Maddox stared at Dravek. “Was that little shock meant for me?”

  “I forgot about that. Sorry. My mistake.”

  “Why shouldn’t I kill you, Dravek? If you’re like me, you’re too dangerous to keep around.”

  “We need each other. Two are much stronger than one.”

  “The Good Book agrees with that.”

  Dravek cocked his head. “What good book is this?”

  “You don’t recall the Bible in your memories?”

  “Ah, the mystic book you like to quote. Yes, there’s a smattering of it in my memories. It’s a strange book. I’m surprised you take to any of its tenets.”

  “I imagine you are surprised. Be that as it may, what are our options? How do we do this? How can I possibly trust you after that little demonstration?”

  Dravek chewed on his lower lip, staring at Maddox, looking away after a time. His gaze soon shifted back. Did he notice that the blaster hadn’t wavered from aiming at his chest?

  “I helped you survive and brought you out of stasis. Don’t forget that,” Dravek said.

  “Were you going to sell me to the Gnostics, changing your mind when you needed help against Leviathan?”

  “Why would Gnostics wish to buy you? What could I possibly get out of that?”

  Maddox rubbed his fingertips and thumb-tip together, indicating money.

  Dravek shook his head. “Leviathan wants you. No one else I know does. Besides, since Leviathan wants you, they also want me. I just want to be free. The Heydell Cloud seems like the place to keep my freedom. I took you along as insurance and because I didn’t like the idea of Leviathan making more clones like me.”

  “Why not kill and incinerate me then?”

  “No,” Dravek said. “It would be too much like killing myself. As you know, we’re not suicidal.”

  Maddox considered options. Dravek had told him about Leviathan wanting to start a spy ring in the Omicron 9 System, with a Maddox clone at the center of it. If Dravek had his personality, the clone wouldn’t want to belong to a Leviathan team. It wasn’t the spying the clone would mind so much, but the cybers and coercive devices. What Leviathan had done once with a device, they would likely want to do again.

  Perhaps Dravek divined Maddox’s hesitation Perhaps the clone knew he needed to make an offer than would appeal to Maddox.

  “I have a plan,” Dravek said. “I think you’re going to like it. I know the Gnostics won’t. We’re going to be a surprise they never forget, provided we let them live.”

  “Go on,” Maddox said. “I’m listening.”

  Dravek began to detail the weapons and equipment in the shuttle’s secret compartments. Then, he began to describe how the two of them would employ the weapons.

  -11-

  Maddox discovered that Dravek had a powerful if small cache of drugs and other paraphernalia. When Dravek showed him the secret compartments, he was astounded at the weaponry and commando equipment. It was as good as anything Star Watch had: missile launchers, sleeve guns and a portable flamer. The last was a devastating weapon. In gravity, it would take several men to carry. In weightlessness, standing behind the flamer would be suicidal when the flamer ejected its heavy blob of hot plasma. While the battle-armor spacesuits were made for cybers, they could modify them for human use.

  During the next few days, Maddox questioned Dravek repeatedly, trying to get information about who had kidnapped him and brought him to this spiral arm.

  Dravek claimed to have no information on the subject. He said his first coherent thoughts of his life had been in the chamber of the chronowarp.

  “The chrono…what did you say?” Maddox asked.

  Dravek shook his head. They were working on the battlesuits. “I don’t know much about the chronowarp. I do know it accelerates tissue growth. That was how the scientist was able to clone and turn me into a grown man so quickly. I haven’t been alive long. From my questioning the scientist, I learned I’ve been me for less than a year. Yet I hold all these memories.”

  Dravek touched his forehead and for a moment, there was a forlorn look on his face. “All these thoughts that are supposedly mine and yet—” He gave Maddox a piercing stare. “They’re really your memories. You lived them. I didn’t. I’ve only lived my own memories while you were in stasis.”

  There was a sudden glint in Dravek’s eyes. “I’ll live my own life, thank you so much. I won’t be your second, your replacement. I won’t go to the Commonwealth as your replica, acting as you. I’m Dravek. I’m not Captain Maddox. Do you understand?”

