“She’s not sick,” Keene said. “It’s her head.” He glanced back at Lorelei, and noted that she was focused on Derek’s movements with an intensity Keene could’ve done without. Girls. Keene didn’t get them at all.
Derek rummaged around the silver case, flinging bandages and other low-tech solutions about the ship’s floor. Keene ran around behind the tumbling objects, scooping them up before heading back and snatching the case with an indignant sigh.
Johnny and Catarina emerged from the sleeping quarters, wiping their eyes.
“What happened, boss?” Johnny yawned as he spoke, muffling the words.
“We found him.”
“You mean him?”
“We’ll be free soon.” Keene turned his attention back towards Derek, whose free hand was running through Lorelei’s hair as he used the other to press a stem cell pen against the cut on her head. The trickle of blood disappeared as the device made its way up the small cut, the cells inside organizing and binding with the girl’s to form a new dermal layer.
The process was over, but Derek’s hand lingered.
“All right, killer,” Keene said, and walked over to snatch the pen from Derek’s fingers, “enough playing doctor.” He gave the two of them a light shove apart, and Derek flashed him just the hint of a sly grin. Lorelei looked less amused.
Catarina popped her head out of the cockpit. “You didn’t mention everything’s broken.”
“Didn’t think it was relevant,” Keene said. “We found him.”
“Except you left out that we’re screwed.”
“We just need to fix it.”
“This should be good.”
“You, me and Derek are going out.”
“What about me?” Lorelei said.
“You’re staying here,” Keene said.
“Like hell I am. Probably a bunch of rapists out in those ruins.”
“That’s why Johnny will stay with you. Right?” Keene nodded towards Johnny, who gave an affirmative, lackadaisical shrug. “You’re going to watch the ship, patch up what you can and wait for us to come back.”
“But—” Lorelei’s protests were cut short by a stern look from Keene and a bump from Catarina as she walked by, towards the exit ramp.
The three explorers donned their protective gear, outfitted themselves with standard plasma weaponry and said a silent prayer to an unknown god before Keene pressed a button next to the exit.
A metal walkway descended, gears creaking from the sub-zero cold. An artic chill rushed through the opening, filling the lukewarm interior with a soul-stopping iciness that seemed to lodge itself in the very core of The Blue Maybelle.
Keene, though, pretended to be undeterred by the sudden change in temperature, and trotted down the walkway until his boots hit the black, dusty ground. Not quite dirt. Keene reached down and brushed his fingers through the ruined soil.
Ash.
Thick layers of it coated the street, the buildings. Centuries ago, long before the First War, during the nascent stages of the Coalition—before it was even the Coalition—rebels had fired a series of heat-shielded nuclear missiles into the planet’s small sun, destroying much of it. The ensuing cloud of ash had rained down upon Thori, choking the inhabitants.
Now, after hundreds of years had passed and the wars had ended, the Coalition had finally built an outpost here, on the other side of the planet.
The ash and the lack of sun had plunged the planet into a deep chill, with temperatures reaching below negative fifty degrees Celsius with regularity. A warm day was around negative ten.
Keene’s chilly fingers trembled as he yanked a hat and goggles from his back pocket. He pulled the gear over his face, leaving only his lips exposed. Keene put his head down and began to lead the small expedition over the frozen tundra. The Blue Maybelle had set down about fifteen miles from the fringes of the outpost. In between lay only the skeletal remains of a once thriving city and the inhospitable conditions.
And night was falling.
“You have a plan in mind?” Catarina said.
He pointed into the inky darkness, illuminated only by thin beams from a crescent moon and the millions of stars that littered the sky above.
Smoke on the horizon.
Maybe their quarry lay closer than Keene had thought.
The remnants of residential neighborhoods and anything resembling human life had ended two miles back. The trio was now in a wasteland, a nomad’s desert, their boots leaving footprints in the smooth black, frozen ash.
Smoke billowed through the air. What was a wisp on the horizon now appeared to be some sort of makeshift industrial apparatus belching smog into the night. But it was difficult to tell, so feverishly did the whipping winds swirl before the group.
“No one’s been out here for years,” Derek said. “Not a single footprint.”
“The winds wash them away,” Catarina said. As if on cue, a strong burst of air—the type one might expect to feel when a desert maelstrom was threatening—came towards them. Mounds of dust kicked up around them. This had become a regular occurrence. The ship’s landing spot had been mild in its environmental challenges.
Yet these gusts had thus far been no harbinger of great calamity or natural disaster.
With a hand over his cracking lips, Keene pressed onwards. Misguided youthful exuberance and desperation spurred him towards the intermittent puffs of smoke, as whatever lay on the other side of the black desert would yield a reversal in fortune.
Or so he believed, in his naïveté.
Then the wind died, leaving Keene and his compatriots a clear view of where they’d wound up. The outpost—their original destination—wasn’t visible. Instead, they found themselves in front of gates fashioned from scrap and wreckage, outside the planet’s only remaining city.
