by M S Murdock
“Yes.”
“All right. Give me clearance. You can shoot me later. How many men could be on this ship, anyway?” There was another moment of silence, and Buck’s nerves jiggled. The ship was navigating barges of debris, but he knew that if they came any closer together, as they surely would once he neared the entrance to the station, it would not be able to avoid them all. He cut the automatic pilot and felt the ship sink into his hands.
“RAM two-four-eight-one, you have clearance.”
“Good. Now give me landing coordinates and docking speed. I’ve never flown one of these things before.” Buck could hear the intake of breath from the other end.
“We are feeding the coordinates into your computer. Approach speed: point one. You’ll see the hatch open at two hundred meters. At fifty meters, cut your engines. The automatic docking system can take it from there. Just be sure you have her lined up precisely. Those wings are a problem. Make sure they’re exactly level, or you might lose them.”
“Thanks,” replied Buck. He cut his speed, barely making 0.1 by two hundred meters. A section of the station parted, and a golden, modern docking hatch opened. He could see it was designed for spacecraft without wings. The Scout would fit, but just barely. The computer showed a clearance of only a few meters from each wing tip. He concentrated on keeping the ship level. At fifty meters, he cut engines.
The ship hovered. Just as it started to drift, the docking tractors took over, and it was pulled slowly toward the hatch. Its wings wobbled.
“There are docking thrusters under each wing,” said Turabian. “The switch should be to your left, high up. Set it halfway.”
Buck searched the instrument panel as the ship began to wallow in the arms of the tractor beam. He found the switches and moved them simultaneously. He felt the ship steady, and he sank back in relief. From now on, it looked like a free ride. The ship moved slowly through the hatch, then was turned into a docking slip and anchored. He heard the mag. nets lock on to the hull. Buck Rogers closed his eyes and sighed.
“Captain!”
The voice startled Buck, but not as much as the sound of the cockpit hatch being ripped from its housing. “Take it easy, Barney,” said Buck, recognizing the voice.
Black Barney, Master Pirate, whom Buck had beaten in hand-to-hand combat and won loyalty from months before, loomed over Buck. Even the man’s concerned expression was fearsome. Barney was huge. He was close to seven feet tall and weighed nearly three hundred and fifty pounds. Not an ounce was fat. Muscles bulged in his left arm until they reached the hand, where they gave way to stronger-and much more deadly-cybernetics. The plates of muscle across his broad chest were accentuated by shiny black armor. The rebuilt metal structure of his right jaw and cheekbone was like a knife that sliced his face in two. One arm was entirely cybernetic. He had used it to remove the hatch. “You all right?” he said simply.
“Sure, but the colonel isn’t. Help me get her out of these straps.”
Barney slipped the restraints by the simple expediency of ripping them out.
“How did you get here?” asked Buck.
“Squad leader. After we hit a supply depot, we headed back to Chicagorg. The place was crawling with Terrines. We stayed around long enough to find out they were claiming a total kill. We left.”
“Sol see. And the Free Enterprise?” Buck removed Wilma’s flight helmet.
Barney grinned, his smile cutting a terrible line across his ravaged face. “She’s out there. Cloaked.”
“Captain Rogers, I must ask you to control your men! This one has injured two of my pilots! I can’t afford to lose any more. Colonel Deering!” Turabian’s voice changed from anger to concern. “Is she all right?”
“She will be if we can get her some medical attention.”
“Move over,” said another voice, and a tiny hand shoved Barney aside. A diminutive man stepped in front of the outraged pirate and placed his fingers on Wilma’s neck, searching for a pulse.
“Crowell,” explained Turabian. “Medic.”
Crowell nodded. “You’re right, Captain. Terrine knife? . . . I thought so. Nice job of field dressing. Probably cut the infection.” He gestured pre-emptively to Barney. “Make yourself useful. Bring her!”
Barney looked surprised, but obeyed when Buck nodded, lifting Wilma as if she were a feather-Which, to his mechanically augmented body, she was.
