Chapter 3
Smash sat in stunned silence, gaping at the bare bridge on the viewer while SAM’s report penetrated his boggled brain. When full realization finally sank in, he let out a raucous whoop.
“We’ve been fighting a derelict!” He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. “We just risked being cooked to disarm that empty crate!”
For some reason he couldn’t stop laughing.
Xu-fu and SAM exchanged wary looks, organic eyes meeting electronic.
“What, you don’t think that’s funny?” Smash asked them.
“No,” they answered in unison.
They were no fun at all.
Undaunted, Smash transmitted the news to the rest of the raiders—who didn’t think it was funny either. Had everyone lost their sense of humor?
The hek with ’em.
Whatever. That ended the mission. As an old saying declared, there was no profit in beating a dead ship. Without waiting for orders, the raiders headed back to base. They bowed to the chain of command for attack purposes, but made their own decisions otherwise. An independently minded lot. That’s why they were rebels in the first place.
Rather regretfully, Smash followed them. He hated leaving the derelict behind, but couldn’t figure why that should bother him. Even if the cruiser could be salvaged, she was no good to the RAT fleet, way too big for their hidden dock. Hek, they couldn’t land her, in any case. Ships that size were “moored” in space, left in orbit around a central base when not in action. But putting her in orbit around the asteroid would have been like hanging out a sign that screamed “Hey, Feds, look here!” More trouble and danger than the cruiser was worth. Still…
Of course!
He struck his forehead again—ow—and reversed course.
“We’rr going back?” Xu-fu shot SAM another look. “You think he hit his head too hard?”
“Unlikely. His head is too thick. You could not damage it with a Wombatt war club.” But SAM began running a discreet sensor-scan on the cranium in question, just to make sure.
Smash bristled. “Don’t act like I’ve gone space-berko. I just want a closer look.”
“At a derelict?” The midget rolled his eyes. “Why?”
“Because I said so. And I don’t have to explain every move. I’m the captain; you’re the crew. Why do you always have to argue? And you”—Smash pointed at SAM—“can take your sneaky little sensors off me right now. There’s nothing wrong. I am in complete control of my faculties and this ship.” He gave it an angry burst of speed, jarring everything.
“Sure you are, I can tell.” Xu-fu rubbed his neck as though suffering from whiplash—then pasted an overly solicitous smile on his face. “Why don’t I take the helm? You sit back and rrelax.”
Obliging little mugwupper, wasn’t he?
Twelve blue digits crept cautiously toward the flight panel.
Smash jackknifed forward, covering the console with his chest. “You keep your six-fingered Ahzian hands off my controls. I’m not sick!”
“Perhaps not, Captain Courageous, but you are about to crash into the cruiser’s bow,” SAM warned.
What?
Just in the nick of time, Smash yanked the raider’s nose up, cut the flight engines, and skidded down the cruiser’s back, finally stopping—snap—on her stern. Whew. The raider’s G-pods might be history, but the magno-disc on her belly still worked, locking her to the big ship’s hull.
“Happy now?” Xu-fu croaked out. “You almost gave me a heart attack again.”
“It seems to be a special talent of his.” SAM’s circuits wheezed with the electric equivalent of a longsuffering sigh. “What now, O fearless flyer and issuer of obscure orders?”
Smash took his time answering. He’d almost given himself a heart attack, too, but had recovered quickly. He was nothing if not resilient. If only he could remember why he’d wanted to return here. In all the excitement, it had sort of slipped his mind… Oh, right. A closer look at the cruiser.
“Scan her again, SAM, stem to stern. There’s hidden treasure here.” And he wasn’t talking precious metals or jewels.
“Highly doubtful. She is clearly an abandoned craft, and thus worthless. The Imperial Federation never discards anything of value.”
“Really?” Smash disagreed. “They left behind a very interesting F-field, didn’t they?”
“You are thinking we might discover how it works and replicate it for the RAT fleet?”
“Maybe. Or discover an easier way to disable it in case we ever meet it again.”