  Maddox nodded, believing he was beginning to understand Dravek. What would it be like to wake up with another’s memories? How would one react if he learned scientists had patterned him to imitate someone else? What if you knew you hadn’t lived your own memories? How would you react learning you were a mere replica of someone else? For the first time, Maddox felt pity for Dravek.

  Did Dravek perceive that? It was possible, for he scowled. “Don’t worry about me. I’m doing just fine.”

  “As you wish,” Maddox said.

  Dravek jerked his head in what might have been a swift nod.

  They worked in silence for a time.

  Maddox pondered his kidnapping and transfer to this remote location. He looked at Dravek. “So you definitely can’t tell me anything about how I reached here, no hint?”

  Dravek seemed as if he was going to yell. He held that back, becoming thoughtful instead. “From the little the scientist told me, I imagine someone took you from the Commonwealth of Planets. But you must already know that.”

  Maddox nodded.

  “Your kidnappers brought you to…” Dravek grinned suddenly. “I’m going to hold onto that for the moment. Call it insurance.”

  “Why do you need insurance?”

  “So you have a reason to keep me alive. You want data I possess, right? I’ll tell it to you later, provided you give me what I ask for then.”

  Maddox considered that. Dravek could easily lie. In fact, he was sure the man was a glib liar for obvious reasons. Yet… Would making the promise give Dravek more reason to keep the partnership going? Clearly, from the knife incident to his former or original crew, Dravek acted treacherously when it became in his best interest to do so, or when he thought it would be in his best interest.

  “Fine,” Maddox said. “That works for me.”

  It didn’t really. Who had kidnapped him? Maddox desperately wanted to know. Had it been an agent of Leviathan, a mercenary bug-eyed monster, a Spacer spy? He had no idea. He was determined to find out, though. When he did—

  Maddox groaned.

  Dravek looked up. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Maddox shook his head and closed his eyes. He rubbed his forehead and opened his eyes quickly.

  Dravek hadn’t moved. Instead, Dravek peered at him in a speculative manner. “That must have been the mind block the scientist spoke about.”

  “Go on,” Maddox said.

  Dravek shrugged. “The scientist didn’t want you thinking certain things, such as Meta or Jewel.”

  Maddox groaned again. “Stop,” he said.

  Dravek grinned before he wiped that away. Perhaps he thought he had a club or a coercive device to use against Maddox.

  Inwardly, Maddox grinned. When Dravek had spoken the names of Meta and Jewel, there hadn’t been any pain. Maddox had pretended the agony in order to induce exactly what he saw in Dravek’s grin. Two could play a double-cross game.

  Maddox and Dravek continued to ready the weaponry, suits and thruster packs for the moment of approaching decision.

  Later, Maddox and Dravek went into the control cabin together. They were staying together in order to forestall any treachery on each other’s part.

  The Jupiter-sized gas giant was large before them and the moons more visible than before. The largest moon appeared to have clouds, an atmosphere of sorts. It was a frozen wasteland of ice and rocks with seas, rivers and dunes. Those couldn’t be water seas and rivers. Likely, the seas were composed of methane and ethane as on Titan, which orbited Saturn in the Solar System.

  Using the side-jets, Maddox turned the shuttle. He did so until the thruster was aimed at the ice moon.

  “Ready?” asked Maddox.

  “Let’s do this,” Dravek said hoarsely.

  Maddox powered up the generators, which spewed the remaining propellant from the engine through the thruster. That slowed the shuttle’s approach and brought simulated gravity back to the shuttle. Anyone watching from the gas giant region would likely see the exhaust plume. Maddox used up the remaining fuel, leaving nothing in reserve.

  When he ceased thrusting, the zero-G environment immediately returned. He’d used the generators for three hours before. A half-hour of braking this time had merely slowed the shuttle. If they hit the moon, it would crumple the shuttle and kill them. This slowing would help later, though. The commando suits wouldn’t have to use as much of their precious fuel to brake. They would have to slow way down in the suits if they hoped to remain in the vicinity or land on the moon.

