“Sir,” Keith said, “we’ve almost reached the hyper-spatial tube area where the opening will be when it appears.”

  Maddox turned to look up at his wife, Meta, who was at the communications station. “Patch me through to Admiral Jellicoe.”

  “Yes, sir,” Meta said, turning to her board.

  A minute later, Jellicoe appeared on the main screen.

  “Damn,” Jellicoe said, “those are massive vessels. They’ve already destroyed three battleships, but the rest are gathering.”

  “Tell your captains to use the system’s debris,” Maddox said. “They are needlessly exposing themselves.”

  Jellicoe glared at him. “Those three were leading the enemy away. Do you understand? They were buying the rest of us time to assemble.”

  With sudden insight, Maddox understood the sacrifice of the battleship captains. He mentally asked them for forgiveness, though they were dead and could no longer give it. They had sacrificed themselves to buy the rest of the task force time to escape.

  Maddox shook his head.

  “What?” Jellicoe said. “What do you have to say? You think you could have done better?”

  “They fought admirably, sir. What are your orders?”

  “That’s more like it.” Jellicoe became pensive. “You may have been right initially, although it pains me to say it. We must get the hell out of this star system.”

  “I think that’s wise, sir.”

  “Right. Get ready to leave. Jellicoe out.”

  Victory and others headed for the location. They had three minutes to get this done. Would the enemy’s assault fleet come down the hyper-spatial tube after them? That would be good because that would give the battleships a chance to hit the maulers when the cyber crews were in the grip of jump lag.

  That might be the best thing they could hope for. Hit the enemy hard when they came through and then flee like mad to Earth. They would give up Barnard’s Star in order to consolidate with the rest of Star Watch.

  “Professor,” Maddox said into an armrest comm.

  “Sir,” Ludendorff said.

  “Go to the Long-Range Builder Comm room and send a message to Admiral Haig for me?”

  “Begging your pardon,” Ludendorff said, “but I’ve already tried that.”

  “What do you mean ‘tried’? The Builder comm isn’t working?”

  “Something is jamming the Builder comm,” Ludendorff said.

  “What?” Maddox said. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Neither did I,” Ludendorff said. “Apparently, Leviathan or hidden Spacers have found a method.”

  That wasn’t good. “Okay,” Maddox said, “see if you can find a way to use it anyway.”

  “I will,” Ludendorff said.

  Maddox looked up at the main screen. The task force ships were ready. Why hasn’t Jellicoe ordered the hyper-spatial tube opened? “Galyan, check on the reason why Jellicoe is waiting to leave?”

  Galyan vanished from the bridge and reappeared soon. “Sir, Jellicoe has people working on it, and they are doing all the right things, but the hyper-spatial tube isn’t opening.”

  Maddox frowned for just a moment. Then he put two and two together. In this instance, it was one and one. The Long-Range Builder Comm device wasn’t working. The hyper-spatial tube for the one-way nexus wasn’t opening either. Could someone be jamming both? They were both Builder artifacts. What did that mean?

  Maddox recalled that Leviathan worshipped the Builders just as the Spacers did. That must be the connection between the two groups.

  Maddox swiveled his seat and pointed at Meta. “Patch me through to Admiral Jellicoe.”

  Meta tried, tried again and said, “He’s not answering, sir.”

  “Keep at it. Tell him this is a double emergency.”

  “Double emergency?” Meta asked.

  “Never mind,” Maddox said. “Just get him.”

  Soon Jellicoe appeared on the main screen.

  “Sir,” Maddox said, “we must flee through velocity or use star-drive jumps. The hyper-spatial tube isn’t going to work.”

  “How can you possibly know that?” Jellicoe said.

  “Because it isn’t working, and the Long-Range Builder Comm device isn’t working, either.”

  “Are you suggesting the enemy has a way of jamming that?”

  “Yes,” Maddox said. “That is exactly what I’m suggesting. In order to save the task force, we have to run or use our star-drive jumps.”

