The Lost Colony (Lost Starship Series Book 4) (34 page)

-40-

The route proved exhausting, as there were no trails and the ferns made it difficult to scout ahead. Nor could they climb the ferns to get a better look, as the plants were too weak to hold them.

Maddox often led them around steep areas lest they tumble down the mountain. At times, they came upon sheer rock faces that not even the captain could have scaled. That took even more time detouring.

After several hours of hard going, Maddox began taking longer breaks, allowing the sergeant to rest more. Eventually, Meta and he took turns helping Riker.

“At this rate it will take days to reach the bulldozer,” Meta said at one stop.

Maddox sat against a fern, having grown thoughtful. He studied Meta, asking, “Have you seen any insects? I mean small ones like grasshoppers and flies, not the Swarm bugs.”

Meta frowned before shaking her head.

“Sergeant, what about you?”

Riker was sprawled on the ground in his EVA suit with his eyes closed.

“No little bugs, sir,” the sergeant muttered, “just sweat in my eyes.”

“Everything was new in the beginning,” Maddox said, quietly. “The Dyson sphere was exciting enough for us, the very fact of its being. I’ve been thinking, though. There should be animal paths, something to indicate wild creatures. We’ve seen nothing to indicate animals or insects. That suggests the Dyson sphere is devoid of lower life-forms.”

“You’re right,” Meta said. “There aren’t any birds or birdlike creatures, either.”

“How do the Swarm creatures and humans survive?” the captain said. “What do they eat?” He shrugged. “How does the eco-system maintain itself? Without insects—”

“There’s something else,” Meta said, interrupting.

Maddox raised his eyebrows.

“I haven’t seen any sickly ferns or any rotting ones on the ground.”

“There were the brittle bones,” Riker said from where he lay.

“Yes,” Maddox said, “which highlights Meta’s point. We haven’t come across anything else decomposing: no exoskeletons, no fallen ferns, animal bones, nothing.”

“What would explain that?” Meta asked.

Maddox shook his head before studying ferns. “I should have seen it earlier,” he said, shortly. “Notice, there are no small ferns. All of them are full grown.”

Meta examined the nearest ones and then those farther out “You’re right. Is this is a park?”

“A groomed forest?” Maddox asked.

Meta nodded.

“It would appear so,” the captain said. “The question becomes: who grooms it?”

“The humans used a bulldozer and the Swarm built dirt towers,” Meta said. “I doubt either of them grooms the park.”

“A reasonable assumption,” Maddox said, thoughtfully.

Riker sat up. “We’re making a mistake, sir. We should head back to the service hatch.” He waved an arm. “This is detouring from what we came to do. We have to leave the Dyson sphere, not learn how it operates inside. How does marching out here help us free
Victory
?”

“The android didn’t want us to see this,” Maddox said. “That suggests we should see it so we know what is going on.”

“Are the little humans running the bulldozer going to help us get off the sphere?” Riker asked.

“I suspect you’re right. They’re not going to aid us.”

“While the Swarm will kill us if they catch us,” Riker said. “This trek is just adding extra risk we don’t need.”

Maddox climbed to his feet. “You may be right, but I still want to see these humans. We should continue hiking if we’re going to reach them sooner rather than later.”

Riker groaned as he stood. “There’s another thing to think about, sir. What if the little humans believe we’re aliens, demons or something equally terrifying to them? We may be walking to our deaths.”

Maddox stared into the sky. Did the sergeant have a point? He thirsted to understand the situation on the sphere, but that wasn’t germane to the wider war. They had to break free of the sphere and find a way back home. That was the ultimate goal. But the sphere, the android, the Shanghai androids, the AI box with Ludendorff’s engrams and the saucer-ship… It seemed reasonable the Builders had fashioned the Dyson sphere. That meant—

“What are you thinking?” Meta asked. “You look so solemn.”

Maddox regarded her. Abruptly, he sat back down, brought up his knees and wrapped his arms around them. The extent of the situation—the Builder pyramid in the Mid-Atlantic on Earth, the Dana android during the journey here, the possibility more androids had replaced various people on Earth—

“What’s that?” Riker asked, as he stared into the sky.

Maddox heard a humming noise. He jumped up, looking around.

“Over there,” Meta said, pointing.

Maddox saw a saucer skimming a mountain, heading toward them. It came fast, the hum increasing volume. The inner saucer was a glowing bulb with a disc spinning around it.

“What now, sir?” Riker asked. “Do we run?”

“No.”

“Should we shoot it?” the sergeant asked.

Maddox silently debated the idea.

The craft had begun slowing down, although the disc continued to spin just as fast around the glowing bulb part. The craft appeared to be ten times as large as a Star Watch shuttle. Bullets weren’t going to stop it.

