The Lost Star Gate (Lost Starship Series Book 9)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Throughout all this, Mako waited in the transfer chamber. Now, she was becoming impatient. She wanted to get on with it, as she was excited and more than a little worried about all the things that could go wrong. As more time passed, the excitement, waiting and worry became too much. Using a combination of transduction and other modifications, the Spacer egg probed outward with her heightened senses. With a radar-like ability, she “saw” and studied the massive activity around her.

  Probing farther and farther, Mako “saw” for the first time the mighty alien that had been awakened from his ancient slumber. Nay-Yog-Yezleth was a gross blob-like creature with many tentacles and a ring of hideous eyes. Despite the inhuman appearance, Mako felt his towering intellect.

  In turn, Nay-Yog-Yezleth sensed her probing, and he directed a portion of his personality at her.

  Mako grew faint as the weight of his presence avalanched upon her. He was old beyond reckoning and callous…not in a reptilian way, but in an alien manner that chilled Mako to the core of her being. Nay-Yog-Yezleth possessed…cosmic awareness, a cold intellect that dwarfed human thought and had soared above the Builders.

  Like a sick person flailing against a strong man using a pillow to suffocate her to death, Mako struggled pitifully against the ugly weight of Nay-Yog-Yezleth’s searching intellect.

  During the overwhelming contact, Mako sensed a malignant will and a demonic hunger to consume. Nay-Yog-Yezleth’s mind-power was gigantic compared to hers, and his inhuman vitality had kept him alive in a slimy pit in the hottest abyss of the Forbidden Planet.

  A normal Spacer would have wilted under the intense alien onslaught. But Mako was no longer normal, and she had sensed such darkness before. She suffocated under the being’s mental weight, but she struggled, and while struggling she sensed more about the Old One. He practiced deep cunning, and in some sly manner, Nay-Yog-Yezleth had helped to shape the Spacers.

  How did he do this? Mako yearned to know. Her mind was suffocating, but she wriggled a thought here and another there.

  Nay-Yog-Yezleth had rejected conscious logic to mold the Spacers. Instead, he’d helped another greater than him who used nightmarish dream-truths that had invaded Meditation Machine-formed multi-mind entities.

  Yes! Mako had sensed dark undercurrents flowing through the universe. One piece of that darkness had joined their former multi-mind entity. She realized now that that darkness had come from a greater Old One hidden out there in the Sagittarius Arm.

  While her mind gasped under Nay-Yog-Yezleth’s mental weight, Mako sought to learn more. Was she a pawn in a Great Game beyond her understanding? Did Nay-Yog-Yezleth use the Spacers instead of the Spacers using the Old One?

  In a moment of time, Mako saw Nay-Yog-Yezleth in the control pit, his tentacles whipping about with bewildering speed as he energy-focused the Great Machine.

  Mako now received dark secrets of ancient interstellar lore. The Old Ones had installed the Great Machine eons ago during a grim time in galactic history. The subterranean caverns containing the machine snaked throughout much of the continental crust. Heat power from the mantle surged through turbines so giant cogs whirled and spun, and kilometer-long pistons furiously rocketed up and down. Sizzling electronic connections joined with gouts of phantom energy. There were other energies and mechanisms driving the Great Machine that Mako could not conceptualize. The combined forces shook the planetary surface, causing quakes in places.

  As Nay-Yog-Yezleth studied her with his immense, cold intellect, Mako received more shocks of knowledge.

  The majority of the Great Old Ones had perished in eons past. They had used the Great Machine here in their cosmic conspiracies. A horrible backlash of energies had devoured many of the gross creatures, sending some on long interstellar journeys, while turning most into puddles of slime.

  Mako wondered if that was true. Something about the mental images she received now seemed false, off, a distraction. The particular image of the devouring energies showed massive destruction to much of the Great Machine. The idea, then, was that the Spacers had worked for over a hundred years to repair the machine. Mako saw in her mind Spacers toiling like ants, ceaselessly repairing the terrible damage.

  “I don’t believe that,” she managed to gasp. “It isn’t logical or true.”