  “Use yours,” Jellicoe said. “Use it right now. I want to know if it works or not.”

  “Can you give me coordinates to jump to, sir?”

  “Just jump, damn it,” Jellicoe shouted. “Jump and find out!”

  The connection cut.

  Maddox turned to Keith and pointed at him. “You heard the man. Do it.”

  Keith put in coordinates, pressed the switch. Nothing happened. Keith swiveled around in shock.

  “Sir, the star-drive jump—”

  “Isn’t working?” Maddox said, interrupting.

  “No, sir,” Keith said.

  “This is bad.” Maddox frowned. He shouldn’t have said that aloud. He shrugged and swiveled the chair to Galyan. “Go directly to Admiral Jellicoe’s flagship and tell him the jump isn’t working.”

  “Are you absolutely sure it isn’t working?” Galyan said.

  “I have no time for these kinds of debates. Go.”

  Galyan disappeared before Maddox said another word. Seconds passed, and Galyan reappeared.

  “Sir, none of the other ships were able to jump either.”

  “So,” Maddox said, with a curling knot of something that might have been akin to fear, “we have no way to leave, and we have fifty massive maulers bearing down on us.”

  “It is as bad as you said a moment ago,” Galyan replied.

  Maddox studied the little holoimage. “Galyan, I have one more journey for you.”

  “Sir,” Galyan said.

  “Go to Admiral Jellicoe and ask him, what are our battle orders?”

  -52-

  Becker knew of the strange jump and hyper-spatial tube interdiction before Maddox or any of the others. Becker had been concentrating as he sat in the command chair of the darter. His three lovelies piloted and watched the sensors.

  The cloaked darter maneuvered slowly and with discretion through the Paran System, having left the crevice of the asteroid.

  With his new mental energies, Becker added to the cloak, disguising the darter. If a sensor or teleoptic should peer at it, the small vessel would appear to be planetary rubble.

  The effort strained Becker. He was tired, munching on snacks to assuage his constant hunger.

  For the sake of the ladies, he wore a kilt, a huge beach towel wrapped around his waist. Naked, he’d seemed too barbaric. With his massive, ungainly chest and misshapen arms, hands, lumpy head, he looked like a monstrosity.

  Fortunately, the girls didn’t see that. They saw their Becker. They smiled every time their eyes met. Once, however, one of them showed a twitch on her cheek.

  Becker decided not to worry about it or try to fix whatever caused that. His mentality was engaged keeping the darter hidden.

  Becker had been pondering what it meant for Leviathan to have sent such a destructive assault fleet. Surely, there were more invasion fleets.

  Becker dimly sensed Venna and Mu, though he didn’t seek to sense them more closely. He didn’t want them to sense him in turn. Especially Venna had powers he didn’t fully understand. He did understand the emanations of Ector and he understood that Venna’s changes were more monstrous than his.

  The Aetharians from Ector—Becker shuddered with revulsion. If the Aetharians were released from their ancient captivity—

  He shook his massive head, deciding not to worry about the trapped Aetharians now. He needed to get the heck out of the Paran System, but the question was how.

  He’d tried to activate through telekinesis an ancient one-way nexus. That hadn’t worked. Then he’d sensed an emanation and traced it to the maulers. The assault vessels had some kind of inhibitor that blocked star-drive jumps, folds, and hyper-spatial tube opening creations. Leviathan had locked everybody here.

  That was terrifying on the face of it. That meant Leviathan would obliterate the puny Star Watch ships, at least puny in comparison to the maulers.

  Becker made his decision as the darter picked up speed, heading for Victory. If any of these bastards could get out of this, it would be Maddox. Even so, Maddox would need help against the combined forces working against him.

  As the Star Watch task force gathered and assumed a battle formation, as the maulers from the Seventh Assault Fleet roared into position, shoving aside debris and rubble—time was a premium.

  Becker couldn’t jump or fold to Victory. Thus, he ordered his ladies to increase the darter’s velocity.

  The darter that looked like a planetary chunk increased speed, heading for Victory, trying to beat those of Leviathan.

