The Lost Supernova (Lost Starship Series Book 10) Read online

  SF Books by Vaughn Heppner

  THE A.I. SERIES:

  A.I. Destroyer

  The A.I. Gene

  A.I. Assault

  A.I. Battle Station

  A.I. Battle Fleet

  A.I. Void Ship

  EXTINCTION WARS SERIES:

  Assault Troopers

  Planet Strike

  Star Viking

  Fortress Earth

  Target: Earth

  LOST STARSHIP SERIES:

  The Lost Starship

  The Lost Command

  The Lost Destroyer

  The Lost Colony

  The Lost Patrol

  The Lost Planet

  The Lost Earth

  The Lost Artifact

  The Lost Star Gate

  The Lost Supernova

  Visit VaughnHeppner.com for more information

  The Lost Supernova

  (Lost Starship Series 10)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Copyright © 2019 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  -PROLOGUE-

  The world shook as asteroids rained upon the surface. The planet’s tectonic plates trembled and had already begun shifting. Hot magma seethed and sloshed below the continental crust as if knowing the hour approached when it could flow upon the land.

  The eruptions would destroy everything, including the underground Great Machine that had survived the era of the Builders and the Ska-driven Nameless Ones with their awful Destroyers.

  Puny primates were bringing about this planetary destruction. The humans had formed an arrogant military order known as Star Watch. Their so-called Grand Fleet had smashed the Spacer armada protecting the star system and had annihilated the surface primary beams, using hellburners and thermonuclear-tipped missiles to do so.

  Even now, another brace of asteroids towed and released by Star Watch battleships screamed through the stratosphere, heading down. When the next asteroids struck—

  Inside the planet, a giant octopoid-like creature slithered madly through unbelievably deep, subterranean corridors. He had a whale-sized blob for a body and many thrashing tentacles, propelling him faster and faster. His intellect and primordial powers dwarfed the creatures from the Commonwealth of Planets. That these gnat-like humans with their toy warships should cause his death infuriated the entity.

  His name was Nay-Yog-Yezleth, and he was a Yon-Soth, otherwise known as an Old One from the dawn time of the universe. He had awakened after an eon of slumber and ingested invigorating varth elixir given him by the Spacers. He had striven to revitalize his father five thousand light-years away so that the nightmare reign of the Old Ones could begin anew.

  As inconceivable as it sounded, the plot had failed. Worse, Star Watch had learned of his existence. That was why the Grand Fleet had come to the Forbidden Planet, to eliminate him.

  How could this be happening to such a unique being as himself?

  Nay-Yog-Yezleth slithered into a grand chamber kilometers below the surface. It was hot down here, and greasy droplets of sweat oozed from his rubbery skin.

  Knowing he might only have minutes left, Nay-Yog-Yezleth activated a hallucination machine, a primitive one unbelievably ancient in age and design. It enraged him beyond speech to think that he had to resort to this in order to gain revenge upon the human race in such a slipshod manner.

  His long tentacles thrashed anew, this time in exact sequences as he pulled levers and tapped buttons.

  The hallucination machine began to hum as screens flashed on, showing him a hundred different worlds and many weird situations.

  As his ring of eyes studied images, he concentrated his vast intellect, rushing to devise a scheme that would achieve his vengeance.

  Then, it came to him. Yes, yes, what a wonderful idea, oh, such a glorious revenge. There were forces and thoughts, undercurrents and reactions throughout the realm known as Human Space and the fringe areas of the Beyond circling the small region of the interstellar void that held terrible secrets waiting to spawn anew. If he could but awaken one of them…

  The ignorant humans thought of themselves as the masters of the universe, but they were so laughably wrong. Why, without the destruction of a few paltry Builder nexuses a short time ago, the Imperial Swarm would have soon annihilated the weak race of hominids.

  In these few precious moments as the asteroids rushed to bring about his extinction, Nay-Yog-Yezleth did not dwell on how he and his father had hoped to use the Swarm Imperium to further their ends. That dream was over—forever—unless other Old Ones had survived the millennias to this new era of small beings and weak minds.

