The Lost Colony (Lost Starship Series Book 4) (3 page)

-4-

Two weeks after Admiral Fletcher left the New Venezuela System, a cloaked star cruiser observed a Windsor League detachment scouring the Ankara System.

Atmospheric league fighters swept over the skies of Ankara II. The pilots broadcast their findings to the nearest hammership. Shuttles soon left the large warship. They landed with scout teams, searching the planet’s empty cities.

The commander of the cloaked star cruiser, a Methuselah Man by the name of Strand, chuckled upon hearing the landing parties’ reports.

Soon, now, he would implement the third phase of his plan. He had already detected the travel pattern of the dispersed vessels. It indicated that Admiral Fletcher still had nominal command of the Grand Fleet.

Strand had expected no less, but it wasn’t going to matter in the end. Yes, the old-style humans had proven more resilient than he would have believed. That came from four key sources: the hidebound Ludendorff, that infernal Captain Maddox with Starship
Victory
and the Adok AI, Driving Force Galyan.

None of those sources appeared to be with the Grand Fleet, however. That meant he could proceed with the fleet’s destruction at his leisure. Not that it would be easy to accomplish. Strand could not perceive a quick fix this time. But if the old-style humans would react as predicted—which he had no doubt they would—then he could annihilate the juggernaut Grand Fleet and continue with his overall master plan for the human race.

-5-

In his wind-suit, Pa Kur hurried through the howling gale. The sky was dark red with dust and flashes of intense lightning as if gods dueled. Far away, rain fell onto sand and cracked rocks.

The water moon of Palain IV was the sole inhabitable body in the system. It orbited a gas giant, the source for the moon’s deuterium-run factories.

In Commonwealth terminology, Pa Kur was a New Man, a golden-skinned dominant, Fifth Rank. He wore a protective wind-suit, which included a bubble helmet with fine scratches crisscrossing the tempered glass. He headed into the gale as his long strides ate up the distance to the interior landing field. He could barely make out the field’s blinking lights.

Windsor League subhumans had entered the star system. One of their hammerships headed here while the other seven monster ships maneuvered toward a Laumer-Point six hundred thousand kilometers away.

Pa Kur did not smile, as it was not in his nature to do so. Yet, he was elated. Strand had been right so far. The Methuselah Man truly was a genius, maybe even a prophet concerning the sub-men.

The lower races now dared to send individual contingents to the various systems. Before, the entire Grand Fleet had moved en masse from one star system to another.

The Emperor’s commander of the invasion armada had wished to attack a dispersed arm of the enemy fleet at once. Strand had convinced the commander to wait. Since the Destroyer’s annihilation in the Solar System, the Emperor and Strand had come to terms again. Necessity had predicated it.

The Methuselah Man had instructed the armada commander in his plan. Strand had said the subhumans needed time for boredom to mentally prepare them for the coming shock before the moment was right to psychologically pinprick them.

As Pa Kur crunched across sand, he squinted at a bullet-fast object coming toward him. He shifted leftward with a cat’s quickness. A thick stalk of ras-grass flew past. If it had struck him, it could have easily breached the wind-suit. The storms here made breathing difficult without aid. He had no time for the theatrics of a torn suit.

Pa Kur had short silver hair and strange eyes even for a New Man. They were glassy like obsidian, showing no emotion. That took some doing on his part. He had never let anyone know that his Fifth Rank status rankled intensely. He desired greater rank with a seething passion. He also wanted to run a starship of his own. Those slots only went to Third Ranks and higher.

His yearning for starship command had been the prime ingredient for his taking so readily to Strand’s plan. The Methuselah Man’s idea was ingenious and subtle. It would also take perfect timing today. Pa Kur knew the others of his sept sneered at Strand’s guarantee of total victory if they would only do as he said. Pa Kur wanted to teach them otherwise.

The obsidian eyes seemed to glitter for just a moment. Pa Kur had studied subhuman psychology, the key reason Strand had chosen him for this task. Pa Kur also had a theory. If one truly wanted to understand greatness—such as that of the New Men—one must first grasp the base stock from which they had come. It would be similar to sub-men studying chimpanzees to learn more about themselves. It was a radical idea, he knew. It also allowed him to understand the subhumans more deeply than his so-called superiors and peers. It never mattered what an inferior believed. Even the enlightened Pa Kur subscribed to that thought.