  The brutal heaviness of the alien’s thoughts abruptly pulled back. Just before the retreat, Mako sensed unease, the possibility that he’d made a mistake with her, sensed, if there was a way to repair the mistake? Possibly.

  “Mako,” a man said.

  Mako withdrew her radar-like senses from out there—she could do so now that Nay-Yog-Yezleth had stopped mentally suffocating her—pulling her consciousness back into her mortal body. She was supposed to be alone in the transfer chamber. It was inconceivable, then, that anyone had breached the sealed area to physically join her at this weighty moment of destiny.

  As she stood inside the heart of the Great Machine, Mako’s blind eyes opened. They used the optic sensors of the goggles, peering through the closed visor of her spacesuit helmet.

  To her shock, the Strand clone stood in the chamber with her. He also wore a spacesuit. How he’d achieved this entry and gained a suit, Mako did not know. Could it have anything do to with Nay-Yog-Yezleth’s unease with her? That seemed inconceivable. No. That was laughable. This was something else entirely, right?

  It didn’t matter. She would know soon enough how the Strand clone had snuck in here, and she would teach the clone a bitter lesson about protocol. Only…that lesson might not happen because the clone was aiming a gun at her. That was a joke, of course, because she had her new powers.

  Within her helmet, Mako smiled indulgently—the clone was a pathetic, predictable little weasel, thinking he could cow her by waving a weapon. She reached out with her modifications, and recoiled in surprise.

  The Strand clone did not hold a beamer, a pistol-weapon she could easily cause to malfunction. Instead, he held an old-fashioned chemical-reaction-driven slugthrower. He had an old .45 pistol of ancient manufacture, an actual 1911 model.

  This was highly irregular. Where had the clone found such a thing? Nay-Yog-Yezleth couldn’t have produced that. Why would she even think the Old One could?

  No. Forget about the Old One. Nay-Yog-Yezleth did his appointed task. He was a cog, a thing the Spacer Nation used in its quest for…for something.

  Despite the fear caused by the Colt .45, Mako spoke imperiously through her helmet speaker. “Lower your weapon, Clone.”

  “I want to know one thing first,” Strand said through his helmet speaker.

  “What is that?” Mako asked.

  “How did I get here and where are we going?”

  “That’s two questions.”

  “Where are we going then?”

  Ah. Mako realized that the Colt wasn’t an insolvable problem. Still, she should humor him a moment or two as she figured out how she would eliminate him.

  “I’m going to my destiny in the Sagittarius Arm,” Mako said.

  “And?” the clone asked.

  The question was maddening and insulting. The clone did not deserve to know about her future greatness. Still, if he died soon—as in several seconds from now—what did it matter if she told him?

  In a controlled voice, Mako answered, “Once in the Sagittarius Arm, I will transmute into a new being of great power.”

  In the background, there was a flickering sense of Nay-Yog-Yezleth sighing with relief. What did that mean? The sense of the watching Old One vanished, however.

  “I’m speaking to you,” the clone said. “I’m not in the habit of repeating myself.”

  “What did you say?” Mako asked, realizing he’d been talking while she’d sensed Nay-Yog-Yezleth’s sigh.

  “How will you do this…this transmuting?” the clone asked.

  That was too much. The clone sought to learn the deep Spacer secrets and asked highly embarrassing questions to boot.

  “Why do you care about any
of this?” Mako asked haughtily. And then it slipped out. “You’re not going to live much longer.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong,” the clone said. “There’s no future for me here. That’s clear enough. Thus, I’m coming with you. I remember now how I slipped in here. It was quite ingenious and obviously, I must have been planning it for some time. You see, this is an urgent matter for me. The questions are because I want to know what to expect on the other side.”

  “You’re a fool, Clone. The Great Machine cannot propel both of us that incredible distance. There is only power to send one. Thus—” Mako stopped talking because she realized the clone already knew that. He had said all of that to distract her.

  Strand pulled the trigger. The Colt boomed as the chemical reaction took place. The explosion hurled a lead slug through the barrel at her.

  Mako reacted swiftly and decisively, reaching out with her telekinetic power. She did not stop the bullet cold. It was likely she lacked the power to do such a thing, as the bullet had great force behind it, and this process occurred in a fraction of a second. Instead, Mako deflected the bullet just a trifle.