A gun—an archaic, brutal old school revolver—poked out over a crenellation in the wall. The burnished silver pistol was held by a hand that, if Keene had to guess, was wearing three or four layers of gloves.
“State your business,” a time-worn voice called out, “or turn around.”
“Kip Keene,” Keene said, surprising even himself with the sternness of his tone, “we’re stranded here and need help.”
It was only half of the truth, but it was the only part of the truth that would grant them access to the less than pearly gates.
The wreckage groaned and sagged as a series of pulleys and cranks were pulled. A small opening formed in the walls, and Keene and the two others slipped through before the gate shut again with a loud bang that screamed out across the now eerily silent plains.
16 | Impatience
But if Johnny were around, still alive here on Earth 200,000 years later, where would his former crewmates find him?
As it turned out, nowhere.
Although Keene’s ensuing search for Johnny had turned up irritating memories from a past best left forgotten, it had, as of yet, produced neither Catarina nor Johnny—nor even a whiff of a lead on either individual.
Finding people who might or might not exist—such as Johnny— was, as it turned out, not an easy undertaking. A futile search had seen five more days tick off the clock, leaving Keene with less than a day on Strike’s original deadline. Visits to the Plaza de Armas, Machu Pichu, Saksaywaman and any set of ruins remotely related to the Incas proved fruitless.
The study of legends, which Franz offered his services and expertise on, also proved equally barren. The utter futility had led to Keene avoiding all of Strike’s calls, in the desperate hope that, when the pair finally spoke, he would have excellent news.
But Johnny was a ghost—perhaps dead.
And Catarina had disappeared with the map of Vilcabamba without a trail.
Leaving Keene stranded on a backwater planet facing jail time.
“Call her, damn it,” Lorelei said. The trio was
seated on the veranda of their modest hotel in Cusco.
“You don’t understand.”
“Coward.” Derek’s eyes were focused on a spot above Keene’s head, as if his former captain was so inconsequential as to not even deserve being seen.
Keene’s phone rang again. He muted it.
Then he heard Strike’s voice, which was strange. In a panicked hurry, he jammed his finger on the END button. But the strains of her words didn’t cease.
They only got louder.
“Surprise.”
Keene refused to turn around, but he could feel her breathing down his neck. If he didn’t look at her, he could maintain the illusion that it was a hallucination, maybe a glitch with his neural implants. Insanity was preferable to her presence—there was a certain freedom in that.
“So this is your handler?” Lorelei had a smirk on her face. “She’s hot. I’m Lorelei. This is Derek. He doesn’t say much anymore. Traumas long past and all that.”
“Care if I have a word with Mr. Keene in private?”
“We know the story.”
“All the same,” Strike said, and Keene could feel her presence looming over his shoulder, the heat of the sun radiating from her blonde hair. “Just a minute.”
Lorelei and Derek got up and moved to the indoor seating, where they watched the proceedings. Keene gave them a pained smile before turning his attention to Strike as she sat down.
“There’s still a day left.”
“This is what happens when you don’t answer phone calls.” Strike pointed at his foot. “Be happy it’s not one of the new models.”
“What do those do?”
Strike mimed pressing a button. “Allow the handler to administer remote shocks at their discretion. Very good for motivation.”
“I’d imagine.” Keene sized her up. Disheveled, with her dress shirt and jeans covered in wrinkles. Tan skin taut beneath wide open eyes keying in on him. The leather jacket still looked good, but it was a bit slacker around the shoulders than he’d remembered. “And how are you?”
“Let’s cut the shit. Tell me what you’ve got.” She leaned forward on her elbows, close enough that Keene could smell stale tobacco and coffee on her breath. Like Ruslan. It didn’t suit her.
“We’ve been working leads. I need more time.”
“You got about twenty-four hours, buddy. Less, actually.”
“I mean, that’s your deadline, not a hard one, so I was thinking—”
“You thought wrong.”
“Care to elaborate?” Keene said.
“All this,” Strike said, sweeping her hands toward the sky, her eyes scanning the horizon, “it can’t go on forever.”
“Sounds bleak.”
“I have a job. A life.”
Keene almost snorted, but nodded instead, adopting what he hoped was a sage look. “So if you don’t catch her by then, you’re closing the chapter.”
“Him.”
“About that,” Keene said. “I think that should be cleared up.”
“Go on.”
“That woman who robbed you?”
“Your ‘former associate,’ as I recall.”
“She’s probably your killer.” Keene paused for a moment to let that sink in. Here came the kicker, the part where she’d probably lunge across the table and choke him to death for being crazy. “And she’s from the same place I came from.”
“Okay.”
“Which isn’t from here.”
“But I know it’s a man.” Keene’s bombshell wasn’t dropping through the bunker just yet. But instead of explaining how he was from another planet—literally—he decided to drop that line of attack for the moment.
“How?”
“I found his picture. Why the hell do you think I called you a dozen times?”
“You like me?”
