The Conspiracy Game: A Tully Harper Novel: A Tully Harper Novel (The Tully Harper Series Book 1)

by Adam Holt

  Buckshot let out a hoot that scared us all to death.

  “Oooooh-weee! Son of a gun! Will you look at that! There’s your Harper Device. And there’s your Harper!”

  Sure enough, on one side of the ship the Harper Device faintly glowed, and in the middle, piloting the Cerberus, was my dad.

  THE WAY HOME

  “You mean the Ascendant had the Device on board their ship and didn’t even realize it?” asked Sunjay.

  “It was right under their noses.”

  After a trip to the infirmary and an ultrasonic shower, my dad met us on the Observation Deck to debrief about his experience.

  He had not destroyed the Lion’s Mane, but he did some serious damage to the ship. After we set him free, he searched until he found the ship’s enormous hangar, filled with well-armed, smaller spacecraft. There was the Cerberus. Two Ascendant were examining it. Just as they discovered that the Device was on board, my dad crept behind them, knocked out one, fought the second, and won. The Cerberus was full of mining equipment, including small explosives, which he attached to a large fuel tank of some kind in the hangar. That must have been the explosion we felt in the space lab, I thought. He then piloted the Cerberus through one of the escape hatches and hid the Harper Device elsewhere.

  “I knew Trackman and the Ascendant would search every inch of both ships for the Device, so I opted for a new hiding place—The Lion Mane’s shell. But the Cerberus was too damaged to return to The Adversity. Still, I couldn’t come back. It was in our best interest—and the best interest of the world,” he said.

  “Tully found the Device,” said Buckshot, stretching his bruised ribs. “The boy convinced me to turn this ship around. You’d have froze out there if your boy hadn’t looked at that model.” My dad grinned and tousled my hair. At long last, I had done what I came to do.

  Of course, “feeling good” didn’t feel great. After his story ended, everyone asked about our adventure, too—escaping the cage, identifying the traitors, outsmarting Trackman, creating portals, and on and on. They peppered us with questions. When we got to the part about the battle in the space lab, it caught in my throat. I could only picture those that weren’t with us anymore—all four of them. Two people I never wanted to see again, one person who didn’t deserve to die, and one that I could never replace. Eventually my dad said, “Why don’t we leave Tully to his thoughts for a while? He’s been through enough.” He was right.

  I had a lump in my throat that wouldn’t go away. That night Sunjay decided to sleep in the orangutan cage with me. When I closed my eyes, I could still see Tabitha reaching out to me, telling me to close the portal. The scene replayed a hundred times in my mind—if I had been faster or stronger, I could have closed the portal while she was still on our side. She would still have been with us. I couldn’t sleep, so I let myself out of the cage and decided to wander through the ship alone. Before I was out of the space lab, I felt a tug on my sleeve.

  “Hey,” said Sunjay, sticking right by my side.

  That night Sunjay and I visited Redshirt’s room. It was almost exactly like my dad’s. There was a quote on the wall: A noble man makes noble plans, and by noble deeds he stands. We looked at his family picture for a while—one of those beach photos where everyone is wearing khakis pants and white shirts with a perfect sunset in the background.

  “We could have saved him,” I said. Sunjay looked at me and shook his head.

  “No, Tully. We would never have figured out the plot without him. It’s not your fault.”

  “I guess not.”

  “No, it’s not, Tully. You did everything you knew how to do.”

  “And Tabitha? What about her, Sunjay? I could’ve saved her if only—“

  He grabbed my arm and stopped me.

  “Tully, didn’t you hear what your dad said earlier? He didn’t come back to the ship because it was in everyone’s best interest. Well, Tabitha did the same thing. She wanted you to close that portal, and you had to close it. What if you hadn’t? It gives me shivers just thinking about the Ascendant coming on board and, and taking over The Adversity, and then what? Returning to Earth to make us slaves?”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right, Tully. Don’t you get it? You did exactly what your daddy would have done, and he’s my hero.”

