The Lost Artifact

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Information about the Strand clones.”

  “I have some data on that, but possibly not enough for you.”

  “I would also like to know the whereabouts of any Nameless Ones’ technology.”

  “I shall begin processing my data. I have a vast store of knowledge. Even with my intellect, it takes time to correlate everything.”

  “Quite the burden, I’m sure,” Maddox said. “But let me get this straight. You will help us locate the clone?”

  “We are bargaining, I take it,” the cube said.

  “Precisely.”

  “I will help you locate the clone, and you will give me a vessel of my choosing.”

  “No,” Maddox said.

  “Ah,” the cube said. “I see that you are going to play fair with me. If you had agreed to my request, I would have known that you were simply lying to me. I realize you will never let me go. What can you give me then, Captain, that I want?”

  “Continued existence,” Maddox said.

  “You mean your trade is a willingness to not murder me.”

  “Builder—”

  “I thought you said I wasn’t a Builder,” the cube interrupted.

  “I’ll call you a Builder for now.”

  “How interesting, Captain. I wonder why the change.”

  “Builder, you murdered over seventy of my crew. I am not inclined to let you live. I’d hoped to break you open and extract the data through a computer scan.”

  “You are a true hominid savage, Captain.”

  “What I’m trying to let you know is that it is a big deal for me to let you live. I’m going to want a lot from you for that privilege.”

  “I can only give what I can give. The clone’s stasis chamber…I have the coordinates for it.”

  “Please give them.”

  The cube did so.

  “Well?” Maddox asked Andros.

  “That’s this star system,” the chief technician said.

  “Where in the star system is the stasis chamber?” Maddox asked the cube.

  “I do not know,” the cube said. “I suggest, given the parameters of the problem, that the stasis chamber would be in the outer region of the system. If it was in the inner system, there would be no way to signal it, or not signal it, if you know what I mean.”

  “Spell it out for me,” Maddox said.

  The cube explained the problem with message signals getting through the neutron star’s interference.

  “Now, Captain, I would like something in return.”

  “What is that?”

  “I would like you to destroy the android Yen Cho in my presence. He failed me at a critical junction. In fact, I demand his destruction if you expect more help from me.”

  “I’ll consider it,” Maddox said. “Is there anything else you would like?”

  “Yes. Link me to Galyan’s ship computers. I’m curious about what the Builders back then did that allowed an engram-enhanced Adok AI to survive six thousand years. I do not understand why the Builders back then broke protocol.”

  “That is curious,” Maddox said. “What else can I give you?”

  “Those two are quite sufficient for now.”

  “I’ll need authorization for the one.”

  “That is a lie, Captain. You do what you want when you want. But I shall give you a third payment-in-kind. I would like to read the files concerning everything the Commonwealth knows about the New Men.”

  “Why the interest?”

  “Captain, captain, do you wish me to manufacture a lie for you?”

  “You want what you want,” Maddox said. “I—”

  “Captain,” Galyan said. The little holoimage had reappeared in the science room. “Valerie thinks she may have found the stasis chamber.”

  “Where?” Maddox asked.

  “It’s in the system’s Kuiper Belt. Valerie picked up a faint signal—”

  “Did we find it?” Maddox asked the Builder cube.

  “Give me the coordinates and the present data,” the cube said.

  Galyan looked at Maddox. The captain nodded. Galyan told the cube the coordinates and what the data consisted of.

  “I believe that could be the stasis chamber,” the cube said. “There is one problem I believe you have not foreseen.”

  “Base defenses?” Maddox asked.

  “No. Base auto-destruct sequences. I highly doubt the original Strand wanted anyone searching his clone-release base. You will have to be extremely careful, Captain, if you want to search the stasis chamber while it is still intact.”

  “Strand…” Maddox said under his breath. The Methuselah Man always ensured that everything would be complicated.

  “Tell Valerie to get ready to jump to the dwarf planet,” Maddox said. “She’s to come out on the side of the planet opposite the possible base.”

  Galyan disappeared.

  Maddox turned for the hatch.

  “Captain,” the cube said. “I would like my first payment.”

  Maddox considered the cube. “First, I’m going to see if you were right or not.” With that, the captain spun, hurrying for the hatch.

  -8-

  Victory made a successful star-drive jump, coming in behind the Pluto-like dwarf planet 34 AUs from the neutron star.

  “It’s out there,” Valerie said on the bridge. “But we know Strand. He’s a hateful little man, revengeful in all matters. He must have booby-trapped the secret base…if it’s really there.”

  Maddox silently agreed. He suspected the base would detonate if anything over there sensed a scan.

  “We could have a cold teleoptic probe pass the area,” Valerie suggested. “It could passively determine what’s there.”

  “How do we retrieve the data?” Maddox asked.

  “You would have to wait,” Valerie said. “Whatever I sensed must have a range limit. Likely, only something nearby would trigger the detonation switch.”

  “Let’s try it,” Maddox said.

  ***

  Valerie set up a teleoptic probe. Keith took the fold-fighter, folded some distance from the dwarf planet, launched the cold probe toward the planet, and promptly folded back.

