The Lost Planet (Lost Starship Series Book 6)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Had Strand made a deal with the Juggernauts? She should assume that. Yet, if she was wrong, she might be throwing away their only hope of defeating the incredible vessels. If she called Strand out on the communications, he would simply tell her that he was attempting to trick the commander of the machines.

  Could that be it? Was he tricking the enemy commander? Ludendorff and Strand were peas in a pod. That’s what Ludendorff would try to do.

  “I can understand Strand if I think of what the professor would do in a situation like this,” Valerie said.

  With her eyes closed, she put her face up to the hot water. It was obvious now that she thought about it. The Juggernauts were chasing Strand here. They did that so the machines could get in close without Victory using its long-range disruptor cannon against them.

  Now that she knew that the Argo and the Juggernauts were working together, what was the best course to take?

  “I have to get out of the star system,” she whispered. “There’s no other choice.”

  The thought depressed her, stealing the shower’s normal good feeling. If she fled the system, Maddox and the others would surely die. Even if Strand just captured the landing party…

  Valerie sighed. The captain, Meta, Keith… The lieutenant bit her lower lip. Could she run out on Keith? She’d never made things right between them.

  “I am a Star Watch officer. I have a duty.”

  The thought weighed heavily on her. She knew what the book said to do at a time like this.

  One thing Valerie had learned from Maddox. A man had to be true to himself. She lived by the book. She would die by the book. It was her way. Therefore, in this terrible situation, she would follow the correct procedure. She would think about Star Watch, about her duty, before her personal feelings. It was time to pay the dues for having command of the starship.

  Valerie shut off the water and stepped out of the stall. This was going to be one of the hardest things she had ever done.

  ***

  “Acting captain on the bridge,” the comm officer said.

  Valerie took her place at the command chair. Galyan floated to her. The lieutenant listened to the latest data. Then she listened to Galyan explain what he had found.

  “What did Strand and the Juggernaut commander say to each other?” Valerie asked.

  “That is unknown to me,” Galyan said.

  Valerie absorbed that. “Put up the display.”

  On the main screen, the bridge crew and Valerie watched the Juggernauts and the star cruiser braking as they began a long insertion into Sind II orbit. Argo was well ahead of the Rull war-vessels, but not so far ahead that the laser ports shouldn’t be glowing with beams directed at Strand’s ship.

  “He’s hardly even pretending anymore,” Valerie said sourly. “Helm, you will take the starship onto the other side of the planet. Do so quickly, please.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” the helmsman said.

  Soon, the huge starship began to move.

  “Lieutenant,” the comm officer said. “I have an incoming message from the Methuselah Man.”

  Valerie shook her head.

  “Do you not what to hear what Strand has to say?” Galyan asked.

  “No,” Valerie said.

  “That will alert him,” the AI said.

  Valerie stared at the screen. She hated the deceptive Methuselah Man. She wasn’t suited to the back and forth conversations where each side lied to each other. She was a combat officer. Patrol duty was becoming onerous to her. She just wanted a warship where her job was being part of a battle group as they charged the enemy.

  “Put him on the screen,” Valerie told the comm officer.

  A second later, the screen split in two.

  “Lieutenant,” Strand said. “It is time to coordinate our strategy.”

  Valerie nodded.

  The Methuselah Man’s eyes seemed to bore into her. A subtle change came over Strand.

  He knows, Valerie told herself. Strand knows I no longer trust him. It was a mistake to take his message.

  “Do you wish to save your captain?” Strand asked.

  Valerie debated with herself. He was a Methuselah Man. That meant Strand had lived a long time. He knew people like few others did. He could no doubt easily read people.

  Valerie stood and motioned to the comm officer. The warrant officer tapped her panel, and Strand vanished from the screen.

  “Give me greater speed,” Valerie told the helmsman. “I doubt we have much longer to do this.”

  “Valerie,” Galyan said. “The Juggernauts have locked onto us. Their laser ports are warming up.”