SAM said nothing more, which meant he’d decided Smash had a valid point, but gods forbid he admit that. He fiddled with the scanners—paused—then fiddled some more. Something seemed to have snagged his attention.
“Most curious,” he commented.
“What?” Xu-fu leaned sideways in his seat to peer at the scanner readings. His blue brow furrowed. “I thought you said beforr there was no one aboard.” He glowered accusingly.
“I did. Because there was not. Then. That is the curious part,” SAM said, clearly peeved. He didn’t often make mistakes like this. In fact, he never made mistakes like this.
Smash would have trusted his own life to the robo’s skill—and had many times. “You mean there’s someone there now who wasn’t before?”
“So it appears.” SAM re-tuned the life-scanner. The faint pulse it displayed remained constant. “However, it is not a strong reading. Just enough to indicate one entity—humanoid, gauging by the energy patterns.”
“Well, whoever or whatever it is, I’d better transport aboard and investigate. Prepare to beam me onto their bridge, SAM. I’ll start the search from there.” Smash unfastened his safety harness and floated out of his seat in the space-weightlessness of the small control-cabin.
Xu-fu grabbed a fistful of his travel-tunic before he floated too far. “What makes you think you won’t be transporting into a trap? Do you everr look beforr leaping?”
“Not often.” Smash brushed him off with a grin. “Anyway, with only one human, it can’t be much of a trap.”
“You hope,” Xu-fu grumbled, unfastening his own harness. “I’ll come with you. You always get into trouble without me.”
“He gets into plenty with you, too,” SAM pointed out.
“Who asked you?” Xu-fu slapped the robo’s chrome dome as he floated over him en route to the transporter that lay behind a hatch above them.
Smash had already opened the hatch and was pulling himself through it and into a crystalline cylinder. He waited until Xu-fu had squeezed in beside him, then pushed the button that signaled SAM they were ready for beaming—a tricky business in the best of circumstances, but doubly so for short tight hops like this one where there was no margin for error. SAM would have to compute their landing coordinates exactly, to the tiniest fraction of a point.
“I hope he doesn’t put us inside a bulkhead,” Xu-fu muttered.
“Do not tempt me,” SAM’s voice buzzed out of the transport-tube’s intercom. Many had speculated what his acronym stood for, but no one knew for certain. The robo himself said SAM stood for Smarter-than-the-Average-Machine. Xu-fu didn’t believe it.
“Smart Ass Machine,” he said.
Having known SAM even longer than Xu-fu had, Smash was inclined to agree.
The air in the cylinder became charged, sending a tingling sensation all through his body… And then they were on the vacant bridge of the battleship.
“Empty,” Xu-fu observed, stating the obvious.
Smash glanced around, searching for shadows that weren’t there, noticing not only the lack of life, but also the lack of dust and decay. The bridge appeared to be in perfect running order. Nothing looked derelict. Even the artificial gravity that all large spacecraft employed still functioned, holding their feet firmly to the deck.
An eerie feeling crept over him. Something was very strange here—well, a lot of things, actually—but one thing most of all. He could hear breathing
coming from over his right shoulder.
And Xu-fu was standing by his left.
Like lightning, Smash whipped out his mazer and whirled round, firing a wide-range stun—zap—then stared in mute wonder at what he hadn’t been able to see an instant earlier.
Xu-fu knelt to examine the crumpled form. “SAM was rright. It’s humanoid—a young male—knocked cold. Should I rrouse him?”
Smash started to nod assent, then quickly changed his mind. “No, wait. We need to figure out something first.” He knelt beside Xu-fu for a closer look at the pale thin face wreathed by a gray hood. “Why do you suppose we couldn’t see him before?”
“Because he was invisible.”
You could always count on an Ahzian to cut straight to the heart of a matter.
“But how?” Smash persisted. “He was invisible only while conscious. What does that tell us?”
“That he was making himself invisible through a conscious effort?”
“Either that or he was consciously preventing us from seeing him.”
“What’s the dif’rrence?” Xu-fu grimaced with impatience. “You’rr giving me a headache.”
“You are a headache. My point is that for him to have made himself invisible, he would have had to create a chemical change in his body. To make us not see him, all he had to do was put that specific thought in our heads.”