“Doubtful.” Strike unfolded an email printout and pushed it across the table. “Finally got Freddy to hack into Daddy’s account. That’s the guy.”
Keene rubbed his forehead and squinted, pretending to be blinded by the sun, rather than the photograph that sat before him. Sure, he’d been searching for Johnny the past week, but it was more in the way a small child puts a shovel in the ground and declares he’s digging to the other side of the universe. It was purely a fantasy.
But there was Johnny, and the email said this is what I look like, meet me here, with an address in Peru. Keene scanned the rest of the correspondence. I have the maps. I know where the Emerald Elephant is, but I need help.
“You check it out?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Let’s go—”
“Of course I did, dumbass. First thing I did when I got in today. Freddy gave me the info. A flophouse, cash only, no names, no guest registers, no cameras.”
“But your father was killed in his hotel room. A luxury hotel.” He saw Strike raise an eyebrow. “I read the paper.”
“The artifact was gone by the time EMTs were on the scene.”
“If it was there. The maps, were they—”
“Same ones from the study. That your associate took. They arrived in the mail a week later, with no return address. No note. Nothing.”
“Which means he never met up with Johnny.” Keene nodded. This was good. Maybe Strike’s appearance wasn’t a sign of his impending downfall. “Maybe Catarina finds out Johnny’s alive. Back in town. Puts the pieces together when she sees your dad show up. So Catarina follows Senator Strike to his hotel, expecting an artifact to be there. But it’s not. She’s early. So she has to track them down.”
“Sounds sloppy. Why not follow him to the meet itself?”
Keene considered it. Catarina was too smart to screw up so bad. Unless…
“You have the police report?”
“On me?”
“I mean did you read it.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“When did the cops show up on the scene?”
“A couple minutes after it happened.”
“And was anything missing?” Keene said.
“His computer was gone, I think. I came down when it happened, a couple weeks ago. Get his personal effects and all that.” Strike furrowed her brow. “Damnit.”
“Good or bad damnit?”
“He had this case, like maybe the size of a small suitcase. All silver, with emeralds adorning the outside. It was in the study at home, but…he must have brought it with him.”
“Does it open?”
“It’s a case.”
“What does it have inside?”
“It was always empty. It had two slots in it, for two objects a little larger than a softball.”
Everything clicked together in Keene’s mind. “Catarina saw him bring the case into the hotel. Must’ve thought it had the cores inside. Rushed in without much of a plan.”
“Cores?”
Keene waved her off. “And then she grabbed the case, but before she could check inside, the whole hotel is in disarray. The room, was there a struggle?”
“Yeah, it was pretty messy.”
“So she steals the case. Only to find later that it’s empty. So she still needs the cores. And the maps are the only way to find them.”
“Which means she found Johnny, who led her straight to me. We find one, we find the other.”
“Duly noted. Problem is, we’ve looked. No leads, remember?”
“What’s this about cores?”
Keene explained what the cores were and how they would essentially cause the apocalypse. He left out some of the other important details, like his spacecraft from another galaxy and his crew from a different epoch.
“Tremendous evil and destruction,” Strike said after he’d finished.
“What?”
“Daddy’s note. It said t
he Emerald Elephant was an instrument of tremendous evil and destruction. The Emerald Elephant is these—what do you call them?”
“Nano-fusion cores.”
“And the map, it has an Emerald Elephant in the middle of the Lost City. Which means the cores are hidden in the city.” Strike looked up from the crumpled email and placed her hands around Keene’s wrists, shaking him. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“We need to find the Lost City.”
“It’s lost for a reason.”
“Not for long.” Strike reached into her coat pocket and dialed her phone. “Freddy? Yeah, it’s Samantha. Can you redirect any government hi-resolution imaging satellites in the area to the Peruvian jungle? I’ll give you the general coordinates. It’s around 80 miles west of my current location.”
She hung up the phone.
“How do you know where it is, if it’s been lost?”
“That’s the official site of Vilcabamba. Maybe they missed something. A secret entrance. Incas were mysterious like that.”
But Keene was barely listening. His mind was in the past, recalling the letters at the bottom of the yellowed map. It’d been long enough that his understanding of his former tongue had become inconsistent, fuzzy.
It wasn’t the Lost City of the Incas at the bottom, but the Last.
The distinction sent a shiver up his back, despite the mild air.
“How do you know Catarina, anyway?” Strike said after a long silence.
“You’ll find out one day,” Keene said, his voice distant. “Or you won’t.”
“That’s a great fortune cookie.”
“We need to move.”
“In a hurry?” Strike said.
“You’re the timekeeper, lady,” Keene said. “I’m just playing by your rules.”
Less than twenty-four hours. But that wasn’t what had Keene bothered. If Catarina was already at the Last City, in this secret place, then that meant the Earth’s atmosphere could be incinerated at any moment.
Which would be even worse for Keene’s prospects than jail.
Twenty-four hours and 80 miles.
That would be easy, given all that had happened to get him here.
The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3 Page 11
