“Noted,” the holoimage said.
Keith shook Maddox’s shoulder. Once the ace had his attention, the younger man told him the next maneuver.
The destroyer headed for the atmosphere. At the same time, the starship’s main bay doors opened. Like a Great White shark, it came behind the destroyer. Instead of jaws, Keith Maker used Victory’s open bay as a maw.
“We have to do this exactly,” Keith said, with his eyes fixed on the view-screen.
Maddox related the ace’s instructions to the AI.
While traveling at great speed, the starship scooped up the destroyer, seeming to swallow it whole. Because Victory moved faster, Saint Petersburg smashed against parked alien shuttles and interior bulkheads. The entire starship trembled violently from the collision.
Maddox shook in his chair, waiting for the outcome. Were they dead? Was Per Lomax right? No! The destroyer finally came to a halt inside the starship. The shaking and metallic screeching stopped.
“Close the bay doors,” Maddox told the AI.
Without giving anyone a warning, Valerie pressed the jump button. Victory shook even more as it entered the planet’s upper atmosphere. A million kilometers away, the cruiser fired its main beam. Each act was all for naught—because the starship jumped once again. It bypassed the fourth planet. The beam slashed empty space, sizzling into the atmosphere. And Victory left the star system three light years behind.
They hadn’t touched down for food. Neither had they found any spare parts on the planet.
“What we do have,” Maddox said, after the jump ended, “is an SWS starship under our control. We’re going to raid its stores, use its tools and hook up its star charts. Best of all, we’re going to use the destroyer’s Laumer Drive to open wormholes for us. People, I have good news, it looks like we’re going to get home after all.”
-42-
Six light years away from the fourth planet and in the void, Captain Maddox led the boarding team into the sideways-resting Saint Petersburg.
It would have been better if they had powered armor. Instead, they wore vacc-suits and cradled assault rifles. Victory’s main docking bay looked worse than a junkyard. Smashed shuttles, ripped-up decking and torn bulkheads made it a twisted, metallic maze. Sparks and burning cables had put a thick drifting haze everywhere. The starship couldn’t take any more damage. It was amazing the vessel still functioned as well as it did.
Working through the docking bay, it took an hour before they reached the half-crushed destroyer. Another thirty minutes passed before they forced a hatch.
Maddox wasn’t sure what he expected to find inside the Saint Petersburg. The craft had been under New Men control for quite some time. In the end, the interior wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, if one considered a huge jumbled mess with everything thrown everywhere as regular. It took a day with the torch to cut through to the galley. Then they had plenty of ship’s stores to choose their favorite meals.
Maddox burped after splurging on prime rib and French fries with horseradish. It felt so good to be full.
Three days with cutting torches and bending bulkheads brought them to the Laumer Drive. It needed repairs. Meta, Riker and Keith began on them immediately.
The others worked through to the bridge. Dana attempted to hack the computer. Per Lomax or one of the other New Men must have set up a self-destruct booby-trap. Detonations destroyed the hard drives when she started trying to manipulate them.
“I hope the Goddess of Destruction devours their guts a worm at a time,” Dana said later.
From memory, Lieutenant Noonan painstakingly wrote out a Laumer-Line star chart. She used old-fashioned paper and pen. A week of alien star drive jumping brought them to one of the tramlines. After that, they began using the Laumer-Points.
Meta and her team had made the Laumer Drive in the destroyer operational again.
Twice, Maddox ordered a star drive jump to escape the New Men. It didn’t make sense that the cruisers had caught up with them. The enemy could only use the wormholes. Victory used wormholes and star drive jumps to cross over to better situated tramlines. They should have left the New Men far behind in the Beyond.
“The New Men cruisers must be faster than Star Watch vessels,” Valerie told Maddox. “It would appear they also have longer-ranged sensors.”
“I’m beginning to suspect the New Men have fewer starships than we think,” Maddox said. “Otherwise, why haven’t they begun a full scale invasion of the Commonwealth? They took Odin, Horace and Parthia, and stopped there, challenging us to come and look at what they had done. Do they need time to construct more star cruisers? Should we be attacking them with everything before they’re ready?”
“We know they’ve infiltrated the Commonwealth with spies and found traitors among us,” Valerie said. “Maybe they’ll try to start a civil war inside us just as Dana’s people once tried to do with Rigel’s Social Syndicate.”
Maddox had told Valerie about that. He pondered the problem as the alien starship swept through the Beyond. Using the Saint Petersburg’s tools, Meta and Dana made badly needed repairs, keeping the vessel running.
Finally, after two months of travel, they exited the Beyond and entered the Oikumene. They’d used wormholes that led in a roundabout way, skirting the Wahhabi Caliphate in an effort to reach Commonwealth territory.
In the Deneb System, their luck ran out. A Wahhabi battle group hailed them. When they failed to answer, the battle group sheik ordered them to prepare for boarding.
Maddox ordered the second-to-last star drive jump of the trip, leaving the Caliphate’s sailors far behind. By that time, Dana had shut down the AI for good.
“Every second we had the alien computer on made me nervous,” the doctor told Maddox.
“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?” he asked.
“Didn’t want to give you a useless worry,” she said. “We needed it, right? Well, we don’t anymore.”
Shortly thereafter, they entered official Commonwealth space. Two Laumer-Points later, a Star Watch frigate on patrol in the Vancouver System hailed them.
Maddox stood on the bridge, using the screen to speak to Commander Kris Guderian. She had short hair and a splash of freckles across her nose. She belonged to the Patrol Arm of the Star Watch, routinely making voyages into the Beyond.
“I am Captain Maddox of the Star Watch,” he said. He wore his dress uniform. “If you have your recognition codes with you…”
“Just a minute, Captain,” Commander Guderian said. She turned away, speaking quietly to someone unseen. Finally, nodding to someone else, she turned back to him. “I’m ready. Go ahead.”
“What color are you presently using?” Maddox asked.
“Indigo Green,” she replied.
Maddox thought a moment. Ah, right. “The fox is red and the hen is purple,” he said.
Guderian waited, as she no doubt checked her records for the proper response. “I see,” she said. “You’re claiming priority clearance passage.”
“Negative,” Maddox said, grinning. “And nice try. You Patrol people always were a suspicious bunch. I’m claiming a Star Watch emergency as your codebook says. You will escort us to Earth. Before we start, though, I have to know the situation with the New Men.”
“The last I heard, Star Watch Command is debating sending a second expedition to Odin.”
“You know about the first expedition?” Maddox asked.
“I take it you’ve been in the Beyond for quite some time, Captain.”
“Have you ever seen this type of starship before?” he asked.