"Well, now we know," Captain Decken stated.

Hetmwit tried to push back the despair at what he was looking at.

The nearest border that the Confederate's astrogation system knew of was just over twenty thousand light years.

Two thousand light years into the gulf between the spur and the nearby galactic arm.

Sixteen thousand light years straight 'up' from the galactic plane.

Then multiple hundreds or thousands to the borders of the Confederacy or the borders of Hetmwit's star nation, as the map pulled from his old ship showed.

"That's months, maybe years in the upper bands of hyperspace," the Captain mused, sitting down in an empty chair at an unoccupied console and staring at the holotank. He shook his head. "Why out here? What is out here that would have all of these wildly disparate ships gathered?"

Hetmwit sat down a little ways away, emulating Captain Decken and swiveling the chair around to face the holotank.

"With everyone's running lights off, there's even less of a chance from a massive array telescope spotting us. The only chance is someone notices a dark spot in between their world and one of the galaxies," Hetmwit said.

"Even weirder," the Captain said. "The angle from the spur makes it so even then there's a weird gap in the far distant galaxies," he leaned back. "We're basically invisible. No emissions, small on a galactic scale, out in the ass end of nowhere."

"But why?" Hetmwit asked.

"That's the ten-credit piece question," the Captain said. He stared at the map. "Without a hyperspace or jumpspace map, I can't even tell if there's rapids or fast currents that might make this the reason to dump all of these ships here."

He stood up and walked back and forth, hands behind his back, pausing now and then to stare at the holotank.

"Can I ask something? Completely unrelated," Hetmwit said.

The Captain stopped. "Of course, Number One."

"If the memory match game requires two cards to match, why was the pattern you first handed me an odd number?" Hetmwit asked. "Was it on purpose?"

The Captain nodded. "Yes. What lesson did you take from it?"

Hetmwit thought for a moment. "That it was unsolvable by the rules, but in reality I could safely consider the game won when I was down to the single card that did not fit anywhere."

The Captain smiled, sitting down. "Anything else?"

"That the existence of an anomaly does not invalidate the patters and goals," Hetmwit said.

The Captain nodded. "Excellent. Always be aware that there may be a wild card and that you might not know you have already seen it," he turned his chair, staring at the console, which read "Near Object Emission Analysis" and tapped the screen. "Just over a thousand ships. Most Confederate according to the queriable IFF beacons," he shook his head. "But nearly three hundred that are not."

"Including my people's," Hetmwit said.

"Only one ship," the Captain said. He brought up the screen and consulted it, tapping a few keys. "Yes, the ship you came in on is the only one from your people," the Captain turned and looked at Hetmwit. "What does that suggest?"

Hetmwit thought. "The ship I was on was doing exploration, beyond our borders by nearly a hundred light years. The fact The Star of Jurakak is the only Olipnat Concordiant ship suggests that the Star entered the area of operation of whatever moved the ship here."

The Captain nodded then turned and looked at the door leading out. "How good are you at building sorting arrays with Confederate computer systems?"

"Getting better," Hetmwit said.

The Captain stood up. "We have the names of all of the ships, the ship's IFF system had ID'd most of the ship types out there as from different species," he waved at Hetmwit who caught up. "We need to check the historical records in the ship's database, find out where the borders of those nations are, then check approximately when and where the ships from the Confederacy vanished or were declared overdue."

"And see if a pattern emerges," Hetmwit said.

"We just have to watch out for any wild cards," the Captain said.

Hetmwit nodded.

-----

Hetmwit stared at the map. It looked like it was just a hodgepodge of ships vanishing.

"The CSFN Yorktown," the Captain said. He shook his head. "Ghost ship, moving around for over thirty thousand years, snatching ships and entire task forces," he tapped the database. "No rhyme or reason to the pattern."

"That we can discern," Hetmwit said. "I've tried by order of disappearance, by proximity to one another, even accounted for galactic movement, there is no apparent pattern."