“The thought that we didn’t see anything, you mean. You’rr saying he didn’t rreally become invisible, just that he could be…telepathic?”
Score one for the mental wizard of Ahz.
Smash saluted him. “Xu-fu, sometimes your grasp of the obvious astounds me.”
“Smash, don’t make me damage you.”
“Uhhh…”
The soft moan came from the deck. The object of their analysis was reviving. Smash held his mazer in front of the young man’s nose, where he’d be sure to spot it.
“All right, whoever you are, no more tricks,” he said when he saw the eyes open. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want some answers.”
But before he could ask any questions, he sensed an odd energy inside his skull—like he wasn’t alone in there, like something was picking at his brain—then suddenly the young man began to speak.
“My name is Zen. I am from the planet Magus in the solar system Gaeas-7. I was taken prisoner by the Imperial Federation during an attack. You can put away your weapon, Captain Hardn—we fight on the same side, against Kronos Kkrypt. I know now that you are an honorable man, and that you can be trusted. Yes, I am telepathic”—he grinned—“and I have just read your mind.”
Well…that sure saved a lot of time.
Cough.
Hastily raking his scattered wits back together, Smash climbed to his feet, pulling Zen up with him. “Any enemy of Kkrypt’s is a friend of mine,” he murmured. “But what in the universe are you doing all alone on a Fed battleship?”
“Flying it. A simple matter with the ship’s automatic controls plus certain…skills I possess. As I told you, Captain, I was captured by the Federation—”
“Where’s the crew then?” Xu-fu interrupted.
“If you will be patient, Xuanisumotallytofu, I will explain.”
“He knew my name. My full name,” Xu-fu rasped, sufficiently stunned to say nothing more.
Smash was impressed. “I wish I could do that.”
Zen blinked. “Do what?”
“Shut him up so easily,” Smash said, deftly dodging a low blow from a blue fist. “Ahem”—he cleared his throat—“I’m sorry…you were saying you’d been captured during a Fed attack?”
“Yes, I was taken one galactic-standard week ago by shiptime reckoning.” Zen paused to dust off his gray robe and straighten his hood. Standing, he barely reached Smash’s shoulder, looked barely more than a boy, but carried himself like a seasoned warrior.
“My solar system is the only one in the galaxy that has not yet fallen under Kkrypt’s control,” he said with obvious pride.
Really? Smash found that last statement intensely interesting. He’d thought the RATs were the only ones who refused to surrender, but this meant there were others still fighting, too. It meant…there was still hope?
“I was brought aboard this ship for questioning,” Zen continued. “But none of the interrogators realized the extent of my people’s abilities. They had never before been lucky—or unlucky—enough to capture a native of Magus, and you must admit, Captain, we Mages do not look particularly imposing or threatening.” A wicked slip of a smile briefly lit his benign countenance—a young devil peeking through the eyes of a saint.
Smash almost pitied the unwary interrogators.
But not much.
“Their minds were unguarded, which made them easy to manipulate. I answered their questions with ridiculous lies—whatever nonsense occurred to me—and implanted the thought into their heads that I was telling the truth. They never doubted otherwise.” Zen shrugged the matter aside as though it had been mere child’s play. For him, perhaps it was. “As for the crew’s disappearance…that was a bit more involved, and far less easy. A sudden opportunity presented itself, inspiring a sudden idea. Yet even as I tried it, I was not sure it would work.” He chuckled to himself. “Much to my amusement, it did.”
“Care to share the joke?” Smash prompted.
Zen placidly clasped his hands, looking like the cali who swallowed the twiddle. “The commander of this craft had brought us out of hyperspace for a routine after-battle maintenance check. As we reentered space-normal, the scanners registered an uncharted planet within transport distance. A primitive jungle world rife with plants but little else. The readings declared there was no intelligent life down there—and fortunately for me there was even less up here. I simply placed the thought in the minds of the commander and his officers that it was of the utmost importance they and the entire crew beam down instantly and claim that world for the Imperial Federation. As far as I know they are still there”—he chuckled again—“and probably still arguing over whose fault it is.”