“What if it’s a Swarm craft?” Riker asked.

Maddox shouldered his rifle. “I doubt it is. If the Swarm ran it, why did the creatures earlier use claw and spit against the robot? They would have used weapons. No. This saucer must belong to whoever runs the sphere.”

“I hope you’re right, sir,” Riker said.

In another few seconds, the strange, humming craft hovered fifty meters above them. A slot opened in the bottom glowing part, and a beam shot down at them.

Maddox didn’t feel any pain. Then, Riker shouted in alarm. The captain glanced at the man, seeing Riker’s feet lift off the ground. At the same time, a feeling of weightlessness came over the captain.

As the beam continued to shine on them, Maddox, Meta and Riker began to float toward the saucer. The captain spied the sergeant. The man shouted but Maddox couldn’t hear anything. The beam seemed to interfere with their short-way comm units.

They rose quicker, only slowing down at the end. Maddox, Meta and Riker entered the glowing bulb section of the ship, floating into a metal room with a bench and a screen on the wall.

The opening closed and each of them gently landed on the floor.

“This—” Riker said

Motion caused them to stumble, and the sergeant to quit talking.

Maddox regained his balance and went to the bench, sitting. Meta and Riker followed his example. A second later, the screen flickered. They saw mountains and fern forests below. The scenes swept by faster as the craft picked up speed.

“Mighty big of them to let us see where we’re going,” Riker muttered.

“Look,” Meta whispered.

Maddox noticed, all right. The ferns disappeared. In their place were the odd dirt structures he’d seen earlier. Instead of ferns, the mountains and then a plains area had millions of earth towers. Among them scurried masses of Swarm creatures.

“They’re endless,” Meta whispered.

They watched for ten more minutes, absorbed with the scenes before they started to become monotonous.

“Why is the…the pilot showing us all this?” Meta asked.

Maddox had no idea.

“Finally,” Riker said, “something different.”

The dirt towers and bustling Swarm creatures reached a vast dome possibly twenty kilometers in diameter and nearly as tall at the top.

“It’s shimmering,” Maddox said, softly.

“We’re heading straight for it,” Meta added.

“Maybe it’s a force field,” Maddox said.

The saucer didn’t slow down, but zipped through the dark force field—if that’s what it was—and hovered over an area of boxlike metal structures. The star no longer shined in the sky. Both had vanished. Instead, diffuse light glowed from the force field.

The saucer began to descend toward the largest structures. An area dilated open into what looked like an underground hangar. There were other parked saucers settled into huge holders. Theirs floated past them until it hovered over a dark opening in the floor.

“I don’t see anyone waiting for us,” Maddox said.

The original entrance in the saucer floor opened. At the same time, the bench began to ease into the floor.

The three of them stood. Then, the floor began to shift under their feet, angling toward the opening, becoming steeper and steeper.

“Maddox!” Meta shouted.

He grabbed her hand.

Afterward, the three of them lost their balance, sliding down the floor toward the opening, falling out of the saucer toward the darkness below.

-41-

Maddox tried to hold on to Meta’s hand as they kept falling but something pulled them apart. They kept staring at each other for as long as they could.

The force pulling Maddox yanked him in one direction, and Meta and Riker in another. He continued to fall but his rate of descent slowed. A new force tugged at his EVA suit. In a moment, it tore off him along with the helmet, backpack, Khislack, belt, pistol and knife. He maintained his Star Watch uniform and boots.

At that point, Maddox slowed even more. He tried breathing, and began coughing and wheezing at a harsh metallic stench.

Mists wafted against him. Cold air blew and then hot. Meta and Riker had disappeared some time ago.

At last, Maddox floated down toward light. He saw a cubicle waiting for him, one that lacked a top. Gently, he floated into the cubicle, watching a glass top slide into place. The chamber was twenty by twenty and contained a cot, sink and toilet.

Was this a prison?

A green gas billowed up from the floor. Maddox held his breath as long as he could. He inhaled finally, smelling the awful gas. He swayed and realized he was about to fall, so he stumbled to the cot, toppling onto it as he passed out.

***

Maddox opened his eyes. He lay face down on a cot. His felt fine and heard nothing. Slowly, he sat up. The sight startled him.

He was in a long row of glass cubicles. Behind them were more rows, hundreds, maybe a thousand. Many of the cubicles contained a single being. Many of those occupants were Swarm creatures of varying shapes and sizes. A few were little people as he’d observed running the bulldozer.

“Hello, Captain.”

Maddox whirled around. Professor Ludendorff sat on the cot in the cubicle next door. The professor had longer hair than he recalled, and the man wasn’t as tanned as when he’d been aboard
Victory
. His clothes looked disheveled and worn.

“Are you another android?” Maddox said.