"That we can discern," the Captain said, nodding slowly. "We don't have locations for the non-Confederacy vessels. Honestly, I'm not too eager to board those ships, get their communications and computer systems online, just so we can guess where they went missing."

Hetmwit tapped a few keys, changing the data, and sighed when he didn't see any new pattern.

"All right, we've looked at the appearances, disappearances, and reported oddities," the Captain said. He moved to a different console and punched in commands. "Let's see the ship herself."

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Hetmwit got up and retrieved a fizzypop from the nearby vending machine, patting Smiley on the head as he moved by.

"Yorktown. Superheavy Dreadnought, carrier capability, double compliment of Marines and dropships. Hull had been in service for over six hundred years. Last underwent SLEP (Service Life Extension Program) two decades prior to its vanishing. Mar-gite War, Mithril Nebula Conflict, Clownface Nebula Conflict, anti-Mar-gite Patrol. Lost in the opening phases of the Second Precursor War," he shook his head and sat down. "Time to buff up on our history."

Hetmwit came over and looked at the image.

The Yorktown was a massive vessel, bristling with cannons and weapons.

Hetmwit admitted it looked impressive. He reached out and typed several keys.

"No interior schematic available at my level," Hetmwit said.

The Captain looked up and opened his mouth.

The lights flashed red and an alarm started wailing.

"The Bridge!" Hetmwit yelled, starting to stand up.

"Too far," the Captain said. He started typing fast. "Routing the feed from the holotanks here and..."

The Captain looked up as Hetmwit stood there, feeling foolish.

"Super-heavy vessel has jumped in with two other vessels with it. Trying to get positive ID and..."

Whatever else there was, Hetmwit didn't find out.

The Captain vanished with a pop of air rushing into a Terran sized vacuum.

Hetmwit blinked.

He looked around even as the lights flashed twice.

Fear surged up and Hetmwit ran for the elevator, waving at Smiley and Hefty to follow him.

The lights flashed several times again as the elevator moved 'up' the spine of the ship, heading for the Flag Bridge.

The elevator came to a sudden stop.

"You are being rescued. Do not resist," a synthesized voice said over the speaker.

Hetmwit looked around wildly and spotted the hatch in the ceiling.

He used his datapad to command Smiley to lift him up so he could move the panel.

He could see the security grid was active.

But there was enough room to lay on the roof of the elevator and stay beneath the safeties that would force the security fields to cut out as the elevator passed.

Smiley helped him up then stood there as Hetmwit worked quickly.

He erased the last two minutes of data from Smiley and Hefty's brains, then replaced the panel. He could still see through a crack, but he felt like he was somewhat safe.

The elevator started moving from where it had stopped between decks, halting at the next deck.

Hetmwit held his breath, staring through the crack.

The door whooshed open and a pair of robots entered. One held a scanner, the other held a nasty looking rifle. Everything about them was made of glossy black metal. Only their eyes were a different color.

A burning, malevolent red.

The one with the scanner passed it over the elevator, even pointed it at the ceiling and scanned, then scanned Smiley and Hefty. After a minute it tapped Smiley on the forehead.

Smiley powered down.

It tapped Hefty and Hetmwit's robotic assistant powered down.

"You are being rescued. Please do not resist," came the voice again.

Two more robots, these ones with heavier chassis, but still built along the same threatening lines, entered the elevator and picked up Smiley and Hefty. They turned around and left.

The one with the scanner tapped the scanner and scanned the elevator again. Then tried again.

It looked at the one with the rifle and gave a curiously Terran shrug. The one with the rifle grabbed the scanner and did a quick scan of the elevator. The one that had done the initial scan of the elevator snatched the scanner back and the one with the rifle grabbed it again.

For a moment they struggled over it before the one with the rifle let go, causing the other one to stumble backwards out the elevator door.

The one with the rifle followed.

The elevator door closed.

Hetmwit had just started to breathe a sigh of relief when the elevator door opened and the one with the scanner jumped into the elevator, its arms up menacingly.

"RAWR!" it screeched with a static filled voice.