Buck climbed slowly out of the cockpit, into the golden incandescence of Salvation Three’s enormous bay, and descended the portable steps Barney had wished against the side of the ship. He ran a hand across his forehead. He was tired.
Turabian regarded the dirty, ragged pilot appreciatively. “Never flown one of those before?”
“They didn’t have ’em in my time, or I would have,” Turabian held out a hand. “Welcome to Salvation.”
Chapter 8
Ardala Valmar crossed her long and shapely legs at the ankle and propped her feet on the edge of a hassock made of red cordovan leather. She settled into the matching contoured chair like a cat settling down to a nap, but Ardala had no intention of sleeping. “Computer On!” she said.
Carved wood paneling retreated automatically from a six-foot high computer Screen. “GOOD EVENING,” replied the computer silently, the Words rolling across the screen. Ardala liked total control of the computer’s functions. Computer-generated personae were too independent for her, so her own computer was a simple, efficient mainframe that replied, for the most part, silently.
“Report!” demanded Ardala. As the computer began to scroll a wealth of information over its screen, Ardala relaxed. Her lovely eyes narrowed to provocative, tilted slits framed by thick lashes as she began to scan the day’s events. The business of the solar system appeared before her, from the most insignificant corporate decisions to major military offensives. She read them all, occasionally pinpointing some fact or circumstance for further study.
Ardala was an information broker-i.e. a blackmailer. As a profession, it paid well, though it did not encourage friendship. Anything but a casual liaison tended to get in the way of profits, and profits were Ardala’s passion. She loved money and what it could buy. She loved the butter-soft feel of her expensive leather furniture, the sensuous slipperiness of her turquoise silk dress, the hard glitter of the single white stone she wore at her throat, the bubbling intoxication of fine wine. She loved the luxury of perfect grooming that pampered her flawless skin and polished her dark cloud of hair to shining perfection. She loved the expensive technology that maintained her beauty through the years. Most of all, she loved the power it gave her-over herself, over her followers, over her world.
Wealth had bought her an asteroid. And the knowledge that a man named Hauberk had embezzled more than two million dolas from his division of RAM allowed her to keep it, unmolested by anyone, including RAM. It paid-in more ways than one-to have familial ties to RAM’s ruling family. Ardala lifted a glass of blood-red wine and sipped daintily, never taking her eyes from the computer screen. “Pause!” She commanded suddenly.
The computer obligingly halted.
“This information on a raid on NEO’s Chicagorg headquarters. That resurrected pilot, Rogers, was in Chicagorg in NEO’s custody, wasn’t he?”
“AFFIRMATIVE,” replied the computer, the response running across the bottom of the screen in red.
“I want a complete report on that raid. Find out if Rogers was taken.”
“SEARCH IN PROGRESS,” stated the computer.
Ardala took another sip of wine. She had let Rogers slip through her fingers too many times since his discovery. The bargain she had made with Wilma Deering-to find Rogers-still rankled. Ardala had kept her side of the agreement, wangling Deering an interview with her old flame, Killer Kane. Wilma had defaulted on her end, presumably because instead of a five-hundred-year-old corpse, she had found Rogers alive. Ardala did not credit the distinction. A bargain had been struck and broken. There would come a time when Deering would pay her
debt.
She also had nearly come face to face with the man only a month before, but circumstances did not allow her a chance at him. One day, she vowed, Buck Rogers would belong to her.
She was intrigued by Rogers. Her profession might be the buying and selling of information, but her hobby was genetic engineering and restructuring. The perfect beauty of her personal male servants was the product of her leisure. Rogers was a relic from the past, and as such, interesting. He had survived a primitive form of suspended animation, the effects of which she wanted to study. And, from the computer transmissions, he was a most attractive mam-three reasons for her personal interest, not to mention the immense profits to be made from a clever marketing of his assets. RAM was willing to pay substantially for him.
The computer beeped, catching her attention. “SEARCH COMPLETE,” it said.
