The Lost Secret

by Vaughn Heppner

  She did not stir.

  Feeling more than slightly stupid, Maddox closed his eyes. He strained to sense her thoughts and soon… I’m not a shaman. I’m the captain of a starship. What do I think I’m doing?

  He frowned while still keeping his eyes closed. I’m the di-far. I can change the way of things, moving destiny onto one track and set it onto another. The Visionary told me that. She believed it. The Erill soul energy in me has expanded, or my spirit has grown in ways I don’t understand. I’m using my new sixth sense. I have to experiment. I felt something earlier, a connection, maybe even an echo of a voice calling to me.

  He held Valerie’s right hand, and he decided that relaxing was the thing to do. He stood there, breathing evenly, and he felt something then. It was a spark, and he shifted as his shoulders twitched.

  Valerie, he said, not realizing he thought that instead of verbalizing it.

  Her hand moved.

  Come back to us, Maddox said.

  “It’s working,” Harris said.

  Maddox opened his eyes, and he swayed, feeling tired. He set Valerie’s right hand beside her on the med-cot. Then he stepped back, feeling like sleeping.

  Harris was at his left elbow, grabbing his arm, steadying him.

  “I’m fine,” Maddox said.

  “You sound winded. What happened?”

  “Not much,” Maddox said, leaving it at that.

  “Look,” Harris whispered, indicating Valerie.

  The lieutenant commander opened her eyes and slowly turned her head to them. She saw Maddox, and a smile crept upon her face. “Hello, sir,” she whispered.

  “Good day, Commander,” Maddox said.

  “I have something to report.”

  “Oh?”

  “Will you help me sit up, please?”

  “No,” Harris said. “You look—”

  Valerie sat up anyway, seeming to gain strength as she did. “The New Men are here, sir, and there’s something else.”

  Maddox nodded in encouragement.

  Valerie told him what had happened on their scouting expedition to the third planet and the five-kilometer wreck.

  -61-

  Captain Maddox called an emergency meeting in the conference chamber. Meta, Ludendorff, Galyan, Andros and Valerie were there. The captain had been talking, filling everyone in on everything they knew so far.

  “That’s it,” Maddox said, finishing the briefing. “Now I’d like some comments, ideas, thoughts, whatever you think is relevant to our situation.”

  “That is just it, sir,” Galyan said. “What is our situation? What are we attempting to achieve?”

  “Well…” Maddox said. “Our primary objective has been finding Builder data to restore the Iron Lady’s full faculties. That in turn could help us figure out who has been attacking her on Earth, and likely hoping to use her to attack Star Watch. We could add, gaining more data on the Builder items we already possess and possibly gaining more data on nexuses and other Builder technologies. We plan to explore the Library Planet to gain those things.”

  “It appears the New Men are already doing that,” Galyan said, “and their warships outnumber ours six to one.”

  “That’s a problem, I agree,” Maddox said.

  “Was that the timing Half-Life hoped to achieve?” Galyan asked.

  “That implies Balron has sided with the New Men,” Maddox said. “I don’t see any evidence of that. Balron strikes me as his own side, not the mercenary or partner of the New Men.”

  “How does the wreck at the third planet play into any of this?” Ludendorff asked. “If anything smacks of Balron, it would be the ray of light striking the Tarrypin moments before jump.”

  “The ray of light is troubling,” Maddox agreed. “What did you make of the wreck?” he asked Valerie.

  “We didn’t make visual eye contact,” Valerie said, “although I examined it on zoom through the teleoptics. I wish the Tarrypin’s computers worked. They’re fried, fused you could say. The wreck has thousands of pods attached by narrow corridors to the main ship. The corridors are like spokes to the five-kilometer tubular section.”

  “Does the design of the ship sound familiar?” Maddox asked Ludendorff.

  “Not in the slightest,” Ludendorff said.

  “What could have caused the ray of light?”

  “More to the point,” Ludendorff said. “What was the ray of light? How did it impart the anti-energy to the Tarrypin?”

  “If I could,” Valerie said wistfully, “I’d like another crack at examining the wreck.” She shook her head. “But the Tarrypin is useless for the rest of the voyage.”

