Buck Rogers 1 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (21 page)

The drone squealed shrilly.

“No,” Dr. Theopolis said, more mournfully than ever. “Buck is on the Draconians’ side. I don’t know whether he was loyal to Earth before, and has gone over to the other side for some reason—or whether he was a Draconian agent from the start, Twiki, and had us all fooled until now. Oh, and I don’t know which solution is the more distressing. Not that it all really matters very much anyway.

“But that doesn’t make any difference now, Twiki. Listen carefully.” Dr. Theopolis dropped his voice until he was almost whispering to the drone. “I’m going to ask you to do the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done, Twiki. Now stop it and hold still and listen to me, you can’t run away from this! This is for our country and our planet, Twiki. There, now that’s better . . .”

Kane, meanwhile, had been the object of Twiki’s and Dr. Theopolis’ surveillance, but the wily Kane, without even realizing he was being followed, pursued his habitual devious pattern of conduct and accidentally rid himself of his two unwanted followers.

He moved, now, through the corridor that brought him to the royal stateroom of the Princess Ardala. Outside the princess’ door he found a Draconian guard-trooper standing at rigid and attentive attention.

“Guard,” Kane snarled, “where is the princess’ bodyguard, Tigerman?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the guard-trooper replied.

“How long have you been at this post?” demanded Kane.

“Only a few minutes, sir. I was out in the enlisted men’s lounge, sir, off duty. Then I was told to report here for a temporary special assignment. Only the princess herself has the authority to relieve me from my post. And it is most important, sir. As you know, the princess is the only person aboard ship with the full authority to order the final assault on Earth.”

“And you have not seen Tigerman?”

“Not all day, sir.”

“That’s very odd, soldier,” Kane said accusingly. “You know the princess relies on Tigerman to protect her very life. She told you to guard her door?”

“No, sir. I haven’t seen the princess either. A guardsman corporal brought me the message in the E.M.’s lounge. I didn’t feel that it was my place to disturb the princess’ privacy, sir.”

“No,” Kane agreed for once, “it wasn’t your place. It’s
mine!
Something very queer is going on aboard the
Draconia.
Soldier, if you want to stay out of the stoker gang, you remain here on duty come hell or high water! Let no one enter this room—or leave it! Not even Princess Ardala herself! You’re under my personal command, and I’ll personally see to your reward if you do a good job—or I’ll nail your hide to the bulkhead and feed your insides to a nest of Algolian bookreviewer worms if you don’t!”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Kane!” The soldier snapped to attention more rigidly than ever as Kane strode angrily away.

Back on the fighter-launching deck, Buck went about his strange business of bolting laser torpedoes into afterburners while the Draconian guardsman who had nodded to him went about his own business of patrolling the area. The work of the mechanics and technicians filled the launching deck with a constant clatter and din, so loud and so steady that the sound of a drone’s mechanical scuttering went unnoticed.

Twiki lifted one deft mechanical hand toward the holster of the guard and carefully removed the laser pistol from its place. With the precious gun in his possession, Twiki scuttered away from the guard again. “Good work,” Dr. Theopolis said softly to the drone. “We may have to sacrifice our own lives to do it, Twiki, but I think we may yet thwart this treacherous betrayal of all that we hold dear.”

He paused, Twiki squeaked, then Theopolis said, “Oh, it’s your life that you do hold dear. Well, my fine little quad, nobody lives forever. Think of it as a sacrifice made in a good cause. Oh, you want
me
to think of it that way, while you leave. Oh. Well, I’m sorry, that just cannot be arranged.”

While the two mechanicals conversed, Buck finished setting up laser torpedoes in the last of the fighter craft’s tailpipes. He turned to see Twiki and Theopolis standing directly before him. The quad held a Draconian guardsman’s laser pistol in his hand and was pointing it directly at Buck’s chest.

“Don’t move, Captain Rogers,” Theopolis commanded.

Buck froze.

“This isn’t going to be pleasant for any of us,” Theopolis went on. “We saw you before you pulled that mask over your face, so we know who you are. Now don’t make us shoot you, Rogers. This weapon is
not
set to stun—do you understand me?”

Without answering the question, Buck gaped at the mechanicals. “Theopolis? Twiki? What are you guys doing
here?
Get away from this area. It’s dangerous for you. And I’ve still got work to do here!”

“That we can see, Buck Rogers. You traitor!”