Ludendorff frowned, shaking his head. “I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. You look well enough. Did you hit your head coming in?”

Maddox ingested the professor’s words. He stood. Whatever the gas had done to him, it hadn’t left any aftereffects. He approached the glass separating them.

“Is there a speaker?” the captain asked.

Ludendorff pointed to the left.

Maddox found a clear-colored speaker grille that barely differed from the glass.

The captain retreated to his cot and sat down. His legs felt a little shaky. Maybe the gas had affected him after all. He glanced at Ludendorff.

“What is this place?”

Ludendorff shrugged in a disinterested manner.

“Are you an android?” Maddox repeated.

The professor scowled. “Your questions imply you’ve met androids before that looked and acted just like me.”

“More than just androids,” Maddox said, “but also a hologram with your engrams running it.”

Ludendorff looked away as if pained.

“Are you pretending to be the real Ludendorff?” Maddox asked.

“No.”

“Oh?”

“I am the real Ludendorff. There is no pretense to it.”

“I see,” Maddox said. “Well, if that’s true. Why did you rush out to the asteroid in the Xerxes System? I never did understand that.”

“Clearly, it was a mistake,” Ludendorff muttered.

“No, not really,” Maddox said. “The rest of us made it out of the Xerxes System. The android posing as you brought a Swarm-Builder device out of the asteroid that helped us defeat the Destroyer.”

“I’m glad I could be of assistance,” the professor mumbled. “It sounds as if you finally found out the android was an imposter.”

“We did.” Maddox looked around again. “Who runs the prison?”

“You’re mistaken,” Ludendorff said, who still stared elsewhere. “This isn’t a prison.”

Maddox mulled that over. “Is it a zoo?”

Ludendorff finally faced him with a hint of excitement. “You always were a quick study, my boy. It’s not exactly a zoo, but a laboratory.”

“Who runs it?”

“That should be obvious, a Builder.”

“The mysterious Builders,” Maddox said. He smiled faintly.

Ludendorff noticed. He rose quickly, walked around his cot several times and finally ran his fingers through his hair.

“I’ve been here a long time,” the professor said. “It’s been discouraging, to say the least. The Builder was quite curious—”

“Are you saying you’ve been in this glass cage for all these months?”

Ludendorff nodded.

“Then all the androids I’ve seen of you—”

“The Builder used them.”

“Why?” Maddox asked.

The professor snorted. “Isn’t it obvious, my boy?”

Maddox shook his head.

“You’ve piqued its interest.”

“Just me?” Maddox asked.

“You and Starship
Victory
. The AI is much more powerful than you realize.”

“Dana uncovered extra computing power.”

“Ah,” Ludendorff said, sitting again. “Maybe you do realize how powerful Galyan is. How is Dana?”

“I don’t know.”

Ludendorff seemed crestfallen. “She didn’t join the expedition?”

“An android of her certainly did,” Maddox said.

Concern crossed the professor’s face. He brushed that away with his hand. Afterward, he tapped his chin, finally nodding.

“Tell me what happened since the Xerxes System. Then, I’ll answer what questions I can.”

“I’d prefer you to answer my questions first,” Maddox said.

Ludendorff straightened, and some of his old personality seemed to assert itself. “I am the oldster here, my boy. I have far more secrets than you do. Thus, we shall show deference to age. I’ve wasted away in confinement far longer than I’ve ever had to endure. It’s taken you ages to get here. My curiosity is burning out of control. Our time could endure for years or it might be over in a moment. You’re—well, never mind about that now. Tell me about the Xerxes System, my android double and the alien Destroyer. I’ve wondered about the Destroyer until my head felt like it was going to implode.”

Maddox eyed the man, trying to decide if this time he looked like the real Professor Ludendorff. He gazed at the other cubicles, at the Swarm creatures. Some spit at the glass. The black gunk didn’t acid burn the glass, or whatever it was, but slid down onto the glass floor, soon draining away.

That reminded Maddox of the alien Destroyer’s spongy floor.

With a shrug, Maddox began to tell the professor of the battle against the alien Destroyer. He included what others had told him, adding Strand’s part in the cloaked star cruiser.

Ludendorff sat on his cot most of the time. He raised a knee, holding it with his hands as he leaned back. The professor grinned at times, scowled and laughed at his favorite moments. He was fascinated with his android replica in the meeting with the Lord High Admiral in Geneva.

“Yes, yes,” the professor said. “I think I’m beginning to understand.”

“Could you enlighten me then?” Maddox asked, having grown weary of talking.

“Excuse me a moment,” Ludendorff said. He went to his sink, turning on a tap, putting his mouth over it, drinking from it like a young boy. He rinsed his hands afterward, crouched by the sink and opened a panel. He took out a wafer and ate it. Afterward, he dusted crumbs from his shirt.

