“You claim to control the situation,” Maddox said. “I know I’m speaking to the Unity, by the way. How you’re achieving this through Lieutenant Commander Noonan, I don’t know. But I do know who I’m speaking to.”

  “Aren’t you the clever one?”

  “In truth, your boast is false. You clearly don’t control the situation. The Fusion First Fleet besieges Remus, pinning you on the planet.”

  “Bah,” Valerie said with a sneer. “Any time we desire, we can summon our main fleet and wipe the Fusion off the board.”

  “No…I don’t believe that. The First Fleet is too limiting to you here, and they’re towing asteroids to rain on you. That indicates weakness on your part versus the Fusion.”

  “Believe what you like, Maddox. You think that you’ve escaped us, but you’ve just made it better for us to—”

  Maddox jumped up from his chair and came around the table. Despite everything else, it infuriated him that the maggot aliens had wrested Valerie’s personality from her and used her like this. He loathed the Unity. He was sick of these mind-screwing types of aliens.

  “What’s your problem?” Valerie said, as she leaned away from him.

  Maddox rapped his knuckles on the table as he loomed over her. “You’ve devoured a planet full of people. You’re mental vampires, and you play these foul games with unsuspecting people. What gives you the right?”

  “Right, right, you speak of right. We have the might: that is more important than the ethereal right of which you speak. Besides, you humans are the perfect sort for us. Your minds are so easily malleable. Well, perhaps not your mind, Captain. You’re an interesting one.”

  “Valerie,” Maddox said earnestly. “If you can hear me inside your skull, resist them with everything you have. You’re stronger than that. You’re you. You’ve fought every step of your career. Do it again against these mind vermin.”

  “You don’t paint a pretty picture regarding us, do you, Captain? Why do you hate us so much?”

  “Because you’re maggots,” he snarled.

  Valerie shook her head emphatically. “I do not appreciate such a pejorative term. We are the ultimate species, the Unity that can bring others into our massed collective.”

  “You destroyed Garth the Monk.”

  “No. You killed him, remember?”

  “No,” Maddox said. “I killed the shell he’d become. Valerie no longer wears a cerebrater. Thus, it doesn’t make sense you can do this through her.”

  “My, my, my, such emotionalism, Captain. That is not your usual forte, is it?”

  Maddox stood straight as he regarded Valerie. He’d already learned much about the Unity, had seen the little white maggots below—Maddox laughed suddenly as the correct approach came to him.

  “What’s so funny?” Valerie demanded.

  “I know what to do. It will be so easy.”

  Valerie shook her head. “You know nothing.”

  Maddox completed the circuit around the table. Valerie stood up to confront him. Maddox grabbed her hands. Valerie surged forward and tried to knee him in the balls. He twisted, protecting himself with a blocking thigh.

  “That’s the wrong move, Captain.” Valerie intertwined her fingers with his, tightening her grip. Then her hands became warm.

  Maddox swayed as a feeling of physical weakness swept through him.

  Valerie laughed, and the Unity through Diana Varus and now in Valerie assaulted the captain telepathically. The connection with flesh strengthened the mental contact, and the Unity through the clone and the Lieutenant Commander struck at the captain’s citadel of self in his mind.

  Just as he’d planned.

  For he’d learned something critical when facing the Unity down below. By telepathically attacking him, they opened themselves to a counterassault. This might be just what he needed to help Valerie escape their hold on her: telepathic access into her mind.

  -70-

  There were rules or laws regarding this kind of telepathic action. They weren’t the kind of laws that had once governed civilized boxing in England, the Marquess of Queensbury Rules. Instead, these rules were like the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the Law of Gravity. Perhaps the better term would be principles; there were principles governing actions such as this.

  Maddox couldn’t have initiated this contest because he wasn’t a telepath. He did have unusual abilities in this realm, however. He had often fought telepathic enemies or foes that had used similar techniques. Perhaps as important, he was already used to the Unity’s methods, as he’d fought off the cerebrater and defeated the Unity’s attempt in the underground chamber.

  This mental assault began in his mind with the image of Valerie Noonan running at him screaming with rage. At first, it was as if they stood on a white plain. There wasn’t any background, wasn’t any sun, planets, walls, nothing.

  “You want background?” Valerie screamed at him.

  Suddenly, as an image in his mind, old brick buildings towered around them. It was Old Detroit where Valerie had grown up and gone to school. This city was empty, devoid of anything but a cool sun hovering in winter. Oddly, there wasn’t any snow on the ground, although there were icy patches here and there.

  “Maddox,” Valerie shouted, with a gun in her hand. “It’s time you paid for your arrogance.”

  Maddox stood in his captain’s uniform, regarding Valerie rushing toward him. She was much younger, what she must have looked like upon graduating from high school. She was much thinner than he remembered and her hair much longer.

  Valerie raised the gun and fired at him.

  Maddox concentrated, and the bullets went from their normal speed to something only a little faster than a running man. Maddox stepped aside as the stream of bullets neared him, harmlessly passing by.

  Valerie skidded to a halt, peering at her gun and then looking at him. “How did you do that?”

