The Lost Colony (Lost Starship Series Book 4) (9 page)

-8-

Riker didn’t shout or frantically test switches. For a moment, he just stared at the dead board. There was no question, the flitter’s electronics had stopped working.

The sergeant glanced outside. They were up a ways, so he had several seconds to get the machine working again. Methodically, he began the initiation procedure, which did nothing positive.

For another second, Riker sat still, debating if he should wake the captain or not. Maddox slept soundly so far. That would change soon, as the atmosphere outside began to whistle past the dome.

There was a soft jar, although nothing came on inside. The flitter’s nose lifted as the air-car continued its flight path but without any internal power. The dash was as dark as ever.

The sergeant’s brow furrowed. How could the flitter be flying—oh, right, Galyan must be using a tractor beam from orbit. The AI could do more than simply pull a craft closer, but used the tractor beam to guide the flitter.

Muttering under his breath, Riker pried open the panel. It took him fifteen minutes of sweaty, delicate work, but he found a strange little timer where one shouldn’t be. Hmmm, if he—

“Don’t touch that,” Maddox said.

The sergeant grunted, lurching back, surprised at the captain’s voice.

Maddox glanced outside, at the dark dash and then at the sergeant. “You managed to contact Galyan, I take it.”

“Yes, sir,” Riker muttered.

Maddox frowned. “You must have contacted him before the event.”

“Right again, sir.”

Maddox nodded. He took a small penlight from a pocket, clicked it on and shined it on the tiny timer in the electronics.

“Do you know what that is, sir?”

“Another complexity,” the captain said. “Did you take the flitter to the shop after our Asia flight?”

“That’s standard procedure, sir, especially after a cross-country jaunt from Shanghai to Geneva.”

“Then we must presume someone hostile to Star Watch had access to the craft while in the garage. Meaning, this was an inside job. Ah, look at this.”

Riker leaned forward, peering at the tiny device.

“Did you see the dot on top?” Maddox asked.

“I do, sir.”

“That is the activation mechanism.”

“It’s unlit, sir.”

“The timer must have absorbed energy from the flitter’s electronics. It’s a kill-switch. The lack of energy also deactivated the timer.”

“I’d gathered as much, sir.”

“Does Galyan know our destination?”

“He does, sir.”

Maddox pursed his lips. “Give me the gist of what you told Galyan.”

Riker did so.

Maddox studied him afterward, making the sergeant uneasy. “From now on, Sergeant, you will inform me if you put any spy systems onto me, including Galyan.”

“I’ll try my best, sir.”

“That isn’t a reassuring answer.”

“I suspect not, sir,” Riker said, who heartily disliked his secret orders. They explicitly said he could not reveal them to the captain.

“What is it?” Maddox asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, sir,” Riker said.

Maddox fixed those strange eyes on him and gave him a level stare.

The sergeant could feel the captain’s mind spinning. The man had an uncanny ability to come up with answers.

A hint of a frown appeared on the captain’s face. “I see,” Maddox said.

Riker swallowed uneasily. The captain couldn’t have logically figured out the secret orders, could he?

Maddox turned away, tapping a finger against a knee. “I’m still on the list, am I?”

“List, sir?” Riker asked.

“Hmmm, you’ve been sworn to secrecy, I presume. Yet…the secret command troubles you. That’s small comfort. How am I supposed to…?”

“Sir?” Riker asked.

“Never mind,” Maddox said. “You shall carry on as ordered and I will do my duty to Star Watch as my conscience dictates.”

Riker knew the lad as well as anyone did. While the sergeant didn’t have exalted brainpower like Ludendorff and Dana Rich, he was experienced in human nature. The secret order cut against Maddox, wounding him, although the captain would never admit it to anyone. He was a proud young officer. Maddox was also a loner by inclination and circumstance. His hybrid nature hadn’t done him any favors in this regard.

“Are you with me, Sergeant?” Maddox asked softly.

Riker knew what the captain was asking. “One hundred percent, sir,” he said.

“Even if…” Maddox left the question unasked.

“Yes, sir,” Riker said, “even if.”

Maddox nodded curtly. He couldn’t show anyone how much the answer meant to him. “Then, let us proceed.” He regarded the kill-switch timer with a penlight in one hand and a small caliper in another. Delicately, the captain reached in and plucked the sabotage device out of the interior dash system.

“Take this,” Maddox said, handing Riker the penlight.

Riker shined the narrow beam on the spot.

Maddox reached in and twisted several loose wires together.

The flitter shuttered. The engine kicked on and lights reappeared on the dash.

The captain tapped the comm-unit and made an adjustment. It crackled into life.

“Galyan,” Maddox said.

“I have analyzed the situation, Captain,” the robotic voice said. “You are a victim of sabotage.”

“Thank you,’ Maddox said. “I have taken care of the situation. You may release us from your tractor beam.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“And Galyan,” Maddox said.