“Traitor!” Buck exclaimed. “Traitor! Oh! Can’t you see what’s happening, Theopolis?”

“I can,” Theopolis’ lights flashed angrily. “I’d say that someone was getting ready to bomb the earth—and that that somebody included Captain Buck Rogers on their team!”

“Don’t you recognize the ships?” Buck asked.

“I don’t see as that makes very much difference,” Theopolis said coldly, “although I’ll admit that they look a little familiar to me.”

“It makes a great deal of difference,” Buck insisted. “Look at them!” He pointed to the death’s head insignia on the nearest marauder. “They’re pirate ships!”

“Pirate ships?” Theopolis echoed, astounded. “Why in the cosmos should there be pirate ships aboard the Draconian flagship? I’m sorry, Captain, you’ll have to do better than that. Now if you don’t mind, we’ll just escort you from this area—”

“No,” Buck interjected. “You go ahead and shoot me if you must, Dr. Theopolis. But I warn you, if you do, it spells the sure doom of earth.”

“Oh, come now, Rogers. I suppose you’re going to tell me that those bombs you’re loading onto the ships here are full of flowers and candy to drop on the pretty girls and the little children of the Inner City.”

“Look,” Buck lashed out verbally, “you half-baked load of electronic gibberish, I don’t know what you think is going on. I can’t expect you to know everything, of course, but have you ever heard of loading bombs in the
tailpipes
of a rocket ship?”

Twiki squeaked excitedly.

“You be quiet, Twiki,” Theopolis scolded. “I’m getting confused enough by Buck, without your helping do it too.”

“Well, maybe this will unconfuse you,” Buck said angrily. “There are no pirate ships. There never were!”

“What?”

“That’s right! They’re Draconian bombers, and have been all along. Piloted by Draconian crews. They’ve been specially marked to make us think they were from some mysterious nest of raiders when they were from Draconia all along, working for the specific purpose of maneuvering Earth’s leaders into a treaty with Draconia!”

Twiki squeaked.

“Then—but—if—oh—!” Theopolis’ lights flashed in a pattern of confusion and disarray. After an astonishing display of lucent disharmony, the computer-brain finally got his circuits back into proper order. “But if it’s a good treaty we’d have signed anyway. Why all the effort, the cost in lives and spacecraft?”

“Because it isn’t a good treaty, as Earth would have realized if the false pirates hadn’t panicked the Council into signing! The Draconian Empire was stymied by Earth’s defensive shield and the Intercept Squadron, and the treaty is designed to get the imperial fleet past the shield and squadron safely—as it is in the process of getting them right now!”

“Of course!” Theopolis exclaimed, dazed. “Of course! Oh, Buck, what fools we’ve been!”

At that moment Kane stormed through the portal onto the launching deck. His jaw set in grim and angry determination, he headed straight for Buck and the others.

“You’ve got about ten seconds, Doc, to make up your mind,” Buck said. “Do you want to believe Kane? Or me?”

“Some choice,” Theopolis said.

“What about yourself,” Buck went on. “Didn’t your own logic circuits tell you I was on the level? What kind of computer do you call yourself, anyway?”

“As a matter of fact, Buck Rogers, my circuits are of the latest and most reliable design. And I must say, I think you’re getting awfully damned personal questioning me like this.” Theopolis’ lights flashed angrily. “But as a simple truth, yes, my circuits did tell me to trust you.”

“Then unless you want to consider yourself a box of spare parts for the Draconians’ bridge engineers, you’d better go along with your original instincts.”

Kane stopped, addressed a couple of soldiers nearby, then raised his eyes and scanned the launching deck carefully.

“All right,” Theopolis said desperately. “But I’ll only trust you on the condition that you help us get to a communicator so we can warn the Inner City of this treachery.”

“You’ll have to take care of that, old robot chum,” Buck said. “Because, on the chance that you don’t get through, I’m going to have to make sure that none of these ships are able to launch!”

Theopolis’ eyes flashed With alarm. What he saw was Kane running toward the spiral ramp, a guard at his side shouting and pointing with excitement. At the foot of the ramp Kane saw two more guards crouching over the body of an unconscious trooper who lay trussed up with his own underwear, his outer clothing taken!

“Out of time,” Buck rasped at Theopolis. “They just found the guard I wiped out awhile ago.”

Twiki squeaked frantically.

