The Lost Patrol (15 page)

Maddox sliced a hand through the air. “You will undo your damage this instant.”

Shu nodded, composing herself. Once she appeared ready, the Spacer took a deep breath. She held that pose for some time. Finally, she stirred, suddenly looking exhausted.

“It is done,” she whispered.

Maddox didn’t feel any different.

“I had to alter you earlier,” Shu said. “You might understand why some day.”

“What exactly did you do?”

“It was a tiny neural blockage,” Shu said. “It’s very technical. But in any case, now that I’ve shown my good will by reversing—”

“Captain,” Galyan said, appearing beside the table. “The Spacer has just practiced a deception upon you. She used her Builder devices, the one powering the other, but nothing happened in your cerebral cortex.”

“That’s a lie,” Shu said.

The holoimage regarded her with outrage. “I do not lie. I have stated fact.” Galyan turned to Maddox. “Sir, I no longer give it a seven percent probability that her interior device did anything to your brain. In fact—”

“Just a minute,” Maddox said. He spun around on the chair. “Do you hear that?” he asked Riker.

“My hearing isn’t what it used to be, sir,” the sergeant said.

Maddox stood fast, causing the chair to fall back. In the same motion, he drew his long-barreled pistol.

“I hear gunfire,” the captain said. “It’s coming from inside the detention area.”

-23-

Maddox burst through the cell door to the sound of gunfire down the hall. Riker followed close behind.

“Make sure the door’s locked,” the captain said.

Riker pushed until the heavy cell door clicked shut.

The sound of gunfire had been consistent the entire time. A man roared in pain. More shots rang out. The yelling stopped abruptly.

“What’s going on, sir?” Riker hissed.

“My guess,” Maddox said, “is androids. Keep behind me, Sergeant.”

“Sir,” Riker said, hurrying to keep up with Maddox. “I only have a stunner.”

“Set it at max.”

“It already is. I’m just saying. If they have combat armor—”

“Aim for the head.”

“Will a stun shot hurt an android?” Riker asked.

“We will undoubtedly discover the truth soon enough.”

They passed an open door into a rec room but continued down the hall. The sounds of gunfire had stopped. Boots struck the decking as people approached.

Maddox knelt in the hall, raised his long-barreled gun—holding it with both hands—and fired as the first Marine came around the corner.

The captain blew the Marine’s head apart. It wasn’t easy, as a hard alloy protected the brainpan. Maddox had special rounds, though, meant for maximum penetration.

Maddox fired fast but deliberately. He wasn’t sure how many androids had fought their way into the detention center. He only had so many rounds in a magazine and had to make sure each counted.

After the third android catapulted off its feet, blown backward by the shots, Maddox used his thumb to eject the spent magazine onto the floor. He slammed another into the handle.

A fourth Marine rounded the corner. This one held an assault carbine with both hands, spraying bullets.

Maddox had already fallen prone onto the floor. The same couldn’t be said for Riker. Two bullets struck the older sergeant. One ricocheted off his bionic arm. The other struck his chest, making him grunt painfully. Riker also fell, which likely saved him from further damage.

The Marine continued to fire until his carbine clicked empty. The man, or android, didn’t attempt to reload. He raced at Maddox as the captain tried to align his gun from the floor. The Marine was already in the process of swinging the carbine, gripping it by the barrel. The stock connected with the long-barreled gun and swatted it out of the captain’s hands.

The pistol struck the wall. Because of momentum, the carbine swung up like a bat. Maddox surged forward. The Marine tried to swing the carbine back down on the captain. Maddox connected first, tackling the Marine by the knees, hurling him off his feet.

The Marine struck the deck hard. He seemed heavier than a man. Maddox was certain he fought an android. The thing would have tremendous strength if it were anything like the other androids he’d faced.

The android’s knees lunged upward, striking the captain’s chest. Maddox didn’t fight it. He allowed the thing’s knees to catapult him over its head. As Maddox landed, he tucked and rolled.

“You had your chance,” the android said.

