The Lost Starship by Vaughn Heppner Page B

have to move at this precise moment if they didn’t want to. That they did invade the Oikumene seems to indicate they feel they have enough resources to defeat us.”
    From her desk, O’Hara cleared her throat.
    “Not now, Brigadier,” Cook said. He focused on Maddox again. “We don’t know their politics. That’s her point. We don’t know their situation. Maybe they’re like the ancient Ostrogoths who fled before Attila the Hun’s grandfather. Maybe some truly wicked aliens are out there pushing the New Men into us. I doubt it, but we don’t know. We’re clueless about far too much. One thing we have an eyewitness to—Noonan and her lifeboat crew told us how three cruisers slaughtered a Star Watch battle group.”
    “Could they have planted that?” Maddox asked. “Could they have captured Noonan and given her false memories about what really happened?”
    “Sure they could have,” Cook said. “We have experts trying to deduce just that. Some believe that ’s the actual case. It’s too hard for most of us to accept three ships doing what they did. Maybe in reality the battle was a slugfest with nearly even sides. The New Men won, captured Noonan and brainwashed her into thinking what she told us. There aren’t any mental marks or other evidence pointing to that, but anything is possible, I suppose.”
    Cook shrugged. “If that’s the case, though, we have much less to worry about. Then, when our main fleets engage, we’ll do much better than we thought we would. We’re fools if we hope Noonan’s evidence is wrong. These New Men are a menace beyond anything we expected. And that’s where you come in, Captain.”
    “I can’t see how one man can make much of a difference in this,” Maddox said.
    “ Firstly,” Cook said. “You won’t be one man. You’ll be part of a team, a very unusual team, to be sure.”
    Maddox noticed the Lord High Admiral and the Iron Lady trading glances. Okay then.
    “How can one team make a difference in such a broad war?” he asked.
    “Right. That’s the question.” The Lord High Admiral’s nostrils flared. “You’re about to leave on a quixotic quest, Captain, maybe the craziest assignment anyone has ever gone on. We’re desperate. It’s more than possible that humanity is facing extinction. The New Men strike me as arrogant beyond anything we’ve faced before. The trouble is that their arrogance seems to be entirely backed by real ability. I think they are better than us at waging war and waging a secret spy contest. I think they’re doing unspeakable things to the populations on Odin, Horace and Parthia. I hope to the Lord in Heaven I’m wrong, but I have a bad feeling in my gut that I’m right.”
    “Begging your pardon, sir,” Maddox said. “That doesn’t answer the question , and my half hour is fast running out.”
    “ You’re right.” Cook glanced at the brigadier. “You want me to tell him, don’t you?”
    “I couldn’t do it, sir,” she said.
    Maddox was surprised at the tone of her voice. The Iron Lady sounded weary, sad, as if… This will be a supremely difficult operation. That’s what they’re hinting at. She can’t give me the orders to do this because she fears for my life.
    For the first time, Captain Maddox felt himself blush. It was a strange sensation. Did Brigadier O’Hara have a motherly concern for him? Did she look at him as more than her star officer? She’d been aware of him since his birth, watching, maybe wondering about him.
    Lord High Admiral Cook cleared his throat.
    Maddox looked up.
    “I’m going to tell you a story,” Cook said. “It’s an old one. You may have heard rumors about it before. There is supposed to be a star system far out in the Beyond. It’s a smashed system, all the planets long ago turned into rubble. Whoever fought that ancient war used planet busters of unimaginable strength. According to the tale, hundreds, thousands of wrecked starships drift as useless hulks. Some believe that