“All right,” Theopolis said. “I’m convinced. We’ll do our part. Good luck, Buck Rogers. I never doubted you for a minute, you know. Take the weapon—it won’t do us any good, you’re the one with the metabolism subject to forceful interruption!”

“None of us are going to make it out of this alive,” Buck answered. “But there are millions of people down there who will, if we do our jobs. Now get going!”

Twiki squeaked, spun rapidly in a half-circle, and scuttered away, his metal feet scrabbling so fast across the metal deck that sparks struck up at every step he took.

Buck looked after the scuttering robots for a few seconds, then shifted his attention back to the job at hand.

Kane, meanwhile, had miraculously managed to miss seeing the earthman and his robot allies. He rose from a quick inspection of the trussed-up and unconscious guardsman, turned and stormed furiously up the ramp to the higher decks.

Buck Rogers, relieved at the departure of the courtier, resumed his work of technological sabotage of the Draconian raiders that were disguised as pirate marauder ships.

Kane charged up the corridor to the Princess Ardala’s stateroom. He pounded up to the door, ordered the guardsman standing there aside.

“But sir,” the young soldier protested, “my orders, sir—”

Kane shoved the trooper ruthlessly aside and slammed his hamlike fist again and again against the clanging metal of the door. “Ardala!” Kane shouted. “Get up! Open the door!”

Inside the stateroom Ardala’s eyelids fluttered open at the racket. She felt in the furs beside her, murmuring in a half-sleeping voice, “Oh, Buck, was I dreaming, or—Buck? Buck, where did you—Buck!”

She sat up, alarmed, then fell back happily on the bed. “Oh, there you are, my darling!” She leaned over and started to press her face against the back of the head of the other occupant of the bed. Instead of ordinary hair she felt her cheek brush coarse, bristly fur.

She leaped back in alarm and screamed as the other rolled over to reveal slitted eyes, the fur-covered countenance, the pointed ears and the terrible fangs of—Tigerman!

Outside the princess’ stateroom the screaming from inside echoed frighteningly off steel bulkheads, sending the hair crawling on the neck of Kane. It wasn’t that Kane was so incredibly fond of the princess. She certainly was an appealing bundle of charms, but Kane knew that women’s bodies were readily available to men in positions like his own. As an old Earth politician had once commented in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, power is an aphrodisiac.

But Ardala was Kane’s means of access to the throne of Draconia! Without Ardala, Kane was just one more power-hungry climber, essentially no different from a brigade of other politicians, bureaucrats and military leaders. His leadership of the Earth-conquering expedition was a major point in his favor at Draco’s court, and for all the emperor’s expressed scorn during his recent PersonImage appearance, Kane knew that he had scored high in the conqueror’s estimation.

But there were thirty princesses of the realm, each of them ambitious to sit upon the throne of empire once Draco had gone to join Caesar and Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler and Charlemagne and Stalin and all the other shades of the legendary conquerors of history. And twenty-nine of those princesses, jealous of her prospective power, had chosen for her prospective prince consort a weakling whom she could manipulate to suit her whim.

In the short run it made for smooth sailing in the households of the twenty-nine princesses and their wimplike husbands. But in the long run it left the Emperor Draco with no suitable heir and with the prospect of a dynasty that would collapse into rubble almost the instant his own strong hand was gone from the helm.

Only Ardala still had the promise of providing Draco with a son-in-law worthy to sit on the throne beside herself once Draco was gone. And only Ardala’s choice of a mate held the promise, to Draco, of his living to see a grandchild worthy of continuing his dynasty down through the ages.

Kane saw himself as Ardala’s husband, the thirtieth and sole worthy son-in-law of the Emperor Draco, the prospective prince consort of the Draconian Realm, and ultimately, through his wife once she became empress, the
de facto
tyrant of the greatest array of worlds ever brought beneath the sway of a single ruler.

If anything happened to Ardala—anything to prevent Kane from marrying her and becoming prince consort—his plans were dashed. The crown would descend to one of the other princesses, one of the other sons-in-law would become prince consort, and Kane’s whole elaborate projection would lie in wreckage.

And now—scream after pealing scream came from the stateroom of the Princess Ardala. Kane didn’t bother to send for the ship’s locksmith to open the resisting stateroom door. One futile blow from his jackbooted heel made the door shudder but failed to spring the lock. Kane waited no longer to draw his laser pistol, adjust its beam to minimum diameter and maximum intensity, and blast open the heavy-duty lock.