The Lost Intelligence (Lost Starship Series Book 12)

by Vaughn Heppner

  A worried Meta watched her husband closely.

  If Maddox noticed, he ignored it. “There’s nothing in particular other than time to repair Galyan. If we can find out from him what happened in the Lolis II…”

  “There’s an old saying you might like, sir,” Riker said. “It’s called ‘slinging bull.’ What it really means is shoveling BS as if it’s candy. Many people accept it, but it still stinks.”

  “Are you through?” asked Maddox.

  “Husband,” Meta said, putting a hand over the one Maddox had lain on the table. “You have a plan. You always do. That you’ve willingly come to such a haunted star system frightens me. I hope you’re not planning to go down to the surface.”

  “That would be crazy,” Maddox said.

  “Which is not the same as saying no,” Riker pointed out. “That was a neat verbal dodge, sir.”

  Maddox glanced at the sergeant.

  “Sorry, sir,” Riker said. “But your wife is worried about you.”

  “I heard her, thank you,” Maddox said.

  “Normally, if you told me to shut up, I’d shut up,” Riker said. “But I can’t watch sweet Meta—”

  “Enough,” Maddox said sternly.

  Riker finally shut up, although he winked at Meta when she glanced at him.

  Maddox noticed, of course, but pretended not to.

  “Oh no,” Meta said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Well…” Maddox said, facing her. “We’ll study the planet, for one thing.”

  “That’s our mission statement,” Valerie said.

  “Wrong,” Riker cut in. “The lord almighty high admiral told the captain to go down to the City of Pyramids and grab alien tech.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Meta said. “It would be suicide for anyone to go down there.”

  “Anyone but the captain,” Riker said. “Isn’t that right, sir?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” asked Maddox.

  “I’m hard of hearing these days, sir. Need a bionic ear, I figure.”

  “I can box you around the ears if that will help you,” Maddox threatened.

  “No, no,” Riker said, holding up his hands in mock fear.

  “Darling,” Meta said. “Are you seriously considering going down to the alien city?”

  “Not seriously,” Maddox said.

  One of Meta’s hands flew to her mouth.

  “Sir—” Valerie said. “You can’t—”

  Maddox sighed. “Listen. Let’s study the planet from a distance. Let’s see if we can contact the Erills—”

  “In Heaven’s name, why?” asked Meta.

  Maddox didn’t answer.

  “Was Fletcher right?” Meta asked. “Is the Erill still alive in you?”

  “No,” Maddox said, maybe too sharply.

  “Darling, you never told me it could speak to you.”

  “Look, look,” Maddox said. “The Erill perished, all right? It’s dead. When I killed it, I absorbed some of its energy. But I think I can communicate with some of the Erills left on the planet. I think I can hear them, at least, at times.”

  “A siren song, is it, sir?” asked Riker.

  Maddox glared at the sergeant.

  The old man held up his hands again. “I’ve said enough. It’s time for me to turn in.”

  “Riker, please stay,” Meta said.

  The sergeant had stood. He now sat back down. “Sorry, sir,” he told Maddox. “She’s a hundred times prettier than you are. I just can’t seem to say no to her.”

  Maddox ignored the sergeant.

  “Don’t you see,” Meta was telling Maddox. “That’s what Fletcher and the others are hoping you’ll do. They know you’re too curious and far too confident. They’re hoping you’ll believe yourself invincible with the Builder symbol as backup—that you’ll go down to the planet. You escaped once because you got lucky. They’re hoping your luck fails and you die. They want you dead.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Maddox said.

  “I don’t think you are,” Meta said. “This time, we lack all insight or knowledge about our enemy. The Lolis II should have proven that to us. Fletcher’s strange behavior, Stokes’ worries—”

  “I know,” Maddox said sharply.

  Meta fell silent.

  Maddox waved a hand in the air. “Maybe we should head for Brahma and pick up Ludendorff. Maybe I should try to contact my uncle.” He meant Golden Ural, cousin to the Emperor of the Throne World.

