The old man returned and sat down, causing Keene to drop the cover with a small whoosh.
“You can look,” Franz said.
“I’m not sure about that.”
“About my permission?”
“If I want to know.”
Franz’s brow furrowed. “But that is the point.”
“The point?”
“We do not really want to know these things,” he said. “Why we are here, what is our purpose. What lies behind the closed door, what secrets our friends hold.”
“We don’t?”
“It is deeper than that. We must know.”
Keene wasn’t sure about the science behind this theory of human ambition and curiosity, but he said, “All right,” and reopened the album.
He leaned down close, inch by inch, until his eyes were no more than three inches from the page. The gaze, the posture, the demeanor then became so clear that Keene recoiled
It was the same Catarina. His Catarina from 200,000 years ago, part of their crew. The one who had come to Strike’s house, stolen the maps. The likely killer of Strike’s father.
“It is as if you have seen a ghost, my friend.”
“Maybe I have,” Keene said. “How’d you meet her?”
“Catarina?” Franz shrugged and gave a small smile. “Time passes, these things become, how do you say it in English? Difficult to remember?”
Could be bullshit, or Franz could just be old. It didn’t matter. Keene’s mind flashed to the first moments in The Blue Maybelle, the skeletons on the floor. A blurry haze, just a glimpse, before the memory plunged back into the abyss of his subconscious.
“The bodies,” Keene said.
“Excuse me?”
“In the ship, there were bodies. What’d you do with them?”
“The Spaniards?”
Spaniards. The hell was Franz talking about? By this point, Keene had put together that the two cracked cryopods didn’t correspond with the two bodies on the ship’s floor. But Spaniards?
“Is this a translation issue?”
Franz laughed. “Perhaps. It is all confusing.” He gave Keene a wink. “But let us talk of other things. That is why I moved out here.”
Keene considered pursuing the Spaniard line of inquiry, but let it die for the time being. “You moved because they took everything from you.”
“No,” the old man said with a smile, “I took everything.”
“I don’t get it.”
“A man’s ego is a dangerous thing. Mine killed my wife. The house, the credentials, the speeches, they turned me into something else.”
“A clerk I met said you were a crazy old man.”
Franz laughed. “Perhaps.”
“How’d he know you?”
“We were heroes. As you might tell, Ecuador, while beautiful, is not the center of such research. Two of their own, about to beat mighty America and the other nations? You can imagine. The papers followed us often.”
“I guess I know the feeling,” Keene said. “What’d you do after?”
“After what?”
“After the lights faded?”
“That’s easy,” Franz said. “I got to know myself.” He stood up from the chair, looking like this time he was going to leave for good.
“And what’d you find?” Keene said.
“I suppose what you too have found.” Franz turned around in the dim light, his form shrouded in the mystery of midnight. “Everything that you hoped you were not.” And then he closed the door to the small bedroom, leaving Keene alone at the table.
Then the door cracked, just a sliver, and Franz added, “I know the woman in the photos was once your friend, long ago. Your two companions have explained that. Fate, no?”
“Did you know she’s still alive?”
There was no answer. The door clicked shut.
An hour passed, and Keene decided, with no bed available to him, that he would sleep outside, under the stars. He took his pack and walked, quick at first, but then careful, as the boards creaked beneath his hurried steps, and eased out the front door.
A hundred yards away, he found a spot that looked inviting, and he sat down in the lush grass, plumped up the bag as best he could, and lay staring at the endless night, wondering about all that had happened in the 200,000 years he’d been sleeping.
12 | A Trip Up the Mountain
“It is the wet season, friend.” Franz’s words roused Keene from his slumber. “This will help.”
A furry coat fluttered down from between Franz’s fingers, one almost identical to the one he’d received six months before from the child. It was almost serendipitous, so much so that the normally rational and grounded Keene contemplated the meaning of the universe.
Or his introspectiveness could have been the product of a refreshed mind.
Despite the hard ground—the grass, while soft, didn’t compare to an expensive mattress—Kip Keene awoke feeling the best he had in quite some time.
Maybe it was the mountain air.
Maybe it was seeing his old friends.
It sure wasn’t because of him, because of Derek and his steel toed boot now kicking at Keene’s side.
Keene grunted and spun over, spitting blood. “You son of a bitch,” he said, then decided to stop speaking, since the words hurt so bad to get out. His rib cracked and moved within his abdomen.
Keene stared in the direction of the rising sun, each breath bringing a new shockwave of pain. He waved at the two figures starting up the path towards his location, but neither seemed to notice him.
“I had no choice, Captain.” Derek walked off.
Despite the pain, Keene screamed out into the morning light, “I liked you better when you weren’t a robot.” He watched Derek disappear into the scenic distance. His former second-in-command’s right hand was missing a pinky.
Keene shuddered.
This discomfort was replaced by a strange notion flashing in Keene’s mind. Derek had spoken English. Impeccable English. Which could only mean one thing. His traitorous friend’s neural implants were functioning.