“Maybe they’ll get eaten by the plants,” Smash suggested. Hey, he could hope. “But there’s one more thing I’d like to know. When we first ran a life-scan on this ship, the reading was negative. Where you aboard then?”
“Captain, I must apologize for that. At the time, I did not know who you were—just that several small raiders had brazenly attacked a battleship. It would have been pointless for me to escape the Federation only to fall afoul of what appeared to be drunken pirates with more bravado than brains. I realize now that assessment was wrong. Then, however, it seemed wiser to simply not be discovered. So I made your surveillance instruments register no life. Along with telepathy, we Mages also have telekinetic powers.”
“Of course. I should have known that,” Smash said with dry good humor. He could afford to be generous, wallowing as he was in newfound wealth. And he appreciated Zen admitting the error of his initial assessment. The RATs were not drunken pirates with more bravado than brains. Well, they weren’t drunks anyway.
“I guess I’m going to have to watch what I’m thinking around you, aren’t I?” he added half jokingly.
“Oh no, Captain,” Zen answered quite earnestly. “I look upon you as a friend now. Mages do not read the minds of friends without consent. It is considered very rude behavior.”
“Thank you, Zen”—Smash laughed—“that takes a big load off me.” He swept a calculating gaze about the bridge, envisioning what lay in the rest of the craft—no derelict, after all, but fully functional and no doubt fully stocked, loaded with supplies the RATs needed. Food, ammo, info…
“If you’re through gawking, we’ve got work to do,” he told Xu-fu. The first order of business was Zen, who was trying to hide it but looked ready to drop. Even with automated controls and telekinetic powers, flying a ship this size was too much for one man. The young Mage must have exhausted himself in the attempt. “We’ll take Zen back to base, then bring this cruiser in as close a
s we dare and start beaming her stores down to the dock. I want everything that isn’t welded in place, anything we can possibly use.”
“I’ll contact Captain Dael on the way back and tell him to have a crew rready to haul off the booty,” Xu-fu said.
“A team of hackers, too,” Smash added. There was no telling what fascinating Fed data they’d find in the battleship’s ’puters. He gave himself a mental pat on the back. Hadn’t he told SAM there was treasure here? Gods, he loved being right. Maybe because it happened so seldom.
Midway between the planning and self-congratulations, Zen’s calm reserve cracked. Worry darkened his delicate face. “Captain Hardn, I cannot go to your base with you, and I, too, need this starship—I was preparing for the jump into hyperspace even as you appeared. My solar system is in grave danger. I must return to it. Quickly. Already it may be too late. I know my people will never surrender to Kkrypt, and I know also we cannot hold him off much longer. But I want to be there at the end”—a faraway look clouded his eyes—“for it will be a glorious fall. The Imperial Federation will not find us easy to destroy.”
Smash understood losing battles, having been fighting one himself for so long. His plans did an abrupt about-face—from unloading the star-cruiser to reloading her. With some careful packing they should be able to fit a lot of little raiding vessels inside this huge crate. It would make for a cramped trip, but enable them to cross the galaxy unnoticed by Fed patrols. Kkrypt’s cruisers, as a rule, didn’t patrol each other.
His gaze caught Xu-fu’s. His brows rose in silent question.
The midget didn’t have to be telepathic to know what Smash was thinking. He’d probably been thinking the same thing.
“You’rr asking me?” he said with a snort. “I’m the one who’s been telling you we need to move base.”
In other words, go for it.
Smash grinned. “Zen, until I met you, I had no idea there was anyone else in the galaxy who still opposed Kkrypt’s forces. If you’ll delay your return just a few hours, I think I can find some excellent fighters who’ll be happy to go with you. Between Gaeas-7 and the RAT fleet, Kkrypt might get a little more than he’s bargained for.”
So did Smash when Zen threw his slender arms around the captain’s neck and kissed him in heartfelt gratitude.
“On behalf of my people and myself, Captain, thank you!”
“Um…you’re welcome…I think,” Smash said. He fired a laser look at Xu-fu. “What are you laughing at?”