The Lost World, page 22
Riker closed his eyes. That was a longshot. But hoping for a longshot was better than giving up. He had to survive and help the rest of the Kit Carson’s crew to survive. By the looks of the people who’d been here awhile, that was going to take plenty of grit and willpower.
What did the New Men seek?
Riker turned over, exhausted, and soon fell into a fitful sleep.
-6-
From the log building, the prisoners marched in the early morning, heading for the mines— huge holes in the side of the pit. New Men flanked them, their faces like masks of superiority and their lean, long bodies brimming with strength and health.
“Keep pace with the others,” a New Man said, shoving Keith.
The lieutenant stumbled, nearly falling before Riker caught his arm. Neither of them said a word, although they nodded slightly to each other.
They entered the mine, discovering that a tunnel stretched before them, the steep incline taking them deeper. In a large stone chamber, women handed out helmets. Riker accepted his, putting it on. It was too tight, but he doubted he could exchange it now. As the tunnel continued, he clicked on the lamp as instructed.
New Men divided the company into smaller groups, leading them ever deeper.
Their group descended to the left, the air growing thick and then stale. In a side tunnel, a massive machine hummed in the dark. The rush of fresh air indicated it pumped precious oxygen into the depths. Without such machines, they would suffocate fast.
Their group entered a low, circular chamber. Keith looked around and then leaned near Riker. “What the hell are they digging for?”
“Good question,” Riker said. He was glad Keith had come back around to ask it.
A trio of New Men strode past, carrying crates marked with warning symbols. They must have been explosives experts.
“Clear the area!” a New Man shouted. “We’re blasting in five minutes.”
Two New Men herded the crew back up the tunnel and told them to stand against the rough-hewn walls.
Riker obeyed but didn’t understand. What could be worth all this effort?
A horn sounded, followed by a deafening explosion. The walls shook. Dust and debris choked the air as the shock wave slammed against them.
As the dust began to settle, an overseer shouted, “Time to work, premen. Load the rocks into carts.”
Riker put on gloves and marched with the others. He soon found himself clearing the newly blasted rocks and debris. Beside him, Keith wheezed and coughed, struggling to keep up with the ferocious pace.
Hours blurred into a haze of mindless labor. They carried rocks and shoveled debris into carts, muscles straining as they pushed the laden vehicles to a nearby chamber for dumping. Other prisoners, faces gaunt and eyes hollow, carted the rubble further away.
The New Men were everywhere, often brandishing the compact neuron whips. Sometimes, the weapons crackled with energy and a human groaned or screamed in pain.
Riker witnessed a fellow prisoner stumbling to the wrong location. He earned a flickering surge of energy across his back. The man’s scream echoed through the tunnels as he twitched on the rocky floor.
“Faster,” an overseer shouted. “Or perhaps you all need further motivation?”
Riker gritted his teeth, forcing his aching body to comply. But even as he worked, he searched for answers. There were no precious gems glittering in the rock face, no veins of valuable ore. Just endless, worthless stone.
“What’s the point of all this?” he asked Keith as they pushed another cartload.
The lieutenant shook his head. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it can’t be good.”
As they trudged back for another load, Riker looked around. The New Men’s arrogance must have blind spots—he needed to find one so he could use it against them.
A guard’s voice snapped Riker back to reality. “Eyes front, preman. The rocks are down there, not up here.”
Riker nodded. “Sorry, boss.”
The New Man eyed him, perhaps deciding whether Riker’s tone deserved punishment. Then another New Man called out, distracting the first, and the moment passed.
As they neared the blasted rock face again, something caught Riker’s eye—a glint of something not quite natural. He blinked, and the thing was gone.
What had he seen?
The sound of a neuron whip was followed by a scream elsewhere.
Riker’s jaw clenched.
How long could he survive this place? Would Maddox ever learn of this? Riker shook his head sadly and resumed the backbreaking work. Valerie—everything rested on the Lieutenant Commander. Riker sure hoped Valerie was doing something to help them get out of here.
