The Lost Starship (28 page)

“I do indeed, sir.”

“How did you, or we, the crew, discover which comet held the professor’s secret supply of spare engines and fuel?”

“Meta told us
—that was her positive action I’ve been trying to tell you about. The guilt of shooting you loosened her tongue. She’s decided to pitch in with us all the way, after all. It seems she and the doctor had been communicating in secret for the past few weeks. Ain’t that interesting, sir.”

Maddox said nothing.

“At the moment, Doctor Rich is on the robo-doctor. I used the computer and found the formula to an old-style truth serum. It’s an underhanded way to do this, I know, and beneath us to—”

“What did you say?” Maddox asked
, interrupting.

“Truth serum, sir,” Riker said.
“I read up on the computer how to make the right formula.”

Maddox closed his eyes. He’d been a fool and overlooked an obvious solution. It galled him, but not as much as letting Meta knock him unconscious. He knew
that becoming overconfident was a problem with him. This time, he’d paid for it with a headache and wounded pride. Thank God for a good man like Sergeant Riker to back him up.

With his eyes closed, Maddox said, “I congratulate on you on your cunning and forcefulness
, Sergeant. You have single-handedly saved the expedition and possibly humanity as well.”

“Keep talking, sir. I like the sound of this.”

Even though it hurt his head, Maddox grinned. He opened his eyes once more and swung his legs off the cot. Dizziness threatened. He heaved up to his feet nonetheless.

“To work, Sergeant,” Maddox said.

“We’re already working, sir. I think you should rest a little longer.”

“No. Everyone must pitch in. We
lost the luxury of time a while ago.”

As
if to punctuate his thoughts, Ensign Maker looked into the room. “Captain, sir, you’d better come to the bridge. I mean the control room. According to Lieutenant Noonan, the destroyer has increased its acceleration above its safety limit maximum.”

Keith followed an unsteady Captain Maddox to the control room.

Upon entering, the captain stopped and stared. Keith climbed through the hatch after him. Meta sat in the captain’s usual
spot. Maddox looked straight at her.

Lieutenant Noonan swiveled around. She didn’t bother with the captain, but gave Keith a meaningful glance. He nodded and headed for the pilot’s chair. Once he’d strapped in and assessed his board, Keith turned and found the captain still
glaring at Meta.

Finally, the former Rouen Colony miner dropped her gaze. She gave her head a quick shake. It made her long hair cascade behind her.

“I don’t expect you to understand…sir,” Meta said in her pleasant voice.

Keith never got tired of studying her, the way she walked or listening to her talk. It defined logic that she’d captured him
on Loki Prime, had manhandled him, in fact.

Would you call what she
’d done
woman
handling me? Sure, a few bodybuilding women can bench press more than I can, but to just push me around so easily…

The crazy part was that he still recalled her grip, the way her breasts had
mashed against his back while she’d forced him through the jungle. What would she be like in the sack?

“I lived on Loki Prime
for four terrible years,” Meta quietly explained to Maddox. “Living there changes you. Well, maybe not
you
, but it did me. Dana…she saved me from some grim predators. I owed her, Captain.”

“I understand
that part,” Maddox said.

“I shouldn’t have shot you.”

“No,” he said.

“To pay for my…action, I’ve decided to help you more directly,” Meta said.

“You decided this after Sergeant Riker shot the doctor?”

“I did
,” Meta admitted. “I don’t expect you to trust me now.”

“You’re wise to
realize that,” Maddox said.

Lieutenant Noonan cleared her throat.

Maddox tore his gaze from Meta. “What is it?” he asked the lieutenant.

Valerie pointed at her view-screen. “I think you ought to look at this, sir.”

In two strides, Maddox reached her station. He squinted as he examined her screen. “They’re moving fast.”

Keith craned his neck to get a look. The destroyer
had accelerated from its Laumer-Point in the inner system, heading out here. Now, the
Saint Petersburg’s
exhaust had lengthened farther behind itself then any of them had ever seen before.

Why are they coming so fast all of a sudden?
Keith wondered.

