“No. It’s too late for all of us. Can’t you hear the interior destruction?”
Maddox heard something, all right, as explosions shook the starship.
At that moment, several things occurred at once. The holoimage faded away. As it did, vertigo struck Maddox again. He couldn’t tell which way was up or down, right or left. It felt as if he was frozen in time. Expectantly, he waited for colors to smash against him and normalcy to return. It felt as if they jumped again. The frozenness stretched longer and longer.
Finally, with great effort, Maddox turned his head. He realized that he no longer heard the enemy beams destroying interior ship’s systems and bulkheads.
Are we in hyperspace? Did Dana take over the starship’s AI and force it to jump? What’s going on?
Slowly, Maddox inhaled. As he blinked, he felt his eyelashes intertwine with each other. Time seemed to have slowed an immeasurable amount.
I have to see what’s wrong.
He began to turn around. It seemed to go on forever and ever. Finally, he rose from his seated position. Then, the riot of colors flooded his senses. A roaring sound invaded his hearing, and his nose seemed clogged with scents. He bellowed, and his descending foot slid out from under him. With a thump, he crashed against the deck, laying there panting in bewilderment.
What just happened? Are we still in battle?
He listened, but he didn’t hear anything telltale. Maddox closed his eyes, exhausted. I can’t just lay here. I have to see what happened.
Captain Maddox struggled to his feet. The screen showed him the void of space. He couldn’t see the red giant star or the enemy cruisers. No wrecks drifted outside and no planetary rubble showed what used to be worlds.
Did we just jump then, as I first suspected? How far did we go?
A laugh escaped his lips. Maddox was certain they were no longer in battle or in the alien star system. He pressed his lips together, containing the laughter. It was time to figure out if they had just won or lost.
-38-
It turned out they had won… after a fashion, Maddox decided.
A day after the battle, Victory drifted in the void three light years from the alien star system. The vessel wasn’t near another star, but in the middle of nowhere. The craft had made the jump in one large bound.
The red giant blazed its light, the brightest object in the darkness.
The alien ship had taken severe damage from the star cruisers. Entire sections of the vessel were off limits because they were smashed wreckage now open to space. Perhaps one third of the craft lacked an atmosphere because the stellar vacuum drifted through it. In certain places, the crew had to take large detours to get from one point to another.
Still, they had survived the encounter with the New Men. No more fires raged or energy dissipated in the starship. They had fully acquired Victory, and they were in no immediate danger of destruction. Those were the good points. The bad troubled Maddox and severely depressed the crew. They had a two-week supply of food, at best. Dana had found a water supply, so they wouldn’t die of dehydration. The star drive needed repair before it could work again. Once it began working—if they ever reached that point—they weren’t sure they could keep it functional for long. They lacked a Laumer Drive, so they couldn’t use the regular tramlines. Earth was three hundred light years away. With Victory’s present star drive, they wouldn’t remotely reach the Oikumene, never mind the Commonwealth of Planets or Earth, before the drive failed for good. And, without this ship in the Star Watch’s possession, nothing Maddox and the others had done out here mattered in a grand strategic sense.
“There’s only one way we’re going to survive more than a few weeks,” Dana said. “We have to repair the ship.”
They met in a chamber with low chairs and what they used for a table. It was warm in here, so they didn’t have to wear their vacc-suits. That was good, because the last tanks only had a half-supply of air left.
“Okay,” Keith said, as he twirled what looked like a key ring, “we need to fix stuff. What do we try to repair first?”
“That’s easy,” Dana said, “the star drive. Without it, we’re trapped in the void with no way of changing our fate.”
Valerie set a tube she’d been fiddling with onto the table. “I’m still worried about the AI. You told us before it isn’t dead. You just cut it off from the ship’s controls.”
Doctor Rich nodded. “That’s right. It’s alive and likely brooding, if such a thing is possible.”
“The AI must know of ways to bypass what you did,” Valerie said. “Maybe it’s secretly working to regain control of its ship.”
“No. I don’t think so,” Dana said. “Think of the AI as a genie, and we’ve corked its bottle. It’s not getting out unless we first pry out the stopper.”
Maddox cleared his throat. “We must work under the assumption the AI will remain inoperative for a time. In that way, Doctor Rich is correct. Our primary goal is to fix the star drive. That will be your department, Doctor and Meta. I’m giving you Keith and Riker as helpers.”
The sergeant sat morosely in a corner. His bionic hand opened and closed with faint whirring sounds. Meta also seemed despondent, with her elbows on the table and her eyes staring and distant.
First glancing at Meta and then looking back at the captain, Dana said, “I’d also like Valerie’s help.”
“No,” Maddox said. “Lieutenant Noonan will help me. Once we figure out how to use the ship’s sensors, we’re going to scour space for a clue as to where we should go next. We’re deep in the Beyond. That doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of humans. We’re going to search for planetary industrial signs. If nothing else, if we find such a system, we can go there and fill our food stores. At best, we’ll also gain technical help to effect fuller repairs. I suspect we’ll only fix everything at a Star Watch dockyard.”
“Trying to bargain for repairs in a human-run star system out here in the Beyond would be dangerous,” Dana said. “The starship is a fantastic prize. It has alien technology that includes a new beam, a better shield and a completely new star drive that bypasses tramlines. Whoever captures the ship will be tremendously wealthy. Greed motivates people do to nasty things.”
Maddox took his time answering. Did he detect avarice in the doctor’s eyes? He didn’t want to believe it. She had taken the Star Watch oath. Would she hold to it? Or would Doctor Rich think of it as some lesser superstition she’d taken to build morale at the most critical juncture of the trip? Without Dana, none of this would have been possible. Maddox didn’t want her for an opponent again. He needed her to remain one hundred percent on the team.
“I’m not speaking about riches for myself,” Dana said, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Of course not,” Maddox said.
“I’m merely saying we have to worry about hijackers if we enter a technologically advanced star system. There’s something else, too. People in the past fled into the Beyond for a reason. Usually, the emigrants were odd in some way. Those oddities might trip us up if we go into their star system.”
“There are dangers all around us,” Maddox agreed, “but we have a deadly warship. People will trifle with us at their peril.”
“The starship has sustained heavy and obvious damage,” Dana said. “We’re limited in what we can do, and people are going to know it. That’s provided we can even get the star drive working again.”