Vaughn Heppner - The Lost Starship

“Of course,” he said. “Look, this is…” He squinted at her. “Why did you ask me to tell you just before we get there?”

“No particular reason,” she said offhandedly.

“You’re—” He was going to say, “lying,” but decided on greater tact. “I’ll keep your request in mind,” he finished.

She nodded indifferently. “What’s your proposal then?”

“The New Men are following us. Whether they mean to capture the sentinel, I don’t know. Let us suppose you’re right: no one can board the alien vessel. Okay. We’ll use the sentinel to set up an ambush.”

“Meaning what?” she asked.

“We’ll lead the New Men to the alien starship. It’s automated, you say.”

“Correct,” agreed Dana.

“Fine,” he said. “We lead them there and it destroys the hunters for us.”

“How does that help us?” she asked.

“That should be easy to understand. They’re following us, and I don’t think they’ll quit until they have us. This stops them, and it gets rid of one or more of their elite star cruisers. Afterward, we’re free to return home. You get your pardon and I have the honor of destroying however many enemy cruisers the sentinel annihilates.”

Dana studied him, and finally, she laughed. “Nice try, Captain. I almost believed you.”

“Well, whether you believe me or not that’s my plan as of now. We’re almost to the second-to-last star system.”

Doctor Dana Rich expelled a lungful of air. “Are you serious?” she asked. “You’ve actually taken us that far into the Beyond?”

“Correct. Now, what do you want to tell me?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

Maddox sat perfectly still. Scout duty was hard work. The ship was too small and they’d rubbed elbows too long. Normal Patrol scout crews were carefully chosen for their abilities to get along and to handle the cramped quarters for extended periods. Maddox doubted any of them were constitutionally suited for the small craft. Thus, he forced himself to sit quietly as he studied the doctor anew, instead of jumping up and pacing.

He envisioned Dana Rich, as she’d been the first few days after she awoke. Since then, the woman had become tenser. More than that, she seemed frightened. But because of her pride, she tried to hide it.

“Fine,” he said abruptly, standing. “If you have nothing else to say—” He started for the hatch.

“Wait,” she whispered.

Maddox turned around.

Doctor Rich stared at her hands. She breathed heavily, causing her breasts to rise and fall rapidly. She was older than either Valerie or Meta, but she was beautiful in an exotic way.

She raised her head, and a tic twitched under her right eye. “You’re a monomaniac, Captain. I can’t believe you’ve brought us so far out into the Beyond. The dangers out there…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. This next jump, well, the one into the alien system, must be done exactly how I say. If you don’t do it like that, we’ll die.”

“Why is that?” Maddox asked.

“Does the scout have a deflector shield?”

“You know it doesn’t,” he said.

“Then the minute you exit the jump point into the alien star system, you and everyone else aboard the Geronimo dies.”

“Because the sentinel will attack us?” asked Maddox.

“Not at all,” Dana said. “The alien star system will do the killing.”

“Can you elaborate?”

Once more, the doctor stared at her hands and began to speak in a low voice. The reason shocked Maddox. Without the good doctor’s insight—if she were right—the alien system would indeed destroy the scout. The question had changed, then. Did they have enough time to get ready to enter the alien system the doctor’s way before the star cruiser or the destroyer found and annihilated them?

The star patterns had changed drastically since Maddox had begun the mission on Earth over three months ago. In a straight line, they were well over three hundred light-years from the Solar System.

The scout had entered this system at high velocity and accelerated. Now, several days later, they approached the other end, decelerating for some time already.

The system possessed an A spectral class star. That made it a bluish-white furnace with a mean surface temperature of 8000 K. Three terrestrial planets made up the inner system, each about twice the size of Earth. The first two had molten surfaces like Mercury. The last resembled a giant dust-blown Mars.

The lone outer system planet—the one they approached—was unique, at least as seen during their travels. It was a brown dwarf with twenty-one times Jupiter’s mass, making it gargantuan. The dwarf was a substellar object, meaning that despite its size, it lacked the mass to sustain hydrogen-1 fusion reactions in its core. Instead, the planet fused deuterium in the center. This was a T spectral type dwarf and was magenta to the eye rather than brown.

The massive planet was over four billion kilometers from the star, the reason for the longer travel time. The dwarf had moons, the largest similar in size to Saturn’s Titan. The T dwarf also possessed highly elliptical orbiting comets, which thickened in the region near an unstable wormhole.

This system possessed two Laumer-Points: the one they’d entered near the third planet in the inner range and the one they approached out in the comet field.

“I’m still not picking anything up yet,” Valerie said. She sat at her station, engaging all the ship’s sensors. She had been targeting comets since exiting the Laumer-Point.

“It has to be out there,” Maddox said. “The doctor told me so.”

Valerie muttered under her breath. After days of fruitless searching, it seemed she’d reached her limit. She straightened and swiveled around.

“Ensign,” she said, “Could you give us a moment.”

Keith sat at the pilot controls. He glanced from her to Maddox. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Valerie asked him.

“Have you seen the menu choices lately?” Keith asked. “If I’d tried to serve that stuff in my bar, the patrons would have stoned me.”

“Ensign!” she said.

Keith sat back, and it seemed he was about to go into his Scottish routine.

“Go head,” Maddox told him. “Grab some chow. Give us a few minutes.”

“Aye-aye, Captain, sir,” Keith said. He marched out of the control room, banging the hatch louder than usual behind him.

The moment the hatch closed, Valerie said, “Permission to speak—”

“Yes, yes,” Maddox said, with a wave of his hand. She was obviously strained, and so was he. “Please tell me what’s troubling you.”

“Sir, meaning no disrespect… Is it possible Doctor Rich lied to you?”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Maddox admitted.

“This may be her attempt—”

A beep sounded from her board, interrupting Valerie’s speech.

Maddox’s stomach tightened. He knew what the sound meant. For weeks, this had happened with increasing regularity.

“It’s Saint Petersburg ,” Valerie said, studying her panel. As she spoke, the lieutenant engaged the cloaking device. A loud thrum told them all they needed to know about the device’s condition. “We can’t keep this up much longer, sir.”

Maddox silently agreed. If it could last for just another day… This was supposed to be the end of the line for them. One more jump would bring them to the sentinel-haunted star system. Doctor Rich had told him a song and dance about how to get into the alien system intact. Could it really be true?

“You do realize that we won’t be able to follow the doctor’s suggestion now,” Valerie said. “We can’t, not with the destroyer in the system.”