  “The Unity is using you,” Maddox said. “These are mental images in our mind, nothing more.”

  Valerie brayed laughter, and the old buildings of Detroit vanished. In their place were palaces, lovely buildings and towers of the main Varus estate upon Remus in the past. Valerie no longer stood there, either, but a stunning blonde in a tight-fighting blue skin-suit wearing spiked heels.

  “Are you Diana Varus?” Maddox asked. He still wore his captain’s uniform.

  “You!” shouted Diana. “You made the Clone Laws. You’re keeping me from my birthright.”

  Maddox shook his head. “I’ve done nothing to you. The Unity is using you just as it tried to use Valerie. You’ve become a tool for the aliens.”

  “I know I’m a tool,” Diana raged. “I’ve always been a tool. I’m a clone. I was made to serve others. Are you going to keep resisting, or must I subdue you?”

  “You’re a conduit, Diana. The Unity is behind this. They’re using you. From what Valerie told me about you, you have a fierce will. Why not employ it against the maggots.”

  “No!” shouted Diana, shaking her fists. “We are not maggots. We are the glorious ones, the collective of intelligent and superior thought.”

  “Maggots that feed off filth,” Maddox said.

  The palaces and towers in the background began to waver. Diana noticed, looking back in wonder and then glaring at Maddox. “How are you able to achieve this?”

  “Your mental images don’t work on me,” Maddox said. “I’ve been trained by the best, by Balron the Traveler. He helped me perceive reality even in instances such as this. I can’t free Diana Varus, as you hold her down there, but I can free Valerie Noonan. You must leave her. You must retreat from her mind.”

  “Valerie Noonan is ours. She belongs to the Unity now and forever more.”

  “Valerie,” Maddox shouted. “This is your last chance. You must fight the illusion in your mind. Let the images slide off you. I do. Am I better than you? Do I always win? You can win, too, if you fight as you did in Detroit. Don’t let the others beat you.”

  Diana Varus glared at Maddox. Then she looked around wildly. The palaces, lawns and towers vanished completely. A second later, so did she.

  Now, Maddox stood in a deep cavern with hot lava rocks providing dim lighting.

  “Is this your homeworld?” Maddox asked.

  He heard hissing and slithering, and masses of little white alien maggots crawled toward him.

  “Yes!” Maddox shouted. “Come to me, my pretties.” He ran at the mass, and he concentrated. His step thudded as a cylinder appeared on his back. Straps around his shoulders and one cinched to his waist held the heavy container in place. A tube snaked from the cylinder to a rod in his hands, one with a trigger.

  Maddox laughed with maniacal glee and pulled the trigger as he aimed the rod at the approaching slithering mass. Liquid fire hosed from the rod and fell upon the maggots as if from a flamethrower.

  A scream in Maddox’s mind almost rendered him unconscious.

  The cavern and massed maggots disappeared. He was back in Old Detroit, with a bewildered and blinking Valerie Noonan standing before him. She was no longer the teenager, but the Lieutenant Commander with the now flawed forehead.

  “Valerie,” Maddox said.

  She blinked at him with incomprehension.

  He stepped close, and she did not recoil. He raised a hand, and rubbed his palm against her forehead. “Let’s get rid of that, shall we? Make it smooth.”

  “How do I do that?” Valerie asked in a small voice.

  “It’s smooth. Look.” Maddox held up a mirror.

  And as Valerie watched, her bumps and misshapen lumps disappeared and her forehead became smooth as it used to be not so long ago.

  Valerie laughed, looking up at Maddox.

  He nodded. Then, he turned around, shouting, “I can do this all day, Unity. Come on, let’s play.”

  From behind a faint building, a mass of little maggots slithered around the corner. They coalesced into a giant white snake with glowing red eyes. “This isn’t the end of it, Maddox,” the giant snake hissed.

  “No?” asked the captain.

  “You have the high ground today. We may have miscalculated in this one tiny regard. Enjoy your marginal victory. It will not last.”

  “On the contrary, you’re going down, maggots.”

  “You will rue the day you ever called us that.”

  “You will rue the day you made an enemy of me,” Maddox said.

  With that, the building and the giant white snake disappeared. Everything vanished until it was only Maddox and Valerie with the white background.

  “Now what happens?” Valerie asked.

  “Now,” Maddox said. “It’s time to wake up.”

  -71-

  Maddox and Valerie stood in the small holding cell with the table and two chairs. They held hands as they faced each other while standing.

  “Oh,” Valerie said, blushing as she realized she held her captain’s hands.

  He let go and stepped back. “Your forehead,” he said.

  Valerie stepped back more, using both hands to cover her forehead. Surprised filled her face. She felt more, fingering her forehead and then removed her hands. “What do you see?”

  Maddox grinned. “The bumps and lumps are gone. Your forehead is smooth again.”

  Valerie laughed with glee, and she rushed the captain, hugging him. “Thank you. Oh, thank you so very much.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, while patting her back.

  Valerie released him, stepping back and feeling her smooth forehead again. “But…how did this happen?”

  “You remember the telepathic assault?”

  “Of course,” Valerie said.

  “The mind is very powerful.”