-7-
The recycled air in the escape pod tasted like stale death. Valerie’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she sucked the last drop of moisture from the condensation collector. Her parched throat burned with each swallow.
“Horrid New Men,” she rasped, her voice cracking from disuse. The words echoed in the cramped confines of the pod, her isolation prison.
Valerie’s fingers trembled as she punched up the resource display on the battered control panel. The screen flickered, its power reserves as depleted as her own. Red warning indicators flashed across every category: oxygen, water, power and food.
Valerie slumped back into the pilot’s chair, ignoring the protests of her aching muscles. How long had it been? Weeks? Maybe a month? Time blurred in the endless void of space, punctuated only by fitful bouts of sleep and the gnawing pangs of hunger.
Valerie closed her eyes as memories of the attack surged unbidden to the surface. One moment, they had been reviving from jump lag. The next, a tractor beam from a star cruiser drew them in.
She’d failed her crew. Failed to see the trap in the Cheng Ho’s distress buoy. Failed to listen to Keith. Failed to…
No. Valerie shook her head, forcing the guilt away. There’d be time for that later. Right now, she had to focus on survival. On getting back somehow to warn Star Watch about the New Men’s piracy and rescue whatever was left of her crew.
If she lived that long, if they did.
Valerie’s gaze drifted to the pod’s tiny viewport. Nothing but an endless sea of stars stretched before her. This star system had barren terrestrial hulks orbiting too near the brown dwarf star, a few meager gas giants farther out and some showy comets. Oh, she could land the pod on a terrestrial planet but to what purpose? To go out and dig her own grave on the molten surfaces?
There was nothing but the vast, uncaring expanse of the fringe Beyond before her. By her calculations, the star system with the Earthlike moon was over 12 light-years away. That was much further than most stable wormholes reached.
Did the New Men even know she’d escaped? What were the smug, so-called supermen doing to her crew?
“Think, damn it,” Valerie whispered, racking her brain for options. Even though the offending star cruiser was in a system 12 light-years away, she hadn’t used the pod’s distress beacon for fear of drawing the New Men to her. Who else could possibly hear the distress signal out here in the fringe Beyond?
Maybe the only thing that had saved her so far was the unstable wormhole. Had the wormhole thrown her to a star system no one used? Was she closer to the Commonwealth now or farther?
Her eyes widened as a dangerous idea took shape. Why had it taken her so long to think of this? Maybe the grimness of the situation had numbed her mind, and she was only now coming out of shock.
“You’re out of your mind, you know?” Valerie said, even as she manipulated the control panel. “This is certain suicide.”
But so was floating much longer in a quickly diminishing escape pod. If you thought about it, what choice did she have? Float out here and die, or take a chance? She hadn’t seen any ships in this star system, no one to contact. Maybe there were Laumer Points outside the system and ships she hadn’t been able to detect using them. At this point, she could no longer afford to be choosy.
Valerie pulled up the pod’s communication protocols. The New Men had used the Cheng Ho’s distress buoy to lure in her Patrol ship. Why couldn’t she do the same thing with them in reverse?
“Come on, you worthless piece of…” she muttered, trying to coax the pod’s systems to life. “One last trick,” she said. “That’s all I’m asking for.”
The computer chirped a warning. Rerouting the failing power to boost the signal strength would cut the precarious life support reserves by half. Valerie hesitated for a split second, then stabbed the confirm key.
“In for a credit, in for a solar,” she whispered.
Valerie crafted a message designed to catch the attention of any passing ships. Not Commonwealth frequencies—she was in the fringe of the Beyond, home to scavengers, strip miners and vagabond traders. This signal would speak the universal language out here: greed.
MAYDAY. MAYDAY. STAR WATCH CRUISER LIFEPOD. CRITICAL SYSTEMS FAILING. HIGH-VALUE CARGO AND MILITARY-GRADE TECH ONBOARD. ASSISTANCE REQUIRED. SUBSTANTIAL REWARD GUARANTEED.