  The bullet still flew at her but missed the spacesuit by a millimeter. The slug crashed against the wall of the transfer chamber, and that was bad. The process needed incredible precision. Another—

  Boom!

  The clone fired again.

  Once again, Mako deflected the bullet.

  Now, the Strand clone used two hands to hold the weapon, and he fired one bullet after another. He seemed desperate to kill her, almost maniacal.

  She deflected each shot like a gun-fu master from an old vid. She was a master at this. Unfortunately, each shot marred the interior of the transfer chamber.

  “You fool,” Mako said.

  Strand snarled and charged her, hurling the Colt .45 at her helmeted head.

  Mako used her telekinesis on the metal gun. It lacked the brutal velocity of the bullets, as the clone was weak-armed. Thus, she deflected the gun’s flight, T-lifted the automatic high in the chamber and brought it rushing down against the clone’s helmeted head.

  The blow disoriented the clone and caused him to stumble. He grunted through his helmet speaker, tangled his feet, tripped and skidded across the floor. He raised his helmeted head.

  Mako concentrated, and she used the Colt .45 like a hammer as it rose and fell, repeatedly knocking his helmet. He managed to work up to his feet once and stagger toward her.

  She skipped out of his path, but kept her concentration as she continued to hammer his helmet with the T-controlled gun.

  “Stop it,” the clone said. “Let’s make a deal, a pact. We can both live.”

  That was a lie, and Mako knew that he knew. The process continued, therefore, and finally his helmet cracked.

  “No!” he shouted. “Have mercy. I never meant you any harm.”

  Mako did not laugh. Instead, she continued to use the dented and twisted gun like a hammer. Now, however, she broke open the helmet and dashed the gun against his skull.

  The Strand clone fell to the floor and screamed for mercy, begging her.

  The gun continued to rise and fall, making grotesque sounds now as it struck his bleeding head. The clone’s begging finally ceased and soon so did his groans. At last, the clone’s space-suited legs kicked and twitched and then they stilled.

  The gun clattered to the floor. According to Mako’s quick radar-like scan, his heart had stopped as his brainwaves ceased. The clone was dead. It had taken long enough. The problem was that he’d left a dilemma for her.

  The old Mako would have been mentally exhausted by the ordeal. The new mutated Mako had power to spare. Once more, she used her modifications, looking around and knowing that the mission was in serious jeopardy. Because of the bullet marks along the interior walls and the excess mass in here, the Great Machine would transfer her elsewhere than the great goal.

  “I cannot allow the project to fail,” Mako intoned.

  Sitting cross-legged in the center of the chamber, Mako bowed her helmeted head. She gathered her resolve and opened an outer hatch in the transfer chamber.

  The hatch had been sealed. Meaning that what she did should have been impossible. She was the Spacer egg, however. She was the proto-god in the making. With her telekinesis, Mako shoved the corpse and the gun and the spent bullets from the chamber. Seconds later, the hatch slammed shut for good.

  Then, with great patience and skill, Mako began to repair the bullet damage along the interior walls. It was slow and tedious work. But what else did she have to do?

  Once done, Mako exhaled and raised her helmeted head. She had barely completed the repairs in time. For, at that precise moment, the energies of the Great Machine reached its pitch, and the incredible transfer began to take place.

  -88-

  Vast energies flowed through precisely calibrated Usan crystals. It was a storm of power. This storm wasn’t controlled by computers, but by the monstrous entity in the pit of the Great Machine.

  Nay-Yog-Yezleth whipped his tentacles with bewildering speed as he sat in the control pit. The mind deep in the blob-like bulk sped through long-string equations as he followed matrix mechanics of eldritch complexity.

  The heat power of the Forbidden Planet changed into quantum-5 energy as it passed through one ring of Usan crystals after another. The quantum-5 energy moved great levers and tripped turbines of elder science. That built up the transcendent power source until huge crackling balls of ethereal dynamism merged into one another.