The
Geronimo
had traveled to the edge of the outer system, past the T dwarf and its many moons. They’d reached the system’s back comet cloud. There were a lot of them out here. An unstable Laumer-Point waited even farther out. According to the professor’s star chart, that tramline would take them into the alien star system.

“We’re over three billion kilometers from the
Saint Petersburg
,” Valerie said. “Even at their velocity, it’s going to take the destroyer a couple of days to reach here.”

“I
can see that,” Maddox said.

“I still don’t think we should use
our fusion thruster,” Valerie said. “We’re cloaked, drifting at our present velocity. Before the
Saint Petersburg
entered the system, we braked with the fusion engine. We still need to slow down even more.”

“
We can use the gravity generator,” the captain said.

Keith winced. He hated the way dumping
gravity waves shook the ship. The
Geronimo
had taken far too much stress throughout the voyage. He was afraid they might shake something permanently loose. If they did, no one was coming to rescue them. This was deep into the Beyond. They were so on their own it wasn’t funny.

Rubbing his hands together, Keith knew fear and excited elation
in the pit of his stomach. This was the reason for existence: doing the crazy thing. They’d been waiting for this moment for months of travel.

“
We can hide from the
Saint Petersburg
,” Valerie told Maddox. “Any of those comets would make an excellent spot. After landing, we shut down almost everything and become a dark object. Of course, it would be even better to land on the right comet.”

“Which one
is that?” asked Maddox. “It could take years of searching to find Professor Ludendorff’s stash.”

“That’s where my apology comes in,” Meta said.

The captain straightened, regarding her. “You can tell us which one it is?”

“From hints Dana dropped,” Meta said. “Yes
, I think I know which comet. I only have one request.”

Maddox said nothing
.

“When all is said and done,” Meta told him, “you spare the doctor.”

Keith wondered what the captain was thinking. The man was proud, and Dana and Meta had beaten him. Slowly, Captain Maddox nodded.

Drawing a deep breath, Meta told the lieutenant the
needed coordinates.

“Ensign Maker,” the captain said. “We
will use the gravity generator to continue deceleration. Then, you will land the scout on the comet.”

“
With our wounded generator,” Keith said, “that won’t be easy.”

“
Are you capable of the task?” the captain asked.

“Oh, yes, Captain, sir,” Keith said
, puffing out his chest. “It’s the reason I was born.”

Maddox grinned. Keith liked that about the man.
He could be a stuffed shirt and then change into a cunning devil.

“
I’m glad to hear it,” the captain said. “Lieutenant, plot the exact course. Then we’ll see if our scout can slip onto the comet without the
Saint Petersburg
noticing.”

***

Later, after the second use of the gravity generator, Keith flexed his fingers. He sat with a straight back in the pilot’s chair. His focus was glued to the flight screen.

For the
umpteenth time this trip, he wished he were in a strikefighter. Piloting wasn’t as enjoyable locked in the same room with everyone else. To float alone among the stars while popping his head next to the fighter’s canopy was far more freeing.

Keith double
-checked the scout’s velocity and its relation to the approaching comet. Behind them, one hundred million kilometers away bulked the massive T dwarf. Its pull affected them more because the ship dumped gravity waves. If he’d maneuvered with the thruster…

Keith cracked his knuckles. “Ready, sir?” he asked.

“Take us down, Ensign,” Maddox told him.

Grinning from ear to ear because he felt nervous, Keith began to use the gravity generator with greater flexibility and control than he’d done before. “A bit at a time, sir,” Keith
explained.

The ace
eased the
Geronimo
lower toward the comet, which traveled around the T dwarf in a giant elliptical orbit instead of around the system’s star. The comet was a dirty snowball, composed of ice, rock and bits of miscellaneous debris. For its size, the thing didn’t have a lot of weight. What he didn’t want to do was land so hard it cracked the snowball. Even worse would be to break it into pieces as if hit by a billiard ball. That would be a dead giveaway to the destroyer where the scout had gone.

“Easy does it,” Maddox
told him.

“No worries, sir
,” Keith said. “This will be a piece of fluff.” He didn’t feel that in his gut, but why let them know. This was his specialty. He would see them through.

“Baby, baby, baby,” Keith whispered under this breath. “Now we’re going to see.” He applied
more power.

