“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want to set up advanced sensors in Mars orbit.”
“Beyond Mars orbit,” he said.
“Even if I thought that was a good idea,” I said, “I haven’t been past the moon in this ship. What makes you think the Guard ship can reach Mars?”
“We know it can from previous comments from Rax. The Guard dreadnought was in Jupiter orbit before it left the Solar System.”
“My Guard shuttle once traveled from Jupiter to Earth?” I asked.
“Yes,” Rax and the Director said in unison.
“I still don’t know why you need my help,” I said.
“Because you control the Guard ship,” the Director said. “Look. This is starting to get ridiculous. I would appreciate it if you returned my property,” he said, holding out a hand. “I need the device you confiscated. I need it in order to keep the bomb from prematurely igniting.”
I tried to mesh the appearance of Lord Beran and his beastmen with the Director’s knowledge of alien comm transmissions from Saturn.
As I did this, the Director continued to sweat. He seemed to reach a conclusion, and his features tightened considerably. He stood up from his seated position and suddenly lunged at me, diving at my legs.
Kazz and Philemon had jumped me once on the Guard ship. Ever since, I’d been antsy about a repeat of that.
Unfortunately for the Director, he was moving a little too wobbly for a good surprise attack. I rammed my right knee up, maybe giving it extra power because of my experiences. The bony protrusion of my knee caught the Director square in the face. That made an ugly thump, and the blow catapulted the Director’s head back so his neck bones snapped. He half flipped and landed—crumpled—onto his back.
The Director just lay there. He didn’t pant. He didn’t moan. He couldn’t. He appeared to be stone cold dead.
-8-
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said, which was the truth.
I mean, I disliked the man. I even often said I hated him, and Debby would chide me about that. She didn’t like the word used casually. It was easy for me to say I hated something. That didn’t mean I necessarily wanted to kill it. I hadn’t meant to do that just now. I’d simply been protecting myself from a ship takeover.
“If you didn’t mean to kill him,” Rax said, “then why did you ram your knee into his face so forcefully?”
“That was reflex,” I said. “Adrenalin. He was coming at me. Remember how Kazz and Philemon took over the ship a year ago?”
“Indeed, I do,” Rax said. “Their plan was well executed.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “Their stealing the ship caused all sorts of problems. I don’t know how many times I’ve told myself I’m never going to let that happen again. So, when the Director charged me…”
“You killed him.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I just wanted to knock him out.”
“There is a fallacy here,” Rax said.
“Listen—” I said, starting to get mad.
“I do not refer to your killing blow as the fallacy.”
“What are you talking about then?”
“The Director—the pseudo-Director, I now believe—has a small device located in his cortex.”
“You mean in addition to the double helix cobalt bomb in his gut?”
“Correct,” Rax said.
I blinked several times as I ingested that. “Do you mean it’s a control device like Sergei’s clones used to have in their brains?” I asked.
“Clones,” Rax said. “That is the possible answer to all the odd behaviors we have witnessed.”
I stared at the unmoving Director. “You’re saying…he’s a clone?”
“I am unsure. But let us observe the facts. The Director of the CAU immediately answered our call the instant we made it. In some ways, it almost seemed as if he was waiting for the call.”
“That would imply Beran,” I said.
“Let me finish my line of reasoning,” Rax said testily. “The Director then came alone onto the Guard ship with a bomb in his belly and a control device in his brain. He demanded that you join him on a space expedition to Mars and possibly beyond. None of those are the typical actions of the Director of the CAU as we know him.”
“You got that right,” I said. “It’s interesting that CAU grabbed Hap’s tech. Hap had clones of Sergei…” I frowned. “How long does it take to grow a clone from infancy?”
“A clone is just like the real thing,” Rax said. “It should take many decades to mature a clone from a vat.”
“Unless Hap had some kind of quick-grow…equipment,” I said. “Or unless CAU found a way to use the chronowarp on the clone. Do you think that’s possible?”
“I am not familiar with all aspects of cloning,” Rax said. “Galactic Law is quite severe regarding the use of clones. Thus—”
“But you think he’s a clone?” I said, pointing at the dead Director.
“At this point, I would give that a ninety-seven percent probability,” Rax said.
“That high, huh? Do you think Beran sent him?”
“I do not,” Rax said. “Lord Beran desires your capture, not your elimination. I believe the clone was genuine in not knowing about the Harrah’s assault. Thus, given the pseudo-Director’s requests…I’d say the CAU sent him.”
“Meaning the real Director?” I asked.
“If he still maintains control of CAU,” Rax said. “Given Lord Beran’s information about Debby and you, he obviously had a source. CAU seems like the obvious source.”
“So, then we’re back to Beran having taken over CAU.” I snapped my fingers. “Maybe this was all a ruse to get us far away from Earth. Beran failed to capture me. Now he wants me out of the way so he can do whatever he’s trying to do on Earth without our interference.”
“That is an interesting scenario with high probabilities of possibility,” Rax said.
“Right,” I said, starting to mentally prepare for a mission. “You’ll have to teleport me to CAU Headquarters.”