Maddox stopped rolling, shooting to his feet and twisting around. The android had also twisted around, climbing up. The captain dove, but he didn’t dive at the android. Instead, Maddox lunged for his pistol that lay on the floor. The android kicked it, sending the pistol skidding away. Then, the android drew its foot back to kick again.

“No,” Shu said. She stood by the open door to her cell, calmly observing the scene.

The android spied her over its shoulder, and its demeanor changed. “You,” it said.

“Don’t do it,” Shu told the android.

The fake Marine tried to move at her, but it seemed confused. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked.

Shu didn’t answer. She had become wan, with her lower lip trembling as if she exerted effort.

Maddox wasn’t sure he understood, but he didn’t have to. He scrambled across the hall, reaching his gun. By the time he stood up and faced the android—it still stood in the same spot, frowning, appearing to try with all its might to move.

Shu appeared to glance at Maddox. That broke the tableau. The android rushed her.

Maddox raised his pistol. For an awful moment, he debated holding his fire. The android had almost reached Shu.

Maddox began firing. He didn’t aim at the back of the android’s head. He pumped bullets into the android’s shoulders just below the neck. He wanted to incapacitate the thing, not kill it. He wanted one of these creatures alive for questioning.

Just before reaching the Spacer, the android crumpled onto the floor. It twitched and smoked and then froze in its last position.

-24-

It was an hour after the android assault upon the detention center. Nine Star Watch Marines had died defending the facility. Four more of the pseudo-men had perished, making a total of six androids aboard
Victory
.

The starship was on lockdown, with specially vetted Marine teams prowling the corridors.

Riker was in emergency undergoing surgery. He wasn’t in critical condition, but he was seriously hurt.

Maddox had returned to the detention cell with Shu 15. Meta stood against the door this time. She stood there as an assassin, armed to the teeth, ready to kill Shu or more androids if they were foolish enough to try this again.

Galyan watched unseen.

Shu sat at her spot, with her hands on the table. “Will the sergeant recover?” she asked.

Maddox studied her but didn’t answer. He recalled Shu as the Provost Marshal in the Lin Ru Hotel in Shanghai. She had attempted to kill him back then with a ruthlessness he’d seldom seen elsewhere. That was the real Shu 15, of that he was certain. He felt foolish having believed the other Shu in Normandy, France and while aboard the Spacer airship.

“Why shouldn’t we remove your Builder devices?” Maddox asked.

“That would be a serious overreaction for one thing,” Shu said. “For another, you’re going to want me to have these modifications when the time comes.”

“Would you care to be more precise?”

“Not at this time,” Shu said.

Maddox studied the Spacer. He let his mind rove concerning her. He was missing something. His mind had clouded, but it would appear the Spacer and her Builder devices had nothing to do with that. Otherwise, she would have righted her wrong when she’d had the opportunity. Galyan said she’d used her internal devices. What had she done then?

“You called the androids with your devices,” Maddox said. “That’s why they attacked.”

“On the contrary, I attempted to stop them from attacking.”

“If you knew they were attacking, why didn’t you warn us?”

“I didn’t realize they’d gotten so near. Otherwise, I would have done exactly that. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. It’s…” She squeezed her hands on the table as if burdened by her supposed lack of decision.

“What are you?” Maddox asked.             

Shu looked up, shaking her head. “I don’t understand the question.”

“Are you human?”

“Captain, please, I’m more human than you are.”

“Yet…” Maddox said. “You are Builder-modified.”

“Several degrees removed Builder-modified,” Shu corrected.

“By that, I take it to mean you’ve never met a Builder.”

“That is correct.”

“Thus, a Builder didn’t personally modify you. That’s what you mean by several degrees removed.”

Shu nodded.

“However…” Maddox tapped the table.

Shu raised her eyebrows.

“I’m not quite ready to make any specific conjectures about the Spacers. Sometime in the past, though, you, meaning Spacers, stumbled onto Builder technology. Perhaps you weren’t even Spacers yet when those people made the discovery. What you found in the Builder treasure trove turned your originators into the Spacers.”

“You have quite an imagination, Captain.”