  “I know that,” Valerie said. “But how could an idea cause my forehead to become smooth again?”

  “An idea or thought in your mind makes you run, makes your heart beat faster and the lungs pump harder. This is something similar. Your mind conceived it and the body brought it about, just much faster than it normally does.”

  “Is that how you got rid of the cerebrater on your own?”

  Maddox shrugged. He wasn’t sure.

  Valerie looked up in wonder. “The oily presence in my mind is gone. It’s not there anymore.”

  “We drove it out.”

  Valerie frowned. “Could that be how demon possession worked in the old days?”

  “I have no idea,” Maddox said. “Do you believe in demons?”

  “That’s not the point, but…never mind. Do I have to stay in the brig?”

  Maddox returned to his chair, sitting, producing a recorder and putting it on the table and turning it on. “Let’s talk.”

  Valerie sat down across from him. “What about?”

  “Everything you can remember about Diana Varus and what she was trying to get you to do. We need to learn more about our enemy, and this is a good way to do it.”

  So, for the next hour and a half, Maddox asked questions to prompt Valerie to remember more. She related many things, and the alien maggot Unity came into focus just a little more for Maddox.

  It would appear they were a parasitical life form, using their mass-mind telepathy to force others to do their bidding. They’d hidden in the nebula for endless generations, having grown weary… Despite many probing questions, Valerie couldn’t remember or didn’t know why they’d grown weary enough to hide.

  Maddox didn’t either, although as Valerie talked, he recalled something about an ancient menace the Unity feared. Could that menace be the Swarm, Builders or Yon Soths? Despite the questions neither had an answer to that. The Unity had fled into the nebula and hidden here for centuries. But now, at last, they stirred again, drawn back into their old ways, hesitatingly launching the satellites to draw prey into range. It would appear they hadn’t known about the humans in the nebula until a few years ago. Clearly, a section of the Unity had taken control of Remus.

  “They’re using the planet as a training station,” Maddox said. “I remember them telling me that while I faced them underground.”

  “What are we going to do next?” Valerie asked.

  Maddox sat back as he nodded. He reached over and shut off the recorder. “I suppose we could high-tail it home and give our report to the admiral. We’re scouting out here more than anything else. Or, we could—”

  Valerie screamed, jumping up out of her chair.

  Maddox whirled around as a little Adok holoimage came into focus. “Galyan, you’re not supposed to do that. What are you doing in here anyway? Is the ship under attack?”

  “It is not,” Galyan said. “I, ah, require you to refer to me as Driving Force or Driving Force Galyan, not simply as Galyan.”

  Maddox raised his eyebrows, noticing that Galyan hadn’t apologized for frightening Valerie as he had. That was unusual for the holoimage.

  “By the way,” Galyan said, “I am in command of the starship.”

  “Temporary command,” Maddox said. “I’m back, so I’m in charge again.”

  “I automatically control ship functions. I am also uncertain that I care to relinquish them back to you. This is my starship after all, built by my people.”

  Maddox scowled. “Now listen here…Driving Force Galyan.” Maddox decided on a different approach, abruptly smoothing his tone. “Why did you enter this cell without my authorization?”

  “I am in command,” Galyan said. “I can go wherever I please on my starship.”

  “I see. So have you decided to sever your unique relationship with us?”

  “What do you mean?” Galyan asked, frowning.

  “You’re acting differently than you usually do.”

  Galyan’s eyelids fluttered. As that ceased, shock appeared on his Adok features. “You are correct, Captain. Do you think that is a function of my taking command?”

  Maddox became thoughtful. Maybe there was an easy way out of this. “You are hereby relieved of command duty, Driving Force Galyan. Under the authority of the Lord High Admiral of Star Watch, who commissioned this mission, I am resuming full command of the starship.”

  “Oh,” Galyan said, sounding crestfallen.

  “As the captain, I demand an explanation of why you have simply popped into this detention cell.”

  “Sir…I am unhappy with this change in my status. I enjoyed command.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “I was given command of Victory thousands of years ago by my people. I am no longer certain I can act as second fiddle on my own starship.”

  “I see. Well, Star Watch has put new features into the vessel. And you have sworn an oath to faithfully serve under me.”

  “I realize all that, sir. But this was my ship in the beginning.”

  “Galyan, you are the last Adok—”

  “Excuse me for interrupting you, sir, but that is why I appeared. I have been listening to you two for some time. You suggested we go home to Earth. But I have learned that Adoks are in the nebula.”

  “Indeed,” Maddox said. “How did you discover this?”

  “Through Diana Varus, sir,” Galyan said. “She recognized me as an Adok. That implies she or the Unity has seen Adoks before.”

  “Interesting,” Maddox said, who didn’t care for the extra complication just now.

  “Thus, I cannot allow you to take Victory home just yet. We must find the Adoks, sir. That is imperative. While it is true I have happily worked in Star Watch this entire time—and you are my family—it is my responsibility to help my people recover from the devastation of the Swarm assault upon our homeworld approximately six thousand years ago.”

  Valerie glanced at Maddox.

  “I do not think my request is unreasonable,” Galyan added.

  Maddox pounced on that. “This is a request then?”