“Might I suggest an alternative method of discovery?”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Call CAU and see what transpires.”
I thought about that as I went to the corpse and grabbed it by its feet. I began dragging the body from the piloting chamber.
“I suggest you take the corpse to the stasis unit,” Rax said. “If we put it in stasis, that might keep the bomb from prematurely exploding aboard ship.”
I pulled faster just in case the bomb was on some kind of timer. But I didn’t drag the corpse to the stasis unit. Instead, I headed to the torpedo chamber.
“Logan,” Rax said from an intra-ship comm, “you are going the wrong way.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t feel I had to, since this was my ship.
“This is a mistake,” Rax said thirty seconds later.
I manipulated an inner torpedo hatch, shoved the corpse into the tube and pressed the switch that slammed the hatch shut.
“We may want the items for later study,” Rax said over the comm.
I moved to a small control board, tapping it. I heard a clang and a whoosh, the sounds of the tube flooding.
“Why the unnecessary haste?” Rax asked.
I pressed the final switch and looked up at a tiny screen. The corpse ejected into the ocean from a torpedo tube.
I turned and ran back to the piloting chamber. Jumping onto the seat, I pressed controls, moving us away as the body began to sink for the depths.
Suddenly, the double helix cobalt bomb in its gut ignited, creating a white hot flash in the water. The flash expanded and struck the Guard ship.
The entire vessel shuddered and rolled over. I grabbed the armrests of my piloting chair and barely kept myself from flying onto the ceiling, which was now below me. The ship kept moving, despite the groaning of metal twisting—
Water began to gush into the piloti
ng compartment.
“Rax, Rax,” I shouted.
The engine purred, control came back to the Guard ship, and it righted itself. The seawater, however, continued gushing into the piloting chamber.
“What happened?” I shouted.
“The Guard ship has been breached, Logan. The double helix cobalt bomb went off too close to the vessel. We have already begun to sink.”
I activated the flight controls and began taking us higher. We’d gone down about one hundred feet already. At that point, a secondary explosion within the ship caused the forward and upward motion to cease.
“Rax,” I said.
“We must abandon ship, Logan. We must do it at once or we’ll go too deep and I won’t be able to transfer us out of here.”
“What?” I shouted.
“The engine is offline and water is filling several compartments,” Rax said. “We must abandon ship.”
-9-
The Guard ship trembled as metal creaked all around us and more water poured in. I grabbed Rax and sloshed through the water already up to my ankles. After exiting the chamber, I sealed the hatch, stopping any water from following us.
“You see,” Rax told me as I hurried to the transfer chamber.
“What do you mean, you see? You’re not saying this is my fault. I just saved our butts. The cobalt bomb would have killed us if it had gone off inside the ship.”
“That is incorrect,” Rax said. “You created the problem by flushing the corpse. The greater pressure created by the water activated the stomach device. You nearly killed us with your hasty action. You may have cost us the Guard ship, as well.”
I made a detour and hurried to my chamber as I shoved gear into a backpack. I couldn’t believe this. What had I done? What had whoever had sent the clone Director been thinking? I wanted to kill that person.
But I couldn’t worry about that now. The ship continued to groan all around me as it sank deeper into the ocean.
“Logan, we don’t have any more time to—”
A sudden clang and a thud throughout the ship threw me off my feet, interrupting the crystal’s complaints.
“What just happened?” I said as I got up.
“The ship hit a ledge of sorts. It has stopped sinking for the moment.”
“That’s great.”
“Yes, as I can still transfer us from here. But that will only work as long as the ship’s battery power lasts. The engine room and the piloting chamber are flooded.”
Rage consumed me. I shook my head. That wasn’t going to help. I had to think, to figure this out. I was devastated at the thought of possibly losing the Guard ship forever.
“Okay...” I said. “That means…well, it means we have limited teleportation for a time.”
“That is bad, Logan.”
I already knew that. I didn’t need Rax hectoring me about it. I had to reframe this or I was going to start getting furious again, and that would just waste time.
“Turn it around,” I managed to say. “We could have died just now. The breach could have let in the entire ocean at once. The Guard ship could be sinking, so we’d be too deep to get out. We’re alive. We still have something, as we have teleportation at least for a time. It may be enough to defeat Beran and his beastmen. Sure. Given enough time, I’ll get a sub and come and fix what happened here.”
“That is far too optimistic.”
I couldn’t listen to his negativity, and arguing here was just dumb. I finished stuffing my pack, shouldered it and rushed to the transfer chamber. It struck me then that I didn’t know where we should go.
CAU Headquarters was in Utah at the Bonneville Salt Flats, deep underground. The flats stretched for miles upon miles of white salt between the Great Salt Lake and the eastern Nevada state line. I’d been there on one other occasion. I’d gone with Kazz to rescue his friend Philemon, a one hundred pound Homo habilis. Each of them used to work for the Starcore and had come to Earth a long time ago.
