The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3

by Nicholas Erik

  Business being to find out what the hell Franz had been working on.

  The pair stepped out of the dust-covered taxi, paid the driver and began walking through the grass. The vehicle had halted where the road ended. From there, a vague sort of trail had been beaten through the verdant landscape by intrepid tourists.

  Keene took a moment to reflect, staring at pristine Lake Limpiopungo and the reflection of the dormant volcano in the still water. The snow-capped peak rippled and blurred. In a way, this was like returning home. Keene’s spaceship, The Blue Maybelle, had crash-landed on the peaks of this snow covered mountain overlooking the lake, the jungle—almost every environment conceivable.

  Two hundred thousand years he had spent in cryogenic stasis, only to be awoken by Franz Chibuco, the man he was now returning to see.

  “Hey. Hey.” Keene looked away from the lake to glance at Strike, who was fifty yards up the path and calling to him. “You coming?”

  Keene didn’t say anything. He just followed Strike through the grass, periodically casting a wayward glance at the lake. Franz’s humble abode came into view after some more walking, the wooden, rustic cottage almost blending into the landscape if not for the solar panels glinting off the new addition in the back.

  “And to think he didn’t have a phone when I met him,” Keene said.

  Franz, once upon a time, had been a prominent scientist, exploring the boundaries of cold fusion and other theoretical energy sources. His aspirations, however, hadn’t brought him acclaim or wealth, only sorrow.

  Flying too close the sun had that effect, sometimes—a reality Keene understood, having been banished from his own planet for space-privateering, later losing his entire crew, one-by-one.

  The only member who remained was Lorelei.

  And, like the others, she too had vanished from his life.

  Knock. Knock.

  Strike’s heavy knock against the front door brought him back to the present. An accusatory voice answered the banging.

  “Quién es?” Keene’s neural implant translation module converted the question to English instantaneously—who’s there?

  “It’s us, Maria,” Keene replied in perfect Spanish.

  “Who is us,” the woman said.

  In the background, an old man’s muffled voice called out, using an instructive tone. The door opened, and a lean woman, tall and thin like a saber, ushered Keene and Strike in.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” Maria said in apologetic, spitfire Spanish, “Franz, he tells me nothing.”

  “It’s okay.” Keene gave the old woman an affectionate pat on the shoulder and walked into the small kitchen. “Where is he?”

  “All the time, every free minute, he spends in the lab. Tells me nothing.” Maria returned to the stove and stirred a pot. “Sit down, eat.”

  “I really need to—”

  She turned to face Keene, her eyes narrowed. “You don’t like my cooking?”

  “That’s not true,” Keene said. “It’s just—”

  “We’d love it,” Strike said in English. “Great.”

  “What’d the blonde one say,” Maria said, her eyes narrowing further in suspicion. “I think she needs to eat more. Will blow away on the wind.”

  “She’s heavier than you,” Keene said. Which was like saying a terrier weighed more than a toy poodle. “And you haven’t blown away, best I can see.”

  “Yes, but she does not have the same heart we Ecuadorians possess. It is from the food.” Maria thumped her chest with an open palm and gave Keene a prideful smile. “It does not allow fat or disease.”

  “I see,” Keene said, trying to navigate the specious, circuitous reasoning in his head. He wiped his nose and adjusted the collar of his white t-shirt. His jeans clung to his skin from the jungle humidity. He forced a big smile, despite his impatience.

  “You two are having quite the conversation,” Strike said. “What about?”

  Keene considered saying your weight, but then decided to announce to Maria, “She said she’d love to eat.”

  Maria broke into a beaming smile, and began serving the pair a delicious smelling meal. “It is so lonely here, now that your friends are gone. At first, very annoying, yes? But now, once they are gone, even the dog is sad.”

  A wiry-haired terrier-mix panted next to Keene’s leg, looking hopeful. It was difficult to ascertain whether it indeed felt sad to be left alone with Franz and Maria, now that Derek had passed on and Lorelei had disappeared to an unknown corner of the globe. From Keene’s perspective, the tiny dog was as enthusiastic as ever.

  Keene dug into the stew and made a big show of it being incredible.

  “Damn, this is really good,” Strike said. “Like really good. And you were gonna turn it down.”

  “Not what I came for.”

  “Manners.”

  “That’s what people keep telling me,” Keene said. A door slammed, and footsteps echoed through the short hallway at the back of the house. Keene looked up to find Franz Chibuco covered in dust and grime, a welder’s mask propped on his forehead. The robust, silver-haired man wiped his brow and smiled.

  “Maria has treated you two well?” Franz said.

  “As if,” Maria said with a snort and waved her hand. “Still worried about hospitality.”

  “That’s my wife.”

  Maria waved him off and tended to the stove.

  “So I guess you saved my life, too,” Keene said.

  “How so?” Franz said, now speaking English.

  “I assume you helped convince Linus that calling the FBI in was a good move.”

  “You’re alive, so I suppose it was.” Franz patted him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “That makes two of us.” Keene rose from his chair. “So what’s the hush-hush about?”