  “Maybe Keith could pop you there in a tin can,” Ludendorff said.

  Maddox drummed his fingers on the conference table. “How old is the wreck again?”

  “According to our readings,” Valerie said, “six hundred years.”

  “How can a six-hundred-year-old wreck beam exotic light?” Maddox asked. “Yes. This smacks of Balron, or alien wizardry. I’m loath to take Victory near the wreck. Maybe I can examine it from the tin can with Keith.”

  “Why would you want to risk doing that?” Meta asked.

  “I know why,” Ludendorff said. “The captain wants to practice his newfound mumbo-jumbo upon it and see what he senses.”

  “What does Balron want with us?” Maddox asked. “It’s maddening not knowing.”

  “Agreed,” Ludendorff said. “And yet, as a Methuselah Man, as someone who has been around longer than anyone else, I suggest we forget all about the wreck and the mysterious beam of light. It has nothing to do with our objective. The six star cruisers are the real problem. Why did whoever ordered it send a ten-man insertion team into low orbit? What does that imply? Can we slip onto the Library Planet with the New Men there, or should we wait until they leave? Frankly, I’m for waiting them out and then going to see what we can find.”

  “And if Strand is with the New Men?” Maddox asked.

  Ludendorff shrugged. “In this case, who cares? Strand is not our key concern. Mining the Library Planet for data is.”

  Maddox stared up at the ceiling. “We’re hunters,” he said. “Sometimes, hunters need patience—”

  A flash of light caused Maddox to shout and shield his eyes from an intensely bright…bright something at the other end of the conference table. He squinted as he tried to peer past his upraised hand at whatever was creating the intense brightness.

  “Captain Maddox,” the brightness said in Balron’s voice.

  “Who are you?” Maddox said.

  “You don’t have to ask that. You know who I am.”

  “Balron?”

  “You didn’t need to say that. Trust your instincts, your sixth sense, as you would put it.”

  Maddox couldn’t see through the intense brightness. “Could you lower the wattage? I can’t see you.”

  “Don’t you understand yet who I really am?”

  “No.”

  “I am the deity you pray to—God.”

  “No…” Maddox said. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Is that what your instincts tell you?”

  “Logic tells me that,” Maddox said. “God wouldn’t have need for tricks like a lying Half-Life. But because you’d lie about such a thing, I’m more inclined to think you’re the devil.”

  With his right hand upraised as a shield against the brightness, Maddox looked around. The others were brightly frozen in mid-poses. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Why aren’t they moving?”

  “You’re in a split-second of time, Captain. I thought I would address you personally.”

  Maddox studied his wife, Ludendorff, Valerie—he squinted at the brightness, trying to use both hands to shield himself from the intensity. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t make out a thing at the other end of the table.

  “Are you afraid to show yourself as you really are?” asked Maddox.

  “Doing this
takes a vast expenditure of energy,” the entity said. “I cannot maintain this state—our state in a nanosecond of time—for long. You need to go to the…the wreck, you call it a wreck, isn’t that so?”

  “Are you still claiming to be God?”

  “I retract the statement. I’m Balron as you surmised. I thought it would save us time if you thought of me as the Ultimate Deity. I am quite powerful, especially compared to you humans, but I am not God, as you conceive of Him.”

  “Why say what you did then?”

  “I already told you why: to save time trying to convince you to do the right thing. You’re a stubborn man, Captain. Unfortunately, I’ve invested time and effort in you, readied you for the moment, you could say.”

  “Why me?” Maddox asked. “Why did you pick me?”

  “The answer should be obvious. You are a unique individual.”

  “Because of the Erill soul energy in me?” asked Maddox.

  “That’s part of the reason. The other is your knack, your gift to act decisively at critical moments. Such a moment is coming upon you.”

  “At the Library Planet?”

  Balron did not respond.

  Maddox nodded to himself. Maybe the thing to do was to keep talking until Balron ran out of energy to keep him in this state.

  “It won’t work,” Balron said.

  “Can you read my thoughts?” Maddox asked.