Despite his fifth rank status, Pa Kur believed he understood Strand’s purpose better than anyone else on Palain IV’s water moon. This pinprick attack would be the first step toward unsettling the subhumans, of teaching them to always doubt themselves.

Within the bubble helmet, a static sound from the implant in his left ear caused Pa Kur to tilt his head.

“Report,” he said, in an emotionless voice.

“We’ve received the coded signal from
him
,” the scratchy voice said. “The word is: go.”

Pa Kur lowered his head and began to run. He sprinted extraordinarily fast like a humanoid cheetah. No regular human could have hoped to run a quarter of his speed.

The “him” meant Strand. The Methuselah Man must be in the system with his cloaked star cruiser. That was interesting.

It was time to ready the Palain sub-men. The coming foray would have to follow an exact procedure. If it worked—

No! Pa Kur refused to sanction the possibility of failure. He would strive and succeed or it would no longer matter because he would be dead. Success would surely elevate him to Fourth Rank. Even better, he would have a starship to command, even if only for a short time.

***

Pa Kur stood inside the interior hangar, watching through one-way glass. Eight subhuman-built shuttles waited on the other side.

He held a comm-unit, studying the approaching hammership. It was round and possessed three layers of shields like an onion. That was unique among the subhumans. The hammership also boasted thick hull armor with heavy ablating underneath.

The Windsor League people did not subscribe to beam weaponry. They trusted in railguns firing multiple types of rounds, the deadliest being thermonuclear warheads. Hammerships were most effective at close range. Their ultra-heavy shielding and hull armor theoretically allowed the vessel to survive distance assaults in order to get in close.

Today, Pa Kur wanted the hammership as close to the water moon as possible.

On his comm-unit, he watched the hammership’s exhaust grow to absurd lengths as it braked hard. The enemy was coming in at combat speed, a wise precaution in most instances.

Pa Kur mentally calculated the braking rate versus the distance left to the water moon. He did not need a computer to make the calculations. Ah. It was time to start moving the Palain sub-men into position.

Raising the comm-unit, Pa Kur said, “Begin the procedure.”

He hooked the comm to his belt afterward, peering through the one-way glass. The seconds ticked away, turning into minutes. Finally, a door into the hangar bay opened. A ragged-looking subhuman peered out. The creature held a stunner. Others behind the first one forced the man into the interior hangar bay. More poured out. They had just made a “successful” escape attempt, killing the hypnotized Palain guards. Likely, these subhumans couldn’t believe their miraculous luck.

One of them pointed at the shuttles. Good. Their voices rose as they argued the possibilities. At last, in a group, they surged toward the shuttles. All the while, more subhumans poured out of the door.

Pa Kur had kept these creatures for years for just such an eventuality. Conditioning them to the correct pitch had been one of his chief assignments. It had been his task because of his keen understanding of subhuman psychology.

The former military colonists forced a shuttle door open.

Pa Kur unhooked the comm-unit, clicking a switch, timing them out of curiosity. He had a theory about their mental acuity. Ten minutes later, an upper hangar bay door began to open to the surface. Interesting. They had achieved the feat three minutes faster than he’d anticipated. It wouldn’t make a difference, though, not to what Stand had in mind.

***

Pa Kur settled into position, lying on his stomach aboard a single-ship. It was a tiny, needle-shaped spacecraft with an ability to fold space for extremely short distances. As impossible as it was to believe, the Commonwealth sub-men had invented the tech. The superior New Men Intelligence service had stolen the secret some time ago.

Pa Kur waited, clenching his stomach. Thirty seconds later, the booster rocket roared. The G forces pressed against Pa Kur as the rocket blasted into space at combat speeds.

The launch point was on the other side of the water moon as the approaching hammership. The few subhuman probes on this side had “malfunctioned” in such a way as to appear as an accident. Thus, the enemy did not know about the booster rockets. The escaping Palain shuttles were already on the other side of the water moon, no doubt hailing the hammership, begging for rescue.

Each booster held a Seven. A Seven was the New Men equivalent of a sub-men’s squad. In this instance, each Seven had his own single-ship. Seven boosters roared for space, meaning Pa Kur had forty-nine New Men for the coming attack, his entire sept.

Soon enough, the boosters reached space. Pa Kur pressed a switch. With the clank of detaching hooks, his single-ship floated free.

One by one, the empty rockets began to drift aimlessly, the nearest one tumbling end over end. Each Seven maneuvered around its leader. Finally, they sent pulse messages to Pa Kur. Everyone was ready.