Valerie’s lips twisted as she hit transmit. The pod shuddered as power surged to the communications array. Warning klaxons blared, the computer’s monotone voice declaring imminent life support failure.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Valerie said, silencing the alarms.
She leaned back in the seat, ignoring the sweat beading her forehead as the temperature began to rise. It was done. Now all she could do was wait and hope someone took the bait.
Of course, even if they did…
Valerie’s hand drifted to the empty holster at her hip. She’d spaced the pistol some time ago, afraid she might take the easy way out. That had been in a moment of mental weakness.
Now hours crawled by. Valerie drifted in and out of consciousness, the thinning air in the pod making it harder to focus. Each time she jolted awake, her eyes darted to the sensor displays, searching for any sign of an approaching ship.
She might have just killed herself with this stunt. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She might have killed herself faster.
Wasn’t it better to take a chance than play it safe and die soon anyway?
“Come on,” Valerie whispered. “Don’t let me die out here. I don’t want to die just yet.”
She checked the sensor display again, but nothing had changed.
Her stomach growled, hunger gnawing at her. She’d been a fool and now would die a fool. What a horrible end to the tale of Lieutenant Commander Valerie Noonan.
-8-
Several days later, Valerie stirred long enough to sit up and try something else. If the longshot had ruined her chances of survival, why not roll the iron dice of fate again and try something else?
The acrid stench of ozone soon filled the cramped space with sparks spitting from exposed wiring as she pushed the equipment far beyond its design limits.
“Come on, you piece of junk, give me just a little more…”
The main display flickered, its image wavering like a mirage in a desert. Valerie squinted at the readout, deciphering the cascade of error messages and system warnings through sheer force of will.
She’d gutted half the pod’s remaining systems for this attempt, cannibalizing life support and navigation to boost the comms array. If this didn’t work, she’d be dead long before anyone found her corpse floating in the void.
“Not like you’ve got much choice,” she said, forcing down the surge of panic threatening to overwhelm her. “It’s this or suffocating in your sleep.”
The thought of her captured crew steeled her resolve. She had to make it back, had to warn Star Watch about the New Men’s pirate moves. If that meant luring in a pack of ruthless scavengers… desperate times and all that, right?
Valerie hadn’t been clever enough earlier. She’d made the distress call too obvious. She’d thought like an upright Patrol officer, not as someone like Maddox.
She wove a tapestry of lies and deception. The new and improved distress signal took shape, layer by layer, each new addition calibrated to catch the eye of passing ships.
“Let’s see,” she muttered, scanning the fabricated manifest. “One damaged Star Watch life pod, check. Encrypted data banks, double check. And for the cherry on top…”
Her fingers paused over the final entry. This was the bait that would spring the trap, a lure too tempting for any self-respecting vulture to pass up.
MILITARY-GRADE NEUROCHEM ENHANCERS. EXPERIMENTAL. HIGHLY UNSTABLE.
“Congratulations,” she said with a humorless chuckle. “You just became every pirates’ wet dream.”
The real trick, though, was making it all seem legitimate. That’s where she had screwed up before. Any half-decent scavenger crew would be scanning for signs of deception. Fuel costs money, and most crews couldn’t afford to waste it.
Valerie leaned in close to the flickering display, ignoring the sparks singeing her hair. She buried the “high-value” items deep within the manifest, obscuring them behind layers of mundane cargo listings and falsified crew logs.
Next came the encryption. Not enough to completely mask the signal—that would defeat the purpose—but just enough to make it look like a hastily scrambled distress call.
“Time to get creative,” Valerie said.
She pulled up the pod’s limited language banks, cobbling together a patchwork of military jargon and technical gibberish. The result was a mess of half-corrupted data, tantalizing glimpses of valuable intel peeking through the static.