As I said earlier, Philemon was dead, killed in a strange Twilight Zone dimension. We’d used a rip in reality at the Bermuda Triangle to reach the place. Kazz had been at the Harrah’s hotel tower. How had he known about Beran and his battle thralls? Was Kazz still alive? Why had he tried to save Debby and me?
“Should we call CAU?” Rax asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“And if we’re right about Beran having taken over the facility?” I asked.
“We can help confirm that as true or not by calling.”
“We could also give the game away by calling,” I said. “Beran might be able to pinpoint the location of the Guard ship if we call.”
“We are working with too many assumptions and not enough facts,” Rax said.
“Are you proposing we transfer directly into CAU Headquarters?”
“Now that you say it… Yes. That is my suggestion. It is near the limit of where I can transfer us, though.”
I considered the idea, soon shaking my head.
“Seems like the place would be under the tightest surveillance one way or another,” I said. “Security showed up pretty fast last time I broke in with Kazz.” I eyed the crystal. “Unless you have some stealth gear stashed aboard ship that you’re not telling me about.”
Rax did not reply.
“So what is it?” I asked. “Do you have stealth gear?”
“No. But I could possibly short circuit their surveillance system.”
“How?”
“You could take an EMP grenade along. Once inside, you toss the grenade. The pulse will knock out their surveillance system.”
“Wouldn’t the pulse knock out more than that?” I asked.
“It would,” Rax admitted.
“I don’t want a hammer to swat a fly. If CAU is still intact, we need their help against Beran.”
“Perhaps if you appeared in the main surveillance chamber…” Rax said. “You could directly shut off the system.”
“Do you know where the main chamber is?’
“I do not,” Rax said.
“So how does that help me?” I said, my voice rising.
“That is why I suggest you call first,” Rax said. “Maybe we could transfer whoever answers and interrogate them here. The air supply will last you for some time here.”
I nodded. I liked it. “Set up a connection,” I said.
A few second passed. The comm screen in the transfer chamber began to blink. Someone began to appear on the screen—then the screen went snowy.
“Someone is jamming our signal,” Rax said. “It is just like the jamming at Friday’s Station.”
That proved Beran had done or was doing something to CAU Headquarters. Beran was also my best line to getting Debby back. This could be my only chance at getting a line on the dominie.
“Listen,” I said. “Transfer me to just outside the jamming range.”
“Do you mean above ground?”
“Yeah.”
“Ah…” Rax said. “I have found a hidden location. At least, I think it is hidden.”
“Then let’s get started,” I said.
-10-
I lay on hot white salt, using binoculars to peer over the lip of a depression. This was Rax’s great hiding spot?
A hot breeze blew over me. The breeze wasn’t strong enough to kick up salt particles. But the day was so hot that the images in my binoculars wavered and blurred.
With a twist of my thumb, I refocused, trying to get a better image.
It was hard to be certain, but I thought I saw several…floaters, I decided to call them. Each was the size of a semitrailer, and they hovered several feet off the white surface. Beastmen moved like ants from an underground entrance pushing huge hovering carts. The wolf-men walked the loaded carts up a ramp and into one or another of the floaters. Some returned down the ramp into the underground entrance of CAU Headquarters, no doubt to collect more stuff.
“What do you see?” Rax asked from my back pocket.
I described the flo
aters and the U-Haul beastmen.
“We must get closer,” Rax said. “From here, I cannot scan through the jamming. If I were closer, I might be able to bore through a concentrated scanning sweep. That might give us greater data.”
Using the binoculars, I studied the situation with the idea of sneaking closer.
Unfortunately, this was one of the flattest places on Earth. That was why automobile racers had used the Bonneville Salt Flats to set speed records. We’d been lucky to find this depression, but then we were on the edge of the flats. Mountains rose up behind me.
“What is it?” I asked. “Close to six-thirty?”
“You cannot wait for dark. Surely, they will leave before then.”
“Can you transfer me closer?” I asked.
“Possibly a little,” Rax said, sounding reluctant. “If the jamming signal should suddenly strengthen, widening the affected area, that could interfere with a successful teleportation and possibly result in our grisly deaths.”
“They’ll spot me if I try crawling.”
“True,” Rax said. “Something has been bothering me about the timing of all this, and I finally realize what it is.”
“Yeah…” I said, lowering the binoculars. “The clone Director answered my call only a short time ago. CAU must have been under siege then. Why didn’t he say anything about it?”
“Precisely,” Rax said. “The other question is this. How did Lord Beran gain his information about you? We thought he got it from CAU. But that cannot be correct if he hasn’t already stormed headquarters.”
“Maybe he raided the CAU offices in DC and got preliminary data from those records and/or the people there.”
“That strikes me as illogical,” Rax said. “If beastmen suddenly appeared in DC, the entire nation should be in an uproar.”
“Maybe Beran hit those offices with greater finesse than he did Friday’s Station.”
“I deem that as unlikely given his actions at Friday’s Station.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t too subtle, was it? If he’s so superior, why isn’t he using superior tactics? Openly storming a place like Harrah’s with beastmen…he’s advertising his presence, his extraterrestrial nature.”
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