The Soldier: The X-Ship

by Vaughn Heppner

  Cade desperately wanted to know more, wanted to live and reach his destiny. But blackness settled over his mind as he began a dive into oblivion.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Did the soldier dream? How could he do so while dead? He’d fallen on a slope, firing at towering wolf aliens who thrust with primitive flint-tipped spears. They’d slain him, right? He’d been alone in this future time—

  All thoughts ceased as fire raced through his body. The soldier wanted to scream in agony as the fire burned away every impurity in him. The fire cooked his heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen and liver. It was a pure living fire. It caused intense torture as it roared through his bloodstream, as it raced from one cell to another, changing, manipulating, cleansing them and turning them as pure as they had been on the day of birth.

  What did that mean, though?

  Long ago, the soldier trained intensely as a member of one of the most decorated units of the Fifth Legion of Kamandi. The Fifth fought in battlesuits, inserted from orbital strike-cruisers. They dropped onto many planets and faced cyborgs—

  Mental torment swept the images aside. Oh, there were more memories waiting, row upon row upon row, but they were locked away from Cade, barred by a device—

  It was possible the soldier screamed. It was possible his body arched and writhed on a stone table. He was not aware of that. He was dead, dying, at least.

  How could he know about bright lamps illuminating him and keeping his near-corpse warm? He could not see or hear the minions: lean old women with long faces and wigs because they were bald. They held glowing rods, touching the powerful naked body on the stone table.

  The sacred draught they had poured in his mouth—could they have administered it in time?

  The screams and howls from the dead one said the draught might have come in the proverbial nick of time. The golden draught of healing came from a unique source, used almost exclusively for the minds in the machine, the great and ancient minds—hundreds, at least—connected in electric unity—

  No. Such knowledge wasn’t for the near dead. The golden draught had magical qualities. It repaired cellular destruction and brought DNA rebirth. That meant it used the cellular DNA, corrected for errors and renewed as at the time of original cell birth. The scale of repair, rebirth—the golden draught was an elixir, a promise and perhaps a curse. It flooded the ruined body of the soldier, sending tendrils of pain and fire, fire and pain to each location, each tiny spot of flesh and bone.

  A galaxy would have waged interstellar war to acquire the golden draught. It was of alien origin, and the production of it had ceased eons upon eons ago. The minions of the crypt had agreed to this tiny draught because the one from above had decreed it. The minds, this was about the wonderful and elastic minds that had brought life to the People of the Hills. The minions had promised the minds eternal vigilance and servitude in place for—

  Cade gasped as the images and ideas flooding him faded away into thankful oblivion. His mind opened because of the draught. But now, the energies of the golden excellence had spent their power, bringing his heart, liver, spleen and other bodily functions and bones back to optimal function.

  The destruction caused by the flint spear-blades had vanished. The men had found and carried him into the crypt just in time. The minions obeyed the new one because she promised an amazing future for the minds in the machine.

  The Age of Miracles and Wonders was at hand. First, the soldier needed to do his duty. Such had said the new one, and she had always been proven right.

  Time passed as the soldier slept deeply in a different place. The golden draught brought about a miraculous healing to one on the brink of death. He’d healed, but the expenditure to his stamina and fat stores had been great. It left him limp and exhausted. Added to his previous exhaustion…

  He slept and slowly recovered, even as the minions spooned him gooey sustenance so he would not wither away.

  The day arrived when his eyelids fluttered. He yawned until his jaw popped. The sound surprised him, and he opened his eyes. Confusion reigned in his mind. What had happened to him now?

  He turned his head slowly. A flickering lamp hung nearby. It cast illumination on a damp cave wall. He saw the moisture and heard a trickle of running water.

  Awareness returned by degrees. He—

  Cade sat up, and no dizziness struck him. He felt wonderful. Sweeping away a great furry blanket, he examined his naked body. There were no wounds, no scars. He had pinkish flesh with steely muscles.

  Had he dreamed about the spears thrusting into him?

  He touched his face, feeling beard growth. He’d shaven in the drop-suit, shaven while among the wolf aliens—

  Cade’s eyes opened in wonder. He remembered his last seconds of life. He’d fired at the warrior, and they’d stabbed him many times. He should be dead. He knew of no medicine or surgical procedures that could have brought him back from that.

  How am I alive?

  A different thought struck. Maybe he was dead. He’d heard people speak about an afterlife. Maybe this was it.

  He examined the cave walls and the bed upon which he lay. Swinging his feet over the edge, he stood, walking about the lamp-lit area. He stopped, spying his torn, blood-clotted clothes and wrecked mesh shirt.

  He wasn’t in any afterlife.

  A woman gasped.

  Cade’s head snapped up.

  The elongated woman wore a white robe and had a long face. She was scum of the hills.

  “No,” Cade said.

  The woman whirled around, fleeing from him like a frightened spider.

  “Wait. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Two elongated men appeared in her place. They were extremely thin and wore leather garments, each of them holding an absurdly small bow with an arrow nocked against the string. They had similarly long faces, making it hard to believe they were standard Homo sapiens.

  Cade snorted. Was he a standard Homo sapiens? Hadn’t Dr. Halifax said something about super soldiers, about Ultras?

