“Yes, sir, Mr. Kane!” The soldier snapped to attention more rigidly than ever as Kane strode angrily away.
Back on the fighter-launching deck, Buck went about his strange business of bolting laser torpedoes into afterburners while the Draconian guardsman who had nodded to him went about his own business of patrolling the area. The work of the mechanics and technicians filled the launching deck with a constant clatter and din, so loud and so steady that the sound of a drone’s mechanical scuttering went unnoticed.
Twiki lifted one deft mechanical hand toward the holster of the guard and carefully removed the laser pistol from its place. With the precious gun in his possession, Twiki scuttered away from the guard again. “Good work,” Dr. Theopolis said softly to the drone. “We may have to sacrifice our own lives to do it, Twiki, but I think we may yet thwart this treacherous betrayal of all that we hold dear.”
He paused, Twiki squeaked, then Theopolis said, “Oh, it’s your life that you do hold dear. Well, my fine little quad, nobody lives forever. Think of it as a sacrifice made in a good cause. Oh, you want me to think of it that way, while you leave. Oh. Well, I’m sorry, that just cannot be arranged.”
While the two mechanicals conversed, Buck finished setting up laser torpedoes in the last of the fighter craft’s tailpipes. He turned to see Twiki and Theopolis standing directly before him. The quad held a Draconian guardsman’s laser pistol in his hand and was pointing it directly at Buck’s chest.
“Don’t move, Captain Rogers,” Theopolis commanded.
Buck froze.
“This isn’t going to be pleasant for any of us,” Theopolis went on. “We saw you before you pulled that mask over your face, so we know who you are. Now don’t make us shoot you, Rogers. This weapon is not set to stun—do you understand me?”
Without answering the question, Buck gaped at the mechanicals. “Theopolis? Twiki? What are you guys doing here? Get away from this area. It’s dangerous for you. And I’ve still got work to do here!”
“That we can see, Buck Rogers. You traitor!”
“Traitor!” Buck exclaimed. “Traitor! Oh! Can’t you see what’s happening, Theopolis?”
“I can,” Theopolis’ lights flashed angrily. “I’d say that someone was getting ready to bomb the earth—and that that somebody included Captain Buck Rogers on their team!”
“Don’t you recognize the ships?” Buck asked.
“I don’t see as that makes very much difference,” Theopolis said coldly, “although I’ll admit that they look a little familiar to me.”
“It makes a great deal of difference,” Buck insisted. “Look at them!” He pointed to the death’s head insignia on the nearest marauder. “They’re pirate ships!”
“Pirate ships?” Theopolis echoed, astounded. “Why in the cosmos should there be pirate ships aboard the Draconian flagship? I’m sorry, Captain, you’ll have to do better than that. Now if you don’t mind, we’ll just escort you from this area—”
“No,” Buck interjected. “You go ahead and shoot me if you must, Dr. Theopolis. But I warn you, if you do, it spells the sure doom of earth.”
“Oh, come now, Rogers. I suppose you’re going to tell me that those bombs you’re loading onto the ships here are full of flowers and candy to drop on the pretty girls and the little children of the Inner City.”
“Look,” Buck lashed out verbally, “you half-baked load of electronic gibberish, I don’t know what you think is going on. I can’t expect you to know everything, of course, but have you ever heard of loading bombs in the tailpipes of a rocket ship?”
Twiki squeaked excitedly.
“You be quiet, Twiki,” Theopolis scolded. “I’m getting confused enough by Buck, without your helping do it too.”
“Well, maybe this will unconfuse you,” Buck said angrily. “There are no pirate ships. There never were!”
“What?”
“That’s right! They’re Draconian bombers, and have been all along. Piloted by Draconian crews. They’ve been specially marked to make us think they were from some mysterious nest of raiders when they were from Draconia all along, working for the specific purpose of maneuvering Earth’s leaders into a treaty with Draconia!”
Twiki squeaked.