  “That’s it then,” Maddox said.

  The shuttle was on battery power again. If, perchance, the Gnostic vessel had departed the area, they were up that horrible sewage-water creek.

  Dravek assured Maddox that hidden Gnostic sensors watched the shuttle carefully. They’d have to pick the right moment to exit the vessel.

  In preparation, Maddox and Dravek ate one last meal on the shuttle, used the facilities and then helped each other climb into their respective suits.

  The commando assault was predicated on something Dravek had learned from one of his original team members. Gnostics were intensely profit driven. Therefore, they didn’t carry large crews, as that meant splitting the proceeds too many ways. Instead, they had highly efficient but small numbers on their ships. That way, each person took home more profit.

  Dravek opened the way to a secret area of the shuttle. While wearing their suit, bulky tanks and thruster pack, each climbed down and worked into an ejector tube. Soon, the panels above resealed, casting each into darkness.

  “Don’t turn on your suit yet,” Dravek said. “We want to wait as long as possible to save battery power.”

  “Got it,” Maddox said.

  They used short-range communication sets to talk to each other.

  Both jacked their suits into the shuttle. That fed them shuttle sensor-data, putting it on the HUDs of their respective visors.

  The ice moon neared, growing larger by the minute as the shuttle drifted toward it.

  “There,” Dravek whispered.

  Maddox saw it on his visor.

  On the moon’s upper horizon appeared the pirate vessel Maddox had seen weeks earlier. Relief filled him. Despite everything Dravek had said, Maddox had been afraid the ship had left. His stomach began to settle.

  The Gnostic vessel rose above the moon’s horizon, so Maddox got a better look at it. It was all girders, struts, attached pods and seemingly magnetized junk. It wasn’t large in a continuous encapsulated sense. It was long if one included the girders, struts and obvious grappling equipment.

  Several outer-docked drones blinked with green lights on the nosecones. The drones were cigar-shaped. Latches released those with blinking lights. The drones slowly maneuvered away from the girder-shaped pirate vessel.

  Gnostic communication opened. There was no answer from either Maddox or Dravek. A dark-eyed woman with a long face and lean cheeks and wearing a square leather hat appeared on their respective visors—that was due to the jacked-in link with the shuttle. The woman threatened them with destruction unless the shuttle opened communications.

  That surprised Maddox. Not the threat, but that he understood the language. He mentioned that to Dravek.

  “I uploaded a language program into you while you were in cryogenic stasis.”

  “What? How was that possible?”

  “Don’t panic,” Dravek said.

  “I’m not. I asked you a question.”

  “I hear you panicking, and I think I know why. You’re not a machine, well, not a mechanical machine. You are a biological machine. I put a helmet over your head and the helmet directly encoded your brain with a new language—one they use in the Heydell Cloud.”

  Maddox grimaced as his chest rose and fell rapidly. He had to use the Way of the Pilgrim to steady his mind and state. Learning this—what else had Dravek coded into him? Was there a special phrase, perhaps, that would render him limp so the other could act treacherously? He would have done that to him, given he had Dravek’s amoral code.

  Continuing with the Way of the Pilgrim, Maddox began an intense self-diagnostic, using his intuitive sense against himself, trying to find such a thing. His Balron-trained instincts searched his mind methodically, refusing to become frantic. Then he found something non-Maddox embedded in his mind. He concentrated and saw it. Breathing evenly, practicing many of his odd abilities, Maddox unraveled the coding and thereby erased it from his memories.

  “That’s not good,” Dravek said.

  For a wild moment, Maddox had no idea what the other meant. Could Dravek understand what he’d just done? The words pulled Maddox out of his mind and interrupted the Way of the Pilgrim. That brought Maddox back to his present reality, and that brought a moment of claustrophobia. Maddox attributed that to the months of travel with killer robots from the planet Kregen several years ago.

  Maddox realized he was hyperventilating. He fought it and brought the breathing under control.

  “Are you feeling ill?” Dravek asked.

  “I’m fine,” Maddox said in a hyper-calm voice.

  “You don’t sound fine.”