  “How did I get here?” Cade asked.

  One of the bowmen cocked his head, listening. He gibbered to the other, and that one gibbered back in their own weird tongue. Clearly, they did not understand Cade, and he did not understand them.

  The one used sign language, indicating that Cade must stay in the chamber. Cade nodded. That mollified the two, and the bowmen retreated from the chamber, taking station outside an arch in a different area of the cave.

  By the light of the lamp, Cade inspected his quarters. He examined his bloody, tattered clothes, his boots minus the knife, and no gun or bullets. There was a trickle of running water at the edge of the cave that left via a grooved floor channel. That was when Cade noted the slanting angle of the floor.

  He knelt and touched the water, touching the wet fingers to his tongue. It was sweet tasting. Since he was thirsty, he cupped water in his hands and drank until he was full.

  Afterward, he felt drowsy and lay on the cot.

  A hand shook him awake later. The two tall bowmen flanked a hooded woman on her knees. She held a wooden platter with her long, thin fingers. On the platter were various pieces of chopped fruit and slices of cooked meat.

  Cade sat up and accepted the platter with a nod.

  A bowman gibbered. The woman arose, blushing within her hood, perhaps at Cade’s nakedness, hurrying away in long, jerky strides. The two guards followed her at a more leisurely pace, taking up their former guard positions.

  Cade devoured the food, wiping his fingers on the blanket after he was done and setting the platter on the cave floor.

  A man cleared his throat. Cade looked up. The elongated man held garments similar to his old, torn ones, although without any mesh shirt as protection—not that the first one had done him much good.

  Surprised at the proffered garb, Cade wondered what it signified. The obvious conclusion was the woman in the crashed ship was part of the band. She must have had extra clothing in her ship.
>
  Cade clothed himself, finding new socks, feeling better because of it. He would have liked to have had his knife and gun back, too, but…

  The two bowmen reappeared. Each had nocked his strung weapon and half pulled back, aiming an arrow at him.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Cade asked.

  The one who had brought him clothes beckoned that Cade follow.

  The soldier began to do so, wondering what the bowmen would think of that. They dropped back, letting him pass even as they continued to aim their half-drawn bows at him. As he followed the tribesman, the bowmen followed him. They passed through the arch into a wider cave lit by torches in iron brackets attached to the walls. In one area, women knelt grinding something in stone bowls. There were no children in evidence, and Cade wondered about that.

  The guide entered a tunnel, reaching stone steps. They climbed the steep passage, maybe one hundred meters in length, until the passage became level again, leading toward sunlight. The guide led Cade outdoors. It was bright, but he adjusted, looking around. Cade found himself in a strange stone fort. The cave was in the back, providing one wall. In front of the entrance was a huge semicircle wall made of heaped blocks and obviously chiseled rocks. The wall was about five meters high and encompassed perhaps four acres of ground. There was a crude wooden walkway near the top of the inner wall patrolled by two dozen similarly garbed bowmen. Those bowmen peered into the distance. Perhaps they feared a wolf nomad attack.

  There was another cave and entrance to the left. There were several thatched huts before the other cave. The most astonishing sight was in the center of the walled courtyard. If Cade were to guess, it was the front section of an otherwise deeply buried spaceship. The rakish nose of the buried ship had polarized windows but no visible means of entering.

  Had the natives of Avalon IV built the protecting stone walls to guard this? How old were the walls? How old was the mostly buried spaceship? Who built the ship, buried it here and why?

  The guide led Cade to a lone hut with a wooden door. Opening the door, the guide stepped aside and motioned for Cade to enter within.

  The soldier hesitated.

  The most talkative bowman behind him gibbered impatiently and drew back on the bowstring. The implication seemed to be that he would drill the arrow into Cade if he didn’t do as suggested.

  That being the case, Cade bent his head and went in. The guide closed the door behind him. Cade waited to hear a thrown bar, but that did not happen. Was this a prison or not?

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Cade spied the hole in the ground. He went to it and looked down, surprised to see wooden steps leading into the darkness. Was he supposed to climb down the subterranean stairs? Shrugging, Cade decided that was the case. Thus, in the gloom of the hut, he started down the wooden stairs, wondering where they led.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  In the darkness on the stairs, the soldier felt his way. The tunnel was formed of stone, which would indicate that someone had laboriously chiseled his way through like a miner. The wooden stairs would have been a later addition.

  Ah. He spied illumination ahead. It wasn’t much, as it didn’t allow him to see the walls, but it did tell him something glowed in the distance. That distance reached him abruptly. He found that the illumination was a dim bulb before a metal hatch. He looked for a way to open the hatch, but couldn’t find any. Finally, in lieu of anything else, he banged on the metal.

  The hatch slid up, artificial light pouring from the interior. It blinded him so he closed his eyes and turned away. He adjusted as before and found himself stepping into the ancient buried vessel.

  He assumed it was ancient because it was buried in stone. He did not believe for a moment that this was the woman’s vessel that she’d used to escape the tech company people. While the vessel might be ancient, it was not musty or weird. It had corridors similar to the Descartes, although larger. He reached a junction and listened but could hear no one else, just the faint hiss of circulating air.