  “Fuel’s not exactly cheap,” Strike said. “Not that I don’t enjoy the scenery.”

  “I understand,” Franz said. “I would not have called you here if it could be summarized with a phone call, or even a webcam chat. It is something that requires full presence to understand.”

  After finishing the meal and showing an exaggerated display of gratitude to Maria, Keene and Strike followed him down the short hall, passing two bedrooms. A door, fashioned of aluminum and looking remarkably out of place—and somewhat tacked on—was locked at the end of the hall.

  “What, afraid of your wife?” Strike said.

  “This is a…volatile environment. Not safe to stumble about in.”

  Keene gulped as he watched the old man unlock the trio of locks. Franz swung the door open, and Keene stared inside. Nothing special. Beakers, wires, test tubes and electronic implements were scattered at all angles about the modest workspace. Keene stepped over a series of journals in the middle of the floor to reach the desk.

  His gaze settled on something. Multiple somethings that were intimately familiar.

  “I thought you destroyed these,” Keene said. He picked up one of the nano-fusion cores, which he and Strike had saved from the clutches of a deranged Catarina. The cores had once powered The Blue Maybelle, but using them to power an interstellar spaceship launch would chew up the Earth’s atmosphere and kill everyone on the planet. “You weren’t joking about dangerous.”

  He set the spherical core down with gentle precision and stared at the hunk of faded granite-colored stone, striated with pinkish red. The Ruby Rattlesnake, liberated from the fallen city of Atlantis. A delightful artifact filled with harmful nano-bots that, if ingested, caused a host of nasty side effects—like insanity, megalomania and painful death.

  Nearby sat the Silver Songbird. The figurine’s eyes glowed with a dull blue light, a feature that Keene hadn’t recalled.

  When Keene had given these objects over to Franz for safekeeping, he hadn’t thought he was donating the
m to science.

  “What’s with its eyes?” Keene said. He tried to think back. Had it always been that way?

  “Ah, the bird. That is what first inclined me to this project. It awoke one day.”

  “Awoke?”

  “The lights came on,” Franz said. “And an idea came to me.”

  “To rig up a bunch of super-dangerous crap?” Strike said. “This is a goddamn biohazard. A pressure cooker waiting to explode. A—”

  “A window into the realm of fate,” Franz said. “Not to border on hyperbole. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  He pointed at a small rectangular box, no more than two feet by three, seated on a table in the room’s corner. Unlike the rest of the lab, the surface of the table was completely clear other than the mysterious and entirely plain looking apparatus.

  “A black box?” Strike said

  “Appropriate, I thought. For the mysteries of what transpires when these objects are connected together.” Franz urged the pair over to take a closer look.

  Up close, it became apparent that the top of the box wasn’t smooth, but contained two curved openings the size of the nano-fusion cores. A small pedestal, no taller than a half inch high, sat in between the circular slots.

  A slot behind the pedestal looked wide and deep enough only to hold a small vial.

  “How’s it work?” Strike said.

  “I built a complex series of transistors and wiring within the box to adequately transfer the energy that the cores generate and use it to create reactions in the other elements.”

  “Should’ve come up with that myself, really.”

  “Years of training and failures, my child,” Franz said with a warm smile.

  Keene watched as Franz worked with a vial, his mask down, squeezing a pipette filled with a gray formula into the glass. The granular dust was drawn from a clear plastic container, filled almost to the brim. The substance bore a slightly pinkish tint.

  “You know what those nano-bots can do,” Keene said. Madrid was still reeling months after they’d been unleashed into the water supply by an insane super-soldier.

  “Patience, my young friend. Grab the fusion cores, if you will.”

  Keene hesitated, then walked across the room to pick up the cores. He returned to the strange box, and slotted them into place.

  Nothing happened.

  Franz followed, sliding the vial into its snug resting place.

  “I’ll allow you to do the honors. The bird.”

  “This is crazy,” Keene said.

  “Seriously, old man, you bring us all the way here to perform voodoo?” Strike shook her head. “Nah, I’m out. This is ridiculous.”

  “I kind of agree,” Keene said, but found himself compelled to grab the silver figurine and bring it to the table. He paused for a moment, his hand hovering above the pedestal. “But since we’re here already.”

  “You’ll see,” Franz said.

  “If this kills me, just know my ghost will haunt your asses forever,” Strike said.

  “I would expect nothing less,” Franz said, his smile darkened by memories of lab accidents and errors of the past. “But this must happen.”

  Keene placed the Silver Songbird on the pedestal of the black box.

  For a moment, the room was still. Nothing moved.

  Then a thin whirring flitted through the air. Keene watched as the box sucked in the vial, a flap shuttering the rim of the glass from view. The fusion cores rattled, and the blue glow in the songbird’s eyes rose to halogen-level intensity.

  Keene shielded his eyes as the workspace flooded with light, stumbling to the ground in a protective ball.

  Quick as it came, the light dissipated. Keene opened his smarting eyes and glanced around.

  A pungent aroma flooded Keene’s nostrils, and the former space privateer turned hard-luck adventurer and thankless world saver sat bolt upright. Then he saw the body. Keene whirled around, eyes scanning Franz’s face for a reaction.