  Maddox swallowed and forced himself to view his visor HUD, showing him sensor data from the shuttle.

  “Those drones look different from the ones I saw weeks ago,” Maddox said. “I don’t see any warheads on these.”

  “Right, right,” Dravek said. “These must be transport drones.”

  As Maddox and Dravek lay in the belly of the shuttle, the Gnostic drones approached the craft. Each circled the shuttle twice, no doubt relaying video images back to the main vessel.

  Finally, each drone maneuvered delicately against the shuttle and magnetized itself to the hull. Only then did they apply thrust in unison, lessening the shuttle’s velocity. They used more thrust in these few minutes than the shuttle had originally used to reach this velocity. Soon, the drones maneuvered the slowly moving shuttle toward the waiting pirate vessel. Interestingly, the pirate vessel had retreated behind the ice moon’s horizon and out of sight.

  “Is it time?” Maddox asked.

  “Not yet,” Dravek said. “We have to time this perfectly.”

  They waited, watching their HUDs.

  As the drones neared the ice moon with its nitrogen atmosphere, Maddox saw large craters and long fissures below. Was that from interior seismic activity or the gravitational pull from the gas giant, which loomed above everything? This gas giant was unlike Jupiter in that it didn’t spew masses of radiation.

  The drones maneuvered the shuttle over the moon’s horizon so the pirate ship came into view again.

  “Now,” Dravek said.

  Maddox pressed a switch.

  The ejector tubes propelled each suited man out of the shuttle and into space. The moon’s icy surface was below by less than three hundred and fifty kilometers.

  Fortunately, due to Dravek’s foresight, the shuttle was between them and the drones and pirate vessel, shielding them from view.

  Each man was in a spacesuit with thruster pack, which together acted like a mini spaceship. They watched even as they drifted high above the moon.

  The drones applied gentle thrust, moving the shuttle toward the waiting pirate vessel.

  Maddox and Dravek were falling farther behind, as each had applied thrust, slowing their forward velocity.

  “Are you ready for this?” Dravek asked over the short-range comm.

  “Locked and loaded,” Maddox said. He was grinning. His intuitive sense told him Dravek was grinning as well. This was high adventure, and their prospect for victory was good.

  -12-

  Waiting, Maddox and Dravek hung in space in their modified EVA Combat Exo-suits or “Comets.” Leviathan engineers had developed the suit systems for the elite members of the Special Commando Operations unit, or so Dravek claimed.

  The inner layer of each suit was made from nano-material, able to repair minor breaches and regulate body temperature. The nanotech fabric had integrated bio-monitors for that. Maddox and Dravek had dismantled the auto medical units. The units had been developed for cybers and would inject them with powerful drugs in the middle of combat. Those drugs might render them unconscious or battle-mad.

  The middle suit layer was a mesh of dense but light composite materials. The layer’s main purpose was to protect them from radiation. In an unshielded space environment, that would likely be critical otherwise.

  The outer layer was an armored exoskeleton constructed from titanium and carbon nanotubes. Theoretically, the layer could withstand immense pressure changes, kinetic strikes and energy weapon beams. The armor incorporated chameleon tech that included sensor-absorbing materials, active camouflage blends and heat signature reduction.

  The helmets had a HUD with a 360-degree field of vision, which included thermal imaging, electromagnetic spectrum analysis and advanced target acquisition. The visor also had auto-polarization to protect eyes from sudden and drastic changes in light.

  Each suit had huge hydrogen-propellant tanks and a thruster. That allowed controlled flight in zero or low-gravity environments.

  For armaments, they had a sleeve-gun that fired heavy shells. Each also carried a launcher with micro-missiles in a selector rotary drum.

  Despite all that, for Maddox, it was strange hanging up here surrounded by the film of metal and nanotech fabric. He was no more than a gnat in a star system within the Heydell Cloud. He was less than a gnat compared to the Scutum-Centaurus Spiral Arm, a place far from home. He wasn’t as far as he’d been behind the Yon Soth Barrier across the Milky Way Galaxy, but he was still plenty far.