“Then—but—if—oh—!” Theopolis’ lights flashed in a pattern of confusion and disarray. After an astonishing display of lucent disharmony, the computer-brain finally got his circuits back into proper order. “But if it’s a good treaty we’d have signed anyway. Why all the effort, the cost in lives and spacecraft?”
“Because it isn’t a good treaty, as Earth would have realized if the false pirates hadn’t panicked the Council into signing! The Draconian Empire was stymied by Earth’s defensive shield and the Intercept Squadron, and the treaty is designed to get the imperial fleet past the shield and squadron safely—as it is in the process of getting them right now!”
“Of course!” Theopolis exclaimed, dazed. “Of course! Oh, Buck, what fools we’ve been!”
At that moment Kane stormed through the portal onto the launching deck. His jaw set in grim and angry determination, he headed straight for Buck and the others.
“You’ve got about ten seconds, Doc, to make up your mind,” Buck said. “Do you want to believe Kane? Or me?”
“Some choice,” Theopolis said.
“What about yourself,” Buck went on. “Didn’t your own logic circuits tell you I was on the level? What kind of computer do you call yourself, anyway?”
“As a matter of fact, Buck Rogers, my circuits are of the latest and most reliable design. And I must say, I think you’re getting awfully damned personal questioning me like this.” Theopolis’ lights flashed angrily. “But as a simple truth, yes, my circuits did tell me to trust you.”
“Then unless you want to consider yourself a box of spare parts for the Draconians’ bridge engineers, you’d better go along with your original instincts.”
Kane stopped, addressed a couple of soldiers nearby, then raised his eyes and scanned the launching deck carefully.
“All right,” Theopolis said desperately. “But I’ll only trust you on the condition that you help us get to a communicator so we can warn the Inner City of this treachery.”
“You’ll have to take care of that, old robot chum,” Buck said. “Because, on the chance that you don’t get through, I’m going to have to make sure that none of these ships are able to launch!”
Theopolis’ eyes flashed With alarm. What he saw was Kane running toward the spiral ramp, a guard at his side shouting and pointing with excitement. At the foot of the ramp Kane saw two more guards crouching over the body of an unconscious trooper who lay trussed up with his own underwear, his outer clothing taken!
“Out of time,” Buck rasped at Theopolis. “They just found the guard I wiped out awhile ago.”
Twiki squeaked frantically.
“All right,” Theopolis said. “I’m convinced. We’ll do our part. Good luck, Buck Rogers. I never doubted you for a minute, you know. Take the weapon—it won’t do us any good, you’re the one with the metabolism subject to forceful interruption!”
“None of us are going to make it out of this alive,” Buck answered. “But there are millions of people down there who will, if we do our jobs. Now get going!”
Twiki squeaked, spun rapidly in a half-circle, and scuttered away, his metal feet scrabbling so fast across the metal deck that sparks struck up at every step he took.
Buck looked after the scuttering robots for a few seconds, then shifted his attention back to the job at hand.
Kane, meanwhile, had miraculously managed to miss seeing the earthman and his robot allies. He rose from a quick inspection of the trussed-up and unconscious guardsman, turned and stormed furiously up the ramp to the higher decks.
Buck Rogers, relieved at the departure of the courtier, resumed his work of technological sabotage of the Draconian raiders that were disguised as pirate marauder ships.
Kane charged up the corrid
or to the Princess Ardala’s stateroom. He pounded up to the door, ordered the guardsman standing there aside.
“But sir,” the young soldier protested, “my orders, sir—”
Kane shoved the trooper ruthlessly aside and slammed his hamlike fist again and again against the clanging metal of the door. “Ardala!” Kane shouted. “Get up! Open the door!”
Inside the stateroom Ardala’s eyelids fluttered open at the racket. She felt in the furs beside her, murmuring in a half-sleeping voice, “Oh, Buck, was I dreaming, or—Buck? Buck, where did you—Buck!”
She sat up, alarmed, then fell back happily on the bed. “Oh, there you are, my darling!” She leaned over and started to press her face against the back of the head of the other occupant of the bed. Instead of ordinary hair she felt her cheek brush coarse, bristly fur.