  “Both are better ideas than you going down to the planet,” Meta urged. “You barely survived a ride across the surface. We barely survived it.”

  Nine and a half months ago, Riker and Meta had been taking him to the City of Pyramids. They’d thought something down there could heal him. Then, an Erill had flown up from the city, entering the shuttle and Maddox, causing him to assault his wife and the sergeant.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” Maddox said. “We’ll jump as near to the star as we can comfortably stand and study what we can from a distance. Maye we’ll discover a revelation. Maybe Andros can finally repair Galyan. We’ll give it some time and see what happens before we decide our next move.”

  -2-

  The G-class star of the Erill System was 1.4 times the size of Sol. It had two terrestrial planets: one in a Venus-like orbit, and the other in a Mars-like orbit. There was a distant asteroid belt in a Neptune-like region at the start of the system’s Kuiper Belt. The majority of approximately three billion space mine-missiles—lurker missiles—were between the inner terrestrial planets. From previous encounters here before the Battle of the Gomez System, they knew the lurker missiles used Orion drives—nuclear explosions—to accelerate fast.

  To replenish used missiles, there was a factory in the center of the Lurker Region that looked like a black asteroid twenty-three kilometers long. It was more than possible that was an ancient Builder factory. Reaching it and staying there long enough to explore inside might prove impossible with the billions of lurker missiles ready to smash any intruders.

  Thus, Victory remained near the star, using sensors to study the second planet and the City of Pyramids in a vast yellow surface area.

  The second planet was a desert world of red and yellow sand and rock a little smaller than Earth. Valerie, Maddox and others used the ship’s scopes to peer at it for hours. The surface pyramids were huge, bigger than any structures on Earth. The pyramids were constructed of massive stone blocks. There were no other apparent structures on the planet, just the mass of pyramids arranged in no particular pattern that any of them could discern.

  The days fused together into weeks, but nothing exciting happened. The lurker missiles left the starship alone. No Erills appeared in any visible form on the distant surface and none of the spiritual entities contacted Maddox in any way he could sense. Andros and his team continued to try to repair Galyan, but their process was exceedingly and painfully slow.

  Halfway through the allotted time, Maddox called the Lord High Admiral via the Long-Range Builder comm device. Fletcher spoke long enough to tell Maddox not to make any more calls until summoned home. When Maddox asked for reasons, the Lord High Admiral hung up on him.

  Victory remained another ten days at its near-star station until boredom and a sense of recklessness caused Maddox to reenter the Builder comm chamber.

  It was weird, but it felt that they’d been here longer than a mere few weeks. Meta had agreed, although no one else had felt that.

  In the chamber, Maddox picked up the microphone and debated the call. Fletcher had been insistent last time. Maybe, though, if he disobeyed the order, the Lord High Admiral would call him home out of pique.

  Maddox clicked the trigger control, making the call. Fletcher didn’t answer. Maddox kept trying. Finally, the Lord High Admiral picked up.

  “What is it, son?” Fletcher asked. “Did you finally discover something?”

  The mild tone surprised Maddox. He’d expected the Lord High Admiral to rage at hi
m.

  “Uh…nothing yet,” Maddox replied.

  “So why are you calling me then?”

  “Lord High Admiral—”

  “Is it because I missed the appointed call?” Fletcher demanded.

  “What?”

  “Have you become hard of hearing, Captain? I said, are you calling because I missed the appointed time?”

  “No, sir. You said you would call every six months.”

  “I know very well what I said. Now, look, you can’t imagine the amount of work piling up around me. It’s more than I ever expected. Even with my newfound energy… Are you sure you don’t have something to report? You’ve been out there long enough.”

  “We took our time reaching here, sir.”

  “You’ve been off exploring, is that it?”

  “No…”

  “Well what in the hell have you been doing for eighteen months?”

  “What?” asked Maddox, dumbfounded by the question.

  “Can’t you count, Captain? I sent you out there eighteen months ago. Surely, you’ve figured out something by now.”

