I now regarded the crystal entity slotted on my spacesuit belt. “Let’s lay our cards on the table,” I said. “Who described this place to you?”
“Argon.”
Argon was a Polarion, an ancient white-haired being that looked like a handsome, majestic man. He had helped me against the Starcore, as I had freed him from the giant crystal entity. It had been trying to break and use him. Maybe the best way to think of Polarions was like ancient Greek gods or goddesses. They had powers. They had passions and could do things that defied reason. Argon had called me a natural, meaning I was one of those lucky few that could achieve amazing feats as a soldier or spy. In the dim past, the legendary Polarions had built fantastic devices and searched for odd dimensions, using Earth as a launch point for many of their ancient experiments.
Argon had helped me against the Min Ve privateers who had cast me into my present role. He’d also helped against the alien construct known as the Starcore. Argon had nearly perished back then in a Thor-type space-missile attack against his stronghold in Greenland. The Min Ve method had been through launching crowbars, essentially, dropping them onto the surface from space like guided meteors, using kinetic energy for the killing power.
I’d last seen Argon in a tube held by Sand’s robots deep underground in Utah. It appeared that Sand had saved Argon’s life from the space bombardment, although the Polarion had been missing limbs and had been unconscious in the tube full of some kind of medical liquid. The Polarion had also worn a mask.
“I don’t get it,” I told Rax. “How and when could Argon have spoken to you?”
“He did so while I was trapped by Sand in a strange room.”
I told Rax how I’d seen Argon in a medical tube, a prisoner of Sand. That had been at the same time Rax was claiming to have seen and spoken with Argon.
“This is quite odd,” Rax said. “One of us is badly misinformed.”
“Wait a second, Rax. When Argon was well, when I spoke to him in Greenland, I found him imperious and arrogant. Was that the manner he spoke to you?”
“Indeed.”
“So why did you wait until now to tell me about all this?”
Rax did not reply.
“Argon is a Polarion,” I said. “He’s isn’t a Galactic Guard agent. There was no reason to have kept this secret from me.”
“The first part is a truthful statement,” Rax said, “and also beside the point. Ah. I remember now. Argon said if the attempt failed—he meant our leaving the Solar System in the GGS Ocelot—that I should take you to the Synthesizer.”
“Okay…what is the Synthesizer?”
“Argon did not say precisely.”
“Rax, doesn’t that strike you as ominous?”
“In what way?”
“In every way,” I said. “For instance, how can the Synthesizer help us reach Earth?”
“The way Argon spoke about it, I believed a portal linked the Synthesizer to Earth. Using a Polarion portal seemed much safer than trusting Antaran transfer technology from Deimos.”
“Okay, here’s another problem. This synthesizer, like is it going to synthesize my body, making more copies of me?”
“I doubt that is the case.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “You mean that you have no idea what it does. I don’t like that. ‘Take Logan to the Synthesizer.’ We don’t know that Argon really spoke to you, and if he did, we don’t know that Argon would have had my best interests at heart. There’s another thing. You don’t know for sure a portal is there or whether the portal still works.”
“I must say,” Rax told me, “that you worry far too much. How else did the ancient Polarions reach the Synthesizer?”
“They had spacecraft back then, right?”
“And fantastic portal technology,” Rax said. “If the Synthesizer station is like the underwater Arctic Ocean base, there is bound to be advanced weaponry there as well.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But Sand wants me back on Earth, remember?”
“That is a non-sequitur statement.”
“No it isn’t. Sand holds Argon captive.”
“That is not what I saw.”
“You saw? I remember now. You went dysfunctional down there. You went inert in the chamber you’ve been talking about. If you think you saw Argon, you were dreaming.”
“Rax Prime crystals do not dream.”
“This is all sounding as fishy as can be, Rax. I don’t like any of it.”
“What other choice do we have at this point?”
I was nodding, looking around. That was why Rax had kept quiet about his so-called Argon meeting, hoping to spring it on me when I was out of options. But was I?
“Maybe I can take a sled to Earth and try landing directly,” I said.
“That is a ridiculous, preposterous idea. A sled does not have enough fuel to reach Earth from here, nor would you have enough air for the journey of at least a year.”
I looked away, heaved a sigh and looked back down at my belt. “Why haven’t others raided this Synthesizer station? If it has Polarion technology, there are a ton of aliens that would love to get their hands on it.”
“That is an excellent question. There are reasons, a few of which we shall have to overcome.”
“Such as?”
“Unknown at present,” Rax said, “as I do not seem to remember. But I do know this. Argon said you were a natural. Do you know what that means?”
I had a feeling that Rax knew exactly what the Polarion had meant by the term. He was using the question to buffalo me into the operation. Yet, at this point, I didn’t see that I had much choice, as he’d said before. I couldn’t stay in the unmoored station, unless I was willing to let the Gigantopithecuses capture me.
Thus, I went ahead, bled out all the air down here in the vault and blew the hatch. Afterward, I hooked three sleds together. I shoved the first sled toward the hatch, running and heaving, barely getting out of the way in time as the other two sleds followed the first. I grabbed a rail on the last one and climbed aboard. It was unnerving, as the line of sleds left the rotating space station. I didn’t look around yet, as I was too busy hauling myself to the lead sled.