“Report!”
“ALTHOUGH THE NEO BASE AT CHICAGORG WAS DESTROYED, ROGERS WAS NOT FOUND AMONG THE DEAD. MEDICAL NOW CONFIRMS WHAT WAS AT FIRST CONJECTURE.”
“He still lives,” Valmar murmured. “I think he will live to make a profit for me.” She nursed her wine, her eyes thoughtful. “Continue,” she said at last, and the computer began to scroll information. Ardala let it flow over her subconscious, waiting for her instincts to trigger. She was adept at spotting ways to profit by others’ actions. The report of the desecration of a war memorial on the outskirts of Chicagorg flowed by unnoticed.
OOOOO
Salvation III clung to Earth in a tight orbit off the main shipping lanes. It was a pile of junk. The center of the station, which housed its power source and living quarters, was completely obscured by the carcasses of ruined ships, trashed solar collectors, defunct satellites, and miscellaneous space debris stuck to its docks by solar electromagnets or netted like schools of fish.
It appeared an asteroid of garbage, avoided by general traffic because of the congestion its barges, with their huge loads of salvage, created for the average traveler. Freighters and military vessels skirted Salvation’s territory, preferring a detour of a few kilometers to a possible collision with the shell of another vessel.
RAM had no suspicion that under the mountain of trash lurked a heart of insurrection. Salvation III was NEO’s first and most secure orbiting base.
Because of its hodgepodge construction, it could dock any number of vessels without detection-provided they were dressed up with a little protective camouflage.
In the depths of Salvation, Buck Rogers was having a discussion with his guardian angel. Huer.dos was, like Chernenko’s Elizabit.dos, a computer-generated entity-win the common vernacular, a computer gennie-and was patterned after Rogers’s twentieth century mentor, Dr. Faustus Huer.
NEO provided Huer.dos to answer Buck’s myriad questions about the twenty-fifth century. He was a source of information as close as the nearest computer terminal, and Buck frequently called on him. The holographic eye on the computer terminal projected Huer’s image, sitting on the end of the couch, He was slight, with a pleasant, ordinary face. His earnest brown eyes disconcerted Buck. They were a computer simulation of his mother’s eyes, and he always felt exposed to Huer, as if his computer generated friend knew him inside and out. The feeling was not totally unwarranted, since NEO had programmed Huer with all known data about Buck.
Huer’s bald head shone softly, and his neat mustache above the mobile mouth turned up at the ends, rather like the whiskers on a rabbit. He was spouting statistics, and Buck was listening with what appeared to be boredom.
“. . . RAM Cutter-Purpose: patrol. Crew of thirty-five. Light armament, both projectile and directed energy. Capable of deep space travel and landing on terraformed planets. Offensive combat rating, on the standard one-to-ten scale: six. Defensive: five. Speed: seven. Maneuverability: five point five.
“RAM Third-rater-Similar to a destroyer in your navy in its function. Strictly military, with no planetary landing capabilities. Capable of deep space and planetary orbit only. Crew of one hundred. Heavily armed except for mass destruction weapons. Offensive combat rating: nine. Defensive: nine. Speed: eight. Maneuverability: five.
“RAM Second rater-”
Buck raised a hand. Huer stopped his recitation. “I’m beginning to get the picture. But what interests me are the fighter class vessels available.”
Huer’s eyes became dreamy as he scanned the, available data banks, then focused. “There is the Scout class vessel, corresponding to the fighter of your era. The ship you flew here was a Scout, though it is technologically outclassed by newer models.” “What’s the newest?” Buck asked.
“In common use?”
“The newest.”
Huer hesitated. “There are secure files on experimental projects.”
“That’s more like it. Access them.”
Huer again hesitated. “That might not be wise,” he said.
“I didn’t ask if it would be wise,” responded Buck.
“It might be dangerous,” Huer clarified.
“You have to get into RAM’s security programming?” Buck asked.