  The probe took a precious day to drift past the other side of the dwarf planet. A tiny computer with the minutest of energy used a telescope to see what it could see.

  After a time, the probe drifted past the planet.

  They waited another day before Keith took out the fold-fighter, collected the probe and returned with it to the starship, which still hid on the other side of the dwarf planet.

  Valerie, Keith, Andros, Galyan and the captain all eagerly went to the conference room. There, Valerie played back the probe’s findings. On the screen, they saw the alien sensor, saw a cable snaking from it and heading deep into a jagged fissure into the planet.

  “How far does the landline go?” Maddox asked.

  Valerie adjusted, making measurements as to the deepest the telescope had been able to observe.

  “Over three hundred meters at this point,” she said, using an indicator to show the pic on the screen.

  “Farther than three hundred meters…” Maddox mused. “So the base—if one is there—is deeper than that. If the base detonates, the crevice will make sure the blast heads upward. It will be a nuclear device at the very least, maybe even an antimatter bomb.”

  “Knowing Strand, it would be suicide to go down to the base,” Valerie said.

  “We can’t have come this far and not go down and check,” Keith said.

  “Do you want to go down?” Maddox asked the ace.

  “Me? Are you kidding? I’d love to—”

  “No!” Valerie said, staring at the ace. “Keith doesn’t want to go down.”

  “But we have to do something,” Keith told her.

  “We can use another probe,” Valerie said.

  “I know a better way,” Maddox said. He turned to Galyan. “Let’s run a copy of your personality in the super-android. It can go down there.
If an explosion occurs and the super-android is destroyed, no one will have died.”

  “Captain,” Galyan said, “I am surprised at you. Firstly, I will not allow a copy of me impersonating me. Secondly, such a copy would have my hopes and dreams. To knowingly allow it to go into a situation that will destroy it—no. I cannot permit such a thing.”

  “Send Yen Cho,” Valerie said.

  “Or the cube,” Andros said. “It’s supposed to be indestructible.”

  “Neither of them will go,” Maddox said. “Both would use the opportunity to create mischief. We will use a probe, a robot. It will beam us the data.”

  Three hours later, Keith piloted a shuttle coming in low over the dwarf planet’s surface. One hundred kilometers away from the giant crevice, he opened an underbelly hatch and launched a probe. Afterward, he headed back for the ship.

  Back on Victory’s bridge, Maddox, Galyan and Valerie watched the probe’s progress. It flew over frozen methane and speckled scatterings of rock that must have come from ancient meteor impacts.

  The manually run probe—Valerie piloted it from her station—slowed as it approached the jagged crevice.

  The lieutenant manipulated her console. On the main screen, they saw the alien sensor lying in the methane snow. It was octagonal-shaped with hundreds of tiny antennae sticking up.

  “Scan it,” Maddox said. “If nothing else, it would be good to know what kind of alien technology Strand had back then.”

  “A scan could cause a detonation,” Valerie warned.

  Maddox did not bother to reply. He already knew that.

  A few seconds later, Valerie pressed a control. The probe scanned and began to run an analysis.

  “Tap into that, Galyan,” Maddox said. “Tell us if you find a match with any known technology.”

  The little holoimage’s eyelids flickered. “Rull technology,” Galyan said, opening his eyes.

  “Android tech?” Maddox asked.

  “Sind II tech,” Galyan amended. “It is a lower-order form of Builder technology not that much different from that used by the Adoks.”

  “No detonation so far,” Valerie said.

  “Take it down,” Maddox said. “We may have just caught a break.”

  Valerie rubbed her hands before she began to tap her console.

  On the screen, the scene changed. The probe hovered over the gigantic jagged crevice. It began to float down, following the landline attached to the alien sensor. It went down and down, past the native rock.

  After the probe had descended a half-mile, Valerie said, “I have something. It’s metallic—”

  “Scan immediately,” Maddox snapped. He sat on the edge of his command chair. “Tell me if you can sense bio matter inside.”

  “A human?” Valerie asked.

  “Exactly. A clone.”

  “Beginning to scan,” Valerie said, adjusting her panel.

  At that very moment, a terrific detonation occurred. For an instant, the bridge crew witnessed an antimatter blast ripping through the structure’s outer hull, climbing—

  And the image abruptly disappeared.

  Maddox whirled his chair around. “What did the scan show? Did you have time to read anything?”

  Valerie frowned as she faced the captain. “I hardly had any time, but the probe made a complete scan. It’s recorded. I’ll have to study—”

  “Galyan,” Maddox snapped. “Did the probe have enough time to sense a human body?”

  The holoimage’s eyelids flickered. “The probe had time,” Galyan said. He looked at Maddox. “There was no body, no bio-matter in the structure except for detected foodstuffs.”

  “The clone is gone,” Valerie said. “He made it out before we got here.”

  Maddox stared at her. “Do we know for a fact a clone was in there?”

  “Maybe not,” Valerie admitted. “But everything we suspected would happen did happen. It all fits Strand’s personality, which substantiates what we suspected.”

  Maddox nodded. The lieutenant had a point. He also wondered if Yen Cho or the Builder was playing them false in some manner. Or maybe both of them.

