Old Secrets (The Survivors Book Thirteen)

by Nathan Hystad

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright ©

  Books by Nathan Hystad

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  The Deities

  Final Days

  Copyright © 2020 Nathan Hystad

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover art: Tom Edwards Design

  Edited by: Scarlett R Algee

  Proofed and Formatted by: BZ Hercules

  Books By Nathan Hystad

  Keep up to date with his new releases by signing up for his Newsletter at www.nathanhystad.com

  Nathan’s books are also available on Audible!

  Rise

  Occupation

  Salvation

  Reclamation

  Baldwin’s Legacy

  Confrontation

  Unification

  Culmination

  Hierarchy

  Lineage

  The Survivors Series

  The Event

  New Threat

  New World

  The Ancients

  The Theos

  Old Enemy

  New Alliance

  The Gatekeepers

  New Horizon

  The Academy

  Old World

  New Discovery

  Old Secrets

  The Deities

  The Resistance Series

  Rift

  Revenge

  Return

  The Manuscript

  Lights Over Cloud Lake

  Red Creek

  Return to Red Creek

  One

  The desolate world was familiar. The way the light refracted through the lake’s surface and off the destroyed cities, with stark white bones contrasting against the piles of brown rubble, was all commonplace to Jules now.

  She sped across the landscape, her green sphere encasing her as she floated toward her destination. She stopped at the ruins of an ancient metropolis, hovering above it. The four circles formed from stones were partly covered by the long buildings, toppled over onto their sides.

  Jules tried to imagine what it had been like before the destruction, but struggled to picture it. The skeletons resembled humans, but when she’d brought a sample back to Light, the projections of their appearance had been slightly different: their heads rounder, arms shorter, and legs a bit longer.

  “What happened to you?” she asked out loud. Her voice was quiet within her energy field.

  And how had a Deity been trapped beneath the ocean? There were so many questions surrounding their current predicament, and they’d failed to uncover answers to any of them.

  Then there was Dean. She’d been so sure she could find him all those months ago– confident he’d visit this place, but there was no indication that he’d traveled here. No one had; none but her. He’d missed her sixteenth birthday. She didn’t want it to sting as much as it had, but her anger at him still burned deep in her chest.

  Jules closed her eyes and concentrated. When she opened them, she saw the city as it had once been. The towers were standing, no longer crumbled to the ground. Hundreds of people shuffled through the streets, carrying baskets, going to the market. She glanced to her right, at a section of green among the dusty hard ground. A group worked tirelessly at the gardens, growing crops where none should have been able to thrive. They weren’t an overly advanced people, but they had determination.

  In a flash, they were gone, and the ruins returned. Had that been an accurate vision of their once thriving society? She didn’t have the answers. There was so much about being a Zan’ra that she was unclear about, but each day brought her closer to understanding. Since she’d been in contact with Dal’i, the short Zan’ra with the orange eyes, new skills were strengthening in her all the time. She needed to find the girl, but Dean was her primary concern.

  She missed him fiercely. With Magnus gone and both her children vanished, Natalia was a mess. Papa had made a point of urging Jules on with her studies, knowing full well her Zan’ra side was going to be needed to solve this one.

  “Dean, where are you?” she asked.

  Jules continued on, floating toward the ocean. She rose higher, hovering under the cloud cover that seemed to thicken every time she neared the expansive body of water. The clouds grew darker, lightning flickering through them in uneven patterns as she approached the burial site.

  She’d come here once a week since destroying the Arnap, hoping to make some sense of it all. The deaths of their people hung heavy around her neck, no matter how many times her parents assured her there had been no other choice. Brik had been reunited with the rest of the Ritair because of her, but she still woke almost nightly, feeling twenty thousand Arnap hearts failing as one. She’d made a choice, and there was no changing the past. Even if she had the Delineator, which she didn’t, Fontem assured her that any alterations would only affect a new branch of her own timeline. It was no use.

  It had been seven months since the Deity had called out to her. Free me. She recalled the voice in her head: the passion, the demand, but now it was silent. What did that mean?

  The clouds were growing angrier, as if her presence there was an affront to the fragile ecosystem. Jules felt that way most of her life. She lowered, moving toward the whitecaps forming on the water. The wind blew strongly, and she thought she spotted bubbles erupting from below the surface. Were there underwater creatures here? On this world of death, it didn’t seem possible.

  Lightning sparked over the sky, thunderous booms echoing across the ocean. The crackling light drifted closer, and one of the beams struck her energy barrier. One second, she was safely floating ten meters over the churning water; the next, her sphere was gone. She flailed her arms as she fell, inhaling the brisk air right before she plunged into the cold.