  A well opened in a subterranean pit. The massive crackling ethereal dynamism surged down into the last generator. No metal or plastic, nor any material substance of any kind, made up the parts of this machine. Energy walls and phantom circuits flowed with molten power.

  On the surface of the Red Planet, the six giant obelisks glowed with power. The symbols along the sides pulsed like a beating heart. The obelisk tips shone sun-like until the luminance became too savage to see.

  Now, the elder being in the great control pit—Nay-Yog-Yezleth—swiveled around as panels flipped over to their targeting sides. His slimy tentacles sped through complex sequences. The Visionary had given him the target—so she thought. She’d received the data while using a Meditation Machine as she’d joined another multi-mind entity. The Visionary believed that she had seen the target in her future visions. This target was a great nexus in the Omega Nebula in the Sagittarius Spiral Arm.

  Nay-Yog-Yezleth knew the secret truth. Spacers using the Meditation Machines used an astral process that made them susceptible to the cosmic dreams of slumbering Old Ones. Monkey-driven brains floating through the cosmos on astral journeys were easily manipulated. The apish creatures had a high gullibility factor. The Spacers were more prone to this than other humans were because they loved esoteric science and offbeat mysticism.

  Thus, Nay-Yog-Yezleth accepted the targeting. He recognized the nexus of their ancient foe, the Builders of hard science insights. The Spacers believed they could soar to evolutionary heights through these forbidden means.

  Yes, yes, Nay-Yog-Yezleth told himself. I shall free you, father. You shall rule again, and the night of the Yog-Soths will descend upon the galaxy once more.

  In the control pit, a myriad of holoimages appeared before Nay-Yog-Yezleth. His hideous ring of eyes observed the many images, and he made squishing sounds and octopus-like croaks as his tentacles whipped faster and faster, the tips touching masses of switches.

  The tainted varth elixir gave him the needed energy to perform at this prodigious level. He had not felt like this for ten thousand years. He had been here before the damning era of the Builders. He had hidden during the surge of the Nameless Ones and slumbered as the Builders slowly waned in ability and presence. Now, awakened from his ancient slumber, he knew that he helped in a great process driven by his father’s nightmarish dreams.

  He silently laughed at the notion that the tainted varth elixir would kill him. That was a Spacer conceit, a la
st piece of caution against the possibility that they had made a grave mistake in wakening him.

  It was no mistake, but it would end miserably for the monkey-beings originating from Earth. It wouldn’t be the last time an Old One corrupted a race by promising the power to defeat their foes. Nay-Yog-Yezleth easily recognized his father’s dream-manipulations. The Swarm Imperium out there would be the perfect race to serve them as mindless slaves. It was almost as if the bugs were custom-built for the Yog-Soths.

  Now, Nay-Yog-Yezleth’s contemplations ceased as he began the final process. This would take every erg of his cosmically aware intellect. He had to concentrate, concentrate—

  Now, now, now! It was about to happen once again. This was a glorious moment in the greatest saga of the galaxy.

  In the transfer chamber where Mako waited, ethereal dynamism boiled in like misty lava. It wasn’t hot, no, it was cold—freezing cold—to a woman of flesh and blood. The ethereal dynamism continued to flood the chamber until it compacted. As more churned within, it condensed to an incredible degree. That heated the dynamism and transformed it into metaphysical energy that had no mass. As the transformation occurred, it caused Mako to turn translucent.

  An outside observer would say that she was becoming invisible. Yet, that would not be precise. She was losing mass as her mass turned into metaphysical energy. Soon, Mako had disappeared, as had the thruster-pack and all other substances in the strange chamber.

  With the faint sound as of a million subdued voices arguing, the metaphysical energy charged up into Quantum-9 Transformers. Seconds passed. Then, the Quantum-9 Transformers beamed the Q9 charged M-energy at the speed of thought toward the six great obelisks on the screaming, stormy surface of the planet.

  The six giant obelisks glowed like points on a star. A swirling power appeared between the tips. This was Q9 charged M-energy and it sped faster and faster until it exceeded the speed of thought.

  Some might have called this the scream of ghosts. It was ethereal, and, arguably supernatural. The science of the Yog-Soths was unlike any other in the galaxy, except perhaps for the Ska.