  “This is what you wanted me to see?”

  “No, no,” the old man said, murmuring to himself. “This is all wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “There was no body in the room when I arrived last.”

  “He was alive?”

  “I don’t know this man.”

  Keene shifted his gaze between the dead man and Franz. “Just what the hell happened?”

  “We travelled over two centuries through time and space,” Franz said. “To a man’s grave.”

  Keene didn’t know what that meant.

  But it didn’t sound good.

  6 | Timekeeper

  Franz’s lab had completely disappeared. Keene now stood in a sparsely furnished cabin in an unknown location. What he did know, however, was that he was pretty damn far from Cotopaxi, Ecuador.

  “Get him on the table.” Keene lifted the dead man’s legs up. He was a nondescript fellow, of perfectly average height and weight with no distinguishing characteristics. His hair was arranged in a neat businessman’s cut which was slightly incongruent with the humble surroundings. Strike and Franz stood frozen in place. “Help me.”

  “Time travel,” Strike said, pronouncing each syllable with exacting slowness. “He said time travel.” She pointed towards the black box, which sat on the floor of the room.

  “Yes,” Franz said, not moving, his voice faraway, “the turn of the 19th century, if my analysis is correct.”

  “Don’t tell me Maria and the dog are outside.”

  “My workshop is shielded because of the energy spikes. But normally, the range would be a couple hundred feet. It does not shift what is below ground or underwater.”

  “And might I ask where in the hell we are?”

  “About a day’s travel from Guangzhou,” Franz said. He ruffled his thick silver hair, like he was thinking. “In this time, at least. About thirty kilometers. Twenty miles or so for Americans. If all my calculations and studies have been accurate.”

  “Thanks for translating,” Strike said. She walked over and touched the dead man’s suit jacket. “This is custom made.”

  “A man of fine tastes,” Keene said, still struggling to move the body alone. Strike finally got the other end of the corpse, and the two of them succeeded in getting the man onto the simple wooden table.

  A thin light streamed in through the blurry windows, giving an impressionistic view of the Chinese countryside. The afternoon sun lent a cheery atmosphere to the humble dwelling. Aside from the offensive smell—given how stiff the corpse was, Keene reckoned it had been here for some time—the cabin was inviting, in a rustic and minimalist sort of way. Besides the table there was a single chair in front of a desk.

  Exposed logs, tightly fitted together, made for solid walls. A fireplace with a cast iron stove sat in the corner, the ashes cold. The thin layer of dust present on the furniture and table suggested that no one had entered the house since the man’s death.

  Something glinted on the table. In his initial confusion, Keene hadn’t registered the finer details—or even the broader brushstrokes—of his surroundings.

  “Looks like our friend here decided to check out on the suicide express.” The man clutched a long revolver in one of his hands. Keene reached over and unwrapped the stiff fingers from the hilt to examine the pistol. It held no valuable clues or particular import, aside from being the instrument that brought about the man’s demise. “You think it could be murder?”

  “Always possible,” Strike said. “But I think the angle makes it unlikely.”

  Keene rifled through the man’s pockets, extracting a leather journal and a piece of crumpled paper. He also found a strange, futuristic instrument that looked like a long, thin pen. A green light blinked on the end when Keene pressed the button on the bottom. He shrugged and set it on the table so he could examine the other objec
ts.

  The front of the journal was well-worn, indicating that it had been used often. This was the work Fox had meant for Keene to continue—the Silver Songbird statue had led him here, to this remote cabin in the past.

  “What’s it say?” Strike said.

  Keene read the note aloud. “I will never regain power over the Chronological Council. Fox has left me notice that she intends to abandon me and my efforts. I was a fool to give that woman domain over my remaining supply of chronosium. I am stranded here forever. A Chronometer reading indicates that someone has recently travelled across time to my lonely cabin. But I have missed their visit, and I shudder to think who she might have employed to come after me, after deceiving her for so long. All is lost.” It was signed “The Timekeeper.”

  Keene glanced at the device on the table, still flashing green. It was the only thing he could think of in the room that could qualify as a Chronometer. He guessed that the green light indicated that time shenanigans were afoot.

  “The Timekeeper?” Strike said.

  “That’s what he wrote at the bottom.”

  “We need to return,” Franz said. “I do not know if this area is safe.”

  “Go for it,” Keene said, still clutching the leather journal tightly. A blue light shot out from the black box, bursting before Keene’s eyes for a moment before quickly disappearing. When Keene looked around, he was back in the familiar workshop.

  No sign of the dead body or the strange ninteenth century cabin.

  “I must think,” Franz said simply, and left the room.

  That made two of them.

  There were a lot of questions to be asked, and perhaps this journal—the final piece of this mysterious man’s makeshift last will and testament—held the answers. Keene had to remind himself to breathe as he settled into the chair and opened the journal.

  “What, so I’m just going to stand here while you read?” Strike said.

  “Do what you want,” Keene said.

  She walked out of the room in a huff and slammed the door. Keene barely noticed.