  Jules tried not to panic, kicking her legs to breach the surface, but she didn’t move. She was being dragged below by a powerful current. She opened her eyes, the salty water stinging them slightly. She squinted, trying to see what was under her, but could only vaguely make out a blob, a rough shape a good twenty or so meters below.

  She found she didn’t need to breathe—another benefit of her powers—and she reactivated the sphere in case something dangerous lingered nearby. Jules hadn’t been brave enough to breach the water confining the sleeping Deity, but now she felt she was being forced to do so. She was nervous, her hands trembling with anticipation, but she moved deeper into the water. Within her sphere, she could see better, and the farther she sank below the roiling waves, the clearer her vision become.

  Jules had no idea what could possibly be
containing a god under the water, but she was surprised when she stumbled upon the wooden crate. It resembled an oversized coffin, maybe eight feet long and three deep, and it waved in the water, fastened to something by thick rusted chains on its underside. She floated lower, moving under the crate, and touched the large rings holding the coffin to the chains. She peered down, seeing the tethers continue toward the ocean floor, which was farther than her vision allowed.

  Who had put this here? It looked so archaic. She’d been expecting something grand, intricate, and beautiful. A prison for a god, made of crystals and energy, not a wooden box with a tarnished chain.

  Free me! The thought boomed in her head so abruptly and powerfully that she shot back with the ferocity of it. Her vision swam as she bobbed in the water, spots in front of her eyes. Blood dripped from her nose, and she felt something in her ear. She couldn’t stay here.

  Ja’ri. You know what you must do. Free me. The voice was less imposing, and it had used her Zan’ra name. Whatever was inside this box knew her name, or some ancient version of her.

  “I can’t! I don’t trust you!” Jules yelled, wiping the blood onto her sleeve.

  Free me and the others. All will be forgiven.

  The others? She shivered at the thought of more hidden Deities out there. “Where are the rest of you?”

  You know. The Four know. Free us, and be rewarded.

  The box shook violently, a scream carrying into her head. She moved away, her mind aching, her bones succumbing to the strain like they were about to snap. Her eyesight blurred again, but she pressed on, moving farther from the trapped Deity.

  She broke free from the turbulent whitecaps, floating into the air. Jules darted to the side, narrowly avoiding another lightning strike, and flew as fast as she could, trying to put as much distance between herself and the angry god as she could. It cried out as she went, the clouds weren’t localized to the ocean. They trailed after her, as if attached to her sphere, and she dragged the black storm over the land past the city of ruins and to the lake, where the portal waited.

  The waters here were calm. She glanced at the cliff, where the bones of thousands settled in carved-out cubby holes, and continued until she swam into the portal room. The lights glowed along the etched symbols in the walls, and she found Light’s icon: a star with a streaking mark over it. The god’s voice echoed in her mind as she pressed it, returning to the safety of her home.

  ____________

  The luster of being named the newest captain in the Alliance of Worlds had quickly lost its sheen. Seven months later, Magnus’ death lingered in the recycled air, palpable everywhere I went. I’d known losing him was going to be difficult, but didn’t anticipate it would continue to consume so much of my daily life.

  We hadn’t been as close over the last decade, with him running Fortune and then Horizon, but we’d kept in contact almost weekly over that time. Now I found myself wishing I could take my communicator and chat with him.

  “Magnus, you’d be having a fit if you were still around,” I whispered, staring out the viewscreen on the bridge. The crew was strong, each of them fiercely positive as we moved through space, heading on my personal mission. So many others were affected by the threat of Lom merging our timelines, even though I was told most of the Alliance board didn’t believe it could happen.

  I tried to excuse their ignorance. They didn’t understand. They hadn’t seen what I’d seen. What Mary, and Jules, and Nat… Thinking about her made me more determined to accomplish my goals. She’d remained on New Spero in their farmhouse. Magnus had loved it there, but now his widow was alone, their daughter run off, an ancient Zan’ra possessing Patty. O’ri was dangerous, according to Regnig and Fontem, and I hated that Patty had ever been tied up in this whole mess. She was just a kid.

  “Boss, you okay?” Slate asked. He tapped away at his tablet and glanced up, his face stamped with concern.

  I nodded, wishing I wasn’t sitting here constantly dwelling on our conundrum. My crew needed me, and so did my family. But Magnus’ family did too. Dean was out there all alone, scouring the galaxies for his sister, and I wished Jules would finally track him down.

  Sergo buzzed from his pilot’s seat, and I peered over, seeing him whisper to Walo beside him. Suma was on the right side of the bridge, working diligently at her console, with Rivo on her left.

  Loweck was behind Slate and me, running weapons diagnostics. I loved this crew. They’d been through so much over the years, each of them choosing to stay on Light with me, regardless of the dangerous mission. Months of space travel had grown so tedious, but together we were getting past the idle times.