She leaped back in alarm and screamed as the other rolled over to reveal slitted eyes, the fur-covered countenance, the pointed ears and the terrible fangs of—Tigerman!
Outside the princess’ stateroom the screaming from inside echoed frighteningly off steel bulkheads, sending the hair crawling on the neck of Kane. It wasn’t that Kane was so incredibly fond of the princess. She certainly was an appealing bundle of charms, but Kane knew that women’s bodies were readily available to men in positions like his own. As an old Earth politician had once commented in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, power is an aphrodisiac.
But Ardala was Kane’s means of access to the throne of Draconia! Without Ardala, Kane was just one more power-hungry climber, essentially no different from a brigade of other politicians, bureaucrats and military leaders. His leadership of the Earth-conquering expedition was a major point in his favor at Draco’s court, and for all the emperor’s expressed scorn during his recent PersonImage appearance, Kane knew that he had scored high in the conqueror’s estimation.
But there were thirty princesses of the realm, each of them ambitious to sit upon the throne of empire once Draco had gone to join Caesar and Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler and Charlemagne and Stalin and all the other shades of the legendary conquerors of history. And twenty-nine of those princesses, jealous of her prospective power, had chosen for her prospective prince consort a weakling whom she could manipulate to suit her whim.
In the short run it made for smooth sailing in the households of the twenty-nine princesses and their wimplike husbands. But in the long run it left the Emperor Draco with no suitable heir and with the prospect of a dynasty that would collapse into rubble almost the instant his own strong hand was gone from the helm.
Only Ardala still had the promise of providing Draco with a son-in-law worthy to sit on the throne beside herself once Draco was gone. And only Ardala’s choice of a mate held the promise, to Draco, of his living to see a grandchild worthy of continuing his dynasty down through the ages.
Kane saw himself as Ardala’s husband, the thirtieth and sole worthy son-in-law of the Emperor Draco, the prospective prince consort of the Draconian Realm, and ultimately, through his wife once she became empress, the de facto tyrant of the greatest array of worlds ever brought beneath the sway of a single ruler.
If anything happened to Ardala—anything to prevent Kane from marrying her and becoming prince consort—his plans were dashed. The crown would descend to one of the other princesses, one of the other sons-in-law would become prince consort, and Kane’s whole elaborate projection would lie in wreckage.
And now—scream after pealing scream came from the stateroom of the Princess Ardala. Kane didn’t bother to send for the ship’s locksmith to open the resisting stateroom door. One futile blow from his jackbooted heel made the door shudder but failed to spring the lock. Kane waited no longer to draw his laser pistol, adjust its beam to minimum diameter and maximum intensity, and blast open the heavy-duty lock.
Another vicious kick from Kane’s heavy boot and the door flew open, crashing back against the bulkhead inside the stateroom and sending a decorative coat-of-arms tumbling noisily to the floor. Kane and the guard-trooper pounded into the room, halting in shock at the sight that they beheld.
The Princess Ardala was sitting bolt upright in her fur-covered bed. Her negligee was pulled halfway over her head, her long hair hung in disarray around her face and she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Beside her in the bed, frantically struggling to escape the entangling folds of satin sheets and thick fur comforters was the princess’ usual bodyguard, Tigerman. His catlike face held an expression of confusion and alarm, and his throat was giving forth a series of sounds that neither Kane nor the soldier had ever heard before, sounds that sounded like a combination whimper of fear and howl of despair and confusion.
“What—” Kane exclaimed as he tried desperately to assimilate the unprecedented scene before him. The Princess Ardala was not known in the Draconian Realm for extreme social fastidiousness, but bedding down with Tigerman was something beyond even the reach of Draconia’s court gossip.
“What’s going on?” Kane managed on the second attempt. Then, as he got a better grip on himself, he demanded angrily, “Your highness—are you out of your mind? What of the legitimacy of the royal line?”
“Take him away!” Ardala screamed. “How dare you suggest that I—that we—that a princess royal of Draconia would ever—!”