The only question, then, was how, after 200,000 years in cryostasis, that was possible. Keene’s were non-functional at best, an impediment and a hazard to his health at worst—when they happened to malfunction and send a splitting migraine through his skull.
Yet another irritating mystery to add to the growing pile.
He grunted, dragging his body off the ground to settle into a limping walk. From his vantage point, the door to Franz’s house looked about five miles away. The four hundred feet felt about as long. Keene almost fell over as he entered the front door and stumbled into the kitchen. He crashed into one of the chairs in a jumbled heap, knees on the floor, hands and face leaning against the seat.
Lorelei passed by, stopping in the entranceway.
“Kip.” She, too, spoke perfect English in addition to the crisp Spanish Keene had heard the night before.
“Yeah?”
“We were supposed to be family.”
Keene turned to look at his little sister. Her expression was solid, steady, but the edges of her eyes quivered in a slight fashion, betraying her true emotions.
“We still are,” he said after a long pause, not sure if the words were true.
She shook her head and went out the door. From afar, just before the door closed, Keene heard her say, “Drink the tea on the stove.”
Then it slammed shut, leaving Keene alone, in a vacuum, where the only sound was the hiss of the kettle. A pungent, woody aroma assaulted his nostrils as the contents reached a rolling boil.
He lifted himself from the seat with gritted teeth and poured the dark brown liquid into one of the pewter cups lined up next to the stovetop.
The taste, combined with the heat, had enough kick
to almost make Keene vomit. But he held it down, chugging the entire cup with steadfast determination. He was unsure why he bothered, but the gesture felt right.
As the contents settled in his stomach, Keene noticed a strange vitality overtaking his body. Five minutes later, the pain in his ribs was gone.
Maria entered the home and looked him over, as a farmer might examine a growing steer. She nodded knowingly and took to washing the kettle.
Keene gave her a quick gracias before racing up the path to join the others.
Out of breath by the time he reached Franz, who was now walking alone, Keene still managed to say, “Where are we headed?”
“To the place where it all began,” Franz said with a knowing nod. “Up Cotopaxi.”
If this was where it all began, Keene was starting to wonder how the hell he hadn’t frozen to death. The mild weather of the city and valleys below was soon replaced by a bitter, whipping cold and snow flurries swirling in the air. As the group had walked further up the mountainous volcano, and a hint of frost began to form on the red soil, the former space privateer found himself shivering, his breath forming a gust of mist upon expulsion into the thin mountain air.
That was when Keene saw it: The Blue Maybelle, its still grounded hull surrounded by work lamps and a great tarp. Only the edge of the craft was visible from Keene’s vantage point, but it was enough to spur his feet forward into a dead run down the sloped crater where she lay.
Panting from the exertion and altitude, Keene arrived to find that the craft was now completely excavated—and quite damaged. Its nose, once pointed and sleek, had been bent and broken on impact, and one of the wings was sliced in two, wires and shrapnel flowing from the wound. From the lights and response of the craft’s systems, the computer was still okay.
But it was clear that the Maybelle was in little shape to fly. Whether she would soar again in the future was an open question, but whether she could do so again within the week was an unquestionable no way in hell.
Keene’s head dropped as he sucked in oxygen, his heart dropping as hope gushed from his chest like he’d been sucker punched by a large boxer. Still, there were the ship’s systems—they would prove useful in his task.
He looked up, and found the three others staring at him, like they were waiting for him to say something.
“What?” he said, still trying to catch his breath. The frosty, thin air meant that he was having a hell of a time doing so, and he regretted his exuberance—especially when he took in the lack of payoff at the end of the proverbial rainbow.
“Your friends want to know why you’ve come,” Franz said. “Or, I should say, have returned.”
His tone suggested that Keene had abandoned his crew. And Derek’s boot, and Lorelei’s general coldness had thus far indicated much the same verdict on Keene’s flight from Cotopaxi’s snowy shelves six months prior.
He had left his crew behind.
And a captain never did that, no matter the circumstance.
But Keene, after 200,000 years, was no longer much of a captain, no longer felt like a leader. And thus, he just returned their icy glares and shrugged. “I got in trouble,” he said. He took a step forward, his sneakers slipping against the frosty, slick terrain. Rubbing his arms, he made a move to go by Derek, who was blocking the ship’s entry.
The great man moved and shoved Keene back.
“See,” he said. “Don’t touch, Captain.”
“A hell of a lot of good that’ll do me,” Keene said, but, considering how the day had started, decided that it was in his best interest to heed Derek’s gruff words—at least for the time being. Keene backed up the gentle incline, so that he was looking down on the three of them.
Despite the new height advantage, he didn’t feel any closer to exerting his influence or getting what he needed. So he sat down and lifted up his pant leg, sliding the fabric over the bulky transmitter. He outstretched both of his hands toward the object, as if to say this is why I’m here.
His former crew looked nonplussed and uninterested in his plight.
