“Kill orders?” Stokes asked in surprise.

  “Heavy stun shots, sir,” the marine said. Without further ado, the lieutenant and his military police filed out of the chamber, shutting the door behind them.

  “I imagine you’re back sooner than you expected,” Stokes said, setting the tablet on a large conference table.

  Maddox took a chair across the report-strewn table from Stokes.

  “What do we know so far about the hauler and its registry?” Maddox asked.

  “Now see here, old man—” Stokes said.

  “This is an emergency,” Maddox said. “Can’t we forgo formalities for once?”

  Stokes plucked the smoldering stimstick from his mouth and eyed it as if the cigarette could give him advice. Maybe the stimstick told him, because the major seemed to reach a decision.

  “An emergency, yes, that’s true. We might as well start somewhere.” Stokes shrugged. “The hauler’s registry has led us through several shell companies. Meaning, we haven’t found the real owner yet. But surely you already know that. Surely your people have gathered data as you played hide and seek around Jupiter.”

  “They did, and that’s what we found as well. Given your greater resources, I’d wondered if you’d found something more.”

  Stokes shook his head. “What are your impressions, old boy? Do you have any of your ‘brilliant’ ideas about what to do next?”

  “The hauler’s true owners are aliens with advanced technology that is on par with some of the best Builder tech.”

  Stokes raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that jumping to conclusions, old son? Consider. A Builder nexus allows one to travel several thousand light-years in an instant. The hauler merely created a bubble field that allowed it deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere.”

  “That’s not quite right,” Maddox said. “These are aliens with until now unknown technologies. You might be forgetting that reflective spheroid that bounces beams shot at it.”

  “I’m not forgetting. The reflective spheroid is…troublesome. But the fact the hauler fled deep into the atmosphere shows the aliens—if they are aliens—don’t fully trust the spheroid against neutron or disrupter cannon fire. Otherwise, why not go wherever they want without a worry?”

  “That’s an interesting point,” Maddox conceded.

  “Here’s another. If these are aliens, are they new or old ones playing new games with us?”

  “Professor Ludendorff claims they’re new.”

  “Ah,” Stokes said. “Professor Ludendorff. I take everything he says not with a grain of sand, but a bag.”

  “Fair enough,” Maddox said. “Tell me. What does General Torres think about all this? Why am I speaking to you instead of him?”

  Strokes rubbed his weary features.

  “Ever since you left Earth, Torres has been arguing that your hide be lasered onto Victory’s hull.” The major took another drag on the stimstick. “Has it ever occurred to you that you leave a bad taste in your superiors’ mouths because you disobey orders whenever you feel like it? Oh,” Stokes said, not giving the captain a chance to answer the question. “I’ll admit your tactics get results at times. But organizations don’t like your kind of person and positively hate your style. I suppose the Brigadier approved of you for her own reasons, and the Lord High Admiral has a small residue of liking for your former results. But you are quickly becoming persona non grata with everyone else.”

  “Including you?” Maddox asked.

  “You, your AI and your resident Methuselah Man should all be jailed and possibly dissected. How you manage to luckily win so many of your encounters defies logic. We should distill whatever we find in you and make our young cadets drink it.”

  “There’s no secret,” Maddox said. “I’m di-far.”

  Stokes rolled his red-rimmed eyes.

  “I’ve read the secret report the Brigadier wrote concerning that. It’s a bloody shame the Spacers ever inflated your already insufferable ego with such nonsense. I imagine you’ve let it go to your head.”

  Maddox shrugged.

  “Indeed,” Stokes said. “It’s a surprise you don’t float away with your helium-inflated ego.”

  The major stubbed out the stimstick in an ashtray. Then he scratched his side and peered at Maddox. He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. Finally, the major ran a hand through his thinning hair and stood abruptly.

  “I simply can’t do it,” Stokes said softly. He headed for the door, opened it, paused as if he was going to turn around and say something more, but then kept walking, heading into the corridor.