Sweat trickled down Valerie’s spine as she worked, the pod’s failing environmental controls unable to keep up with the overtaxed systems. The air grew thick and stale, each breath a chore.
“Almost there,” she wheezed, forcing herself to focus through the mounting exhaustion and oxygen deprivation.
The final touch was the trickiest. Valerie needed to mask any trace of her true identity or Patrol affiliation. She scrubbed the pod’s transponder codes, replacing them with a hodgepodge of falsified IDs pulled from half-remembered smuggler’s tales and backwater spaceport rumors.
As she worked, a nagging voice in the back of her mind whispered with doubts. What if no one took the bait? What if they saw through her ruse? What if—?
“Shut up,” Valerie said, silencing the inner monologue. “You start second-guessing yourself now…
The last part was the hardest. She boosted the signal so it would reach farther than before. That took more life support away from her.
Valerie groaned, laying back, trying not to think about how awful the stale air tasted.
“All right, you opportunistic bastards,” Valerie whispered. “Come and get it.”
She’d just used her final power reserves to send out a stronger, open invitation to every cutthroat and scavenger passing through or near this star system. If anyone answered her call, they certainly wouldn’t be coming to mount a rescue.
No, they’d be coming to strip the pod bare, take anything of value, and leave her corpse floating in the void. If she was lucky.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Valerie whispered, running a hand through her sweat-soaked hair. “You’re unarmed, half-dead already, and you just rang the dinner bell for every predator in the Beyond.”
But the alternative was certain death, alone in the emptiness of space. At least this way, she had a fighting chance, however slim it might be.
Valerie forced herself to take stock of her meager resources. No weapons, unless you counted the hydrospanner she’d used to rewire the pod. Limited mobility in the cramped confines. And her body was a wreck after weeks of rationing and oxygen deprivation.
“Well,” she said with a mirthless chuckle, “least you’ve got the element of surprise. Nobody expects a half-dead Patrol officer to put up much of a fight.”
She closed her eyes, trying to push away the fear and doubt gnawing at the edges of her mind.
The waiting was the worst part. Every creak of the pod’s stressed hull sent a jolt of adrenaline through her system. Every flicker on the sensor display had her heart racing, wondering if this was it—if her trap had finally been sprung.
Hours crawled by. Or was it days? Time lost all meaning in the endless void.
Valerie drifted in and out of consciousness, her exhausted body finally giving in to its demands for rest. But even in sleep, there was no peace. Nightmares plagued her fitful slumber—visions of her captured crew, of ruthless scavengers tearing apart her sanctuary, of drifting alone forever in the cold embrace of space.
She snapped awake with a gasp, disoriented and panicking. It took a moment for reality to reassert itself, for the familiar contours of the escape pod to come into focus.
And then she saw it: a blinking light on the sensor display. A contact, closing fast.
Valerie’s heart hammered as she leaned in, squinting at the readout. The ship’s profile was unfamiliar—a hodgepodge of different designs cobbled together into something vaguely predatory.
“Well,” she said. “Looks like dinner’s served. I hope you bastards are hungry.”
-9-
The scavenger ship loomed in the viewport like a nightmare made metal. Its hull was a patchwork of mismatched plates, held together by welds and prayer. Valerie’s eyes narrowed as she took in the haphazard array of weapons bristling from its surface.
“Well, aren’t you just a beauty,” she said, her hand tightening on the hydrospanner.
Static crackled over the pod’s comm system. A guttural voice cut through the white noise.
“Attention derelict. This is Captain Marek of the Bloodtooth. Prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with extreme prejudice.”
Valerie’s lips curled into a humorless smile.
She keyed the comm, pitching her voice higher, injecting a note of panicked desperation. “Oh, thank the stars. Please, we need help. Our systems are failing, and—”
“Shut it,” Marek said. “We ain’t here to play rescue. You got cargo, we take cargo. You got valuables, they’re ours now. Anything else, well… we’ll see what you’re worth on the market.”