  She glanced at Galyan in amazement. “Did you say laser?”

  “Correct.”

  “Over this distance,” Valerie asked.

  “It seems extreme,” Galyan admitted.

  The five Juggernauts opened up as one. Each war-vessel fired five heavy lasers. The beams speared across the distance. By now, the Juggernauts were two thirds of the way to Sind II.

  The majority of the lasers struck Victory’s electromagnetic shield. If the Juggernauts had been in near-orbit, the combined lasers might have been enough to knock Victory’s shield down in a matter of seconds. Fortunately, the lasers dissipated; much as a flashlight-beam weakened, the farther one tried to see with it.

  “I’m redirecting power to the shield,” Andros Crank said.

  “Galyan, can we withstand the lasers before we move behind the planet?”

  “It will be a near thing,” Galyan said.

  The number of lasers striking Victory’s shield dramatically changed during the next few minutes. The firing distance combined with the starship’s jinking meant that sometimes ten lasers struck. Sometimes, fifteen lasers struck the shield, and for a short span, only five lasers hit. The other beams flashed past then, but were soon redirected against the starship.

  The electromagnetic shield changed colors, heading for black. Before the shield collapsed, the starship slipped around Sind II in relation to the advancing enemy vessels. Immediately, the lasers quit hitting the shield, as they were no longer in direct line-of-sight of each other.

  Valerie collapsed back against her chair. She was damp with perspiration.

  “Helm,” she said. “Plot a course three light-years from here.”

  Everyone turned to her in surprise, including Andros Crank.

  “Valerie,” Galyan said, speaking for the bridge crew. “You cannot mean that we are leaving the landing party on the planet.”

  “I don’t like it any better than you, than any of you,” she said. “But we have a duty to Star Watch. We have a duty to Earth. While we love the captain and the others—”

  Valerie blushed. She couldn’t believe she’d said the word love. That was too much.

  Clearing her throat, she said, “No matter how much the others mean to us, we have a higher duty.”

  “What duty is this?” Galyan asked.

  “We have to tell the Lord High Admiral about the Rull and the androids. The androids seem to have uncovered ancient and powerful relics. We have to tell the Lord High Admiral about Sind II. Most of all, we have to keep Victory intact. We can’t let the enemy destroy us or capture the ship.”

  “You are wrong, Valerie,” Galyan said. “The captain is more important than Victory. He is di-far. Has he not proven that many times? He saved my life. He saved Andros Crank’s life. He has saved your life, too, Valerie. Now, it is our chance to save his life.”

  “How can we do that?” Valerie asked in an agonized voice. “The Juggernauts are coming. Strand is their ally. We can’t face them and survive. We have to flee now before they can employ their dampening field.”

  “But Valerie, we defeated two Juggernauts a little while ago. If we employ all our antimatter missiles and use more decoy drones—”

  “That’s not going to work against the Methuselah Man. Besides, we faced a badly damaged war-vessel. These five are all intact. We’re overmatched. We have to make t
he hard choice so we can stay alive to fight again.”

  Galyan turned away. “I will scour the planet for the landing party.”

  “Maybe you can do that, but where do you start? We don’t have enough time. We have to leave while we can.”

  Small Andros Crank cleared his throat.

  “Yes, Chief Technician?” Valerie asked.

  “It is too late for us to leave,” Crank said. “My indicators show that the dampening field has reached us.”

  Valerie sat down hard, thinking this through. When she looked up, she noticed that everyone stared at her.

  This was her moment. She was in charge. She had to think like never before. She didn’t want to leave Maddox, to leave Keith—

  “Listen,” she said in a hoarse voice. “This is our only hope. Helm, you will plot a course away from Sind II in the opposite direction as the Juggernauts are coming. We’re going to have to outrun them long enough to get out of range of their dampening field. Then we will use the star drive.”

  Andros Crank nodded. “That is as good a plan as any. We should probably aim for the system star, and try to swing around it as closely as possible, using it to shield us later.”