Pa Kur led the seven Sevens around the upper curvature of the red water moon. Storms swirled below in a vast panorama. Maybe it was beautiful. Pa Kur had a difficult time with the concept. He continued to lie on his stomach, holding onto handlebars, using a throttle to adjust his velocity. The gas giant appeared, rising out of the horizon like a massive moon. The Jovian planet was deep blue in color. Several deuterium-processing stations still existed in the upper clouds, although they were less than pinpricks and thus invisible to the naked eye.

“Go dark,” Pa Kur said into the comm.

He released the throttle and tapped out a sequence on his board. His needlecraft no longer accelerated, but drifted with its momentum. He activated the mini cloaking device. It was his only defense against the mighty hammership.

The huge craft had reached the water moon’s far orbit, although it still wasn’t visible this far away.

The shuttles were visible as they burned brightly, their exhaust tails tiny streaks in the blackness.

Once more, Pa Kur tapped his comm. Excited, begging voices bubbled from it. The Palain subhumans pleaded with the captain of the Windsor League vessel. Several of them at once continued to explain how they had just escaped New Men captivity.

The commander of the hammership was cautious. The woman had an obvious right to be.

From on the water moon, a planetary cannon beamed. The ray struck perfectly, smashing a shuttle apart as metal melted and then exploded with air, water vapor and flesh and bones. A second cannon beamed. This one struck the outer shield of the hammership.

The two planetary cannons wreaked havoc among the shuttles, destroying one after another. Finally, the hammership’s railguns targeted and fired, screaming shells through the atmosphere, silencing the planetary lasers. Hangar bay doors opened and fighters launched.

The last two Palain shuttles neared the hammership. The escapees pleaded anew, some of them crying in terror.

Pa Kur listened intently.

“Please,” begged one of the escapees. “Board us and search the shuttles. We really are who we say we are.”

“What about bombs?” the hammership captain asked.

“Don’t you think we’ve already thought of that?” a shuttle speaker answered. “The New Men are cruel and inhuman. They’ll do anything to win. We’ve searched everywhere through the shuttle. We’re safe, I promise you. But you’re going to have to see that for yourself. That’s why we ask you to board and search us.”

“Very well,” the captain said. “Prepare for boarding.”

It took ten minutes of maneuver for the two shuttles to stop fully and the fighters to circle them with their guns live.

More time passed as two shuttles left the hammership, accelerated and then decelerated. Finally, several spacemen left a Windsor League shuttle, using hydrogen exhaust to propel themselves to the nearest escapee shuttle.

“Thank you, thank you,” wept one of the Palain escapees. “We owe you so much.”

“No,” Pa Kur said. “You owe no one anything as you are mere tools.” He pressed a button.

Hypnotism was an interesting phenomenon. The sub-men were particularly susceptible to the practice. The people in the shuttles believed they had looked for thermonuclear bombs, when in fact they had not. How otherwise could they have sounded so convincing?

Pa Kur’s radio pulse reached the two shuttles. Seconds later, each of them ignited, blowing apart. Powerful thermonuclear blasts also took out the hammership’s two shuttles and many of the space-fighters. Even more important, gamma rays, X-rays and heat billowed at the hammership. Clearly, the blasts would fail to knock down the shields, but they would whiten the ship’s sensors for a short time.

“We shall begin,” Pa Kur told his Sevens, “in three seconds.” The time passed. “Now,” he said.

Pa Kur engaged the single-ship’s thruster. As acceleration increased, he switched on a timer, watching it closely.

“Fold,” he said.

His single-ship disappeared from its position and reappeared less than one quarter of a kilometer from the hammership. Just as Strand had predicted, rescue shuttles launched from the giant vessel. That meant a way through the shields for the attacking needlecraft.

“Ignore the shuttles,” Pa Kur instructed the others. “Get onto the hammership at once.”

None of his sept acknowledged his command, of course. None of them would understand why the sub-men practiced such a thing. They had heard; thus, they would obey.

Pa Kur noted the single-ships around him. That was good. On his tiny screen, he saw the opening in the three shields. Once, Per Lomax had used single-ships against Starship
Victory
. The Emperor’s people had studied the attack. Pa Kur used the new and improved tactics that came from the study. It was why he had forty-nine needle-ships and why they had appeared so near the hammership.