Buck Rogers 2 - That Man on Beta (18 page)

“But—but, Your Highness!” He was nearly in tears.

“Listen here, dear old Uncle Von Norbert. Can this computer understand what I say to it?”

“But of course,” Von Norbert said. His confidence was beginning to return, now that he was back on technical ground. “You may activate a microphone and speak to it, type your message by keyboard, write it on the sensaplate with stylus, tap it in by telegrapher’s code . . .”

“Fine,” Ardala stopped him again. “Voice will do fine. Well, and maybe I’ll play around with some of the other toys you have on here. So this is what you do with the money I get you out of the imperial treasury. Build yourself shiny toys!”

“Your Highness!”

“Scram!”

Von Norbert bowed out with quivering chin.

Ardala sat at the computer’s console, tapped a few symbols via keyboard, then flicked an input mode control switch to
oral.

The computer spoke in its electronically synthesized voice. “Villus Compu at your service.”

“Good,” Ardala said, “do you recognize me? Here’s my handprint, check it with your files.”

“You are Princess Ardala, twenty-sixth daughter of Draco, king of Draconia and emperor of the Draconian realm.”

“That’s right, you old bag of diodes and chips. I am also beautiful, intelligent, and very loving. And I desire to mate with Captain Buck Rogers of Terra.”

“Negative,” the computer voiced, “your personality scan is not appropriate for this experiment.”

“What are you talking about? You’re nothing but a machine! You don’t just say
negative
to me—I’m a princess! I
order
you to have Buck Rogers mate with me!”

“Negative. Your personality scan indicates independent, hard to get along with, apt to rant and rave. This experiment is for the breeding of soldiers, who must be subject to discipline and conformity. You are not suitable.”

“What do you mean?” Ardala ranted. “I’ve never ranted or raved in my life!” she screamed. “Where’s something heavy? Give me . . .”

She ran around the room, searching. Finally she opened the top of the console keyboard unit and pulled out a heavy paper roller. She was about to smash the computer’s visiscreen when it sprang to life with the image of her father.

The Emperor Draco, it should be understood, has been criticized for his ambition, his ruthlessness, his vicious temper, his gourmandlike appetite for all fleshly pleasures including food, drink, lush women, fast vehicles, vainglory, palaces, villas, high-speed groundcars, yachts, and spaceships. In fact, all of this criticism is entirely valid—and then some.

But Draco was also brilliantly intelligent, vastly skilled at both political and military sciences, absolutely fearless, and—in his own, brutal way—fiercely loving and loyal to all of his daughters and all of his empire.

Huge, bearded, garbed in the uniform of stellar high admiral—which title he bore in addition to his royal and imperial ones, and which he had earned by dint of sheer military brilliance quite aside from his position on the throne—Draco peered out of the computer screen and commanded his daughter.

“Ardala! Put that down at once!”

The furious princess of a moment before turned into a naughty child, discovered and scolded by a righteous, stern parent. She fumblingly installed the paper roller back into the keyboard. “Yes, Father,” she said contritely.

“Daughter,” Draco’s visage intoned, “I am very upset, very disappointed with you. Here I am having the time of my life in the middle of a perfectly glorious space war. Thousands of ships. Millions of troopers. Casualties all over the place. Blood, gore, screams of the wounded, moans of the dying, etc., etc. And I just received the most distressing summons away from my duties.”

“Don’t listen to Kane,” Ardala pleaded. “You know he’s just jealous. He wants to marry me and be a prince, and I spurned him and he’s mad. I love you, Daddy.”

“Now you listen to me, young lady. This Gregorian war is no trifling matter. We are determined to conquer the Gregorians. We must win. I must win! And if you do anything to interfere with my victory, I will have you executed as a traitor.”

“But, Daddy,” Ardala sniffled.

“No buts! Do you understand?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Ardala sobbed.

F O U R T E E N

The Ellis Plan was what they called it, in honor of the robot armorer Ellis 14 who had worked out the logical procedure involved. Supervisor Latner had fumed and protested but the old scientist Dr. Huer had insisted, and the Ellis Plan it was.