  An MP looked in at Maddox, turned away and shut the door behind him, leaving the captain alone in the large chamber.

  Maddox raised his eyes at Stokes’ odd behavior, shrugged once more and gathered the reports on the table. He began reading them one by one, soon becoming concerned. Although many of the reports came from widely divergent regions in the greater Commonwealth, there were too many similarities. It almost felt as if there was a guiding intelligence behind the many incidences. And yet, who could maneuver all these various forces like a puppet master pulling strings? Maybe a Builder could.

  The captain read reports for over an hour before he finally stirred, got up and tried the door. It was locked. He knocked, but no one opened it.

  He looked around the room, noting the ceiling cameras recording him. That meant whoever was watching knew what he’d been doing. Maybe that’s what he was supposed to be doing, reading the reports.

  Maddox returned to the large table and continued reading the literature. The majority of the reports had to do with outlandish robberies, hidden cliques plotting rebellion and increasing space piracies. The events occurred throughout the Commonwealth and with growing frequency.

  Sometime later, a scraping sound from the door caused Maddox to look up as it opened.

  Stokes reentered the room, and there was something different about him. Then Maddox noticed the new insignia on an altered uniform.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Stokes?” asked Maddox.

  Stokes nodded stiffly as he stood by the opened door.

  “What’s this about?” asked Maddox.

  Stokes’ right hand shook as he raised an unlit stimstick toward his mouth. He halted the motion and crumbled the stimstick, tossing it onto the floor. With a jerk, he headed into the room.

  A marine outside the room quietly shut the door behind Stokes.

  Maddox waited.

  Stokes sat across the table from him at his old spot. The new lieutenant colonel glanced at the reports now set in neat piles before regarding him.

  “I don’t like you, Captain. Not one bit.”

  Maddox said nothing to that.

  Stokes frowned and seemed reluctant to speak again, but finally said, “The Lord High Admiral told me that maybe my not liking you was for the best.”

  “Did you tell the admiral that you refused to work with me?”

  Stokes uncharacteristically glared at him.

  Maddox nodded as if that confirmed his suspicions. “So, the Lord High Admiral bumped you up from major to lieutenant colonel as a way to bribe you to work with me anyway?”

  Instead of answering, Stokes said, “General Torres has been suspended, as he’s under investigation.”

  “Let me guess. His brain patterns are off.”

  It took Stokes a second. “Even more off than the Lord High Admiral’s patterns.”

  “Torres’ new brain patterns must have been Doctor Meyers’ work,” Maddox said.

  Stokes put his hands on the edge of the table as if he would suddenly push himself away from Maddox. “Let’s make a few things clear. For the present, the Lord High Admiral has subdivided the Intelligence Arm. You’re my concern now, Captain. Instead of the Brigadier, you will report to me and only to me.”

  “Where is the Brigadier?”

  “That’s classified information, old son.”

  Maddox raised a single eyebrow.

  “You have to be a good boy and play by the rules for a time before I’ll let you see the Brigadier.”

  Maddox said nothing.

  “Now,” Stokes said, “it’s time for me to tell you about your new assignment.”

  “Just a minute,” Maddox said. “I want more information regarding the Jupiter situation.”

  Stokes shook his head. “That’s out of your hands. It’s out of my hands, too. A different sub-division of Intelligence is going to work on the hauler and Doctor Meyers.”

  “You’re sidelining me from the main show?”

  “Didn’t you hear me, old boy? Intelligence is splitting into sub-divisions. We’re compartmentalizing more than ever. I’ll make my report to the new chief.”

  “Who is that?”

  Once again, Stokes shook his head. “That is now classified information. I will tell you this, though. The Jupiter hauler, Doctor Meyers and even more ex-Prime Minister Hampton has Star Watch Intelligence running scared. Even as we speak, the eggheads are creating layers and systems to try to stop anything of the kind from happening again. The incident has created an emergency.”

  “This is like the android attempt several years ago,” Maddox said.