The gravity generator shook the ship. Metal groaned.

“Let up on the generator!” Lieutenant Noonan shouted.

Keith did no such thing. This was the final approach.
His panel shook before him. The gravity generator clacked with strain. It could break any second, and maybe the smart thing to do would be to let it rest. He kept it running.

“Ensign!” shouted Maddox.

The generator began to make even worse screeching sounds. Keith winced. His chest erupted with fear. If the gravity generator blew up—the game would be over. The others kept shouting at him. He ignored their pleas. This was just like strikefighter combat. The man with bigger balls won these. He continued to use the overburdened generator, dumping more gravity waves.

“Sir
!” Valerie pleaded with Maddox.

Keith
studied the approach. They still came down too hard. He tapped his board. The overburdened generator roared with complaint. The entire scout shook. So did Keith as he sat in his chair. He refused to stop, though. Either the generator lasted or—
The
Geronimo
gently settled onto the snowball. A few ice particles broke off and drifted into space. That wasn’t good. But the comet held, and they had survived the landing.

With another tap
on the board, Keith turned off the gravity generator. It whined down the scales, at last going silent before it stopped running. The ace waited in his chair for his nerves to settle. Finally, he looked around and laughed heartily to show them he was the pilot extraordinaire.

“Nothing to it,
Chaps,” Keith said. “It was a lovely piece of fluff, just like I told you it would be.”

***

They were down. Now they waited on the comet as the destroyer crossed the star system.

For Keith, t
he waiting proved harder than the landing. Having something to do kept his thoughts from lingering on the staggering odds that always seemed to climb higher against them.

Just like the others, Ensign Maker’s nerves had frayed throughout the past
months of run, endless repair, hide and slip away down another wormhole. It didn’t help that they did this in a battered scout. The
Saint Petersburg
or the star cruiser always found them again. It was maddening and debilitating to shipboard morale.

Keith wore a vacc-suit as he jumped out of
Geronimo’s
hatch. The stars blazed around him as he glided onto the dirty-white surface. He turned back, viewing his home for the last three months. He’d always had a good eye, able to tell where he’d welded, where the dents mashed inward and which hull parts were good.

I can’t believe I gave up my pub for this. I must have been out of my
bloody mind. We’re never going to survive the alien system. The idea of using the comet as a sheath—pure rotgut arrogance is what it is
.

He faced forward and began to glide across the surface. Keith had a knack
for this. He was well aware that if he jumped too high, he would reach the comet’s escape velocity and float away. It was like ice-skating, something he used to do a lot of as a kid. He’d played hockey for a time. His small size meant he’d been a target for the bruisers trying to check him into the boards. His skating speed and slap shots had won more than one game for the team.

He glided, feeling free as he
never could cramped within the scout. Everyone was getting on one another’s nerves. Seeing the same faces every day, smelling the recycled air and eating the freeze-dried crap—
I need a drink
.

In his helmet, Keith licked
chapped lips. A good brew would help. Even better, would be a shot of Scotch sliding down his gullet.

I wonder where the captain hid it.

Keith had been good for longer than he believed he could. By the Rood, he hadn’t been this sober ever since Danny-boy’s…

Keith licked his lips one more time.
He didn’t want to recall his brother’s death. Oh, yes, he had taken the captain’s evil pills for a time. If he drank, he’d likely puke out his guts. Well, he would if he’d continued to pop the little traitor capsules every several days. Starting a week ago, he’d flushed the pills down the toilet. He remembered the captain’s threat. The baton smashing the bottle—
That was a dirty trick
. He had a scar on the back of his right hand because of it.
Will one drink make any difference?

In his heart, Keith suspected it would. He’d given the captain his word. The blighter had helped him remain sober. The abyss—
Don’t be melodramatic, Keith, my boy. What abyss? That’s pure tommyrot
.

He knew that wasn’t true, but he wanted to lie to himself.
Despite the cramped quarters aboard
Geronimo
, he’d felt alive these past weeks. It had been like that at Tau Ceti. The threat, the excitement, the pressures fed his sense of adventure. He’d saved the crew a time or two. That had been the best part of all.

I haven’t lost anything flying a craft
.