When it went into effect, the Inner City defense squadron ready detachment was cut back to skeleton level, with all duty crews on twenty-four-hour alert, while a special force was sent at top speed, star-warp drive, to trace the vector calculated in the Intelligence and Scanning Center.

The point ship of the special expeditionary force was piloted by Wilma Deering’s deputy commander and executive officer, Major Dylan. Dylan’s screen was set for a maximum range scan, and the pilot’s keen eyes seldom strayed from the eerily glowing rectangle. Suddenly Dylan’s eyes widened. A blip!

It was too remote, or too small, an object—or one both too remote
and
too small to register on the range-and-mass indicator in Dylan’s starfighter, but it was an object in a sector of space where no objects were normally to be found. And it was moving as fast as only a starfighter in star-warp drive could move—directly toward the defense squadron!

“Ship in twelfth quadrant,” Dylan snapped into the starfighter’s radiophone, “identify yourself.”

There was a brief pause filled with only the space-crackle of free-floating hydrogen nuclei colliding in random combinations. Then a familiar voice spoke through Dylan’s earphones: “This is Colonel Deering, Inner City, earth space fleet. Request ID data on yourself!”

With a grin of relief the exec radio’d back, “Colonel Deering! This is your fleet! Dylan speaking—I’m in temporary command for this sector!”

“Oh, it’s so good to hear you!” Relief was clear in Wilma’s voice.

“Are you all right?” Dylan asked.

“Yes. Fine.”

“And Captain Rogers?”

“He’s—he’s still on Villus Beta,” Wilma told the other pilot. “He helped me escape so I could return to Earth for help.”

“Well, you don’t have to go that far. Help’s here now! Are you ready to assume command of the squadron, Colonel, or shall I continue to act for you?”

Wilma drew a deep breath. “Yes,” she said, “thank you, Dylan, for acting in my absence. And for bringing help this far. I’ll resume command now, thanks again.”

She swung the controls of her starfighter around, warped her flight path to match that of the speeding fleet. She saw Dylan’s ship, on her screen, falling back to exec position, leaving the command position open for her. With a joyful heart, Wilma swung her starfighter into formation with the rest of her command and rocketed onward with the others.

On Villus Beta, Buck Rogers and Professor Von Norbert had left their respective interests and were—to put it delicately—negotiating terms. They stood in the room that had first been assigned to Buck for housing, before he and Wilma had experienced their abortive romance in the artificial Garden of Eden.

The two men had apparently reached some level of understanding, as Buck’s words at the moment were, “All right. I’ll do it, Professor.

“But”—he went on—“no more cozy mating room. And especially no more public performances!”

“Why—what do you mean?” Von Norbert asked innocently.

“This!” Buck snapped. He pried away a ventilator grating to reveal a sleek video monitor lead.

Von Norbert said, “Oh.”

“Well?” Buck persisted.

“That wasn’t for public performance. It’s a routine security monitor. They’re all over Villus Beta. I’ve found ’em in my own quarters. Nobody’s quite sure who controls them. Probably Kane.”

“Well, I want my room cleaned of the things. No bugs—or no Buck! If you understand what I’m saying.”

“All right,” Von Norbert agreed, “I’ll have your room completely debugged. You can check it yourself as soon as the squad leaves.”

“Then it’s okay,” Buck said, “I suppose.”

“All right. While the security troops are clearing out their equipment, let’s stroll over to the great hall and meet some of your, ah, counterparts in the experiment.” The professor led the way from Buck’s quarters.

In the great hall Buck was introduced to Grenda, Blorim, and Orell. They all cooed hellos at Buck. He offered to shake hands politely with each, discovered that they were willing to do far more than shake hands with him.

“Well,” Buck commented, “this is a pleasure.” Orell snuggled up to Buck on one side; Blorim, on the other; Grenda stood against his chest, looked up and stroked his cheek. “This is more than a pleasure, in fact,” Buck conceded.

