The Lost Secret

by Vaughn Heppner

He wore sweaty sweats and running shoes, his dark hair shiny from the exertion.

  “There you are,” Ludendorff said.

  Maddox turned in surprise.

  The professor was a Methuselah Man, his exact age unknown: five hundred, two thousand years or something more. He likely hadn’t lived all of it in a stretch, but spent many years in stasis. The one known fact was that Builders or Builder servants had kidnapped Ludendorff off Earth over two thousand years ago. The Builders had given him greater intelligence and the ability to live a very long life.

  Ludendorff was a medium-sized man with thick white hair, the handsome tanned features of a man in his fifties and a gold chain around his neck. The first few buttons of his shirt were open, revealing white chest hair.

  “Do you feel better?” Ludendorff asked.

  Maddox stopping unwrapping the bands from his hands. “Did Galyan summon you?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you here then?”

  “You want to speak to me, don’t you?”

  Maddox stared at the Methuselah Man. Something was off, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. Wait…there was the hint of a smile trying to break out on Ludendorff’s face. What did that imply?

  “Have you tapped into Galyan’s surveillance system?”

  Ludendorff laughed, shaking his head. “This is rich. You suspect me when I’m helpful and when I’m not. You should have a preference and treat me better when I follow it.”

  “You’re up to something,” Maddox said.

  “If you must know, I saw Meta several minutes ago. She asked how our meeting went.”

  Maddox thought back and realized he’d spent over an hour hitting the heavy bag. He turned slowly as he examined the bulkheads, the deck and the ceiling. He did not spot anything unusual, but he felt the softest of scrutiny. That confirmed…what, exactly? He wasn’t sure.

  Ludendorff had started looking around, too. He now reached into a pocket, extracting a flat device the size of a phone. With several taps, he caused it to beep. The professor grew more interested, holding the device with one hand and tapping it with the fingers of the other.

  “It just stopped,” Ludendorff said.

  “What did?”

  “A signal…” Ludendorff tapped the device once more. “Ah, a signal quite similar to one Galyan’s holoimage exhibits.”

  “Where does the signal originate?”

  “I haven’t located it yet.” Ludendorff shook his head before looking up. “Do you suspect androids have secretly stowed away?”

  Maddox resumed unwinding the wraps. “Galyan,” he said.

  Nothing happened.

  “Galyan,” Maddox said again.

  Still, nothing happened.

  Ludendorff started tapping his device again.

  The feeling of surveillance resumed. Maddox squinted, looking around—

  There was a flicker like a ghost holoimage up near the farthest bulkhead where it joined the ceiling. Maddox backed away from it, dropping the sweaty wraps onto the deck. He backed up more, deliberately heading toward Ludendorff.

  “What is it?” the professor asked.

  “Don’t you see it?”

  “See what?”

  Maddox whirled around—to find the professor aiming a small black weapon at him.

  “Surprise,” Ludendorff said. “I bet you weren’t expecting that.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The professor. Who do you think?”

  “No,” Maddox said. “Who are you really?”

  “Are you trying to be cute, Captain?”

  Something in the man’s eyes gave away action behind him. Maddox turned to see a head-sized ghost image coming for him.

  “Remain perfectly still, and it will all be over in seconds,” the professor said.

  Maddox charged the professor.

  The Methuselah Man fired.

  Maddox dropped, but not quite fast enough. Something hot seared his left shoulder. The captain crawled madly toward Ludendorff, jumping back up.

  The Methuselah Man fired again, a blistering energy blot striking Maddox in the chest. He went down hard.

  An alarm began to ring.

  “What’s that?” Ludendorff shouted.

  Maddox groaned from the deck, with scorching agony spreading across his chest.

  “Why is an alarm ringing?” Ludendorff demanded.

  Maddox looked up as a gym hatch opened.

  “Damnation, this isn’t the end of it,” Ludendorff told Maddox.

