Vaughn Heppner - The Lost Starship

Inside her helmet, Valerie shouted, moving between the robot and Dana. Kneeling, Valerie ripped out the expended magazine and shoved in another. The robot loomed before her. She held the muzzle centimeters from its skin and let the rifle tremble in her hands. Bullets smashed through dented outer armor. They sparked inside the electrical guts. Yet still the robot’s treads carried it closer.

Then, Valerie released the rifle as she began to roar and rave. Pushing with her feet, she collided with the thing so hard her teeth jarred together with a click . She shoved as her vacc-boots kept moving, straining against the robot. Mechanical tentacles struck her helmet and whipped against her shoulders. Her cries changed to those of pain. A last convulsive effort gave her more strength. She toppled the robot and rolled free of it. With sweat dripping into her eyes, she scrambled to the assault rifle lying on the deck. She jammed in a new magazine. As the robot’s treads spun and the tentacles attempted to right itself, she shoved the muzzle through a torn area. Valerie pulled the trigger, pumping slugs into the undying robot. Finally, smoke billowed from the thing. Flames flickered, and the robot’s efforts weakened until it no longer mattered.

Exhausted, Lieutenant Noonan staggered away from the alien machine, crashing onto her butt as she panted. She didn’t know if they had won or lost, but she sure as heck felt as if she’d done her part.

On the starship’s bridge, the holoimage raged at Captain Maddox. “You traitor! You lied to me. Your people are attempting to gain control over my AI core. I will drop the deflector shield and let both enemy beams strike the ship into oblivion.”

“Wait!” Maddox said. “They aren’t supposed to be doing that. My crew is attacking you?”

“What?” the holoimage asked. “They’re doing this against your orders?”

“Of course,” Maddox said, trying to gain time for whatever the others were attempting. “I have too much respect for you to do anything other than serve you. Strengthen the deflector shield. Use everything you can against the New Men while I stop my team from hurting you.”

“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.

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.”