Vaughn Heppner - The Lost Starship

Let the chase begin .

No. He didn’t have time to indulge now. That would be for later when they won.

Keith Maker grinned. Sergeant Riker kept kneading his one good eye. The old man had just woken up. Valerie sat straight, seeming the perfect Star Watch officer in her crisp uniform.

The others wore their uniforms, but they didn’t keep them as sharp as Lieutenant Noonan did hers. Maddox decided his uniform could use pressing. These past weeks, he’d become too lax about dress codes.

Doctor Rich cleared her throat, giving him a meaningful glance.

“Doctor,” Maddox said. “You’ve been hard at work. Would you like to discuss your findings with us?”

“Thank you, Captain Maddox,” Dana said. “You are correct. These past hours, I have reanalyzed the alien sentinel. During our voyage into the Beyond over the last three months I have been replaying in my mind many of the arguments I had with Professor Ludendorff. He was a frightfully intelligent person, with stunning insights. Without him, our original expedition would never have reached this strange system. We spent weeks studying various wrecks. We also analyzed rubble, searching for technical or civilizational clues, anything to help us understand the sentinel. Near the end of our stay, the professor believed he had found the ticket.”

Dana shook her head. “I rebelled at the professor’s idea. It seemed like a suicide mission. Convincing several key crewmembers, we took over the professor’s ship and escaped the star system. Eventually, he regained control. As I said, Ludendorff was the opposite of the absent-minded professor. He was brilliant with theoretical ideas and their practical application. I should have foreseen that and marooned him somewhere. Eventually, that’s what he did to me.”

Doctor Rich sighed. “In any case, I have probed the approaching sentinel. I wish I could tell you I’ve discovered something new and amazing. That is not the case. I am down to trying the professor’s plan, as I can think of no other way to gaining entrance onto the sentinel. At this point, I don’t see any other way of surviving the killing machine.”

“What is this method?” Maddox asked.

“It will sound ridiculous, I’m sure. It still sounds that way to me. Yet I would rather take a risk attempting to survive than wait idly for death to claim us. Thus, it is either the professor’s plan or nothing.”

“What’s his idea, love?” Keith asked.

Doctor Rich gave the pilot a cold glance. Afterward, she cleared her throat and regarded Maddox. “Part of me wishes to hate you, Captain. If you hadn’t come down to Loki Prime, none of this would be happening to me. But you did come, and I am off that Godforsaken world with its horrible spores. Now, Death comes for us. And I am propelled to try Ludendorff’s crazy scheme. I’m sure that somewhere the professor senses this and smiles.”

Raising her voice, Dana said, “You always were far too smug to like, Professor. Yet I say, good luck with whatever thing you are presently trying to achieve.”

Maddox wondered if this uncharacteristic flowery speech was an effect of the stimulants Doctor Rich had taken.

Dana glanced around the table. “This is the plan,” she said. “We will set the scout on autopilot. It will approach the sentinel. Likely, we will see some interesting form of destruction.”

“What kind of silly plan is that?” Keith asked, snapping his fingers. “Phtt, so ends our expedition?”

“I said put the scout on autopilot,” Dana said. “All of us will leave before Geronimo is destroyed.”

“Where are we going to be?” Keith asked. “Floating in space watching the bloody fireworks?”

Doctor Rich raised her eyebrows. “You’re sharper than you look, Ensign.”

“What?” Keith shouted. “You’re serious?”

“As I said, it is a harebrained scheme. Professor Ludendorff claimed it would work, given the right adjustments on our part. That’s what I’ve been working on for the last fifteen hours. I’ve been trying to remember what sequence he said will succeed.”

“Your plan calls for us to spacewalk off Geronimo and send the scout to its doom against the sentinel?” Maddox asked.

Doctor Rich didn’t seem to hear the question. She stared at a bulkhead. Maddox wondered if she’d fallen into a trance.

Suddenly, she began to speak in a soft voice. “We had a death on our expedition. A crewmember named Hassan died while we were in the alien star system. We gave him all the trappings of a Muslim burial—the man had been a renegade of the Wahhabi sect. Then we set him adrift in the system as if we were at sea on Earth. The sentinel hurried to investigate. It even launched a small vessel, which scooped up our dead friend. The shuttle returned to the sentinel.”

“With the body?” asked Maddox.

“The professor thought so,” Dana said.

“Do you, or he, have any thoughts as to why it did that?” Maddox asked.

“Ludendorff had many ideas,” Dana said. “The one he finally fixated upon was the sentinel wishing to dissect the individual for study.”

“Why did the professor pick that idea in particular?” Maddox asked.

“I wondered the same thing,” Dana said. “Why not as reasonably believe the sentinel tried to save one of its own species? Suppose the computer, or whatever the aliens used in lieu of one, finally malfunctioned. It tried to save the corpse, believing that it was really trying to save one of its own, bringing it to the ship for resuscitation. The starship is old. One would suspect failing systems. The marvel is that the vessel runs at all.”

Keith shifted in his seat. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but if the sentinel is picking us up to run tests, I think it will have a way to subdue those it catches.”

“Very good, Ensign,” Dana said. “I pointed out the same thing to the professor. He assured me he would figure something out when the time came.”

“Did he tell you what the something was?” Maddox asked.

“No.”

Maddox grew uncomfortable. “What’s your plan for our defeating this possible subduing agent?”

Dana fixed her bloodshot eyes on him. “I did a lot of pondering. I finally realized the solution.” She pointed at him. “You’re going to defeat the subduing agent, Captain Maddox. You have guns and a fighting crew. As I said, I’m also hoping that after six thousand years something over there has fallen apart. If not, the subduing agent will likely defeat us.”

“If your hope is true,” Maddox said, “—that the ancient starship has fallen apart—it may not be much help to us against the New Men.”

“First things first,” Dana said. “We’re not on the starship yet. Now you know my plan for getting us aboard. Are you willing to attempt it?”

Maddox sat back. She was right. It was a crazy plan. “One thing bothers me,” he said. “Back on Earth, Brigadier O’Hara spoke about needing people with the right brain patterns. She said the professor had spoken about it.”

“I don’t recall that,” Dana said.

“Then why did the brigadier and the Lord High Admiral say that?” Maddox asked. “Cook had me gather the people I did due to those supposed patterns.”

“I have no idea,” Dana said. “Maybe it was subterfuge on their part, something to throw off the enemy if they learned of it.”

Maddox doubted that. It would have to remain a mystery for now. “I’m willing to attempt your plan, Doctor, or the professor’s plan as you say. What about the rest of you.”

One by one, the others agreed that any attempt was better than none.

“Then we’d better hurry,” said Dana. “The sentinel will be here soon enough.”