“Sir?”

“Thank you for your quick action. It saved our lives. We’re indebted to you.”

“It was my pleasure,” Galyan said. The AI paused before adding, “I am eager to renew our adventures. Earth orbit has become unbearably tedious. This episode tonight shows me I should be engaged in hot action, using my rarified abilities to defeat humanity’s enemies.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Maddox said.

“That is the best thanks of all then,” Galyan said. “Do you wish me to begin analyzing possible suspects?”

“I do,” Maddox said.

“Wonderful. Thank you, sir. It will help relieve the tedium of listening to the scientists rhapsodize about my past. It is not what I have done which interests me, but what I’m going to do in the future.”

“Uh, Galyan,” Riker asked. “Have you gained clearance for us yet?”

“I was just about to tell you. Dr. Rich has surfaced and left for Geneva. She is on a supersonic flight. I would suggest this means Dana has found evidence of past alien intrusion on Earth. I would love to ingest her data. Do you think I could listen in to her briefing?”

Riker sat back with a groan, massaging his eyes. He couldn’t believe this. Dana had left for Geneva? He could have been home asleep the whole time.

“Turn us around, Sergeant,” Maddox said.

“To Geneva, sir?” Riker asked.

“Exactly.”

The sergeant hesitated, waiting for the captain to tell him he was sorry for having interrupting the sergeant’s sleep time.

Maddox did no such thing. Instead, the captain leaned his head back against the bubble canopy and closed his eyes, falling almost instantly asleep.

Muttering to himself, Riker adjusted the flight path, heading back for Europe. He might even have turned on the autopilot and gone to sleep, but thinking about what Dana had uncovered kept him too edgy. Was Galyan right? Had the good doctor found real evidence of past aliens on humanity’s home planet? Had the Builders been here in ancient times? Riker wanted to get to Geneva and find out the news.

-9-

Dr. Dana Rich stared out of the jet’s window. It was bright morning in Western Europe, the sunlight bathing the beautiful Alps.

She had just woken up from a light slumber, having made the trip from the Mid-Atlantic in a little over an hour.

The doctor wore a red jacket and had let her dark hair cascade past her shoulders. It was presently tousled from her sleep.

Dana was in her late thirties and strikingly beautiful with brown skin and dark eyes. Born on Earth in Bombay, India, she had emigrated to the Indian Brahma System with her parents. A few years later, she had been the smartest student in the university system there, a girl in a world filled with boys. She had fled Brahma in the company of Professor Ludendorff, having lived with him on Brahma, creating a scandal for her family. The affair had ended in time and Dana had found herself back in the Brahma System. There, she had worked for the secret service against the Rigel Social Syndicate, a neighboring star system. Dana had been a clone thief, caught by Star Watch in the end and sent down to Loki Prime, the worst of the Commonwealth’s prison planets. Captain Maddox had rescued her because he’d needed her services. For what she had done to help bring back
Victory
from the Beyond, Star Watch had pardoned her of crimes.

She had led the science team the first time in the Oort cloud studying
Victory
. After the professor, Dana knew more about the ancient starship than anyone else did. Because of her intellect and daring, she had uncovered old ship systems in
Victory
that had gone a long way to defeating the alien Destroyer in the Solar System.

Since then, she had spent many hours trying to uncover yet more deactivated Adok ship systems. Finally, having found nothing like her previous discovery, she had asked to work on the Alien Project in the Atlantic.

Star Watch had reluctantly agreed. They were much more concerned with finding solutions to present problems than reconstructing the past. But Dana had insisted on the work, and given her previous successes, Star Watch had agreed.

Dana had a different philosophy on the importance of the past than most others did. In her opinion, humanity knew too little about the Builders. Galyan had given some new data, but that had been sketchy. The mechanical people had aided the ancient Adoks against the Swarm, but the Builders had remained mysterious to them, preferring to work in the shadows. In the end, Galyan had given them more Adok legends and myths than facts about the Builders or mechanical people as the Adoks had called them.

The Builders were a mystery indeed. Surely, they could not have begun as cybernetic beings. They must have been fully biological at one time. So far, though, the evidence had proved otherwise.

From what Dana could tell, the Builders had been watchers, dabbling with the Adoks and humanity, constructing the silver pyramids but having no known planets. They had fought the ancient aliens who had made Destroyers and they seemed to have disliked the strange Swarm.

As Dana sat in the seat, she rubbed her hands in anticipation of the coming meeting. Yes, she was concerned about the greater war against the New Men. She also feared Strand, realizing he might be the greatest danger of all. Yet, like the professor, ancient aliens absorbed her intellect.

That was why she had gone to the bottom of the sea in the Mid-Atlantic to join the Atlantis Project, the renamed Alien Project.

What they had found down there…it was amazing if one looked at it the right way. Could she help convince the Star Watch oversight board that the scientists down in the Mid-Atlantic needed more funds and equipment?