  “Enough.”

  “Why did you lie about being stuck in a temporal loop?’

  “While I appreciate your curiosity,” Balron said, “the time for that is over. The Half-Life stratagem failed. We have come to the critical phase, and I still need your assistance. You must go to what you call the wreck and enter it. There…you will find a doorway, Captain. You will find it due to your new sixth sense. You must enter the doorway and go down a long corridor. At the end of it, you will meet an alien. The two of you will go to a special room and retrieve several items. They are missing pieces, you could say. You will return from the corridor back to the wreck. Once there, take the pieces to Victory.”

  “And?” asked Maddox.

  “That will be quite sufficient for now.”

  “What if I refuse to go?”

  “Captain…please…I have gone to great effort to train you, to gift you with new senses. You must use your gift and do this thing for me.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “I need your help,” Balron said.

  Maddox laughed. “You sent Half-Life to us as a stratagem, you just said. He lied about temporal loops, probably lied about other things and tried to destroy Galyan.”

  “I made a mistake with Half-Life’s programming. See, I admit it. So let’s put the construct behind us. It’s finished. The key thing is that I saved you from the Yon Soth and from the attacking S. H. Leviathan warship. I did that by having Half-Life use the nexus to transfer you here.”

  Maddox scoffed. The only reason we were in that star system was because you tricked us into going there.”

  “Captain, if I must, I can make you do this for me. Please don’t make me force you.”

  Maddox reacted instinctively to the threat, shouting, jumping up onto the conference table and charging the light.

  “Stop!” Balron cried. “You must not do this. The timing is wrong.”

  Maddox growled low in his throat. The light felt hot, and the intensity grew. He screwed his eyes shut, continuing to charge—

  He tripped and fell, falling for what seemed like a long time, and there was no more light. Opening his eyes didn’t help. He was falling in darkness.

  Is this a trick? This must be a mental trick.

  Suddenly, he saw a tiny opening far below him. It rushed closer. Through the opening, he saw a deck. At that moment, he fell through the opening, tensed and thudded onto the deck, the wind knocked out of him. Maddox groaned, twisted and tried to breathe, failing and then sucking down a sip of air. That unlocked his lungs. He breathed more deeply, gathered himself and sat up.

  He was in a large, long tubular section of spaceship. This one had float-rails along the sides. In that moment, he realized he was weightless as he floated off the deck.

  He arched his head, looking up. There was no opening, just ceiling. He wasn’t on Victory, but on a different spaceship. That should be impossible.

  He inhaled again, testing—it was breathable air, but with a tinny taste to it. If he wasn’t on Victory—he saw a floating alien approaching. The alien wore a blue uniform with a cap snug on his head and had a furry wolfish face.

  With a start, Maddox realized the alien was an Ardazirho, and the alien barked words at him.

  The captain didn’t understand the words. Thus, he raised his hands palm upward, showing his incomprehension.

  The Ardazirho drew a gun from a holster, pointing it at Maddox, barking more words.

  Maddox raised his hands in the air.

  The Ardazirho eyed him. Then, it motioned with the gun for Maddox to start moving down the corridor.

  Swallowing, wondering if he was hallucinating, Maddox pushed to the nearest float-rail and began to pull himself in the direction the alien wanted him to go.

  -62-

  Maddox soon found himself in a spacious office facing a big fat Ardazirho. The alien had an eye patch over his right eye, and his clothes were garish but of obvious quality, although the buttons on the jacket strained because of the creature’s obesity. The Ardazirho sat behind a large desk, with a fluted glass container before him as he quaffed red wine from a goblet. There were several screens on the wall behind him, one showing a cool red dwarf and the others nothing at the moment.

  Behind Maddox were several armed Ardazirho guards, muscular fellows bigger and meaner looking than the one that had brought him here.

  The big fat Ardazirho sipped the red wine and then barked at Maddox, spraying droplets of wine in the captain’s general direction.

  Maddox began shaking his head and then stopped. To his astonishment, a few of the alien words made sense. He barked a phrase back at the fat fellow.