  I tried to let that sink in. We returned to the orangutan cage and slept.

  A Red Vision interrupted my sleep. In the Vision, I stood in the middle of an ice-covered plain. The terrain wasn’t familiar, but in the distance I saw those enormous purple towers. I walked toward them. Everything glowed with a strange purple light. It’s the Ascendant’s planet, I realized. The icy plain stretched for miles. There were enormous cracks in the ice, which groaned, squeaked, and shifted beneath my feet. I had a feeling this place was once full of life. Something was wrong. Nothing could live here now.

  Something sprouted from the ice in front of me—first it looked like four enormous snakes were leaping from the ground, but then a fifth shorter one emerged, too. A hand, I realized, and on one finger a gold ring—the ring of Gallant Trackman. The hand towered above me, and with a menacing gesture, pointed one finger toward the sky. I looked up and saw a star in the distance, and beside it a faint, blue speck. Where are we? I wondered. This must be our solar system. The hand seemed to feel my presence though. The hand became a fist and tried to swat me like a fly. I barely dodged that giant fist, which crashed into the ground behind me and shattered into icy chunks.

  I continued on toward the towers. Getting closer, I could see a figure on the parapet. She held a ribbon in her hand. No, a scarf. “Tabitha!” I shouted. Just as I began to run toward her, a black staff grew out of the ground, its purple head buzzing with energy. Then another and another. They formed a barrier and wouldn’t let me pass. I couldn’t create a portal. High on her tower I could see Tabitha searching the horizon. The vision faded into darkness. I tried to remember all the detail of the landscape—the icy plain, the seven high towers. Was there a city below them? Had I heard people cheering in the background? It was hard to say.

  The next Vision was the first hopeful scene I had seen in a while. I found myself back in Houston. It was spring and bells were ringing in a church tower. Everyone I knew—from Aunt Selma to Dr. Vindler and my classmates—sat in the churchyard at an outdoor wedding. Tabitha was missing though.

  At the front I could see a bride. Beside her, a groom. Their backs were to me, but I could see the groom’s hair: a red streak went through the center. My dad’s getting married? I jumped out of my seat and ran toward the front. The groom began to turn toward his bride, but before he could lift her white veil, the Red Vision dissolved into nothing and left me wondering what the future held for us all. There might be some happy ending waiting for us, but it was a long way away.

  All these Visions drifted through my mind when I awoke. I looked out the skylight at the Earth growing closer by the hour. Sunjay stirred, and for the next few hours, we stargazed together.

  FOOTPRINTS

  “I brought you something,” I told my dad the next morning, floating up beside him on the Observation Deck. He ran his hand down the red stripe in his hair and looked at the Moon behind us. We were nearly home.

  “I have a gift for you first,” he said, reaching into a pocket of his blue jumpsuit. It was a piece of dingy gray cloth the length of my arm. One end had fringe. The other end was blackened but trimmed, like a hot blade had cut it. I had no idea why he brought me the old scrap of cloth until I touched it. At that moment the cloth sprung to life with color—purple and black began to swirl around the cloth, mixed with an occasional bright red flash.

  “How did you get this? Where is the other half ?” I asked, but the answer came back to me. I pictured the portal in the space lab—the Ascendant Lord holding Tabitha, Trackman preparing to climb through the portal, Tabitha’s scarf positioned between the two sides. When I closed the portal, her scarf was severed. Maybe she h
eld the other half even now, locked away in a cell on the Lion’s Mane. I tied the scarf around my right arm and watched it radiate with color.

  Then I remembered the rest of that scene. The terrible sounds. The chaos. But something else had frightened me before I blacked out. Maybe I was hallucinating, I thought. There had been a horrible thing floating beside the scarf in the space lab that day. No, it was as real as the scarf.

  “Dad, what else happened when the portal closed? I remember seeing something else. Did Trackman lose—”?

  “Yes, I wasn’t there to see it, but you took Gallant Trackman’s hand when you closed the portal,” my dad explained, staring into space.