  “You mean when androids kidnapped the Brigadier and the Lord High Admiral and put android lookalikes in their place?”

  “That,” Maddox said. “Before their initial invasion, the New Men also swamped us with spies and found far too many traitors among us, and they used clones as well.”

  “Strand used the clones,” Stokes said, “not the New Men.”

  “My point is that we’ve dealt with these kinds of attacks before,” Maddox said. “We’ve experienced it. That’s how I know the secret aliens are pulling hidden strings better than anyone else did in the past.”

  “You read the reports?”

  Maddox nodded.

  “And you suppose that these new aliens of yours are responsible for all the ills occurring throughout the Commonwealth?”

  Maddox considered the question before saying, “It strikes me as a logical conclusion.”

  “I don’t agree. But that doesn’t matter either way. You’re concentrating this time around. I’m going to give you the parameters for your next mission.”

  “Said mission has nothing to do with the alien hauler and Doctor Meyers?” Maddox asked.

  Stokes’ lips thinned. “I’d rather they intern you. I’d rather you have to sit through several court-martial hearings. But this latest infiltration attack has rattled Intelligence and the Lord High Admiral to the core. You think there is one hand manipulating events. I don’t, and neither does the Lord High Admiral. We believe that several of our enemies are operating together.”

  “But the hauler—”

  “Listen!” Stokes shouted, as he stood up. “This is deadly serious, old man,” he said in a softer voice, turning away. He stared to the side for a time.

  As abruptly as he’d stood, Stokes sank back to his chair. He pulled out a pack of stimsticks and seemed to dearly want to take one. Instead, he pitched the pack so it slid across the table.

  Lieutenant Colonel Stokes looked at Maddox with his exhausted, baggy eyes. “This latest incident is the worst of a new set of problems. Your timely aid…the Lord High Admiral is grateful for it. That’s why he’s giving you another Gordian knot to hack. It’s possible your new assignment has something to do with Hampton.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Stokes sighed. “Listen a bit and maybe you’ll learn something…”

  -27-

  Lieutenant Colonel Stokes’ information had to do with the reports Maddox had been reading. There were outlandish robberies, hidden cliques plotting political and military rebellions and increasing space piracies. These activities had happened everywhere. Just as bad, there was increasing unrest throughout much of the Commonwealth.

  According to the eggheads, the three biggest factors behind these violent impulses were the original Destroyer attacks that had broken the Wahhabi Caliphate by annihilating the key home planet. The Destroyer had been an ancient ship of the Nameless Ones that Maddox had finally boarded and sent into the Sun to melt. The second factor had been the New Men invasion of “C” Quadrant. The last had been the Imperial Swarm invasion that had begun in the Tau Ceti System.

  The various battles and wars had caused hundreds of millions of deaths, the worst being the total annihilation of life in the Tau Ceti and Alpha Centauri Systems, both of which were near the Solar System in stellar terms.

  The remaining Wahhabi Caliphate and Windsor League planets, and many other formerly independent planets and star-system unions, had joined the grand Commonwealth of Planets. The great majority of regular humanity had thus come together in one vast political system in order to be able to field the greatest number of warships possible. The melding of these star systems into the Commonwealth had naturally caused “teething” problems. New rules and taxes for many worlds, and the ruin and death from countless invasions had made the “teething” problems even more difficult than they should be.

  Some people on some worlds yearned for their old ways. Some people grew weary of burdensome tax rates or having local tax monies leave for other places light-years away. Some people wanted to run their own lives again or give it a shot and run their planets along their unique customs. The idea of voting for a member to sit in some building far away on Earth to decide their planet’s fate—some people could not accept that concept anymore. Some never could.

  According to Lieutenant Colonel Stokes, some of these problems might have been worse directly after the Imperial Swarm invasion. A few things had gotten better. But some places had become worse, too. Star Watch only had so many ships, and many of those ships no longer existed, particularly after the bloody battle against the Spacers and the Yon-Soth on the Forbidden Planet.