  Becker sat hunched, more like crammed, into the command chair of the Darter Tarrypin. His girls worked hard, and they were good pilots and sensor operators.

  Becker’s mentality and decisions partly came from the knowledge he’d gained from the rat thing of Ector that had tried to lodge in his brain. He’d also gained insight from the player that knew how to deal with women.

  Becker now took a philosophical attitude and a what-the-hell thinking. He was going to make it or die in style, come what may. He wasn’t going to twist reality, lying to himself, to make things into what he wanted as the secret gamma king. No. He was going to stare reality in the eye and see what was what, accept it, and see if there was a way to use that.

  All the while, the darter maneuvered its way closer to Victory.

  Then a sensor operator on one of the maulers—Becker reached out telepathically and switched a point in the cyber brain so the operator fell down dead. Becker also scrambled what had been on the sensor board over there.

  The monster man nearly collapsed from the effort of that. He wondered if he should take stimulants, but decided that was a bad idea. He needed to deal with what was and not fudge a thing even a little.

  As the massive maulers maneuvered into position, and as the puny task force of Star Watch waited as if they would give battle, the Darter Tarrypin glided to Victory.

  Galyan did not appear, no communications opened, but one of the hangar bay hatches on the double-oval starship opened. The darter slid into Victory’s hangar bay. The hatch shut, and the darter landed on the deck.

  Becker folded forward on his chair. Near exhaustion and mental anguish meant that Becker nearly swooned. Instead, he found Honey at his side, giving him a cup of black coffee.

  He gulped it so scalding liquid burned his throat. No matter, he was Becker. He had performed prodigies and now, now—

  “I need to wait for precisely the right moment,” he said.

  “Yes, Becker,” Honey said.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I do,” Honey said.

  A strange feeling overcame Becker. He wished Honey truly loved him on her own merit and not because he forced her to love him. It was a strange feeling for Becker, and he wondered if it had anything to do with the player from Earth whose intellect he’d looted. Becker shook his head, not in a negative, but in resignation, knowing that now he needed to wait in order to do this right and survive the horrible cybers.

  -53-

  Senior Dax leaned against the dais rail, watching one of the larger bridge screens as the giant maulers maneuvered into position amongst the stellar junk.

  War Master Vane continued to issue commands. Venna and Mu seemed content to observe the situation as they remained on the dais with him. They could afford that, as everything was going Leviathan’s way, if Leviathan truly wished to unleash its greatest assault fleet by itself.

  Dax knew the last part wasn’t the case. Enigmach and the other Grand Strategists had developed a precise plan that would submerge Star Watch and the Commonwealth in an avalanche invasion with no place to turn or run. This was a piecemeal assault, a single attack. It should work here in the Paran System. But if even one Star Watch vessel managed to escape to warn the rest that Leviathan had this inhibitor…

  Dax didn’t shake his head. He was too absorbed with his mathematical formulas and his precarious place with Venna and Mu. They had obviously used him. Even if he escaped—

  Dax closed his eyes, refusing to consider what he could tell Enigmach that might absolve him of this blunder. Instead, he continued his obfuscation strategy against the two witches. He had become a cog in Venna’s greater plan. Was this attack Venna’s entire game? She must have a greater objective than the destruction of the Star Watch task force. Was it correct to think of her as a Spacer? Venna had been a Spacer spy. With the Phantasma Synth Crystal shards embedded in her, she might have transformed into something else.

  Of course, she’s something else.

  Dax was sure he was onto something. If Venna wasn’t a Spacer representative—what was she and what was her objective? Should he attempt to discover her goal, especially given his severe limitations here?

  Surprisingly, but thankfully, Mu didn’t turn to taunt him. The Spacer was absorbed in her duties, which seemed to be keeping a close eye on Vane. The War Master had become ecstatic as the maulers readied for battle.

  The front rank of maulers, arranged in a three-dimensional formation, consisted of thirty assault vessels. They were like a wall heading at the Star Watch warships. Behind the wall followed the other twenty maulers.