  Two armed marines rushed into the exercise chamber. At the same moment, Ludendorff began to fold in upon himself. It was a strange performance as he collapsed into a ball of light. The light floated upward.

  The marines halted in shock.

  “Fire,” Maddox gasped.

  The marines must have heard because they aimed and fired, the blaster energy passing through the ball of light and scoring against the ceiling, leaving marks.

  The light passed through the ceiling, disappearing from sight.

  The marines lowered their weapons, staring at each other and then the captain.

  “Galyan,” Maddox whispered. “Galyan, if you hear me—”

  The ancient Adok holoimage appeared beside the downed captain.

  “Sir, you are hurt. I shall summon medics.”

  “Galyan, there was a ball of light. It passed through the ceiling. Follow it. Find out what it is.”

  “Light, sir?” asked Galyan.

  “The marines fired at it.”

  Galyan turned. “Is this true?”

  One of the marines said it was, adding, “It was an intruder. It must have attacked the captain.”

  “Oh, dear,” Galyan said. “I will begin searching, sir.” The holoimage winked out.

  The marines approached. “What was it, sir?” one asked.

  Maddox slowly rose to a sitting position.

  The other marine swore, grabbed a communicator and called for medical assistance.

  Maddox looked down. The entire front of his sweatshirt was gone. A great blistered red mark was on his chest. It radiated heat, glowing and throbbing.

  “You’d better lie down, sir,” a marine said.

  Maddox squeezed his eyes shut and opened them wide. Then, he passed out, collapsing.

  -16-

  Maddox wasn’t sure what was happening to him. He felt strange, disoriented. He’d faced Professor Ludendorff in the gym—

  Maddox did not blink or look around, because he couldn’t see or feel anything. He paused in his thoughts, however. He tried to look around. When that produced nothing, he attempted to open his eyes.

  I don’t have any eyes to open.

  The thought should have terrified him, and it was possible the idea would terrify him soon. He recognized something before that. It had the similar sensation as…not dreams exactly…

  He’d faced something akin to this in the Beyond. He’d wanted to go back to that place…the City of Pyramids in the Erill System. Yes…

  Had an Erill attacked him? No. That didn’t seem right. Could it have been a mythical Ur-Builder?

  The idea of that…light began to turn the blackness around him into a gray universe. There was no direct source of light. A growing grayness that brightened—

  Maddox attempted to peer at himself. He had no eyes, no body that he could detect—Wait a minute. There was throbbing redness all around him. He tried to touch it—

  I’m in my own mind, Maddox realized. The understanding helped him to calm down and that helped him to concentrate.

  Perhaps the stolen Erill energy in him was aiding him in some fashion. What did he remember?

  Ludendorff—a thing imitating Ludendorff—had drawn a weapon and fired at him. That weapon had burned his sweatshirt and produced a red expanse on his chest. That expanse had been hot. It had grown, and it had driven him unconscious.

  Had that been by design?

  The Ludendorff imposter had folded in upon itself and turned into light, float
ing light that had passed through the ceiling and escaped. The thing had spoken to him while in the Ludendorff form. The speech indicated intelligence. It was alien, obviously.

  Did the alien have anything to do with the “ghost image” attacks back on Earth? If that were true, was this a new menace or one allied to those Star Watch knew?

  Maddox struggled to understand. It knew about the professor and knew enough about him to know he and the professor often quarreled.

  What was it? This was frustrating. It was—

  Maddox paused. He heard a faint voice. It was a sweet voice. It called to him as one lost in the wilderness. It was feminine.

  “Meta,” he whispered.

  “Oh, darling, darling, can you hear me?”

  Maddox’s consciousness became buoyant and floated out of the grayness. It seemed to Maddox that his consciousness slipped back into his body. Could his spirit have left his body?

  That was a terrifying idea for several reasons. Might it indicate that he’d been dying or even dead?

  Maddox hated that idea.

  “Darling, please come back,” Meta whispered.