  He checked a scope, seeing the fiery tails of asteroids as they plunged through the thickening atmosphere to strike the planetary surface.

  Nay-Yog-Yezleth refused to dwell on his coming demise. That would simply be too awful. He had lived for so very long, so long indeed. To die to these wretched primates was more than he could bear.

  Thus, he concentrated on his revenge, on the wonderful plan of their destruction. It would take a few more adjustments to make it work.

  His slippery tentacles thrashed and slapped in seeming random order and in speeds almost impossible to discern. Fortunately, his vast inhuman intellect guided his many appendages.

  The hallucination machine thrummed with exotic forms of energy, sending out pulses of ethereal quantum E7 rays.

  The machine was ancient beyond reckoning, but was based upon primal Yon-Soth technology, which was, practically speaking, “magic” to the ignoramuses of this era. The rays moved at the speed of thought, emanating from the machine.

  The tentacles slapped faster yet.

  Nay-Yog-Yezleth concentrated the EQE7 rays at several groups of intelligent beings—were they all actual life forms in the accepted sense of the idea?

  Unfortunately, Nay-Yog-Yezleth had run out of time to ponder that question.

  He manipulated the machine as he programmed a complex set of hallucinations for each group. These hallucinations or delusions would drive the entities to predictable actions. The actions should combine into the destruction of the human race. Certainly, that destruction would not occur with the speed and suddenness of slamming asteroids, but the extermination of the human race—in all its variable forms—would happen in a short span of time. Say…four years at the most.

  Nay-Yog-Yezleth might have enjoyed chortling in evil glee at his masterwork of vengeance. He was too busy working in order to make sure that his hasty plan would succeed with brutal efficiency for him to indulge himself.

  Thus, deep underground in his subterranean fortress, the Old One continued to manipulate the ancient machine as one asteroid after another crashed upon the already heaving crust of the Forbidden Planet. The asteroids added incredible forces to the tectonic plates. Those plates finally shifted violently. As even more asteroids rained upon the quaking surface, the deepest plates cracked and surged. The magma in the mantle raced upward, spewing hot lava onto the surface. Gigantic cracks appeared. In seconds, the quaking and cracking became a worldwide event.

  In his subterranean fortress, Nay-Yog-Yezleth died as a torrent of lava burst into his chamber, killing him and melting the ancient machine.

 
The reign of the Old One on the Forbidden Planet was over. The crews in the battleships in orbital space did not know that. Thus, the towing and releasing of asteroids would continue for another eight days.

  At the end of that time, Admiral Fletcher and what was left of the Grand Fleet would begin the voyage home.

  Meanwhile, the EQE7 rays continued for a little longer to shift the brain patterns of carefully if hastily selected entities. These entities were varied, but each group would be part of the vengeance puzzle that would soon begin to squeeze their targets to dreadful effect.

  -1-

  EIGHT MONTHS LATER

  Lord High Admiral Cook squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. The Lord High Admiral was a big old man. He wore a white Star Watch uniform and had a swath of thick white hair and leathery features.

  He did not like what he was hearing. He did not like it one bit. Frankly, it was a mistake. In his opinion, it was a terrible mistake. The question was—did he dare to tell the new Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Planets the truth?

  Cook sat before a large table, facing three people. They were in a huge ornate room in Stockholm, as this was part of the great Governing Council Complex where the elected delegates from a hundred worlds made policy for the Commonwealth.

  Incoming Prime Minister Daniel Hampton—who had the greatest number of elected councilors on the Great Council—was in his late forties. He was an energetic Vegan—a man from Vega II—with wavy red hair, and was using his famously engaging smile as he explained the new policy to Cook. Prime Minister Hampton had proven terrific at speaking in public and private. He had been talking to Cook for some time already. No doubt, the Prime Minister believed he was softening the blow, as it were.

  Hampton’s chief political advisor sat on his left. Many of the keenest observers believed this man had been responsible for Hampton’s election to the highest office in Human Space.