  “Agreed,” Valerie said.

  The bridge crew looked forlorn. They needed hope. They needed her to spur them.

  “We have to remember this,” Valerie said. “We have to burn it into our memories. Someday, we’re going to have a chance to change the odds. But we have to stay alive to do that. Remember Captain Maddox. Remember Meta, Keith Maker and Professor Ludendorff. We’re doing this as much for them as for us.”

  “How is that true?” Galyan asked in a small voice.

  “Because we will remember them,” Valerie said. “As long as we remember them in our hearts, they will stay alive in a manner of speaking.”

  Galyan turned to her. He seemed incredibly sad and small, and so very vulnerable. A second later, he disappeared.

  The helmsman began to plot the course. The weapons officer checked the starship’s remaining number of drones and antimatter missiles.

  Soon, Starship Victory began to accelerate away from Sind II. It was a race. Valerie didn’t know if they could win it. But they were going to try.

  As she sat in the command chair, she felt terribly alone. She felt soiled. This was the hardest thing she had ever done. Someday, she hoped, she would find a way to live with herself.

  -63-

  As Victory fled Sind II, as Argo and the Juggernauts approached the planet, and as Maddox, Meta and the professor stood frozen in the Planetary Defense Net chamber, the giant mechanical snake Ludendorff had brought onto the starship continued to burrow through the underworld.

  Unbeknownst to anyone but the professor, he had found the mechanical snake long ago on a deserted planet with Swarm etchings in ancient caverns. The alien device had been one of several treasure troves of items he’d uncovered during his long travels.

  Ludendorff had torn down and rebuilt the snake. He’d fiddled for weeks on the computer virus it carried. He hadn’t foreseen his particular entrapment, but he had suspected something like the Planetary Defense Net Coordinator Unit. In truth, the snake had been insurance, and the ancient Swarm device was now all that stood between Ludendorff and a fate worse than death.

  The snake, a mechanical drilling unit, used advanced sensors, searching for the command source. It had uncovered a ping several hours ago, and drilled remorselessly toward it.

  The Juggernauts converged upon the planet as Star Cruiser Argo led them. On the other side, Victory gained velocity as it ran for its life. In the underworld, the priest-led Vendel war party marched through the maze under the outer dome. A space marine scout monitored the first sounds of the war party’s approach. The knowledge quickly made it back to Lieutenant Sims. The young fighter conferred with his squad leaders. They had no plans of shedding their exoskeleton suits, not way down here in the depths of a hell-world. They would live and die as space marines—they all agreed that was the best thing to do.

  In the Planetary Defense Net chamber, Maddox, Meta and Ludendorff’s chests barely rose and fell as they breathed just enough to keep their bodies alive. None of them could move a muscle otherwise, although their eyes, ears and noses continued to sense what occurred around them.

  All the while, the snake burrowed toward its objective. It was a hybrid machine, part-Swarm, part-Builder tech and part Ludendorff genius. It moved seamlessly past every defense, undetected. Its only drawback was the slow rate of its advance.

  The approach of the Juggernauts and Ludendorff’s endless queries to the coordinator unit had stimulated the Planetary Defense Net into action. That meant a surface sensor node collected data concerning the incoming fleet, sending the data to the coordinator unit. The planetary AI debated options with itself as it computed. The computations leaked energy, the precise energy readings the snake sought.

  Making a course correction, the giant mechanical snake began burrowing upward. The drill whined faster and lasers burned hotter as the device chewed away metal, rock and dirt. Finally, many meters from where Maddox, Meta and Ludendorff waited frozen, the snake reached the unseen computer banks that made up the AI core of the coordinator unit.

  The device drilled the final distance until it broke through into the main core. Tiny ports opened on the dirty, earth-crusted snake. Tendrils slid out. The articulated flexible sections resembled the metallic tentacles that had wormed out of the box Dana Rich had investigated.

