Read Online Buck Rogers 1 - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century by Addison E. Steele - Free Book Online

“Princess Ardala’s ship is unarmed. That’s the law!”
    “Then she’s bending all hell out of it!” Buck said angrily.
    “If you’re convinced of that, Captain, what do you suggest we do about it?”
    “I’d search that royal space-barge or whatever you call that flying palace, before I’d ever let it inside Earth’s defense shield!”
    “That would be an insulting way to begin an alliance supposedly built up on good faith.”
    “Good faith is for diplomats,” Buck answered bitterly. “And what it gets you is this,” he gestured. “A plastic city with a dome on top of it and a ruined world outside. I’d go up there armed to the teeth. Full squadrons, fully prepared to fight. If I’m mistaken, you can always say it was a military escort of honor or some such line. Nobody’d really be fooled, but it would save face all around. But if you don’t, you’re just sitting ducks!”
    Wilma said, “For a man who’s been asleep for five hundred years, you seem to have strong opinions about this world you never made.”
    “Yeah,” Buck grated. “You’re absolutely right. It’s none of my goddamned business how you blow up your world. My generation didn’t understand what the hell we were doing either, and it looks like we knocked it all apart shortly after I crawled into my jammies, so I guess there’s a kind of rough justice there after all. Well, thanks for everything, Colonel. Go back to bed and sweet dreams to you.”
    He turned and began to stride away, across the floor of the vast, echoing hangar.
    “Just a minute, Rogers! Where do you think you’re going?” Wilma Deering was all the military commander now.
    Buck stopped and turned back toward her for a moment. “I’m going outside the city, thanks.”
    Wilma started to run after him. “You can’t do that,” she cried in horror. “It’s—you’ll die out there, Buck!”
    “I’ve got to find out what happened to my people,” he said.
    “That’s forbidden!”
    “You’re joking! This is a free country, Colonel. Or at least it used to be.”
    “Captain Rogers, you are in a technical state of military custody. Regardless of what we think of each other, you’re officially my prisoner and I’m officially your guard. I cannot let you escape.”
    “You can’t stop me.”
    She put her hand on the holster attached to her military officer’s tunic. “I can, Buck. Don’t make me.
    Buck walked away from her, advancing steadily toward the exit from the hangar. It was a calculated risk, he knew. In his life he had faced down many deadly foes, from enemy pilots in combat fights, to cold-blooded murderers to raging berserkers. He knew that the first few seconds were the most critical.
    He knew that Colonel Wilma Deering, despite her military position, was a warm, feeling human being. Even as he had accused her entire world—and by implication Wilma herself—of being an army of emotionless, conditioned zombies, her own reactions had shown the anger and distress that he had provoked. He knew that she would balk at the prospect of shooting him now.
    There was no question of her courage. She could face up to an opponent in fair battle and give as good as she got—could kill without hesitation in a kill-or-be-killed confrontation. If she had been incapable of that, she would never have reached the position of command she now occupied. She would have transferred to a softer branch of service long ago, or paid for her bravado with her life.
    But would she shoot a man in the back?
    An unarmed man?
    Buck knew that Colonel Deering’s sense of duty required her to undog her holster, open its flap, lift her sidearm from it, aim at him and fire if he refused to stop. But he knew that Wilma Deering’s sense of humanity and fair play would do battle with her sense of duty. And if the two countering impulses held her paralyzed for a few seconds more he would be out of her sight, into the dark shadows that ringed the edges of the cavernous hangar. In