“Thank you, my boy,” the professor said. The older man had put his hands behind his back, beginning to pace back and forth beside the separating glass. “I’m beginning to understand what happened.”

Maddox waited. If this was the real Ludendorff, and he had been here since shortly after their time in the Xerxes System—it was amazing the man hadn’t become stir-crazy. Maybe he had.

“There used to be more of us,” Ludendorff said. “I mean Strand, me and the other Methuselah Men. We’re old, much older than anyone suspects. The Builder modified us long ago, well before the Space Age.”

“Six thousand years ago?” Maddox asked.

Ludendorff stopped pacing to stare at him. “Good heavens, my boy, not nearly that old. I’m close to nine hundred years old. Six thousand—” Ludendorff shuddered.

“Strand is just as old as you?”

“Give or take a few years,” Ludendorff said.

“The Builders modified you, you say?”

Ludendorff sighed. “A single Builder did so. He was the last one. Once…” The professor shrugged. “The Dyson sphere is ancient, much older than the Adok starship. I believe the mass of Builders left long before that time.”

“When?”

“Around the time of the Swarm invasion of our region of space,” Ludendorff said.

The professor marched to his cot, sitting down. “The Builders are ancient as far as races go. I have no idea as to their origin. In some previous millennia, they fought a timeless war against the makers of the Destroyer. Those aliens came from somewhere other than our galaxy. I know little about them or the timeless war, but it drained the Builders, not physically but spiritually, I think. They turned the Destroyers back in the end, although they captured the one vessel and modified it.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. I just know that after the timeless war the Builders changed in a fashion I haven’t been able to perceive. Most of them left. A few dabbled with their hobbies. I think that’s the best way to view it. The one here traveled around the Orion Arm. He was the last Builder in our region of space, a lonely individual with his own program of entertainment.”

“What was your task?”

“Eh?” Ludendorff asked.

“Why did the Builder modify you and Strand? What instructions did he give you?”

“We were conduits for data, giving reports at various intervals. I gave my last report around five hundred years ago. At first, we didn’t think much about it. The Builder often let us go our own way for years at a time. Then, it started to become suspicious. Strand and I decided the Builder must have died. But we’ve been cautious all these years just in case. The Builder had left us certain restrictions, you understand. One of them was to leave Builder artifacts alone. I do not believe it is happy with either of us.”

“So…for five hundred years the Builder has been doing what?” Maddox asked.

“Hibernating, I believe.”

“In the Dyson sphere?”

“That makes the most sense, yes.” Ludendorff exhaled in a drawn out fashion. “You have to understand, the Builder always used robots, androids and other cybernetic tools to advance its program. In this way, the one Builder could keep a stellar empire running for as long as its spirit lasted. In retrospect, I think the last Builder has grown weary. Many of the robots, androids and cybernetic toys may have shut down, only coming back online again with the Builder’s recent revival.”

Maddox tried to envision that. What he’d seen before with the silver drones in the Xerxes System when
Victory
had been chasing the Destroyer, and the strange thing trying to control the alien world-killer from the inside…

The captain looked up. “The Dyson sphere is like a haunted house?”

“Not exactly,” Ludendorff said. “The interior surface has its zoo exhibits.”

Maddox shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a zoo. When the saucer caught us, we saw endless kilometers of Swarm towers, dirt structures.”

“Really?” the professor said. “Tell me about it.”

“No,” a soft voice said in the air. “That is all for now.”

Maddox raised his eyebrows, studying the professor. The man looked surprised too. Ludendorff asked Maddox something. The professor’s mouth moved, but no words came through the speaker.

Maddox approached the glass. He shouted.

Ludendorff shook his head, indicating he couldn’t hear the words.

Maddox pounded on the glass.

The professor watched him for a moment. Then, the older man shrugged, went to his cot and lay down.

Maddox didn’t feel such resignation. “Who are you?” he asked into the air. “Are you the Builder? Why did you want me to come here? Why have you trapped me? What happened to my people?”

There was no answer.

A moment later, Ludendorff jumped up. He signaled Maddox frantically.

The captain nodded.

Ludendorff pointed along the edge of his cubicle.

Maddox walked to the edge of his, peering down a narrow hall between the next row of glass cages. A large Swarm creature approached in the narrow hall. It wore a harness with items hooked to the frame. The blue-colored creature stalked in a jerky manner like a giant praying mantis. It had mandibles and strange, outsized orbs like a mantis, and it had the size of a large cow.

The creature stopped before Maddox’s cubicle. With a stalk and pincer, it removed a device from its harness, clicking a button. The nearest glass wall slid into the floor. The Swarm creature re-hooked the device to its harness as it stepped into Maddox’s cage.