Keith passed out hypos with the Baxter-Locke shots. Injecting that into him left Maddox feeling ill. Five minutes later, the ace said it was go time.
Maddox gripped the arms of his padded chair. He noticed that Riker did likewise.
“Round one,” Keith said. “Victory, you can release the tractor beam.”
“One moment,” Galyan said. “The two-jump sequence is going to make matching my firing of the wave frequency beam that much trickier.”
“You’re the hyper-intelligent AI,” Maddox said. “You can’t let us down, Galyan. You promised to show us miracles with your Adok starship. This is your chance to shine.”
Galyan didn’t respond to that.
“The tractor beam is gone,” Keith said thirty seconds later. “Here we go.” He tapped the controls.
The grim sensations of jump slammed upon Maddox. Time lost meaning until he felt disoriented and sick, wanting to vomit. The Baxter-Locke shot seemed not to have taken effect for him this time.
Keith garbled something and repeated it a few moments later. Neither time made any sense.
“What?” Maddox finally managed to mutter.
“We’ve hit a glitch, sir,” Keith said. “My sequencer is off by several degrees. I wouldn’t have noticed, but we’re not exactly where I’d predict we’d be. I wanted a perfect jump, sir. This is definitely going to throw off Galyan’s timing.”
Maddox’s gut seethed as the sickness hit him. He clamped his jaws so he wouldn’t vomit.
“I need to recalibrate the sequencer,” Keith said.
“Do it,” Maddox whispered.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m fine,” Maddox wheezed. “Now fix the sequencer.”
The ace unstrapped, pushing past them as he floated weightless. He tore open a panel, using a magnetic tapper to try to fix the sequencer.
“What’s that light mean on the controls, sir?” Riker asked.
“What?” Maddox asked. He felt more horrible by the minute. With splotchy vision, the captain noticed a red light on the pilot’s board.
Keith swore at them. “Why didn’t someone tell me about that?” He shot past Maddox, floating to his seat, sinking into it and strapping in. His fingers fairly flew across his board.
Sudden acceleration slammed Maddox against his chair. The back of his helmeted head struck hard, making him groan. What was wrong with him?
Then something glowing hot erupted from the bulkhead, hissing past Maddox’s head and striking the opposite bulkhead. The lights in the craft began flashing on and off.
Maddox’s visor whirred shut and oxygen began to pump into his vacc-suit.
“The doomsday machine is using a rail-gun to fire at us,” Keith said. “Must be using proximity shells, grenades, as munitions. Looks like the machine got lucky with us. That was a pellet smashing through our systems. We can’t stay here, sir. I’m going to have to jump now.”
“Go for the hull,” Maddox said. “Get us into its safe zone.”
“The odds of doing that now—”
“Don’t argue,” Maddox said. “You have to trust your instincts, son. Just do it.”
“Do or die, sir, right you are. Hang on, mates. The death ride has just begun.”
The acceleration worsened, pushing Maddox deeper against his seat. Then the craft must have zipped to the left. The G forces shoved against the captain, making him want to vomit again.
“Three, two, one…zero,” Keith said.
Once more, the disorienting process caught Maddox off-guard. The world spun. Noises garbled in his ears. The next thing Maddox knew, Riker stood over him, clicking off the straps and yanking him to his feet.
“What’s wrong with you, sir?” Riker asked. “You have to snap out of it. We’re here. The damned pilot pulled off a miracle. Now, we have to hope the AI can do the same thing.”
-39-
Maddox stopped inside the tiny jumpfighter twice, dry heaving. He felt awful.
Someone gripped his elbow painfully. “What’s wrong, sir? Why are you acting so strangely?”
“Feel…sick,” Maddox whispered.
“How, sir?”
“My gut…want to vomit…feel achy.”
Seconds passed into an eternity of dull-eyed apathy. A new person in a vacc-suit floated before him.
“It’s me, mate, Keith. Did you feel this way after the Baxter-Locke shot?”
“Yes…” Maddox slurred. “Is that important?”
“It’s an Apollo reaction, they call it. Happens every seventh or eighth shot. I should have warned you about it, I suppose. It’s one of the reasons they don’t hand the shots out like candy to everyone.”
“What do we do now?” Maddox whispered.
“You hope the effect wears off. There were a few people… Well, never mind about that. We have to get out, sir. We’re practically on the hull, but we’re drifting. Our window of opportunity is small. Galyan will be firing his unlocking beam soon. If we’re not at the hatch in time…”
“What’s the best remedy for the Apollo effect?” Maddox asked.
“Simple old mulishness, sir. Get mad. Sometimes that seems to burn out the nausea. Don’t know why, but that was the scuttlebutt I heard.”
Maddox tried to focus on his hatred against the New Men. They planned to select the winners and losers in the universe, who lived and who died. The odds were bad for everyone. One out of five chances of living in the New Order. No. That wasn’t going to get him angry. He had to make this personal.
The captain smiled bitterly. He should focus on Kane grabbing Meta. But the agent for the New Men was a cipher. Maddox wanted the head honcho. Oran Rva had come to Earth. The commander had tugged the webs of the enemy’s espionage net. Likely, Oran Rva had coordinated the various assassination attempts against him. Maddox had always wanted a face-to-face with one of the leaders, one of his mother’s killers.
“I’m not going to get angry,” Maddox whispered to himself. “I’m going to get even. I’m going to do this my way. For that, I refuse to let this nausea stop me.”
“What’s that you’re saying, sir?” Riker asked.
Maddox realized his radio link had been on the entire time. That was fine.
With the greater concentration came a realization that Riker and Maker had hooked him into a thruster-pack. Now, each of them floated to theirs.
“You have to go back with the jumpfighter,” Maddox radioed Keith.
“I’d love to do that, sir,” the ace said. “But the sequencer burned out the last jump. The fighter’s finished. I’m coming along, going to add my two credits to the fight.”
Maddox didn’t say a word. He concentrated, forcing his mind to burn through the drug-induced haze. He had made it to the doomsday machine, the outer hull, anyway. Had Per Lomax gotten this far? Was the New Man inside the planet-killer helping the others?
“Let’s go,” Keith shouted. “We’re drifting and will be out of range soon.”
“Here goes,” Riker said. “I hope you’re ready, sir.”
“Do it,” Maddox whispered.
The sergeant slapped a switch. The hatch blew away.
Maddox forced himself to shove off, drifting through the opening. Before him was a wall of pitted neutroium armor. Looking at it made his eyes water. Seen from this close, the hull seemed primordial. It made Victory seem new.
Maddox stared at the pitted surface. As he did, there stirred in him a feeling of… evil. It made him shudder. Here was something truly alien. If they went inside—
“We have over ten kilometers to go,” Keith radioed, the transmission scratchy-sounding.
The words startled Maddox out of his reverie.
“Ten klicks is near the limit of our hydrogen tanks,” Keith added.
“Lead the way,” Maddox muttered. “I’ll follow behind.”
“Sergeant,” Keith said, with a same ring of authority in his voice as when he piloted. “You bring up the rear. Make sure the captain keeps up.”