  The consciousness slipped back into his body, and it felt good to be back. It was comforting, although he struggled like a man putting on a shirt just a little too small for him. Might his spirit or soul have grown in the absence of its body?

  What a preposterous thought.

  Maddox struggled to put his skin—his body—back around his soul. He had to stuff a part here and there—

  He opened his eyes, although he didn’t see anything.

  “His heart rate has returned to normal.”

  “His brainwaves have resumed.”

  Maddox opened his mouth so his tongue lolled out.

  “His heart rate is rising.”

  Heat struck Maddox, not a nice kind of warmth, but a hot sizzling—

  He flinched, and he wondered if he should stay in such a hot place.

  “Maddox!” Meta shouted. He could feel her hands touching his face. “Don’t you go. Don’t you dare leave me. I love you so much. You have to stay with me. You have to live with me. We have so much to do. I want your baby, darling. You have to give me many babies.”

  The terrible heat began to recede.

  “Bodily functions are returning.”

  What were those people talking about? They made it sound as if he was in a medical facility undergoing something traumatic. Brain waves? Heart rate?

  “You’re okay, darling,” Meta said. “You can relax. Breathe. Doctor Harris wants you to breathe.”

  I know how to do that.

  Maddox inhaled, and that helped his eyes. Blurry images appeared instead of nothing. There were colors—such glorious colors. He’d been in the land of no color. To then see such blurred colors—

  He laughed.

  “Has he gone insane?” Harris asked.

  “His brainwave patterns look normal enough, Doctor.”

  Maddox inhaled deeply, and the blurriness departed as he stared into the lovely face of his worried wife. Tears ran down her cheeks but she laughed with joy.

  “Oh, Maddox, oh, darling,” she said, kissing his face.

  “Go easy,” someone said. “He could have a relapse.”

  “What?” Maddox said, his throat scratchy and sore. “What happened?”

  Meta kissed him more.

  “You had an accident,” Doctor Harris said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired,” Maddox said, “and sore.”

  “Where are you sore?”

  “My chest,” he said. “Can I get up?”

  No one spoke, and Meta stopped kissing his face.

  As Maddox asked the question, his full sight resumed. He was partly in a machine, with tubes and wires tangling around him. Medical personnel were everywhere, a convention of them, it seemed.

  “Don’t get up just yet,” Doctor Harris said. She was a tall woman with short red hair and prominent cheekbones. “We have to sew you up first.”

  Maddox didn’t say anything, but closed his eyes. He was so tired, so sleepy.

  “Doctor?” Meta asked, sounding worried.

  “It’s fine,” Harris said. “He should go to sleep. Frankly, it’s amazing he’s awake. We’ll sew him up and spray quick heal. Then, we’ll observe him for twenty-four hours at least.”

  That was the last thing Maddox heard as he drifted off to sleep.

  -17-

  Galyan was an oddity to say the least. His essence was a bank of computers in the heart of the ancient Adok starship, once the flagship of the Adok fleet defending the home system against a vast Swarm invasion armada. That had happened over six thousand years ago.

  The AI computers were a mixture of Adok and Builder technology. The personality of Driving Force Galyan—the real Adok from over six thousand years ago—had been imprinted into the computers. In Adok terminology, Galyan had been deified. The AI thus had much of Galyan’s original personality mixed with computer logic.

  The computers used the Adok-Builder holo-imaging refined by Ludendorff and Star Watch to project him throughout the ship and beyond, to a limited range. The AI computers used ship sensors to not only study outside but inside as well. For that reason, Galyan was one of the best security systems in Star Watch.

  The trouble was that Galyan the deified AI had been working hard ever since the attack against his good friend and commander, Captain Maddox. The hard work was not the problem, but that he had solved nothing so far.

  Galyan had gone over security videos, watching “Ludendorff” appear outside the gym and entering. He did not have any record of the engagement between the Ludendorff-image and Maddox. He had gone over the testimony of the two marines. Galyan had then searched the ship’s security videos, trying to spot anything that might be a floating ball of light.

