by Brandt Legg
“I don’t need the stories,” she said. “They are not encouraging.”
“You are brave. Like your father, like your mother—”
“I am not.”
“Yes. Yes, you are. I can see it in you.”
She shook her head, because she didn’t believe she was brave, but she could see he actually thought she was.
“This is the last of the Globotite that has been mined. The guardians have everything else.”
“No . . . I can’t,” she said again.
“You must.” He held out the pouches and touched her hand with them. “Without this, your father will fail. With it, he might succeed. He might save the future.”
She stared at the miner, still refusing to take the pouches. Just then, a commotion at the other end of the street took their attention.
“Guardians!” he whispered loudly. “Please, take them.” He pushed them into her hand and she took them without thinking. “Thank you . . . ” His eyes lingered on hers for a powerful instant. “Now, go!”
Before she could respond, he was gone. From the highest point of her yard, Mairis saw the guardians sweeping into the settlement. Their numbers were too great for it to have been another routine search. Part of her was happy that Grayswa was off on a quest deep in the forest, but she also knew he might have been able to prevent whatever was about to happen. She feared a purge, but wondered if the Cosegan society had collapsed to the point where they would resort to such violence.
Seeing the size of their force, she panicked for Suu’s uncle, and ran to try to warn him, but by the time she reached their home, he was already in custody.
“Wait, what are you doing?” she asked a second before realizing her mistake.
“Get her!” one of the guardians yelled.
Mairis turned to run, but it was too late. A guardian grabbed her. The globotite was barely concealed in her pack.
As she struggled, they scanned her with holographic imaging. “She’s not Etheren,” the man reported.
“Let her go,” the other one said.
“Are you sure?”
“Just Etherens.”
“Where are you taking him?” Mairis asked as Suu’s uncle tried to shoo her away, but they ignored her questions.
She watched as he, and soon thousands of other Etherens, were loaded up into goeze light transports.
Mairis thought of the globotite now in her care and knew she must go. The miner and many of the others taken would know about it. It would not take long before the guardians began questioning and analyzing the minds of all their captives. They would learn she had it, and they would be back. They would come for her.
Unable to reach her father, or Grayswa, she watched her adopted family, friends, and most of her community being moved like cattle and taken who knows where.
Nowhere good, Mairis thought, as she made a decision. I will do whatever it takes to get this last globotite to my father.
When it was all over, Mairis and a few dozen other non-Etherens wandered through the abandoned village. Since the settlement was now essentially shut down, most of them decided to head back to the city. She would go with them, blending in with the refugees until she got close enough to head off-road.
But I must be extra cautious, she thought. Some of them might be guardian informants.
Seventy
Deep within the spectrum belt, approaching the Epic-seam, the fleet of Imaze ships encountered a galactic storm like no other. The cosmic forces quickly threw them into dire turmoil.
Shanoah tried valiantly to regain control of the spinning ship—communicating with the onboard artificial intelligence system, using every sequence and code she knew—but nothing worked.
“There is a flaw in the durable connection,” she yelled as the droning sound of scraping metal and competing sirens emanating from unknown sources fought a battle of decibels. “It says some kind of outside force has control.”
“It’s the spectrum!” Fray shouted back from the wall where he was pinned by the centrifugal force of the spinning ship. “The color tones have penetrated.”
“That would mean they have intelligence, consciousness,” she yelled.
“Must be.”
“Impossible!”
“Seems like it’s happening!” he yelled. “Try seismic-seven!”
Shanoah looked at the four dead crewmembers around her, knowing others might’ve been lost below. She didn’t know how much air the eight on the upper level still had remaining. “What if it doesn’t work?” she shouted, knowing full well what would happen if it didn’t.
The ship would explode. There would be nothing left of any of them.
“There is no choice!” he yelled back.
But there was a choice. Shanoah had been there before. She had regained operations the last time, when she’d lost Stave. The swirl of that memory was buried in a shallow grave, rattling in the chaos of her mind. The grief and guilt of that churning tragedy ran raw against her senses, thinking back on those fractured moments when the world—her world anyway—should have ended.
Shanoah found the floating holographic controls and fixed her eyes on the heads up displays. The increasingly dense light fields, which were essentially equivalent to asteroids (some solid, some more like pulses of molecular imprints, both made up of colored lights of varying frequencies), now pummeled the ship. The windows revealed what she had already denied, the colored concentrations of energy, Or whatever the hell they are, had entered the ship. Fray was right—they were penetrating.
“There. Is. No. Choice!” he barked again.
She knew he was right. This time was different. Still, she responded with, “Too dangerous.” Her concern was that if they did the seismic-seven, it would be her last command.
“Forget the fear! Issue it!”
“I’m not afraid . . . not for myself.”
“I know,” he shouted, understanding what she meant. If they failed, it wasn’t just their lives, it wasn’t just this time, it was everything that would be gone. He also considered her the bravest person he’d known. “One way or another.”