  Dax wasn’t sure why all fifty didn’t move as a wall against the task force. He was sure there was some subtle military reason.

  Dax switched views, looking at a different screen. The Star Watch vessels had formed a short, squat cone. If Dax was correct, that had originally been a New Men Fleet Formation. Might Star Watch have appropriated the formation for their ships? Given what he witnessed, the answer was yes.

  Space battles were typically a matter of mass and energy projection. The side that could bring a greater mass, more firepower and hit at once would likely win. There were technological considerations as well. If one side seriously outperformed the other technologically, numbers didn’t necessarily matter.

  The Conqueror-class battleships had proven tough nuts while alone. Would it make a difference now that they had all formed in an abbreviated fighting cone?

  Eight battleships and Victory formed the Star Watch cone. Some destroyers flanked the cone, but stayed rearward of it. The destroyers lacked the heft and firepower to be effective in such a contest.

  As the maulers readied to fire their massed lasers, a combined cone beam made up of the nine disruptor cannons hit the nearest Leviathan assault vessel.

  Beam for beam, the disruptors were more powerful than the mighty mauler lasers. The lasers used intense heat to do their damage. The disruptors disrupted the molecular cohesion of a target.

  Even though the maulers were massive compared to the battleships and the mauler engines were a factor larger at least, the type of beam made a critical difference. So even though the maulers should easily be able to generate more energy and thus more destructive force, the opposite was the case.

  In this, Star Watch possessed the technological edge. It would also seem that mass for mass, or pound for pound, the Star Watch electromagnetic shields were more powerful as well. However, comparing the mass of the two sides was laughable. The gross preponderance was on Leviathan’s side.

  Even so, the massed cone disruptor beam blew down a mauler shield and bored into the iridium-Z hull plating. That hull plating was tough and thick, but under the annihilating force of the combined disruptor beam, it didn’t stand a chance.

  The massed disruptor beam bored a huge hole in the hull plating and smashed within. Yes, the mauler was much bigger and roomier than a Star Watch battleship. But in this case, that didn’t make much difference. The massed disruptor beam blew down one bulkhead after another. It devoured coils, cybers, waste disposal units and huge generators.

  An incredible two and a half minutes after the breach, the mauler exploded in a fury of destruction. That blew mass and energy at nearby maulers, but nothing got through the heavy shields of the other warships.

  “Damn these ants,” Vane said on the dais. “They destroyed one of my maulers. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  Vane glanced at Venna. “I apologize, lady.”

  “There is no need,” Venna said. “Destroy the task force. That is the thing.”

  “Great Leviathan abhors unnecessary losses,” Vane said.

  “These losses aren’t unnecessary,” Venna replied. “Destroy the task force, but more importantly annihilate the double-oval starship with them.”

  Dax found that interesting. Clearly, Venna did not care for Captain Maddox.

  Mu glanced sharply at Dax and then at Venna.

  Dax frowned, not understanding the significance of that, but realizing it had been important.

  The battleship cone targeted a different mauler.

  Vane shook his narrow head. He spun around and shouted orders to his battalion of bridge crew. They must have translated that to the various mauler commanders.

  Groups of maulers began to target individual battleships in the front rank of the cone. There were five such battleships in the front, with nine of the giant maulers targeted on one apiece.

  That was an uneven contest. The technical superiority of the Star Watch vessels didn’t matter because the mass was simply too much against them.

  Vane shouted for confirmations.

  Replies reached him.

  The War Master turned to Venna. “In less than a minute these battleships will explode. Then the contest will no longer be in doubt.”

  “Has it ever been in doubt?” Venna asked.

  Vane scowled. “Arrogance during battle is an unwise procedure, lady. Certainly, I expect to win. I have brought the most to this fight, a prerequisite for victory. But you never know what an enemy task force might possess in terms of alien weaponry. I am not seeing anything unusual. Thus, Great Venna, I implore you to be ready for an uncompromising victory.”