  The projector ten meters in front of my seat blinked, and a cylinder of light descended from its hub on the ceiling, centering the bridge. The others stared at it, and Sarlun’s familiar face surfaced, along with his body. The projection flickered before solidifying. He wore his white uniform and smiled as his snout waved in excitement.

  “Dean, I have news.”

  My blood pumped harder, and I rose, crossing the short distance to stand in front of him. “What is it? Did you find him?”

  Sarlun nodded. “Someone has spotted Dean near the Elion system. There’s a small station near a mining operation out there, and his ship and his description match.”

  “Elion?” Slate asked. “What’s out there? Nothing but rocks and an unforgiving world, right?”

  It hit me. I’d forgotten the name. “It’s the place where the Zan’ra language was last recorded. It was how Jules could translate Lan’i’s words, that first interrogation with the kid.”

  Slate frowned. “The time he tried to strangle you?”

  I shrugged. “He has issues.” I turned back to Sarlun. “Thanks. We’re on it.”

  “Otherwise, how is the mission?” he asked.

  I pointed to the viewscreen, and Sarlun’s image followed along. “A month out from our next stop. Fontem says we can’t bring the starship, so a few of us will be heading from Techeron in my Kraski ship.”

  “And you still trust this Fontem?” Sarlun asked in front of everyone.

  “I have no choice,” I told him.

  He nodded; his snout stopped moving. He lifted a hand and waved at his daughter. She smiled proudly. They spoke frequently; a nice touch with the added technology of our starship was the ability to communicate from ever-vaster distances, not to mention the portal we had on Light.

  “We’ll be in touch. Good luck with finding Natalia’s son.” Sarlun’s image vanished in a flash.

  Walo buzzed something in Padlog before changing to English. “Captain, the portal was just used. Someone arrived.”

  It had to be Jules. She kept returning to the damned Deity, but she claimed it was sleeping again, no longer pleading to her for liberation. She still worried me. She was pushing herself too hard, trying to become this Zan’ra she knew little about as she chipped away at the complex puzzle around them. How did it all fit with Lom, and could they use her powers to stop the other Zan’ra, as well as Lom’s insane plan from another dimension? The entire thing left me with a headache.

  “I’ll stop by later,” I told Slate, who nodded absently. He’d be ending his shift soon, the secondary team coming to work the bridge.

  I exited, heading toward the portal on deck two. It didn’t take long, but I ran when I saw the Shandra’s guards crouched near the room’s entrance.

  “Jules…” She was on the ground, trying to sit up.

  “Get off me!” she shouted, her eyes glowing angrily. The two familiar guards lifted their hands, releasing my daughter.

  “She collapsed when she arrived. We dragged her out of there,” Keith said.

  “Don’t worry about it. You did the right thing,” I assured them, and helped Jules to her feet. Dried blood crusted her upper lip.

  “Papa, there are more of them!” She was clearly excited, but the corridor here was no place to have this discussion.

  “Let’s bring you up to our quarter
s,” I told her. She clutched me around the chest, and we made the trip as fast as we could. Maggie greeted us at the door, wagging and jumping on Jules’ legs.

  “Mary!” I called, unsure if she was in at the moment.

  She rounded the corner, dashing through the hall as soon as she spotted her ailing daughter. “What happened to you?”

  “I went back to Desolate,” Jules said. That was the name of the planet where she kept visiting the Deity. The name felt like an omen, and I didn’t like it.

  “And…?” Mary grabbed her arm, leading her inside to the kitchen, where she snatched a cloth, dabbing it gently on Jules’ nose and ears.

  “And it woke.” She told us about the vision of the beings living their lives in the city, followed by the lightning storm brewing over the ocean. When she mentioned being struck by a bolt, Mary frowned, crossing her arms. “I fell into the ocean and saw where he’s held prisoner.”

  “We don’t know he’s a prisoner,” I said.

  “What else could it be? He told me there were others, and that I had to release them all.” Jules already looked better, her color having returned.

  “How’s he contained?” I asked, wondering if these Deities had real bodies, or if they were godlike essences of some kind. Regnig wasn’t one hundred percent confident, even though they’d seen a few archaic drawings of the beings.

  “He’s in a coffin chained to the ocean floor.” Jules’ face was dead serious; otherwise, I would have thought she was kidding with us.

  “A coffin…” I stopped, rubbing my eyes.

  “Papa, I have to find the rest of them,” she blurted, and I met her stare. Her hair was messy, dried erratically from salt water, and I pointed to the bathroom near her room.

  “Why don’t you have a shower and change, and we’ll have dinner, then discuss what it means,” I suggested.

  “Dean, I really think…” Mary started, but a quick shake of my head cut her off. “You heard your dad.”

  Jules seemed like she was about to say something else, but she stopped herself, taking my advice. I waited until I heard the shower running to speak again.