“I told you I got in trouble,” Keene said. “A lady cop busted me for stealing.”
“Someone didn’t learn from their mistakes,” Lorelei said. Her eyes indicated, however, that she hoped it was stealing along the lines of their past exploits—an air of chivalry, bravado and sticking it to the man.
Her face displayed clear disappointment when Keene said, “I might’ve got a little greedy.”
“Is that all?”
“Why’d you stay up here with the old man, anyhow?”
“Loyalty,” Derek said. “He saved us.”
“I get that—”
“I don’t think you do,” Lorelei said. “We don’t think you do.”
Keene nodded, almost feeling bad about shoulder checking the old man in the frozen ship, scrambling away without even so much as a thank you. But then he just shrugged, because the past was an illusion, the future a wish, and he needed to focus on the present.
Or something like that. He’d heard it on TV, and liked the sound of it.
And what he needed in the present was simple: he needed access to his damn ship.
“Let me see her, at least,” Keene said. “She’s mine.”
“Can you really say that if you abandoned it?” Lorelei said.
“I paid for it,” Keene said. “My name was on the loan.”
“I don’t think Jack the Diamond will come looking for papers.”
“How the hell did you keep this thing under wraps anyway?” His eyes scanned the frost-crusted tundra. From what he’d gathered, Cotopaxi and its surrounding wonders were something of a tourist hotspot—climb the mountain, tell your friends you were some sort of badass adventurer.
Then again, at this point in time—or maybe at any point, ever, in time—his understanding of most matters was low.
“Carefully,” Franz said with a patient smile. “Come.”
Lorelei and Derek, despite their previously firm protestations that Keene was not to be allowed on board, deferred to the old man’s judgment without question or gripe, forming a thin passageway through which Keene squeezed through.
He could feel their breath, the weight of their stares, questions and accusations raining down on him as he slid past, but there wasn’t time for all that. He had six days before he was going to be put in Federal lockup by an agent much too pretty to be doing anything resembling law enforcement.
Although she had handled him just fine.
Keene would’ve been embarrassed by the recollection of getting his ass kicked, but even with today’s groveling and the lukewarm reception he’d received, his ego was pretty much undamaged.
Six months of being an outcast will make a man impervious to life’s smaller slights and indignities.
Franz walked through the ship’s halls, pointing out new features without a word, understanding that Keene would notice their changes. He led the younger man into the cockpit. Keene’s fingers brushed over the polycarbonate alloy. Despite not being used in thousands of years, it was clean and well-maintained—no doubt the careful hand of Lorelei or Derek.
“Does the console still work?” Keene pressed down on a few of the buttons, but The Blue Maybelle made no indication that she would awake from her perpetual slumber. The outer lights proved illusory.
Franz shook his head. “The nano-fusion cores are missing.”
“Missing?”
“Gone. Only one backup, running vital systems. Lucky us, right?” Lorelei said. “We shut off the greeting and defense systems.”
“How big was the backup, again?”
“About the size on each cryopod.”
“Are they big enough—”
“To run them in a series?” Lorelei grinned, but it wasn’t friendly. “Funny, we didn’t think of that.”
�
�Sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Your ship,” Franz said, cutting into the dispute, “I’m afraid, won’t run without the main cores.”
“Where’d they go?”
“Someone took them,” Derek said.
“Catarina?” Keene explained how she had been interested in the maps.
“So it’s true.” Franz’s expression was troubled. He leaned against the walls and placed his fingers over his mouth in deep contemplation. “She didn’t take them. But.”
The last word was ominous. “But what,” Keene said. There was no answer for a lengthy time.
“But I believe she’s looking for them, if our past research was any indication.”
“Okay,” Keene said. “Big deal. I’m looking for her.” Kind of. His first inclination, had the cores been present, was to convince the others to fire up the jets and abscond into space, forever leaving this wretched rock behind.
Strike could’ve watched The Blue Maybelle’s plume of thruster smoke disappear into the atmosphere.
He acknowledged that this scenario was always somewhat fanciful.
The gravity of the truth settled on him, and his stomach turned over.
Keene would have to find Catarina, that girl he loved so long ago—now a woman pushing past middle age who had a strange and murderous agenda. Otherwise Strike, who had proven to have a quick trigger finger, would no doubt dog him all over this forsaken planet.
Then Franz drove the seriousness further home. “The work we did, she always spoke of home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, of home. Always cryptic.” He shook his head. “This is before I knew of all this.”
“And?”
“I believe she means to leave this planet.”
“Good riddance.” After brief consideration, however, Keene’s stomach churned again. Escape to the stars was probably not the fate Strike envisioned for this woman. If Keene let that happen, the fury brought upon his head would be swift and absolute.
“Not quite,” Franz said. “The power of the thrust, the nano-fusion cores, their effect on Earth’s atmosphere…” His voice trailed off, signifying that some great calamity would befall the planet.
The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3 Page 8