Maddox leaned back. “I fail to understand your angle in all this. You appear to want my help.”

“I do want it, just as you’re going to want mine. There is balance in that.”

He nodded. “Yet you won’t enlighten me about anything. I am of two minds concerning you. The first desires to order the surgery.”

“I can’t stop you,” Shu said.

“The second is to order you into suspended animation.”

“I’ll take the third option,” Shu said.

“You’ll have to earn the third option.”

Shu smiled faintly. “Shall I tell you why that isn’t so?”

“Please,” Maddox said.

“Your curiosity will prevent options one and two. That leaves option three.”

Maddox shook his head. “If you fail to answer my most fundamental questions to my satisfaction, I will leave your fate in Meta’s hands.”

“I don’t believe you,” Shu said.

“Believe as you wish. I will begin the interrogation now. How was my mind clouded?”

“You speak in the past tense,” Shu said. “Has your mind returned to normal?”

Maddox drummed his fingers on the table, waiting.

Shu also waited.

“Let me instruct you in a truism,” Maddox said. “I will not knowingly allow a Trojan horse on my starship. Your Builder devices give you abilities. Those abilities continue to remain unknown. I suspect you called the androids to free yourself. That led to the deaths of six of my people.”

“You know that’s false. I never called them. In fact, I saved your life from the last android as he was about to slay you. That was an observable fact, impossible for a realist like you to refute.”

“I have also begun to believe that you’ve tampered with Galyan,” Maddox said. “I have had my fill of people tampering with the AI on my ship. I will not let another Builder-centric person do likewise.”

“Captain, I have proven my good will—”

Maddox’s chair scraped across the floor as he turned it around to face Meta. “Are you ready to pronounce your verdict?”

“I am,” Meta said flatly.

Maddox nodded to her.

“Surgically remove the Builder items from the Spacer,” Meta said. “It’s the only way to be certain. Otherwise, someone could come along and thaw her out. Then, we’ll be right back where we started.”

“I don’t believe you’re serious,” Shu said.

“That is your prerogative,” Maddox told Shu. He stood. “I will talk to you again after the surgery.”

He headed for Meta and the door.

“I earned the two devices through exacting studies and labor across the years,” Shu said loudly. “It is a great honor to bear them. Would you strip me of that?”

Maddox didn’t turn around to answer. Instead, he snapped his fingers as if to say, “I’ll do it like that.”

Meta opened the door, going through. Maddox didn’t hesitate as he followed her.

“Wait!” Shu shouted.

Maddox paused, although he didn’t turn around. His meaning was clear. This was Shu’s last chance.

“I kissed you,” Shu whispered.

Maddox’s jaw tightened. Did she appeal to his chivalry?

“That’s when I applied the toxin,” Shu said. “It was on my lips. I transferred it to you.”

Maddox turned, regarding the Spacer.

“It was a slow-acting toxin,” Shu said. “It affected your thinking. It’s…part of the reason you accepted me. You might have also possibly missed a few things. Clearly, you didn’t miss enough of them. I told the Visionary we should give you a stronger dose. She thought the effect might be lasting if we did that. The Visionary refused to risk that because of religious convictions. She believes you’re
di-far
.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m beginning to,” Shu said.

“That’s an untruth,” Maddox said.

Shu gave the faintest of shrugs. “The Visionary is old-school. She believes in the legends. I think we make our own luck and call it the will of the gods. You appear uncommonly lucky, Captain.”

“What do your devices do?”

Shu licked her lips. “It’s difficult to listen to you blaspheme like that. Maybe I’m more old school than I realize. You shouldn’t ask such rude questions.”

“Your androids killed some of my people.”

Shu bristled. “They’re not
my
androids. They belong to Strand or Ludendorff.”

“How do you know that to be true?”

“It’s self-evident,” Shu said.

Maddox smiled faintly.

“I realize you don’t believe me.”

Maddox held up a hand. “What do your—what should I call them?”

“Adaptations,” Shu said.

Maddox raised an eyebrow. Was he supposed to think of the Builder devices as evolutionary changes? That was absurd. The devices weren’t adaptations in the slightest.