  In the end, Galyan had watched endless repetitions of Ludendorff simply appearing before the gym door. There was no ball of light beforehand. There was nothing his sensors could detect until Ludendorff simply appeared. Then, the sensors had detected the human shape with Ludendorff’s image entering the gym, and then nothing.

  Lieutenant Keith Maker had ordered a ship-wide search for Ludendorff. Three marines found him asleep in his quarters. The professor had been working in his laboratory ever since they left Earth. He’d been working on the secret project Maddox had given him.

  “What secret project?” Galyan had asked.

  “Sorry,” Ludendorff had told him. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone under any circumstances. Those were the captain’s direct orders.”

  Galyan had asked Meta about that. She hadn’t known anything about secret orders for Ludendorff.

  Galyan now waited for Captain Maddox to awaken so he could ask him about the secret project. It had occurred to Galyan that the ball-of-light alien might have appeared to Ludendorff as Maddox, giving him the assignment. Ludendorff had found the theory unconvincing and refused to believe it. “I would know the difference,” Ludendorff had added.

  Galyan supposed that could be true. He also knew that the professor was extremely arrogant and pigheaded about certain topics.

  As Galyan waited, he watched for the ball-of-light alien to reappear. How could such an alien hide on Victory? How could such an alien fire a weapon to kill the captain?

  Fortunately, the ship’s medical team had resuscitated Maddox, bringing him back to life. It had been clinical death, according to the medical team.

  The idea intrigued Galyan. Was there life after death? The humans had many religions that said so. The most interesting of the stories was about Jesus Christ, a man-god who had returned from the dead. The Bible claimed he’d risen from the grave on the third day, reappearing to over five hundred different people. Those people had gone out and spread the news, changing human history.

  It saddened Galyan that he would never know the truth of the claim of life-after-death. He was an AI, a soulless machine. Perhaps his Galyan engrams, from the Adok Driving Force Galyan
—

  “This is futile,” Galyan said to himself. “I am here. When I am not here, I will be nowhere. I should concentrate on the here and now, not on some nebulous state that I will never experience.”

  That was one of Galyan’s primary tenets. He would be here far longer than any of his good friends would. That meant he wanted to help keep them alive for as long as possible. Thinking of his long-lost wife—

  “Do not go there,” Galyan told himself.

  He did not.

  The second great sadness was dwelling on the idea that his best friends would die someday.

  “Do not go there, either.”

  Because of his essential computer personality, he was able to simply shut down that line of thought.

  Galyan went on patrol as a holoimage, traveling through the many ship corridors and then going outside on the ship hull. He did not discover any evidence of aliens, alien tampering or balls of light or alien holoimages.

  Could this strange alien intrusion have anything to do with the supposed holoimage attack back on Earth?

  Galyan gave that a fifty-one point seven percent probability. If he had been playing a ring game of Texas Hold ’em against an opponent, he would have bet hard with such a slight margin. As a member of Star Watch hunting for an enemy alien—

  “Galyan,” a familiar voice said. “Galyan, can you hear me?”

  Galyan the holoimage disappeared from his location in engineering and appeared beside the bed of Captain Maddox.

  The captain lay fast asleep on the bed. Galyan checked the medical monitor near the bed. The captain was in his twelfth hour of sustained sleep.

  Who had called him then with the captain’s voice?

  “Galyan, you must hear me. Why aren’t you coming then?”

  Galyan did not disappear. Instead, his eyelids fluttered, moving faster and faster. That indicated that his computers were working at top speed.

  Galyan’s eyes quit fluttering. He switched his optical settings and saw a ball of infrared light hovering over the captain.

  “What are you?” Galyan asked.

  “Interesting,” the ball of infrared light said.

  “If you harm our captain—”

  The ball of infrared light disappeared.

  Despite running through the full electromagnetic spectrum, Galyan did not spy the alien entity—if that was what it was. The thing was gone.