  “Unrest among the stars,” Maddox said. He’d read the reports. This was just a rehash.

  “It’s more than that,” Stokes said. “In places, there is outside interference stirring the pot. New Men spies have supplied money or weapons and sometimes inspired leadership.”

  “Not just New Men,” Maddox said, “but the hardliners in particular.”

  “True.” Stokes eyed the captain. “Lord Drakos is a hardliner, maybe the chief one.”

  “My assignment has to do with Lord Drakos?”

  “Victory is going to the Vega Sector,” Stokes said.

  The Vega Sector, as Maddox knew, was a fourteen-light-year diameter with the Vega System in the center. Daniel Hampton had been from Vega. The Sector capital was on Vega II, as was the Sector Star Watch headquarters for the region.

  “Is that where Lord Drakos is operating now?” Maddox asked.

  “From what we’ve been able to piece together, Drakos moves around constantly, although he seems to spend the majority of his time secretly moving through the Commonwealth.”

  “Does he use a stealth star cruiser?”

  “Yes,” Stokes said, “just like Strand used to do.”

  Maddox recalled the Balak moon where he’d almost caught the treacherous New Man. If only Golden Ural hadn’t stopped him.

  “You want me to go to Vega II and uncover the ringleaders of what…a fomenting sector-wide rebellion?”

  “Exactly,” Stokes said. “Find the ringleaders and break the conspiracy—”

  “That’s the best use of Victory at a time like this?”

  Stokes stared at him for a long moment.

  Maddox waited.

  “I don’t like you, Captain.”

  “We’ve already established that,” Maddox said dryly.

  “I want to be clear.”

  Maddox waited some more.

  “The point,” Stokes finally said. “Oh, hell,” he said, seeming to mentally switch gears. “Intelligence is in turmoil. We need Brigadier O’Hara back. I liked your idea about using me as a conduit for her. The admiral told me about it and told me it was a bad idea. I don’t agree with him, however…” Stokes shrugged. “I’m not like you. I obey orders even when I don’t agree with them.”

  Maddox continued to wait, as he sensed turmoil in the lieutenant colonel.

  “Torres screwed up,” Stokes said. “Admiral Cook believed Torres was a hardnosed pile-driver that could take Intelligence in hand. That didn’t work out, now did it? We need the Brigadier. But Drakos made sure we can’t use her until we clear up what the New Man learned from her.”

  “I’m not tracking you,” Maddox said.

  “Given the latest analysis, I believe Drakos will be in the Vega Sector. Those planets seem critical to whatever hardliner plan they’re hatching. Your cover mission is to break the rebellions by finding the hidden ringleaders. The greater and real task is finding and capturing Lord Drakos.”

  “I thought Drakos was protected because he finally signed the Accord between us and the Throne World,” Maddox said. “Remember? That’s why I wasn’t able to grab him in the Balak System.”

  Stokes rapped the table with his knuckles and stared intently at Maddox. “You must capture Drakos on the sly so we can question him in secret.”

  “Why go through all this rigmarole before getting to the point?”

  The lieutenant colonel stared at him until final the captain said: “Oh.” Stokes was pulling a Maddox. That was why. These were not official orders, but between the two of them.

  “Oh, indeed,” Stokes said bitterly.

  “If anyone asks me,” Maddox said, “I’ll say that you never told me a thing about capturing Lord Drakos.”

  “Originally, Cook was going to tell you about Drakos and what needed doing, but finally decided to keep it a secret. We have too much on our plate to add a possible war-starting incident with the New Men.”

  “And yet, you’re telling me about Drakos anyway.”

  “I’m not like you,” Stokes said softly.

  “You follow orders. Unlike me, you’re a good little soldier?”

  Stokes nodded stiffly, but he seemed like a man with a guilty conscience.

  Maddox guessed it, then. “Keeping quiet about Drakos was another price for your bump up in rank, wasn’t it?”