Shu waited without expression.

“What can you do with your…
adaptations
?” Maddox finally said.

“I mentally hindered the androids who captured you on “E” Deck. Normally, you couldn’t have deceived them the way you did.”

“I see. Obviously, you know what the androids did. Do your adaptations allow you to see through bulkheads?”

Shu shook her head.

“You must come clean,” Maddox said. “It is the only way to avoid surgery.”

“You’re a barbarian,” she said with heat, “a savage.”

“I am
di-far
, a man of decision. It would be well for you to remember that.”

Tiny beads of perspiration appeared on Shu’s forehead. It caused Maddox to wonder if she’d been lying earlier. Shu had said she didn’t believe in the old ways. It would appear she did. It would also appear she really believed he was
di-far
. Why would she have lied about that?

“For short periods of time I can utilize transduction,” Shu said in a monotone.

Maddox shook his head.

“At those times I have the ability to see electromagnetic radiation and electromagnetic wavelengths and process the data as fast as a computer.”

“You hijacked the ship’s monitoring images?” Maddox asked.

“Crudely stated, but correct,” Shu said.

“Thus, you saw the kidnapping androids through the ship’s monitors, through its security cameras.”

“Yes.”

“What else can you do?” Maddox asked.

“You’ve spoken about the androids’ mental dullness. That was due to me. I interfered with their neural connections.”

Imperceptibly, Maddox leaned toward her. “Can you do that to humans?”

Shu shook her head.

“Are you lying?”

“No.”

“How can I know you’re telling the truth?” Maddox asked.

“You’ll have to trust your instincts.”

Maddox inhaled as he pondered the situation. “How can I block your adaptations from affecting those on my ship?”

“Powerful scramblers will do it, as they’ll interfere with the signals.”

“Why did you want to come on this particular voyage, Provost Marshal?”

Shu looked away, sighing at last. “One of the reasons was to thwart Strand.”

“Do you believe he was in the cloaked star cruiser that followed us in the Tosk CL System?”

“Of course,” she said.

“And?”

“I also want to thwart Professor Ludendorff,” she added.

“Thwart him from doing what? Using the Nexus?”

“No, not that,” Shu said. “I can help you use the Nexus. I…probably know more about it than either of the Methuselah Men. I certainly know more about it than you or anyone else in your crew.”

“Let me ask you again. What are you? Who are the Spacers?”

“I am Shu 15, a Surveyor First Class. I am an agent of change, bid to bring about the Golden Age of Man. The Spacers are the children of the gods, seedlings cast into the cold universe to ensure the progress of life in its march against Death.”

“Death as in the cessation of the living?” Maddox asked.

“No. Death as in the terrible Swarm Imperium and the Makers of the alien Destroyers.”

A cold feeling worked through Maddox. “Do you know the extent of the Swarm Imperium?”

“You’ve asked me that before. I do not. Like you, the Spacers believed that the Swarm was extinct or at best made up of a few pockets here and there. The knowledge you brought back from the Dyson sphere has changed much. In truth, that knowledge sent a shockwave through the Spacer councils.”

“The Spacers want to know the extent of the Imperium just like Star Watch does?”

“We probably want to know more than Star Watch does.”

“Why?”

“With greater knowledge comes greater pain,” Shu quoted. “We Spacers know more about the wider galaxy than Star Watch does. Rather than bringing us delight, this knowledge threatens us with despair.”

“Is that due to knowledge about the Makers of the alien Destroyers?” Maddox asked.

“Partly,” Shu said.

“Are the Makers in our galaxy?”

“If I don’t know the extent of the Swarm Imperium, how could I know about the Makers?”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“I have no idea if the Makers are here or not,” Shu said. “I rather doubt it. Let us for all our sakes hope they’re not.”

“Indeed,” Maddox said. “Yet you feel the Makers will return to our galaxy?”

“In time,” Shu said. “The records show they’ve already made more than one pass.”

Maddox studied her more closely. “What, specifically, are you hoping we find on this voyage?”