  Maddox silently mouthed the number. It had taken them a little less than three months to reach the star system. They’d been here a little less than a month. Was Fletcher losing his mind?

  “I spoke to you in your office four months ago, sir,” Maddox said.

  “That’s a damned lie,” Fletcher said. “I’m looking at my calendar right now. It was last year we met.” He mumbled, maybe counting under his breath. “It was eighteen months in total just like I said.”

  Maddox blinked in shock. This was out of left field. Was Fletcher screwing with him or was it something else? “Sir, can I speak to Brigadier Stokes?”

  “Whatever for?” Fletcher asked suspiciously.

  “I would like to corroborate the supposed passage of eighteen months.”

  “No more of your jokes, son,” Fletcher said. “I’m too tired for it. I’ve been working—forget it. Don’t call me unless you find some new alien technology. You can stay out there twenty years, too, until you get the balls to do some real exploring. Fletcher out.”

  The connection went dead.

  Maddox stared at the microphone in his hand. Could Fletcher be right? He didn’t see how that could be possible.

  Maddox reset the main controls for a different Builder set, and clicked the microphone trigger. “This is Captain Maddox of Star Watch calling the Emperor of the Throne World.” He kept at it for a time.

  Finally, the Emperor responded.

  “Lord Emperor,” Maddox said with deference. “I apologize in advance for bothering you. I’m in the Erill System and have been here almost a month. According to reports, though, a year and a half has passed since I left Earth.”

  “Captain Maddox,” the Emperor said in a stately voice. “Your calling me is highly unseemly. Because I’ve recently learned that your father was my cousin, I will refrain from taking action from this slight. I imagine you’re referring to the City of the Pyramids. According to my data, that is a highly unstable star system, as there are temporal fluxes that apparently strike at random. It’s possible the fluxes occur due to ancient alien technology hidden there. Maybe it’s something else. For your father’s sake, I urge you to immediately leave the star system.”

  “Thank you, Lord. Do you suppose the Erills can shift time?”

  “I’ve never heard of them. But if such creatures can do as you suggest, then I counsel you to flee as fast as you can from there. Now, I have said enough. Go in peace, Captain, but do not call me again.”

  The Emperor cut the connection.

  Maddox sat there, thinking. It was time to make a decision.

  -3-

  Maddox could have made the decision himself, but sometimes he liked bouncing ideas off those he trusted. He would have liked to talk to Ludendorff or maybe even Galyan. In a pinch, he would have asked Doctor Dana Rich. In the end, he sought out Andros Crank, as he was the most technically proficient of his remaining crew.

  Maddox pulled Andros off the Galyan repairs and took the stout Kai-Kaus to a sensor science station. On the main screen was an aerial shot of the City of Pyramids. Streams of yellow sand snaked between the great monoliths, while red sandstone walls rose up to the east of them.

  The two sat as Maddox explained what Fletcher and then the Emperor had said. The owlish Andros kept staring off into the distance. Finally, Maddox stopped talking.

  Andros turned to him. “Eighteen months have passed. That’s incredible. We must be in some kind of temporal bubble.”

  “A bubble?” asked Maddox.

  “You’re right, you’re right,” Andros said. “It doesn’t have to be a bubble. That would be the likeliest shape, though. Time moves slower for us than the rest of the universe. Could this be why the Lord High Admiral sent you out here?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “To give himself more time to act without having you around,” Andros said.

  “That’s an interesting thought. Maybe he ordered the assassination attempt on Earth and it failed. This was the backup plan.”

  “Exactly,” Andros said. “And that might have been the point of the Lolis II. It exploded. Maybe Jasken did it too soon.”

  “Right,” Maddox said. “Jasken was supposed to wait until we boarded them. A hypnotic command would move Jasken and boom, end of Maddox and company. Still…sending us out here to simply get us out of the way seems too esoteric.”

  “Yet... Could the Lord High Admiral have faked his surprise regarding the passage of time?”

  “That’s a good point,” Maddox said. “He was surprised. No. I don’t think he was faking that.”