Finally, I slid front forward onto the sled, grasping the handlebars.
“Do you have a direction for me?” I panted. Weightless maneuvering was harder and more tiring than it looked.
Rax gave me the bearing.
I activated the first sled and began punching in the coordinates as given me by Rax. The lines holding the sleds were smart cables and straightened out below me. That was a relative term in space. By below I meant under my sled.
Ready, I twisted the throttle as Rax directed. The sled vibrated, and seconds later, hot hydrogen exhaust spewed from the back of my car-sized sled. That propelled us forward as we built up velocity, heading for some distant Synthesizer station hidden in the Asteroid Belt.
The reason for the three sleds was in order to have enough fuel to not only reach the destination, but slow down so we could land once there. By that time, we would have less mass, as I would unhook each sled as it ran out of fuel.
I released the throttle and waited, sailing through space, realizing I must be insane to trust Rax in this. But as someone once said, there were times to just lay back and enjoy it. That’s what I was going to attempt to do for now.
-11-
Sailing through space in the middle of the Asteroid Belt while clutching motorcycle-style handlebars wasn’t my idea of fun. There was no margin for error. I’d never known anyone to do it and I was quite alone out here. NASA didn’t know about me. The Chinese and Russians didn’t know about me, and except for CAU, no one could remotely do anything about it to help me.
Speaking of CAU, Lord Beran had effectively destroyed the outfit, at least, as far as I knew.
For those of you that don’t know, Lord Beran had been an Antaran dominie—think of a galactic professor from the greatest university in the Orion Arm. As you can well imagine, he had b
een an extremely conceited individual. I’d attempted to thwart him over a month ago and failed. He’d brought his Tosk teams and clone-sons to a place deep under the ice in Antarctica. There, he had activated ancient portal machinery constructed long ago by Polarions. That machinery had let to a Shadow Dimension full of wickedly powerful entities. One of them, calling himself the Master, had broken through to our side and defeated Lord Beran in an impressive fight. Long story short, the Master had mocked me and told how he and his kind had defeated the ancient Polarions that had attempted to colonize the Shadow Dimension ages ago. I’d tricked the Master back to his side, jumped back over to ours and wrecked Beran’s equipment keeping the portal open, thus locking him and Beran over there.
Sand, by the way, ran the Great Machine deep in the Earth. Its purpose, as far as I knew, was to keep the Shadow Dimension closed from their side coming to ours. It was also harder from anyone on Earth going there. Lord Beran, with ancient machinery, had forced open the way on our side, thus breaching Sand’s barrier. If the Shadow Dimension denizens had come to Earth in great numbers, they would have turned it into a living Hell, with them as the tormenters.
What’s the point of telling you all this? When a regular guy makes a mistake, the consequences often hurt him and those who loved him. When powerful alien super-beings made a mistake, they could hurt entire worlds, possibly even galaxies. Why break into other realities and dimensions if those places brought insane plagues or conquerors back into your realm?
The godlike Polarions had been amazing. There was no doubt about that. However, the Polarions had turned out to be rather foolish. Their wisdom quotient had been low, while their intelligence had been higher than a kite.
I thought about such things while lying on the sled. The stars kept me company. The sun blazed in the stellar distance, while Rax kept quiet, plotting further mischief, no doubt.
Just a few years ago, I’d been a regular guy minding his own business as a security expert for Western Sunlight, Inc. I’d been in the Marines before that and knew how to handle myself in most tough situations. Because of the Polarions and greedy aliens wanting secret artifacts or tech treasures, I’d been through one crazy adventure after another. This one took the cake, though.
Rax eventually started speaking to me to give me further instructions four and a half hours after we’d left the rotating station.
I slid onto the sled’s underbelly and crawled down the smart cable. With a wireless command, Rax caused the cable to release the first and now upper sled. That cable coiled itself like a snake under the control of an Indian fakir waving his reed pipe back and forth.
I lay on the second sled, turned it on and twisted the throttle. We accelerated once more, leaving the first sled behind and continuing on our space voyage.
Time passed slowly after that.
I slept, woke later and took a piss in my suit. There was a rig set up for that, but it still felt weird. I stretched afterward and drank some of my water supply. Although I was hungry, I wasn’t yet hungry enough to suck down more of that awful Tosk paste.
I sailed through space, wondering if any other human would ever do something like this. Maybe mankind wouldn’t make it off our dirtball. What had Rax said before? The hotshot running the pirate vessel might try exterminating all humans in order to cover his crime of destroying a Galactic Guard dreadnought.
“Hey, Rax,” I said.
“Please, Logan,” Rax said sluggishly. “I was in a deeply meditative state. I do not care to talk right now.”
“Sure, sure,” I said. “How can humans tell anyone about the pirate overlord? They don’t even know about the Antaran stations or the pirate spaceship. They could never—”
“Logan, please, I do not sleep as you do. But I need a meditative period to replenish my mental acuity.”
