimensional physics had thrust them through a hole in space and time.

  They had faced the Continuum War, pirates, corporate mercenaries, alien overlords, and even rips in the fabric of reality itself. They had stood shoulder-to-shoulder and back-to-back in firefights and fistfights, had pulled each other out of burning ships and the vacuum of space, and had encouraged each other through the slow times, the hard times of isolation and separation that only comes from being the last of your generation or your species in a vast new universe.

  And yet, for all that, there was still a rift between them. A cavernous gulf that separated them, manifested in a million tiny differences: Quantum’s vastly superior intellect and heightened senses which often made the Warden feel like a stupid child, the way Quantum never got the Warden’s jokes or personal references but sometimes knew what he was about to say before he said it, Quantum’s dislike of most human foods, the strange alien music he sometimes played that hurt the Warden’s head for hours afterward, the way Quantum slept standing up with his eyes open, and even the fact that the Warden couldn’t pronounce Quantum’s actual name without getting a nosebleed. These were constant reminders that the Warden’s best and only friend in the galaxy was an alien from another dimension who had, at one time, nearly killed him.

  “We’ve just spent too much time locked up together on this ship is all.” The Warden sighed and shook his head as he strapped on his gun belt.

  “So, where are these bounty hunters really taking us?” The Warden asked as he returned to the bridge.

  Quantum looked at him. “It appears that we are indeed rendezvousing with Hulk 13.”

  A moment later, the small convoy of ships exited the Einstein-Rosen bridge, emerging into normal space in a flash of black light. The Warden looked through the forward view port and saw the massive prison ship lumbering toward them. Nowhere near as big as the SuperCorp Sun Smasher, the ancient hulk somehow seemed twice as menacing.

  In the decades since being decommissioned as a warship, the Hulk had grown as new wings and compartments had been added to house the ever-growing prison population. The profile of the thing now looked more like
some misshapen hornet’s nest than a sleek ship of the line. Bulbous, windowless protrusions seemed to grow out of the spacecraft’s hull like leprous scabs or tumors, while gun towers stood at odd angles to provide as much intimidation as defense.

  “I’ve never seen an uglier ship in all my life.”

  “If we do not come up with a solution, it is entirely possible that it will be the last ship we ever see.”

  ---

  The bounty hunters veered off as soon as the Hulk 13’s docking beams locked onto the Ranger VII. They had been paid to deliver the ship and its crew and were not hanging around to see how things turned out. Without so much as another communique, the four ships made straight for the ERB.

  King smiled at this. No doubt his reputation as a hard man and a strict disciplinarian gave pause to those who made their living in the grey spaces of Star Law. He was fair, to be sure. He always played by the rules. One could not succeed in his various lines of business and not do so, but he also knew how and when to change the rules to suit his own advantage.

  As soon as the silvery sleek ship entered the docking bay, King forgot all about the middlemen of his latest purchase. He felt a sudden pang of pride and almost childlike reverence as he looked on an actual Ranger-class ship for the very first time in his life. Most had been scrapped, recycled, or scuttled in the wake of the Battle of Draconus Prime, later to be replaced by the larger, faster Paladin-class gunships. But those armored brutes just didn’t have the sexy lines and grace of the earlier patrol craft.

  “Sir,” Jericho said, “my men are in position.”

  King frowned at the interruption of his moment. He looked up at the massive guard and sighed.

  Jericho was the son of a human Undoc colonist and a Tel’klik soldier. Though he had his mother’s smooth, furless skin and pale green eyes, he had inherited his father’s hulking musculature and simian-like features. The orphaned half-breed had been raised by the Sisters of the Sun in a secluded monastery near Orion’s Belt before escaping the cloister to join Star Cav.