  “We’ve lost eighteen months of normal time.”

  “Not quite that long,” Maddox said. “We’ve been out of circulation fourteen months, maybe more like thirteen.”

  “The magic number,” Andros said, making a strange, possibly superstitious hand motion.

  “Chief Technician, I want your take on the situation. Could the Erills have caused the temporal distortion?”

  “If they did, it would indicate they have a way to manipulate physical reality. That would give strictly spiritual entities a newfound power, at least, one we haven’t seen before.”

  Maddox tapped his chin. “I don’t think that’s the answer. Maybe the ancient technology that brought the Erills to our dimension is responsible for the temporal distortions. Maybe the Emperor is right, and they happen randomly, or as a side effect.”

  “If the distortion became too powerful,” Andros said, “it could trap us here, making it impossible for us to reenter normal time.”

  “How would that work?”

  Andros grinned sheepishly, shaking his head. “We need Galyan, sir. I know I’m the one who’s supposed to have fixed him. My point is, the location of this star system was in his memory banks from long ago, from six thousand years ago. He must know more about this place than he told us before.”

  “Then repair him, dammit!”

  Andros spread his pudgy hands. “I would if I could, sir. If it’s any help, I now think he’s alive deep in his computers, but to make him operational again—I suggest we find Ludendorff. The professor would know better than anyone else what to do.”

  I can fix Galyan.

  Maddox’s head jerked upright at this statement. “You just told me you couldn’t.”

  “What’s that?” Andros asked.

  “You told me you can’t fix Galyan.”

  “I’m still working on it,” Andros said.

  “Then why tell me you can fix him?”

  Andros stared at Maddox.

  “Didn’t you just tell me that?” Maddox asked.

  Andros shook his head.

  Maddox frowned…turning to the screen. He got up, went to the controls and adjusted the viewing screen. The aerial shot of the City of Pyramids—

  “Look!” Andros shouted, pointing at the screen.

  Maddox looked up in time
to see a glowing ball race from one pyramid to another. Last time, that was how the Erill had appeared before entering the darter in the upper atmosphere.

  Galyan’s fate rests in your hands, Captain.

  “What did you say?” Maddox asked angrily.

  Andros shook his head, and he made another warding gesture. “Are you hearing voices, Captain?”

  Maddox ignored the question, as he didn’t like the implications. He peered at the screen, but no more glowing balls appeared near the pyramids or anywhere else.

  “Continue trying to repair Galyan,” Maddox said at last. “Tell no one about our meeting.”

  “You can count on me, sir,” Andros said.

  “I know.” Maddox went to Andros, patting him on a shoulder. “Maybe I’m hearing what I want to hear. We’re in a temporal distortion. Maybe that’s what causing these strange events.”

  Andros nodded, but he looked far from comforted. Still, the Chief Technician departed the chamber.

  Maddox remained in the science chamber, studying the City of Pyramids 170 million kilometers away. He shifted viewpoints, but nothing new appeared, nor did he hear or sense intelligent communication directed at him.

  After a time, Maddox grew droopy-eyed, struggling to remain awake but finally collapsing into a chair and falling asleep. His chin rested on his chest. Shorter thereafter began a strange and unsettling dream.

  In his dream, Maddox’s spirit or consciousness left his body behind in the science-viewing chamber aboard Victory. His spirit departed the starship and flittered faster and faster, gaining speed as it zoomed for the second planet. The feeling was intoxicating, and Maddox felt encouraged, optimistic.

  Eventually, he reached the upper atmosphere, slowing as he began to descend toward the dot of the city far below. A sense of danger intruded upon the dream, however.

  Maddox halted, staring down. Glowing balls appeared down there. They seemed to call and beckon him to descend all the way. They would show him sights that would amaze his mind—that would astonish him and make him giggle.

  Don’t tell him that. Maddox doesn’t giggle.

  The sense of danger grew.

  No, no, one of the glowing balls projected at him. This is fun. It is adventure. Don’t you wish to restore Galyan?