A first sergeant holstered his gun and stepped up to Cook. The sergeant saluted crisply. “I don’t understand this any better than you do, sir. That was Hicks. He’s…I’ve been in tight places with Hicks before. There’s no one better, sir. This makes no sense to me.”
Cook scowled at the first sergeant.
“B-But it happened, sir,” the sergeant said. “I can’t explain it.”
“Outside, all of you,” Cook said. “No. Belay that. You stay right here. But I want all of you to put your guns on the table.”
“I don’t suggest that, sir,” Maddox said. “Keep your guards armed.”
“You don’t suggest it?” Cook asked explosively. “Do you realize—?”
“Sir,” O’Hara said, softly, interrupting him. “Do you think I could have a quick word with you?”
“What about Ludendorff, Ma’am?” Maddox asked.
“He’s dead,” O’Hara said. “Forget about the professor for a moment. We have more pressing worries.”
“Let me check him please,” Maddox said.
“Go, do it then,” O’Hara said, as she tugged at the admiral’s sleeve.
“Yes, check,” Cook said absently. He bent his head afterward, listening to the brigadier whisper to him.
Maddox moved to Ludendorff, telling himself to examine the evidence and subdue his thumping heart. This called for cool concentration. Yet, he found himself shaking.
The first thing Maddox noticed was the lack of blood. There was some, but considering the number of slugs that had torn into the body, it was a pitiful amount. Maddox knew about head wounds. Anything above the nose bled copiously. The braincase was shattered. There should be blood and gore everywhere, but there was not.
The second thing Maddox noticed as he closed the distance were small, blue, electrical discharges from inside the body. The third something was the smell of ozone in the room combined with the burnt gunpowder odor.
Maddox knelt on one knee, staring at the wreckage of Professor Ludendorff. The sight shocked him, but not in the manner that he’d expected it would.
It was clear that the outer layer was composed of skin and blood. But that was it: the epidermis was just a layer. Underneath was something else entirely that had nothing to do with humanity.
Maddox leaned lower, put his fingers into the worst wound and pulled to get a better look.
One of the guards at his back vomited. That caused a commotion among the others.
“What’s going on over there?” Cook called out. Someone must have pointed at Maddox. The admiral swore in disbelief.
Maddox continued to tug and pull at the wound. He saw steely-colored bones and circuits of a kind he’d never seen before.
“What are you doing?” the Lord High Admiral asked in disgust.
Maddox did not answer. He continued to search.
“Captain Maddox, have you gone mad?” the admiral asked.
The captain glanced over his shoulder. Everyone stared at him. A few of the guards had become pale-faced. One man looked as if he was going to faint. Only the brigadier seemed halfway normal. She looked at him curiously.
“Sir,” Maddox said. “You might want to order the guards out of the room.”
Cook opened his mouth. It seemed he might reprimand Maddox. Instead, after a moment’s contemplation, the admiral shut his mouth with the click of his teeth. Motioning with his head, he silently ordered the guards to leave.
“We’ll be outside if you need us, sir,” the first sergeant said.
“Good,” O’Hara told him.
The Lord High Admiral seemed unable to speak.
The guards began to file out.
“Wait,” O’Hara said. “First Sergeant, take the assassin to medical. Inform Major Stokes that the gunman isn’t to wake up until the doctors have thoroughly scanned him for suicide procedures.”
The first sergeant glanced at Cook. The admiral was staring at Ludendorff.
“Yes, Ma’am,” the first sergeant said. He snapped his fingers, giving his men orders. They hoisted the unconscious assassin, carrying him out of the chamber.
When the door closed behind them, Cook woodenly moved to the body. “Why are there blue sparks in his wounds?” the admiral asked.
“This thing is an android, a cybernetic organism,” Maddox said. He blinked and looked up at Cook. “He wasn’t human.”
The admiral turned to O’Hara. She nodded.
“Am I missing something?” Maddox asked.
“I have to see this,” Cook said, ignoring the captain’s question. The old man grunted, and his joints creaked as he bent beside the carcass.
Maddox pulled flesh and wiped away blood. It allowed the admiral a better look inside.
“He was a machine,” Cook said. “But—”
“But like nothing we might have constructed,” Maddox said.
The Lord High Admiral lost his balance, or maybe the strength went out of him. Cook sat down heavily on his butt. Like a big kid, he sat there stunned.
“What do you make of this, Captain?” O’Hara asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” Maddox said, hedging.
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” O’Hara said. “Your quick action rendered the assassin unconscious. We might actually be able to trace his source because of that.”
Cook’s head snapped up. A fierce light glowed in his eyes. He pushed off from the floor, grunting again, staggering to a chair. He sat down heavily, with his elbows on the table.
O’Hara followed his example sitting down.
With a shrug, Maddox did likewise. The dead android would keep as it was. The captain studied the thing. That had been Ludendorff? It didn’t make sense. Had Doctor Rich fallen in love with a cybernetic organism?
Maddox slapped the table.
Both Cook and O’Hara looked up.
“Who made Ludendorff?” Maddox asked.
“Yes,” O’Hara said. “That is the question. Do you have any ideas?”
“The Builders,” Maddox said. “Given the professor’s actions, I doubt the New Men constructed him.”
The admiral groaned in dismay as he massaged his forehead. “This is all too much, too bewildering. A doomsday machine races to Earth, New Men attack out of the Beyond, what appeared to be a Methuselah Man recited an old code sequence that gave him unlimited emergency authority to Star Watch. How did this-this Builder android learn about the Armageddon Protocol in the first place? Just how deeply are we compromised?”
O’Hara studied the admiral before turning to Maddox. “What do you know about the Builders?”
Maddox nodded. That was a good place to begin. “I happen to know more than you might expect. We had a breakthrough on Victory.” He began to explain what he’d learned from Galyan, their latest experiences in the Xerxes System and the egg with the cybernetic Swarm creature inside.”
“It seems these Builders have some expertise in modifying what would be to them alien creatures,” O’Hara said.
“There’s that,” Maddox said. “But we have another problem. If Ludendorff was a Builder android…I take that back. He can’t—it can’t—be anything else. That means we’re not only contending with the New Men, but with these hidden Builders.”
“No,” O’Hara said. “By your tale, it’s worse than that.”
Maddox frowned at her. “Oh, yes. The New Men transferred to the Builder pyramid. Our enemy uses fusion beams and has what must be Builder electromagnetic shields. Ma’am, if the New Men have all these things… Maybe the New Men do know how to construct androids.”
“Then why did Ludendorff fix your disruptor cannon?” O’Hara said. “More to the point, how did an android have the expertise to fix it?”
“How did an android know to search for Victory?” Maddox asked.
During their talk, Cook had continued to massage his forehead. He sighed now, letting his hands drop to the table. “Those are interesting topics, but not germane to our immediate problem. An assassin hid among my most trusted security personnel. The killer slew Ludendorff. This was after the professor gained our trust and pointed to you, Captain. What was Ludendorff going to tell us?”