Valerie gasped.
Maddox understood the significance. A wink of brightness appeared near the faint vessel in the ion storm. The jumpfighter had gone to it. Maddox wanted to know why.
Before he could comment, several magnetic strands writhed out of the ion storm. Two of them struck Victory. The bridge shuddered under Maddox’s feet. To his left, although out of sight, metal made twisting, groaning sounds. A second later, the bridge lights went out. The only illumination came from the purple storm outside the ship showing on the main screen.
Grim suspicion gripped the captain’s mind. If the jumpfighter had raced to the ghostly vessel, it implied that someone had planned for the event. That meant someone aboard ship had brought Victory to the punishing ion storm on purpose, maybe by corrupting the flight computers. That person or persons had threatened Star Watch’s most important starship, and they had done so under Maddox’s nose.
With every faculty alert, Maddox watched the ghostly vessel. What was it? How could it maneuver through the magnetic storm? Why was it here at this precise moment?
The giant ghost ship slid through a dark opening in the center of the storm. The vessel disappeared as it dropped through the vortex. Then, the dark opening began acting like a fantastic vacuum cleaner, sucking the ionic storm into it at a prodigious rate. There was no jumpfighter in evidence now. The twisting mass flashed with power. Long strands writhed madly. They no longer lashed at the starship, though. Instead, the strands twisted “upward” in relation to Victory.
Maddox cataloged everything as his features became even more composed. His eyes burned with a deadly light, however, belying his cool reserve. The dark opening began to close. As it did, a visible pulse of magnetic force expanded like a watery ripple. One edge of the ripple sped toward Victory.
Maddox’s neck and shoulder muscles tightened with anticipation.
“Come on,” Valerie said, tapping her panel. No doubt, she tried to raise the shield. At the last second, she looked up hopelessly.
The ripple of power struck and then passed the fleeing starship.
Maddox expected the last surge to shut down everything that had remained on so far. Instead, the opposite happened. An electrical whomp sounded, and the lights returned to the bridge. Some of the panels that had darkened reenergized. That caused a klaxon to blare with a rising and falling noise.
Maddox’s head moved to track the source of the klaxon. “What’s causing the alarm?” he asked.
Valerie got up and moved to a different board, tapping it and reading something that deflated her shoulders.
She faced Maddox. “Sir, you’re not going to believe this. The New Man’s holding cell is empty.”
In two strides, Maddox stood beside the lieutenant. The small screen showed the empty cell where they had kept Per Lomax. Their most dangerous enemy was free.
Maddox whirled around as he unbuttoned the jacket to his uniform. He drew a long-barreled gun from its harness. Most starship captains didn’t go armed on their vessel, but Maddox retained the habit of traveling armed at almost all times from his days as an Intelligence officer.
“Sound the ship-wide alarm,” Maddox said.
The captain considered himself the universe’s premier realist. And the reality was that the escaped prisoner was superior to them in every way, smarter, faster and stronger.
“We have to recapture Per Lomax before he picks us off one by one and takes over Victory,” he said.
Valerie stared at him. “Sir, surely Per Lomax used the jumpfighter.”
“That’s one possibility,” Maddox conceded. “The other is that he used the jumpfighter as a tactic to throw us off. It could be a diversion.”
“But—”
“Our starship is the greatest prize on both sides of the conflict,” Maddox said. “If the New Men capture Victory, our latest advantage over them will vanish.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Valerie said.
Maddox headed for the hatch. One of his greatest strengths was acting faster than his opposition. He would use that here before Per Lomax could consolidate his position.
“Don’t let anyone onto the bridge until I return,” the captain said over his shoulder.
“Yes, sir,” Valerie said. “Where are you going, if I may ask?”
“To figure out what just happened,” Maddox told her. Then, he darted out the hatch.
-2-
Maddox moved down a corridor with the silkiness of a jungle cat. His mind churned over the possibilities. Per Lomax was deadly and vastly clever, one of the New Men created in the Beyond, a genetic superman with delusions of godhood.
By exerting himself to the limit, Maddox had defeated Per Lomax once. He wasn’t sure he could do it again. It wouldn’t be for a lack of trying, though.
Starship Victory had a minimal crew and only a handful of passengers, less than twenty people altogether. The starship was an ancient Adok vessel, the last of its kind from a war fought over six thousand years ago. It had two huge oval areas and could have carried thousands of personnel. With Galyan, the Adok AI, presently down, Per Lomax could be hidden anywhere.
Maddox had narrowed the situation down to three possibilities. Per Lomax had set the jumpfighter on auto as a ruse, Per Lomax had used the craft to reach the ghostly vessel or someone in the crew had fled the starship. He wasn’t interested in the third possibility, at least not yet. A free and vengeful Per Lomax was the great danger. Until he had eliminated that threat, nothing else mattered.
From around a corner, Maddox heard a footfall. He froze, straining to pinpoint the exact location of the sound.
The footfall did not repeat itself.
Maddox’s eyes seemed to gleam. Slowly, carefully, like a great cat on the hunt, Maddox eased down the corridor.
The ship-wide intercom system was still down, and none of the portable comm-units worked. That was damage from the magnetic storm. He was on his own against Per Lomax.
Despite Maddox’s resolve, his stomach tightened. The iron realist in him whispered a terrible truth. No one could match a New Man one on one.
The captain stopped, gripping his gun tighter. Per Lomax might be unarmed or only possess a knife or a knife-like shank. At close quarters, a knife could be just as deadly as a gun, though.
Maddox debated options. He only had a few. Time was his enemy in this. He could not relinquish control of Victory.
The starship raced home to Earth from the Tannish System in “C” Quadrant. The vessel was far ahead of the survivors of Admiral Fletcher’s Fifth Fleet, which the starship had saved from destruction. Interstellar messages could only travel as fast as the fastest spaceship. The ancient vessel with its star drive was faster than any other Star Watch ship. Maddox raced home to give High Command the good news.
I should have demanded a platoon of space marines from Fletcher before I left the admiral.
Maddox’s head twitched in a quick negation. Could have beens were useless.
His lips peeled back to reveal white teeth. In these situations, one could move too cautiously. Maddox inhaled. It was truth time. He charged, turning the corner.
Maddox saw his mistake immediately. A waiting shooter leaned against the wall, aiming a stunner at him. Maddox’s trigger finger tightened. At the last millisecond, he eased pressure so as not to shoot.
The barrel of his gun was aimed at Sergeant Treggason Riker’s forehead. Maddox would have put a bullet hole in his Star Watch Intelligence aide. Fortunately, the captain’s superior reflexes allowed him to catalog the “shooter” as friendly and lower his weapon just in time.
As Maddox did so, Riker twitched in surprise, no doubt at the captain’s swift appearance, and pulled the trigger of his weapon. The stunner ejected a nearly invisible blot of force. Maddox began to dodge, but not even he was that fast.