  That one growled as he leaned toward Maddox. “Who are you, beast? Why do you wear civilized clothes?”

  “I’m Captain Maddox,” he growled back, using their alien tongue with growing ease. “Who are you?”

  The fat Ardazirho froze, perhaps deciding if he should be outraged by the question. Instead, the alien chuckled. “You have the honor of addressing Pack Leader Horx Lars of the good ship C.I. Nubilus.”

  “I’m glad to you meet you, sir.”

  Horx Lars stared at Maddox. Then, the Ardazirho poured himself more wine, gulping it down. “How did you manage to stow away on my ship for this long?”

  Maddox hesitated. Could this be a dream? He didn’t feel as if he was dreaming. An ancient Earth philosopher had once said that one could not be sure regarding reality, because one never knew if it was real life or a dream he experienced. Maddox felt that if one could tell there was a difference between dreams and reality that he possessed a facility that allowed him to differentiate between the two. This felt like reality, despite it being impossible. That meant there had to be a logical reason for all this.

  “Are you deliberately ignoring me?” Horx Lars asked.

  “No, Pack Leader. I’m at a loss to explain my presence on your ship. Would you believe me if I said I simply appeared?”

  Horx Lars slammed a big furry fist on the desk. He swore in the alien tongue and said, “Just appeared. You just appeared on my ship?”

  “Yes, Pack Leader.”

  “That tears it,” Horx Lars said. “We truly are in a quantum phase like the senior scientist suggested. You’re the fourth such anomaly to occur today. I speak of bizarre incidences that have no scientific explanations. Can you be more specific about how you reached the C.I. Nubilus?”

  “I can,” Maddox said, “but you won’t believe me.”

  Horx Lars opened his fanged maw and laughed. “Try me, monkey man. See if I’m not the best Pack Leade
r of the Gatherers.”

  “Uh…before I do, how about a sip of wine to oil my tongue?”

  Horx Lars stared at Maddox. Then, the Ardazirho shoved a goblet and the fluted container across the desk.

  Maddox poured himself red wine and threw it back into his mouth, swallowing. It was strong wine, and it hit him for once. “Ah. That was good.”

  “You drink like an Ardazirho, monkey man. Can you eat your food as fast?”

  “Never mind about that,” Maddox said. “Could I see an image of your ship?”

  “Why?” asked Horx Lars. “Are you a spy perhaps?”

  “I’m a lost monkey man, and I need to find my moorings.”

  “Fair enough, fair enough,” Horx Lars said. He swiveled his immense bulk around and fiddled with a screen. A second later, it showed the C.I. Nubilus, a five-kilometer tubular vessel with thousands of pods around it attached by spoke-corridors.

  “I thought so,” Maddox muttered. “Could you show me where we are?”

  Horx Lars glanced over a shoulder at Maddox, nodded, and tapped the panel. The C.I. Nubilus vanished, showing the iron-nickel mountains of the third planet of the Library Planet system.

  A cold feeling struck Maddox. He became dizzy, and he considered drinking more wine, and then nixed the idea. He needed his wits, not to dull them.

  “Sight of the planet bothers you,” Horx Lars said. “Why would that be?”

  “I’ll tell you in a moment, sir. Could you first tell me what you meant by a quantum phase?”

  Horx Lars swiveled back around to face Maddox. “You look like a sneaking furless monkey, willing to promise the galaxy and just as likely to flinch a thing and lie about it later. But I have a gut feeling about you. You almost seem like a warrior.”

  “I am a warrior.”

  Horx Lars laughed. “Any monkey man would say the same. Well, we’re Gatherers. Do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “We find interesting creatures throughout the cosmos and capture them. We have thousands of animals, some smart, some dumb brutes. We sell, we trade, but mostly we search for fighting creatures to bring to the inner galaxy. The Masters there have games, you understand. It’s a living for us, but it’s tedious at times. We Ardazirhos are the best suited for this life because we’re hunters and nomads by nature. Our knowledge of the galaxy is vast, and that was why my senior scientist knew the affliction of our beloved vessel to be a quantum phase, which emanates from the second planet.”