  “Strand is clever enough to have set up decoy stasis chambers,” Maddox said.

  “In this instance, I don’t believe that,” Valerie said. “Clearly, this hidden base took considerable effort to create. Strand is conceited like his New Men.”

  “Your point?” Maddox asked.

  “Does a conceited person believe others can figure him out? Or does he think he can outsmart everyone?”

  Maddox eyed the blank screen. “The fact of the explosion shows us Strand wasn’t utterly conceited. The fact of the clones means that Strand long-ago considered his death or capture.”

  Valerie nodded. Maybe so; she hadn’t thought of that.

  “Still,” Maddox said, “that is neither here nor there. We came deep into the Beyond to find a clue. We have none, other than to substantiate the next clone’s release. He has begun his mission. The clock is ticking, and we have no idea where to find him or how to figure out a way to find him.”

  Maddox eyed the others. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Yen Cho or the Builder cube could possibly tell us more,” Valerie said.

  “I must think,” Maddox said. He stood. “Lieutenant, you have the bridge.”

  With that, the captain strode for the exit.

  -9-

  Maddox stood at a viewing port, eying the stars and the dwarf planet below them. They were deep in the Beyond, closer to the Throne World than to Earth.

  Strand had released another clone. Maddox felt the truth of that in his bones. The hidden base had detonated as the probe neared it. Strand was obviously covering his tracks. An earlier clone had used a Builder ghost-ship and a guardian robot. The next one would have the tech of the Nameless Ones. How would that manifest itself?

  Maddox shook his head.

  Yen Cho had lived longer than any of the Methuselah Men had. The android had tracked the earlier clone to Smade’s Asteroid. It would seem the android understood Strand’s psychology well indeed.

  The Builder cube had run probability programs for the earlier clone. It had been with the Strand clone, studied Strand, and studied the clone’s victims. The cube had also figured out some of the original Strand’s strategy through his clone’s actions.

  It would seem that if one could combine what the two mechanical beings knew, and add in human intuition, that the answer would likely appear obvious.

  Maddox had no idea how to meld the three. Would Professor Ludendorff have known a method? If anyone could do it, it would be that unpredictable Methuselah Man.

  The captain shifted his stance as he stared down at the dwarf planet. Strand loved secret bases and cloaked vessels. The Methuselah Man loved working from the shadows. He loved nothing better than manipulating people by pulling hidden strings inside them.

  Secret bases…secret bases… Why did that stick in his mind?

  The captain snapped his fingers. While free, the original Strand had haunted the New Men. He had maneuvered around them—

  “From a secret base,” Maddox said softly.

  An android named Rose had gone to Strand. She had complicated the Methuselah Man’s life, which had helped Maddox to capture Strand on Sind II.

  If Rose knew the likely location of Strand’s secret base when the Methuselah Man had operated against the New Men, it would stand to reason that Yen Cho would also know the base’s location.

  The original Strand hadn’t operated freely for a time now. Would his people continue to operate from that old secret base?

  Maddox doubted that. They would reasonably fear the New Men hunting them down.

  “I need to find that base,” Maddox told himself.

  He whirled around. It was time to pry some information out of the reluctant android.

  ***

  Maddox faced Yen Cho. As he had so often in the past, the android currently played solitaire. Two marine guards stoo
d in the cell, leveling heavy combat rifles at the android.

  Yen Cho paused, his hand poised above a card as though he readied himself to flip it over. “Can I help you, Captain?”

  “I need the location of Strand’s secret base from back when he used to torment the New Men.”

  “I do not know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do,” Maddox said. “Rose did.”

  The android had seemed ready to flip over the card. He did not. Instead, he looked up at Maddox again. “The base in question is likely empty.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Strand’s people might have destroyed it.”

  “I want the location,” Maddox said. “Not excuses.”

  The android cocked his head. “You found the hidden clone base in this system, but it exploded, yes?”

  Maddox said nothing.

  “A trade, Captain, is that what you’re suggesting, information for information?”

  Maddox still said nothing.

  Yen Cho flipped over the waiting card, and played another. He seemed to consider something as he made the moves and looked up again. “The base you desire is in the Lycon System. It has four planets, one of them terrestrial and the rest gas giants. It lacks comets and an Oort cloud. It also has a G-class star.”

  “The location,” Maddox said.

  “The base is hidden on an extra-large moon of the third planet. The moon has a poisonous atmosphere and an underground complex able to house several thousand people. Most were techs. Strand kept Lore Fallows, a Kai-Kaus Chief Technician, there as well.”

  “The original Strand kidnapped Lore Fallows. I remember.”

  “Is the secret base your latest desire?”

  “The clone-release base here detonated, as you predicated,” Maddox said.

  “Interesting,” Yen Cho said. “You gave me the information I sought before I told you the stellar coordinates of the Lycon System. You dearly want this old science base, do you not, Captain?”

  Maddox did not answer.

  Yen Cho set the cards on the table. “The Lycon System is forty-three light-years from here. It is much closer to the Throne World than this system is. I suspect there might be star cruisers in the Lycon System.”