“The facts, Ardala—” Kane shouted excitedly.
“Execute that—that—animal!” Ardala ordered the guardsman. “Do it right here and now! Use your laser pistol!”
“No,” Kane ordered the soldier coolly. “Place him under arrest and hold him in solitary confinement until I can question him.”
“What!” Ardala shrieked. “Kane, you countermand my order?”
“Under the circumstances, princess, yes, I do!”
Tigerman, finally free of the entangling bedclothes, growled angrily and lunged toward Kane.
Kane raised his laser pistol and sent a single bolt of pure energy surging across the narrow space that divided him from the mutated animal. The courtier stepped coolly aside as Tigerman, stunned and paralyzed by the force of the laser beam, clattered to the floor inches from the man’s heavy, polished boots. With a laugh and a sneer, Kane spurned Tigerman with the toe of one boot, turning the heavy body over onto its back.
“Drag this animal away,” Kane instructed the guard-trooper. “Put him in irons. Let him communicate with no one, and don’t bother to exert too much effort on his happiness or comfort. I’ll issue further instructions later, as to what to do to expunge the stain he has placed on the royal escutcheon of the House of Draco!”
The guard saluted and stepped into the corridor to summon several more uniformed troopers. They dragged the body of the still helpless Tigerman away, and Kane slammed the stateroom door shut behind them.
“Well, well, well,” Kane’s words almost oozed from his mouth once he and Ardala were alone, “so the little princess has taken to playing with pussycats in the royal bedroom. Or should I say, only tomcats need apply?”
“You’ve some explaining to do, Kane!” the princess snapped angrily.
“I have?” Kane echoed incredulously. “I have explaining to do? You are the one with the peculiar taste in bed partners, my princess. Besides, I’ve been busy tending to the business of his majesty, the Emperor Draco. And I can tell you that his majesty will be less than delighted when he hears of the goings-on aboard the royal flagship.
“Aside from your highness’ eccentric little love exploits, there’s been a traitor planted aboard this ship. Two of my guards have been assaulted, and with all due respect to your highness,” and Kane made a mocking, exaggerated bow, “I am frankly more concerned over the presence of a saboteur than over your highness’ odd sexual appetite.”
“Traitor? Saboteur? What would I know of that?” Ardala demanded.
“I suppose nothing, Ardala. You’ve obviously been otherwise occupied.”
“I’ll deal with your insolence later, Kane. This little scene h
as not at all the meaning that your filthy little mind assigns to it. I was somehow tricked. Drugged, probably. I passed out in my bed, and when I awoke it was to find Tigerman beside me, apparently as puzzled and distressed by the whole matter as I was.”
“A very convincing tale,” Kane cooed. “Of course, her highness’ word is above reproach, just like the virtue of Caesar’s wife. Hah!”
“Meanwhile,” Ardala commanded Kane, “you will give the order to launch our attack on Earth. At once!”
“I think not,” Kane countered. “We can’t attack until your father’s forces arrive to support us.”
“Oh, Kane, you’re as much of a spineless weakling as any of my twenty-nine sisters’ weakling husbands. Of course we don’t need my father. We have overwhelming strength even without him, we have the element of surprise, and we have our own influence boring from within the Inner City to weaken their defenses.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Kane shook his head, “too risky. Let’s wait for the emperor.”
“You gutless fool,” Ardala scorned him. “Do you want to be the conqueror of Earth—or do you want to be an underling in the army of the conqueror? If we go ahead, you and I can be sitting together on the throne of Earth by the time Draco heaves his fat carcass into view. We can be, you and I, Kane.
“But if you don’t have the nerve to come along in the attack, why, I’ll go ahead and do it myself. And sit alone on the throne of a conquered world!”
Pacing back and forth on the richly furred floor of Ardala’s chamber, Kane frowned in concentration. The strain he was under was obvious. His forehead burst into sweat. His hands trembled and he clenched his fists to make them stop.
“All right!” he exclaimed. “All right, Ardala! I concede your point. We will attack.”
Buck Rogers 1 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Page 16