“Uh,” he stammered, “ah, Grenda. Uh, Grenda. Uh, what kind of name is that?”

“Draconian, silly,” the voluptuous young woman replied.

“Oh,” Buck commented intelligently. He turned to one side. “And, uh, Blorim. Blorim. That’s Draconian too?”

“Of course,” the second young woman answered. “Of course.”

The third young woman, Orell, asked, “What kind of name is Buck?”

“American, silly,” the earthman told her.

“What’s that? American, I mean.”

“Oh,” Buck explained, “it’s a country. Or—it used to be.”

“Bet you can’t guess how old we are, Buck,” Blorim teased.

The professor interjected a stern word.

“Whoops! Sorry,” the young woman responded.

“No. I hadn’t thought to ask. How old are you?” Buck asked.

Blorim shot an inquiring glance at the professor. In reply he merely shook his head.

“I hear that
you’re
five hundred years old,” Grenda said to Buck.

“Well, 537 to be exact,” Buck told her.

“You sure don’t look it,” Grenda and Orell giggled.

A curtain fluttered at the rear edge of a balcony overlooking the great hall. Behind the curtain, whose flimsy material did little to block their view of the interview taking place below, Kane and the Princess Ardala exchanged words. Ardala had been observing the meeting between Buck, Von Norbert, and the three Draconian beauties, all alone. Now, unannounced, Kane stood beside her, his heavy presence obvious.

“Good afternoon, Princess,” he greeted Ardala.

“You snuck up on me, Kane. Your standard mode of operation, of course.”

“Not at all,” Kane smiled his oiliest smile. “You were just too busy mooning over your pretty earth-boy to notice my arrival.”

“Be careful how you address your princess, Kane,” Ardala snapped angrily. “Or I’ll have your head!”

“Of course, Your Highness,” Kane bowed, exposing the back of his muscular, bull-like neck for a moment, as if yielding to the request of a royal headsman. “I trust,” Kane went on as he straightened, “that you and your imperial father have had a little talk. And you understand now that I am running things around here.”

“Kane, I understand more than you can imagine!”

“Ah, Ardala, my princess. I do still want to be friends with you. You know I’ve always been very . . . fond . . . of my princess. I’m still willing to be your husband, in fact.”

“The day the boiling sea of the Gregorian desert freezes over,” Ardala returned.

“Well,” Kane replied coolly, “till that day, then.” He gave another sneering peek at the scene beneath their balcony, then strolled away, leaving Ardala to seethe.

While events moved at their accelerating pace on Villus Beta, the Inner City defense squadron continued to streak through warped space, Colonel Wilma Deering in the commander’s position, Major Dylan in the executive officer’s. There was a bleep from Wilma’s commo telescreen and she flicked a toggle to activate her two-way audio-video circuit with Earth.

The wizened features of Dr. Huer appeared on her telescreen. “We’ve run your information to the computer council and they’ve confirmed your hunch,” Dr. Huer said.

“I’m not surprised,” Wilma told him.

“There’s no truth to the claim that the Draconian race is dying out,” Huer continued. “However, there is an area of the universe that the Draconians have been unable to conquer, probably because they have no immunity to the viruses of the sector. That part of space is called Gregoria. The council suspects that the Draconians are holding Buck in order to use his antibodies to secure immunities against viruses native to the Gregorian sector.”

“Then it’s all just part of their pattern for conquest,” Wilma gritted. “Sounds like something Kane would do.”

“Further,” Huer said, an office light glinting from his old-fashioned spectacles, “the council and the Intelligence and Scanning Center have both calculated the results of the Draconians’ capturing Gregoria. Wilma, child, it would give them an ideal position for an all-out attack against Earth!”

There was a long silence, broken at last when Wilma asked, simply, “What are my orders, Dr. Huer?”

“That is still being discussed here. Stand by, Wilma!” The hand of the figure in the vision screen reached for a control switch and Dr. Huer’s face faded slowly from the screen.

In the great hall of Villus Beta, a casual observer would have thought that a casual party was taking place, rather than a serious genetic experiment—or an interstellar war!