Hetmwit managed to keep from screaming or wetting himself.

It looked around, bent down and patted the carpet carefully. It then reached up and pushed up the hatch that Hetmwit had crawled through. Hetmwit stared in horror as its other hand reached down by the thigh, a panel opened to reveal a blocky, heavy pistol, and the robot slowly drew the pistol.

It raised up the pistol to the grill in the lower part of its 'face' and tapped it, making a kissing noise, even as it raised the hatch.

It suddenly lifted the pistol, firing five shots into the ceiling.

One barely missed Hetmwit, the smoking hole only an inch from his nose. His datapad had shattered as the bullet passed through it.

The robot suddenly extended its lower legs, lifting itself up to look through the hatch. It was facing opposite of Hetmwit and its head slowly rotated.

"You are being rescued. Please do not resist," the robot buzzed.

The head turned to face Hetmwit, the red eyes boring into his.

"You are being rescued. Please, do not resist," it repeated.

The head kept turning, the gaze sweeping away from Hetmwit.

Two robots with rifles ran into the elevator. One smacked the robot with the pistol. There were bursts of static, the volume rising, and Hetmwit realized the robots were yelling at the one that had fired the pistol. One of the robots snatched the pistol from the robot and smacked it with its own pistol before jamming it back into the hatch and kneeing the panel shut.

As the three robots left, one of the ones with the rifle smacked the one that was now holding a scanner again across the back of the head with a clonk.

The elevator doors closed.

Hetmwit held his breath until dark spots appeared in his vision.

The elevator moved and Hetmwit held tight. It stopped at several floors, the glossy black robots getting in. Several times one would poke another and the other would rotate its head around to face the one that had poked it.

Hetmwit would swear that it was glaring at the poker.

The elevator finally stopped and all the robots filed off.

After a few minutes, Hetmwit gathered up his courage and dropped down into the elevator. He pressed the button for the deck where the Captain had shown him how to bring the Captain back.

The elevator moved at a glacial pace to Hetmwit.

At one point he could hear music. A thudding bass beat with someone speaking rapid fire with the beat.

"...what you choose will never matter..." the voice said.

It gave Hetmwit the shivers.

"...because everything is mine..."

The voice receded.

The elevator slowed and stopped. Hetmwit tried the buttons several times, but the elevator just beeped at him. He looked around and froze.

A camera in the upper corner was panning back and forth, searching the inside of the elevator car.

Hetmwit hit the door open button and lunged out.

He bounced off of one of the bulky black robots with a rifle, stumbling and falling against the wall.

The one he had bounced over looked at the other one for a moment.

Then shoved it hard enough to send it stumbling into the wall.

That one turned around and punched the first one in the eye.

Scrambling to his feet, Hetmwit ran down the corridor as the robots grabbed onto one another and started wrestling, making what sounded like biological grunting sounds.

His room was up ahead and he slowed down as he got close.

One of the doors was open and he stopped, peeking around the corner.

One of the robots stood in front of a wardrobe, the doors open. It was admiring itself in the mirror, brushing at its head like it was flipping hair out of the way.

It was also dressed in what Hetmwit knew was Terran female erotic display under-clothing.

Hetmwit blinked in surprise at how it kept rotating its waist back and forth and admiring itself.

He turned away, toggling the door control.

A robot had the top drawer of his dresser open and was pawing through his stuff. It jumped, turning to stare at the door with a distinct aura of "I wasn't doing anything" as it held a snack bar that Hetmwit had hidden behind his socks.

The robot stood there, slumped its shoulders and shook its head. Then it suddenly looked up.

Hetmwit stepped to the side.

The robot blinked, the irises clicking loudly.

It saw the one wearing under clothing and walked out. It emitted a burst of static.

The one in underclothes gave a high pitched shriek and covered its crotch with one hand and its chest with one forearm.

Hetmwit closed the door, hurrying over and getting another datapad.

The robots are insane, he thought. The wild card is insanity.

The realization made him giggle.