The windows filled with the purples and blues of the swirling light-asteroids, their seemingly random sizes oscillating, increasing, threatening impact. These presented a whole different danger. Where the energy pulses could enter the ship, the colored asteroids could destroy it in an instant.
“The ACAL is working!” she announced, relieved that the anti-collision algorithms built into the onboard AI system still to seemed be functioning, even without her commands.
“It’s the only reason that we’re still in one piece.”
In the spin, she saw the blur of pulsating yellow and orange rocks ahead, recalling those from just before Stave died on the last trip. The memory of it pulled her back into a dark and terrifying place until, just as quickly, something worse ripped her back to the present.
A chunk of pulsating yellow hit the ship, tearing into the side.
“The light bands held!” Fray yelled as the glowing pulser swept in a crashing catastrophe, knocking around the interior. “The sides resealed!”
“Oxygen back,” she shouted as the meters plummeted and recovered at the same time. “The pulsers shorted the wavelength synch, but I’m not sure we can take another hit.”
“You’ve got to do the seismic-seven!” Fray had not been on the last mission when Stave and the others died, when Shanoah almost didn’t make it back, and part of him wondered if she’d made a mistake before, or if her decisions had been what saved her and the ones who had made it back. “You know the damage pulsers do!” He looked out the window. “More pulsers fast approaching.” Fray tried to move, but was still trapped against the wall. “Time is sweeping against us!”
Yet, as Shanoah neutralized the pulser bouncing around the interior with a proton wash, she had no way of knowing how much time had come and gone. “Doing a seismic-seven is going to make all that worse.”
“Do it!” he yelled. “The gold
ones are coming.”
“The ACAL can protect us from that frequency!”
“No, you didn’t face those before. They’re an uncharted claim against reality.”
She knew there was a chance even with a seismic-seven that they would bash through every shield and crush them. “The Oordan-field,” she yelled. “The seismic-seven will take too much energy. We’ll hit the field with over-weight velocity.”
“Either way . . . ”
“We’ll be unable to escape the pull. The Oordan-field will finish us for sure.”
“Please.”
“So many ways to die,” she said, not loud enough for him to hear.
Seventy-One
Gale looked at the small opening, and then turned back to the old man. “Tell me that’s not as big as it opens?”
“It’s not meant to be an entrance,” Avery said, smiling. “Remember, it’s for guarding something precious.” His smile faded and his tone fell to an urgent whisper. “Something beyond us mortals is hidden inside. Those who put it there didn’t want it to ever be found.”
“It just looks like an old coal chute,” Rip said.
“That’s what it’s supposed to look like.”
Rip reached up and pulled himself high enough so he could get his head inside the opening. “I’m guessing something in here moves?”
“That bottom slab. You can work it out with the other side of the key.”
Rip noticed the flat edge of the key handle was more like a slotted screwdriver blade.
“Work the edges,” the old man said.
“That’s a small space to get through,” Gale said to Avery. “Are you going to be able to make it?”
“Oh, I’m not going through this time,” the old man replied.
She nodded as if that was a wise decision. “How did you get to know about this?”
“Well, my grandfather . . . he was involved in the 1912 renovation.”
“I don’t understand,” Gale said. “How does doing construction connect to knowing about one of the most important artifacts in the history of the world?”
He laughed. “Could be because my grandfather was also a member of a secret society.”
“Don’t tell me it was the Knights Templar,” Rip said from above, now dusty and black as he pulled out to get fresh air. “Are you sure this panel comes out?”
The old man chuckled. “You just keep at it.”
Rip sighed and pushed his head back in.
“Can I help, Dad?” Cira asked, tiring of exploring the rest of the crypt.
“Not yet.”
“Your grandfather?” Gale prompted Avery. “Secret society?”
“Ah, yes . . . No, he wasn’t a Knights Templar or anything so gloried. Ol’ Nampa was part of a far more secret group. You’ve never heard of it because they were so secret.”
“Do they still exist?” Gale asked.
“Sort of. There were three of us left.”
“You being the last?”
He nodded. “Yeah, we kind of folded our group into another.”
“What’s that group called?” Rip asked from inside the hole.
“What group?” the old man replied, smiling slyly.
“The group,” Gale said, smiling to encourage him.
“You mean the List Keepers?”
“What do they do?”
“Can’t really tell you.”
Rip pulled himself out again. “You mean to tell me that you’re willing to tell us where an object that was held by Jesus Christ is located, but you won’t tell us who, or what, this group—what’d you call them, the List Keepers?—is about?”
“An idea is far more sacred than any object could ever be,” the old man said. “Ideas can also be much more dangerous than any physical possession.”
Rip looked at Avery for a moment, impressed with so much wisdom. “Can’t argue with you there.” Then, back in the chute, he finally worked the key under the slab far enough that he could get his fingers in. He lifted out a plate not much bigger than a square manhole cover. “There’s a ladder in there.” He handed out the slab.
Gale and Cira strained to get it down on the floor without letting it drop or crushing their fingers.