  “Like he needs more reasons to hate me.”

  “He sure doesn’t. Neither do The Ascendant. They lost the Device and their ship was nearly destroyed. I lost a good man. They captured your friend. There are a lot of scores to settle here.”

  “I don’t care about scores. We’ve got to save Tabitha.”

  “You’re right.” He turned toward me. “That’s one thing I promise you: no matter what comes next, we’ll find Tabitha. We’re not going to lose another...” His voice trailed off and eyes flashed red with old memories. “She’s as much my responsibility as yours. First, we must prepare. The Ascendant will come first for you and the Device, and then for the world.”

  “Why me? You’re the one that blew up their ship.”

  “I crippled it. That makes me a threat,” he said, “but you’re the danger. You can use the Device in ways they didn’t expect.”

  “Or it can use me.”

  “Either way, you can wield a terrible weapon. Who knows what they could do with it—or you? I don’t want to find out. So I’ve warned the Alliance about the Ascendant. Every government on Earth went on high alert when they heard me say ‘hostile alien invasion.’”

  It made my hair stand on end. I hated the thought of seeing one black ship floating in space. How many would they bring to Earth?

  “Did you tell anyone about me?”

  “No. I told them that the Device is lost.”

  “You lied. Why?”

  “Because the Ascendant aren’t the only danger. The world will prepare for war, and they’ll want to use every weapon they have. They would want to use the Harper Device.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

  He took my hand and looked at the scars. “Do you think a weapon that powerful is safe in anyone’s hands? Maybe it would help us defeat the Ascendant, but it could also destroy us all. So we will keep these things secret for now.”

  I can keep secrets, I thought, handing him my unofficial account of what happened. He read over the first few pages.

  “A ‘misguided youth,’ huh? That’s what Sawyer called you. You look like you’ve got good direction to me.”

  “You think so?”

  “Definitely,” he said. “You might need some guidance, but that’s different than needing direction.”

  “He also told me I had a lot of nerve.”

  “Well, that’s true, too,” he said. Then he pursed his lips. “This account isn’t final yet. There’s one thing you haven’t written.”

  “I wrote everything. The whole truth. What’s missing?”

  “I haven’t completed my personal objective. It was something that needed to be done, but I could never do the job, no matter how hard I tried. Now I know why. I have a few requests before we return to Earth.”

  “What requests?” I said. My heart started to pound. What more could I do?

  “First, you can’t use your powers when we return to Earth. I know you’ll want to. You’ll want to try to locate Tabitha. You’ll want to practice,” he said.

  Why hadn’t I thought of that? I could keep looking for her in the Red Visions, I thought.

  “I need to practice,” I said. “The Ascendant will come for me first, like you said. I’ll need to fight them.”

  “But I forbid you from using your powers,” he commanded. “They could create chaos just like the Device.”

  When did he decide all of this? I wanted to yell it out loud, but I just listened.

  “And the second request?”

  “Second, before we land, I need you to put the Harper Device to sleep.”

  I rolled my eyes at that. “I don’t even know what that means. It’s not awake. And when did you become an expert on my powers?”

  “I’m not.”

  “It sure sounds like you are.”

  He rubbed his hand along the red streak in his hair and floated over to the bay window. He took out his pen, clicked it three times, and let it spin in mid-air. “You remember when I discovered the Harper Device. Those images of me standing in the crater? I was standing in the light and the Device was in the shadow. There was one thing that no one noticed. I still can’t believe it.”

  I imagined the crater, the Device, and my dad with a helmet in his hand. It was an impossible scene, but it was simple. There was nothing to miss. He stroked the red streak in his hair again. “I wish I had understood them then. It was all too baffling, and I only saw them once—those strange dreams of exploring space with you, of strange objects on the far side of the Moon. I returned home and forgot about those dreams—until the day you boarded my ship. Then it all started to make sense. When the portal in my cell appeared and you tumbled through it, everything came together. Still, I can’t believe no one noticed.”