  What was the correct move?

  He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hello! Is anyone in here?”

  “Down here,” a woman called.

  Cade picked a corridor and walked, reaching what might have been a tube lift. There was no box or platform to go up or down, just metal access rings along the side.

  “Are you down there?” he called.

  “That’s right.”

  As Cade started down, he realized the woman spoke regular Concord speech, a derivative of ancient English. That hadn’t struck him until now. Surely, she was the woman he’d come to help. He was going to meet her, as well as meet his destiny.

  As he climbed down, the soldier’s heart started thudding. An excitement he could not place drove him faster. His fingertips and gut had a funny giddy feeling. He also felt the stirrings of sexual excitement. He hadn’t known about that until now. He realized that he was grinning so hard it was starting to make his cheeks hurt.

  He reached another junction and could hear someone tinkering, striking or touching metal on metal. Increasing his gait, he hurried down the new corridor and reached an open hatch.

  A normal-sized woman had her back to him. She wore grease-stained coveralls and tightened something inside. Panels lay on the floor to expose machinery or equipment within the bulkhead.

  Cade cleared his throat.

  The woman withdrew her head and upper torso from the opened bulkhead, turning to face him. She was thin—although not as thin as the Avalon IV natives—had a bob cut of dark hair and a sharp nose with a grease stain across her high and white cheekbones. Her eyes were dark like pools of oil, almost as if they were machine orbs. She was oddly beautiful, and he could see why the tribe called her a witch woman. She had long thin fingers with black fingernails and might be more curvaceous than the baggy coveralls revealed.

  She smiled, showing stark white teeth.

  “I’m Cade.”

  “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Tara Alor.”

  “What?”

  She raised her plucked eyebrows. “You don’t like my name?”

  “It isn’t that. I, uh, met another Tara Alor not so long ago.”

  The smile faded, suspicion taking its place. Tara dropped the tool. The electrical flicker at the tip ceased. A moment later—Cade wasn’t sure how she’d done it—a small flat laser emitter was in her right hand.

  “Sit down on the deck,” Tara said in a firm voice.

  Cade sensed his death in her tone, and he had no doubt that black flat device could kill him. He sat cross-legged in order to put her at greater ease.

  “I’m Tara Alor. Do you dispute that?”

  “Not at all. Before I proceed, I should tell you that the other Tara secretly worked for the tech company.”

  Those dark oily eyes—completely black without seeming pupil or iris—had yet to blink. They focused on him as if she could drill into his soul.

  It was strange, but Cade could feel her mind mulling over options, making one binary choice after another. He cocked his head. Now why would he think they were binary choices?

  “Tell me about this Tara Alor,” she said.

  “The one on the Helos space station?”

  “Where?”

  “The Rigel System,” he said.

  She still did not blink, and as the binary choices multiplied, her head made minute jerks and shifts.

  “Yes,” she said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Tell me about the Tara Alor in the Helos space station.”

  Cade proceeded to tell her the tale as he remembered it. There was something very wrong about this Tara Alor, though. The eyes proved that. Was she an android or an ancient cyborg perhaps?

  The last part of the interior question caused a spasm in Cade’s mind. He groaned, bending his head and rubbing a spot on his forehead.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “I get these bad headaches when I’m stressed.”

 
; It took her two seconds before she said, “That is only a partial truth. Why are you here, Cade? Tell me the entire story. If you lie, I will know.”

  He nodded and began spinning a tale—using tactics in this. He left out everything about Jack Brune, Dr. Halifax and Group Six of Earth. He spoke as if Rohan Mars had made the offer directly to him in the office on Sparta.

  After he’d told the bulk of the edited story, Cade asked, “Do you know Rohan Mars?”

  Minute jerks to her head preceded the answer. Did she make another bundle of binary choices before answering? “I know others like Rohan Mars. Remember, I fled the tech company, as you name it.”

  “Why did you flee?”

  She laughed, but it sounded forced. “To reach here, of course.”

  “Why Avalon IV? What’s here that’s so important?”

  “I saved your life, Cade. You did not save mine. I’m asking the questions, if you don’t mind?”

  “How did you save my life? Do you mean the small black saucer and golden beam?”

  “I do.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “There is nothing to guess. I saved you. And, you’re welcome.”

  “I’m curious why you didn’t just trade the priestess for me.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “The…hill people wouldn’t let you?”

  “Hill people? Oh, you mean the Nian. I do anything I wish among the Nian. I rule here. Surely you must have realized that already.”

  “Rohan said the Nian kill outsiders.”

  “The ancient legends tell of that, yes,” Tara said. “But I’m not just any outsider. I’m—”

  “Go on,” Cade said.

  “Later,” Tara said with a dismissive wave of her hand, the one holding the flat black laser emitter.

  “If you rule here, why not force the Nian to give up the nomad priestess?”

  “This time, I’m curious. How did you learn about her?”

  “The old one told me.”

  “Oh dear. That is quite interesting. You’re going to have to elaborate on that.”

  “The old one was the white-furred old wolf alien who went to the Pillar of Exchange—”