Rip, contorting himself by holding on to a pipe just below the ceiling, was able to swing his legs in, twist around, and get a foot on one of the ladder rungs.
“I’ll stay here to make sure no one closes the lid,” the old man said.
Gale made a face as a shiver went up her spine. “Please do. I don’t want to die in this crypt.”
“Gale, you don’t have to come,” Rip said.
“I’ve come this far, I’m not going to miss the main event.”
“I’m coming, too,” Cira said, pulling herself up.
“How will we know where to go in there?” Gale asked.
“Only one way to go,” the old man said, a sentimental look on his face. “You won’t get lost. What you’re looking for is a cross.”
Rip nodded, not surprised, then carefully climbed down the ladder into the tight space.
Once the three of them were standing at the bottom of the ladder in a dark, dank tunnel, which was only about shoulder width and barely six feet high. Rip shined a flashlight ahead. He had to stoop as they navigated the space.
“Talk about close,” Rip said. “But there’s a draft coming toward us, so there must be another air source down here somewhere.”
The passageway went off to the right. Its tight brick walls looked different than those inside the crypt they had just left.
“How old are these tunnels?” Cira asked.
“Nice masonry work,” Rip said, the light’s beam hitting where the walls met the brick floors. “Older than the church.”
“I think this is working around to the front of the church,” Gale said. “Remind me to ask Avery why these tunnels were built in the first place.”
They had to walk single-file in the slowly curving tunnel. It came to an end about fifty feet from where they began and took a sharp right. Rip stooped as they followed the passage until it opened up into a little room just wide enough for the three of them to stand side-by-side.
“That wall answers your question about why the tunnel was built,” Rip said, staring at the wall four feet in front of them. “They built it for the Eysen.”
His light glared off a three-foot by two-foot ornate gold cross, inlaid with tarnished silver.
Seventy-Two
Rip, Gale, and Cira stood in the underground chamber beneath the Old North Church in Boston, baffled at the spectacle of the gold and silver cross.
“It’s so fancy,” Cira said. “But it’s a cross. Where’s the Eysen?”
“Maybe I should go back and ask Avery,” Gale suggested.
“Hold on,” Rip said. “Give me a second.” He felt around the cross, which he now realized protruded from the bricks by more than an inch. He pulled on the shiny cross, wobbling it, until it came loose it out in one piece and handed it to Gale.
“Woah,” Gale exclaimed. “Heavy.”
Rip put his hand into the recessed cavity where the cross had been.
“So where’s the Eysen?” Cira asked again.
“The cross is a decoy,” Rip said. “If anyone found their way down here, they would believe the treasure was the cross.”
“And it is,” Gale said, studying the beautiful artifact. “Paul Revere was a renowned silversmith. I wonder if he made it.”
Rip nodded. Normally he might have stopped to entertain such theories, and to study the magnificent cross, but he knew the Eysen could not fit inside of it, and no matter how spectacular it was, or who might’ve made it, it could never compare to an Eysen—particularly this one, because of its purported owner. He ran his hands around the cavity again, but found nothing.
They all scoured the tiny space. Rip stood back, surveying the entire room, and then he saw it. “There.”
“What?” Cira asked.
“Those pipes.”
He pointed to two large pipes that ran through the ceiling at the corner of one wall. “They seem to be old concrete, but I think it’s another material.” He rubbed his hands along the dusty pipe until he found a dimple about the size of his fingertip. He pressed it. A section of the pipe running against the wall opened.
“Ha!” Cira said triumphantly.
“Concealed metal hinges,” Rip announced as he reached up into the opening and pulled an object out. “Looks like a sphere to me.”
“But the casing is only wood,” Gale said, expecting the intricately carved stone casings the other had had.
Rip studied the wooden globe until he found the nearly invisible center seam. Trained to be cautious of ancient artifacts, he carefully inspected every inch before he attempted to open it.
“How could it have come from the Cosegans in wood?” Gale asked. “Can wood last eleven million years?”
“I like the stone casing better,” Cira said.
“Maybe the original casing didn’t survive,” Rip suggested. “We’re talking thousands of years. Someone could have made this one to protect it, to hide it . . . It’s incredibly well made—perfect really.”
Gale watched as Rip tried to separate the sides. “Maybe you need a tool to open it?”
“Patience,” he said to himself, turning it around to get a better grip. “Wait, what’s this? Cira, let me have your magnifying glass.”
She loved it when her parents borrowed her tools. “Sure,” she said, fishing her Swiss army knife from her pocket and handing it to him.
Rip flipped out the small magnifier inside. “Amazing,” he said, examining a tiny spot on the bottom of the wood casing. “There’s a little symbol carved here.”
“And what is that next to it?” Cira asked, leaning in.
“Looks like ancient Hebrew.”
“Dad, Jesus was a carpenter, right? Could he have been the one who made this casing?”
“That would be pretty cool,” Gale said. “Where’s the date? Avery said today’s date was carved in the casing.”
“Must be inside . . . let’s get it opened,” he said, just as he got the two sides separated.