  One tendril inserted like a lamprey into a data link. That activated the ancient Swarm virus program, the one Ludendorff had modified. At computer speed, the snake disgorged the virus into the coordinator unit AI.

  The virus worked quickly and efficiently, rerouting, re-commanding and switching the essence of the AI like an electronic cancer would change body cells.

  The accumulation effect brought a monstrous change to the AI. It was a Jekyll and Hyde transformation. The AI became confused and disoriented. Many of its processes no longer functioned properly. It didn’t know what to do. It needed repair. It could sense a vast degradation in itself. The one “sane” part of its core sought relief, but how, where, who—?

  The three in its Planetary Defense Net center—could they conceivably assist it back to normality? It would be a terrible risk. Yet, at this point, what did it have to lose?

  The AI tried to calculate odds, probabilities and outcomes. But it was too late for that, much too late. It was time for luck. Thus, metaphorically, the AI picked up the dice, blew on them, and unfroze the three intruders in its command chamber.

  -64-

  Maddox staggered as his heart began to beat normally again. His head snapped up as his long-barreled gun clunked onto the floor. Why had the ceiling magnet turned off? Did it matter why?

  In four swift strides, Maddox reached the gun and picked it off the floor, shoving it into its holster.

  Meta stumbled as she unfroze, crumpling to her knees. She put her hands on the floor, panting, letting her long blonde hair cascade to hide her features.

  Ludendorff staggered several steps and bumped full-face against a wall. He stumbled backward after that, tripped over his entangled feet and bumped the back of his head hard against the floor.

  Maddox whirled around in time to see the event. In a flash, he recalled the brick, the teenaged wrestler he’d towel-snapped in the eye during his youth.

  The captain hurried to Ludendorff, kneeling, taking a wrist and checking the pulse. The Methuselah Man’s heart beat forcefully. Next, Maddox peeled back an eyelid. Ludendorff was out cold.

  Should he slap the old man and bring him to? It might be risky if Ludendorff had a concussion. The Methuselah Man might be too groggy to take hold of the situation just yet.

  “I must speak to the Builder observer,” the dome said in a strange mechanically altered voice.

  Maddox looked up at the dome. The multi-colors swirled more slowly than before. That seemed ominous.

  “The
observer is hibernating,” the captain said, as he stood.

  “That is dreadful news,” the dome said. “I demand his assistance this instant.”

  “I am his chief aide,” Maddox said. “Perhaps I can assist you until the observer finishes communicating with his master.”

  The multi-colored lights swirled even slower now. It almost seemed as if the dome considered the news.

  “I do not detect any communications taking place,” the dome said.

  “You never would. It is a special Builder channel. That is why the observer is hibernating, so he could access it.”

  “I saw him trip and fall, and hit his head.”

  “What is your dilemma?” Maddox asked.

  “No. You cannot conceivably help me. I need masterful assistance.”

  “I am a troubleshooting candidate,” Maddox said.

  “That does not correlate with the observer’s previous data. The observer said you where his aide.”

  “I am that too. That is how a candidate trains for observer-ship.”

  “Oh… I did not realize,” the dome said.

  Maddox waited.

  “Very well,” the dome said, “I will continue. Perhaps you have a solution. I am suffering mental fatigue. Many of my circuits may have overheated, malfunctioned or are in the process of recoding.”

  Maddox refrained from glancing at Meta, as he tried to understand what this meant. One minute, the AI trapped them. The next moment…

  Maddox snapped his fingers.

  “You know what is happening to me?” the AI asked.

  Maddox had a suspicion. “You are under a stealth attack.”

  “I did not sense this attack.”

  “Of course not,” Maddox said. “That’s what makes it a stealth attack. However, you are sensing the results of the attack.”

  “What must I do to defend myself?”

  Maddox pointed at the images of the five Juggernauts on the far wall screen. “You must eliminate those space vessels.”

  “That does not correlate. I do not sense any form of attack from them.”

  “Nevertheless,” Maddox said. “Destroying the Juggernauts will bring you relief from the stealth attack.”