“Just answer one question, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Fine,” Rax said. “The alien pirates would need to destroy Sand and others hidden from regular humans. In doing so, they would likely annihilate all life on Earth.”
“Oh,” I said. “But wouldn’t they first try to find whatever it was they came to the Solar System to steal?”
“You have broken your word. You said one question. Besides, do not ask something when the answer is so patently obvious.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, deciding to let him meditate. I had my own things to think through.
Time passed—hours, two days. I released the second sled, and I began to feel antsy stuck on the last sled. I was a physical kind of guy, needing to walk, lift, do things, in other words. If I lay around for too long, I start getting jumpy and squirmy.
After lying here watching the stars pass for days, I was that way now.
Had Jenna and the others made it home? Were the Gigantopithecuses still coming? Was there really an ancient Synthesizer waiting for me? Which of us had seen Argon? If I hadn’t, what had I seen in the tube and why had Sand lied to me?
I was the new guy. The old farts on the block often lied to me, hiding their dark secrets.
“Logan,” Rax said, speaking normally, “do you see that object up ahead?”
Glad to have some talkative company again, I squinted through the visor of my helmet. “I don’t see a damn thing.”
“Are you using the helmet’s zoom function?”
“What zoom function?”
Rax didn’t sigh, although he instructed me more closely in the helmet’s abilities. I had to twist my head inside the helmet and try one knob after another, moving them with my lips. As I tested these, a bright light outside caught my attention.
I faced forward. The brightness increased and then abruptly quit.
“I saw that,” I said. “What was it?”
“Trouble,” Rax replied. “More precisely, it was the plume of an accelerating missile.”
“What?”
“A missile that is heading straight for us.”
-12-
I shouted in alarm.
“Please, Logan, that does not aid my mental processes. Just a moment, I think… Ah! We are in luck.”
“You can control the missile?” I asked hopefully.
“No. It is a kinetic kill-missile, not possessing a nuclear or antimatter warhead. I imagine the ancient ones did not want to bring attention to the Synthesizer. If a nuclear warhead detonated, some of the watchers on Earth might notice. Even ordinary people might see an antimatter explosion.”
“Oh boy, that’s swell,” I said sarcastically. “You had me worried there for a minute. A kinetic kill-missile, praise be that it’s not a nuke.”
“In a manner of speaking, I already said that.”
I cleared my throat. “You do realize we’ll both die anyway, right?”
“I doubt I will,” Rax said.
“Oh? So, you won’t mind then if I unhook you from my belt and toss you overboard?”
“That would not kill me,” Rax said.
“Of course not. You’d just tumble in space for the rest of your existence.”
“I would put myself into sleep mode, sending out periodic signals. I imagine someone would eventually pick me up.”
“Bully for you, Rax.”
“That is a fine attitude, Logan. You are maturing at a much faster rate than I would have thought possible for you.”
“You know what, old buddy? Since you said that, and since I’m going to die anyway, I’m going to pull out my Antaran blaster, toss you ahead of me and use you for target practice.”
“This is the wrong time for gallows humor,” Rax said.
“I’m not joking.”
“Then, your threat is in poor taste, as I was just about to tell you how to avoid the missile.”
“I’m listening.”
“You must set the sled for constant acceleration. Once so set, you will jump off it.”
“Okay… And how do I change my velocity to land on the Synthesizer station?”
“I am hoping the ancient site has some sort of
retrieval mechanism to bring you in.”
“That makes no sense,” I said, my temper rising again. “First, they send a missile to kill us, and then they’re going to rescue me? Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen. How much time until the kill-missile reaches us?”
“I would estimate ten to eleven minutes.”
“That gives you nine and a half minutes to ten and a half minutes to come up with a better plan.”
“I do not have a better plan,” Rax said.
“Just so you know, before time is up, I’m going to begin target practice with you.”
“Logan—”
“Don’t bother, Rax. If I’m going to die out here trying your harebrained scheme, you’re going to die with me.”
“That is an ugly attitude.”
“Yeah, ain’t it just?” I asked. “But it does have one positive element. It’s my ugly attitude. So, I’m going to stick with it.”
Rax did not respond right away.
Now, as I’ve said, I’d been lying on a space sled far too long. I was antsy, eager to be doing something physical. That had put me into a foul mood. Plus—and this was important—a damned kinetic kill-missile had been launched against me. I had maybe ten minutes left to live.
“Hey!” I shouted, beginning to lose it. “A missile is heading straight for us because you followed Argon’s so-called orders. Did you ever think that maybe this was Sand’s trick against us? Sand caused the hallucination inside you in order to ensure my death later as a failsafe. That way, his precious secret would remain hidden because he would have sealed any possible loose lips, like my own.”
“I am beginning to suspect you are correct,” Rax said.
I nodded within the helmet, gratified he’d finally admitted to his stupidity and gullibility.
“Still,” Rax said, “I now believe our best chance lies in bargaining with the Synthesizer.”
Invaders: Dreadnought Ocelot (Invaders Series Book 4) Page 6