  He turned toward me with a red glint in his eyes.

  “You’re talking like Tabitha. What didn’t we notice?”

  “My footprints in the crater, Tully. My footprints led up to the Device, but there wasn’t a set of footprints leading back to where I was standing. That’s because I didn’t walk back into the light—I was thrown there,” he said, rubbing his hand along his hair again. Then I began to understand—the streak in his hair, the glint in his eyes, why he didn’t seemed surprised by our space jump or my powers.

  “But you’re saying—“

  “—You’re not the only one who has seen a Red Vision. The Device gave me none of its power, but I have seen things in dreams.”

  Every hair on my body stood on end as I realized the truth of it. My heart was in my throat.

  “So, so you knew—“

  “I knew enough. The mission was in some sort of danger, but I wasn’t sure how bad,” he said. “I knew that Scrubbles’ manager was upset for a good reason. There wasn’t really an orangutan on board. And I knew that we needed that boy in the cage.”

  “Why?”

  “Because part of this mission was in your hands.”

  He trusts me more than I ever imagined. It made me feel like a whole person all over again, like when I had come clean with Tabitha.

  My lost friend.

  “We have to save Tabitha,” I said. “Promise me.”

  “I already did, but I will again. Now will you help me finish my objective?”

  “IT’S THE BEGINNING AGAIN…”

  The space lab was empty and in shambles when I arrived. I had been too tired to notice until then, but Sawyer had destroyed the garden in our battle. Chunks of dirt and plants were suspended throughout the lab, making it difficult (and disgusting) to enter. Owlbert was in the middle of the lab, flapping his wings and looking confused. I plucked him out of the air and placed him on the bars of my cage. He turned his head toward me and hooted, thankful to have his talons on a solid perch. My attention turned toward the Device, back home in its spacious room.

  I didn’t really have a plan, only that it must be put to sleep. I adjusted the scarf on my arm, punched in the access code, and entered the room. It seemed like months ago that the Device had drawn me toward this room, along with every living thing in the space lab. Entering the room this time I felt the opposite effect. The Device seemed to hold me at a distance. I tried to float toward the swirling red globe, but I found myself pressed back to the glass door. Behind me I heard something that sounded like rain. Turning around I saw all the soil, t
he plants, everything in the lab that had been suspended in mid-air was now pinned against the other side of the lab. This wasn’t going to be easy. I set my mind on moving forward, putting my hands in front of me, reaching for the Device. The lightning flowers began to glow, and I drew the Device toward myself. It was a strange feeling. I didn’t feel like the Device was moving. Instead, the entire ship seemed to move sideways so that I could reach the Device. As my fingertips reached the mist, my hands went cold and disappeared, as did my wrists, then my arms, and then all I saw was red.

  Red, red, red, red, red.

  I was buried in a Red Vision. It looked like a red fog bank, and I emerged from it into a small garden. There was a stone bench in the middle. A trellis lined with flowers arched over the bench. From the far side of the garden a figure came into view. More like materialized. The form seemed human but remained cloaked in mist as it walked toward me. Red mist streamed onto its shoulders like hair flowing in the wind. It sat down on the bench and motioned for me to do the same. I couldn’t tell if it was man, woman, or something else. The being spoke in a soft voice.

  “You came and did not delay.”

  “It was you who spoke to me in my bedroom,” I said, sitting on the bench.

  “Of course. Are you young now, Tully?”

  “Yeah, pretty young. Where are we?” The words felt strange on my tongue, even though I understood them. Are we speaking some other language? This creature seems to know me, like we’re old friends.

  “Ah, it’s confusing to you,” said the being. “Yes, young you are indeed. It’s the beginning again…before the Chaos. Sometimes I can’t tell. We are in my garden.”

  “It was you who drew me into the Device.”

  “The Device? That’s no way to refer to an old friend,” it said. Was there a smile on its lips? A thousand questions popped into my mind.

  “Who are you?”

  “I have many names—some will never be spoken again. Some should never have been used.”