***

Two hours later, Dana stood before a lectern, fingering a data chip. The oversight officers would appear soon. Over a comm, she had finally convinced them of the need for an emergency meeting.

Jotting notes on a piece of paper, she was in the process of deciding on the precise wording of her opening monologue. “Hit them between the eyes from the beginning.” Dana liked to say, “Grab them by the nose and twist if you have to.” That kept people awake no matter what they really believed.

The nose grab, in her opinion, was the Atlantis Project. Real buildings and artifacts existed down there alien in nature. She suspected the Builders had constructed an Earth base in the distant past. If the scientists could dig deeper, Dana expected to extract ancient Builder technology. That was the nose twist. In the war against the New Men, each new tech could be the piece that turned the tide of the war fully in the Commonwealth’s favor.

The similarities she’d seen down on the sea floor compared to other Builder tech she’d seen—they were very similar. Now it was true that most of the others in the Atlantis Project disagreed with her analysis, but that was because they were fools. They shied from the truth because the implications could upset their pet theories about human development.

What if humanity was a special project of the Builders? What if the world’s religions all went back to shadowy remembrances of the alien cybernetic organisms? That would upset the main religions, but what did Dana care about that? She wanted to get to the truth, not continue to follow ancient myths.

Hmmm, what if she began her monologue like this? Dana began scribbling the idea on paper.

A door opened as she wrote. She looked up with a scowl. The meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another half hour. She needed the time—

“Captain Maddox,” Dana said, surprised.

“Hello, Doctor,” the captain said a bit breathlessly. Had he been running?

“Sergeant Riker,” Dana said with a smile. The older man panted, coming through the door behind Maddox. “It’s good to see you two scoundrels. Have you come to hear my report?”

Maddox stared at her before saying, “When will we see the New Hindu Kish again?”

It took a second. Then, Dana’s eyelids fluttered. She exhaled as if the captain had just punched her in the stomach. She took several steps back, rubbing her stomach, as her features stiffened. It felt as if all the air seeped out of her lungs. She grew faint and it seemed as if she was falling backward.

The next thing she realized was sitting on a chair with Maddox peering at her from another.

“What…?” Her mouth was dry. She frowned, looking up at the lectern. The last thing she remembered was standing behind it. How had she gotten here?

“Did I faint?” she asked.

“No,” Maddox said, “but you were vacant-eyed for several seconds. I helped you sit down. Do you recall the saying?”

The words slammed home again, “When will we see the New Hindu Kish again?” How dare the captain speak such words to her? They were some of the most intimate words Ludendorff and she had ever shared. The last time Ludendorff had spoken them—

She straightened. “Where is he?” she asked, hope flaring in her heart.

“Excuse me?” Maddox asked.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Captain. I know you know what I mean. It’s clear you’ve spoken to Ludendorff. I demand to know what else he told you.”

Dana glared at him. “He gave you those words. No one else could possibly know them. He told you to tell me in order for there to be no doubt it was him. He wants me to go to him, is that it? Where is he? I demand you tell me this instant.”

“I see,” Maddox said quietly. “He spoke the truth. It really was Ludendorff. That changes the equation.”

“Captain,” she said in a warning tone.

Maddox studied her. She hated when he did that. “I spoke with a holoimage of Ludendorff.” The captain proceeded to tell her of the holoimage claiming to be her ex-lover. At the end of the story, Maddox waited.

“What am I supposed to say to that?” she asked.

“Was the holoimage from the professor?”

“Yes, without a doubt,” she said.

“Could…an enemy have subdued the professor, forced the engrams into an AI unit and then cataloged the needed secrets via machine?”

“You have a suspicious turn of mind,” she said.

“I am an Intelligence officer when all is said and done.”

“Are you implying Strand did this?” she asked.

“He seems like an obvious candidate or a Builder.”

Dana looked away. “I don’t think it was a Builder.”

“Your evidence being…what?”

“According to my studies on the Atlantis Project, the Builders were exceptionally peaceful. They abhorred violence.”

“Yet they developed weapons and fought wars,” Maddox said.

“Your first assumption is correct. I do not agree with the second.”

“They used proxies then,” Maddox said. “Their minds still guided the conflict.”

“I believe you are wrong again,” Dana said.

Maddox grew thoughtful. Finally, he shook his head. “The evidence does not support you.”

“The more I find out about the Builders,” Dana said, “the more I believe that other species bewildered them with their bents toward violence.”

Maddox continued to stare at her. Abruptly, he stood.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“It’s time I laid this before the brigadier. We need
Victory
and we need to hurry to the Xerxes System. I have to reach the professor before whoever set the timer in my flitter reaches Ludendorff first.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Maddox disappeared through the door without answering.

Riker glanced at her and then at the door. The sergeant jumped to his feet, waved goodbye and ran after the captain.