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important, Doc. I’ve got a hunch about this. Check out the experimental aircraft, please.”
Huer’s mustache twitched. “I really do not have much choice.” His eyes became dreamy again.
Buck waited patiently, knowing the security systems Huer was trying to penetrate were heavily shielded. A wrong move might damage him beyond recognition. When Huer’s eyes focused again, Buck asked casually, “Got something?”
“There are several experimental projects underway, but only one of them is operational. It’s a small, one-man fighter with nine point five speed capability. It’s armed with new, long-range lasers, and carries three missiles as well. I’ve stored the data, but I won’t run a full print-out until I can scramble it through our coding system and lose it. Hang on to the specs. Once you have hard copy, I’m going to kill the file.”
“That hot, eh?” Buck was not surprised.
“Sizzling. Warhead International has kept this one under wraps, hoping to scoop the market. I only managed to breach its programming to level one. There are things about this Krait fighter you won’t know,
“I think I know enough. Where has Warhead got its prototypes stashed?”
“That was information I could not access.”
“Could you work on it?” asked Buck.
“All I can do, without putting my programming in jeopardy, is to keep my electronic ear to the ground.”
“That’ll have to do.”
Huer leveled his direct brown eyes at Buck. “If I may ask, what is your interest?”
“Just keeping up on new technology,” said Buck smoothly as he shifted on the couch.
“Poppycock. You’re up to something.” The expression was unmistakably Faustus Huer’s.
“Doc, when you get to know me better, you’ll realize I’m always up to something.”
“You’re evading me.”
Buck smiled sweetly. “Yes.”
“You are exceedingly frustrating to a logical mind,” commented Huer.
“I’ve been told that before.” Buck paused, then regarded the hologram with calculating eyes. “so I’ll ask a question you can answer.”
“Yes.”
“What’s NEO?”
“The New Earth Organization is a mediator between the arcologies of Earth, and a strike force against the oppression of RAM.”
“Don’t quote chapter and verse. Maybe I should say ‘who is NEO?’’
“For obvious reasons, there is no official roster. Unofficially, I can tell you NEO is a conglomerate of people with one thing in common: they do not like the status quo. For whatever motives, they want Earth out of RAM’s control.”
“From what I saw, RAM is doing a lousy job of running things.”
“That depends on your point of View. If you were Martian, you might think RAM was doing an efficient job of mining Earth for
its resources.”
“What about its human resources?”
“Those, too.” “That’s slavery.” Cool flames ignited within Buck’s cobalt eyes.
Huer nodded.
“And what motivates RAM?”
“Russo-American Mercantile runs on one principle: profit.”
“Individual or collective?” asked Buck, his twentieth century mind contrasting the ideologies of capitalism and communism.
“Both,” responded Huer.
“Simultaneously?”
“Yes. Ostensibly, RAM seeks a common dividend. In reality, though, it is a vast empire of opposing factions, all intent on feathering their own nests.”
Buck shook his head. “I’m not sure I’ll ever understand it.”
“The concepts are found in your own time as well,” Huer replied.
“Economics always baffled me. However, I do see immediate results: a ruined planet and a hopeless population.”
“I am afraid your assessment-” Huer stopped in midsentence, his eyes registering shock. “Wait. There’s something disrupting.” Huer blinked, and his eyes assumed a flatness which meant he was locking circuits. “You are already aware,” he said, “that I was created specifically to help you adjust to the twenty-fifth century.”
“Sure.”
“Of necessity, my creation involved correlating all known data about you and your background. It also meant coding in all the information you supplied to NEO, much of it previously unknown. I am the most complete source of information regarding Buck Rogers.”
“So?” Buck failed to see the significance.
“So something is interested in me. Because of you.”
“You mean someone else has tried to access you? I thought I was the only one who could do that.”
Huer shook his head. “All it takes is the right code, but I don’t think that’s the problem. I have no indication that the interest is extra-computer.”
“Then where is it coming from?” Buck asked.