  The political advisor was a dour bald man with stooped shoulders. He wore a half-rumpled suit and seemed to be a crotchety, muttering old man more than a political wizard. Still, the advisor was full of statistics and known for his unbending will. In truth, Bill “Get ’Em” Sanders had run the election and had already begun running the new administration. He did so because he usually convinced the Prime Minister that his way was the best way.

  The last of the three was a stunning beauty. She sat on Prime Minister Hampton’s right and had been introduced as Doctor Lisa Meyers. She was in her mid-thirties but looked as if someone had frozen her at a perfect twenty-five. She was tall and elegant with her long dark hair done up in a towering wrap above her head. She was so slender as to be almost gaunt, and she seldom smiled. Her eyes might have been the most beautiful thing about her, as they had a piercing quality when she fixed her gaze on a person or object.

  Cook knew little about her. She had proven a mystery to his prep aides in Star Watch Intelligence. During the meeting, Meyers had watched him much too keenly, stirring a lust the old admiral had thought long gone in him. Meyers had also jotted notes on a pad laid on the table in a lawyerly fashion.

  Prime Minister Hampton finally stopped talking, looking expectantly at Cook as he used his supposedly dazzling smile to prod the admiral.

  Cook knew he should say something, but he was still absorbing the Prime Minister’s ideas and hadn’t decided yet if he could follow them.

  “Well?” Prime Minister Hampton finally asked.

  “I’m not sure, sir,” Admiral Cook managed to say.

  “You’re not sure about what?” Hampton asked.

  Cook took a deep breath and decided he needed to stick to the truth. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea, sir.”

  Hampton stared at him as the engaging smile slowly drained away. Finally, the Prime Minister broke eye contact and turned to “Get ’Em” Sanders.

  “Please elaborate, Admiral,” Sanders said gruffly.

  “We finally have peace,” Cook said, addressing the advisor. “These past years, Star Watch has taken heavy ship losses too many times, particularly in this last battle against the Old One.”

  “Yes…” Sanders said, his eyes smoldering as he studied Cook. “I’ve gone over the reports about the orbital assault against the… the Forbidden Planet. Do you truly expect us to believe that some ancient…monster aided the Spacers?”

  Cook wished he had Brigadier Mary O’Hara with him, but she was on permanent leave because Star Watch didn’t know how badly she’d been compromised by the Bosks.

  “Admiral?” Sanders demanded. “Did you hear what I just asked you?”

  Cook cleared his throat. He was beginning to dislike Sanders. How dare the chief advisor address him as if he was a first-year cadet?

  “Of course I expect you to believe the reports,” Cook said, “as they’re true.”

  “Really,” Sanders said in a biting tone. “Did anyone happen to see the ancient Old One?”

  Cook drummed thick fingers on the table. Now that he thought about it, had anyone seen the—?

  “Captain Maddox and his wife Meta saw a Yon-Soth—an Old One,” Cook answered. “They saw the creature in a nexus in the Sagittarius Spiral Arm—”

  “Lord High Admiral,” Sanders said, interrupting him. “That isn’t even the issue. The real point is that Admiral Fletcher took horrifying fleet losses in the battle of the Forbidden Planet System. Combined with the massive ship losses from the initial Swarm Invasion, Star Watch is woefully weak at this critical juncture. We need time for our industrial base to construct new warships and time to train new personnel to fill those ships.”

  Cook blinked several times. Was the advisor hard of hearing? “That’s exactly my point,” the admiral said. “We need time, and that means we need peace so we can rebuild our fleet strength. We also need time so that countless Commonwealth planets can recover after the repeated shocks these past few years.”

  Dour old Sanders frowned and glanced at Doctor Meyers.

  That surprised Cook. Wouldn’t Sanders have glanced at Prime Minister Hampton for support? What was the connection between the gorgeous Meyers and Sanders?

  Sanders adjusted his creased tie and brushed his left hand over his bald head before he concentrated on Cook again.

  “I fail to understand your objection to the Prime Minister’s order,” Sanders said. “It sounds as if we both want the same thing.”

  “Sir,” Cook said, leaning minutely forward as he addressed the Prime Minister. “May I speak frankly?”

  “You may,” Sanders said, without looking at the Prime Minister to gain permission.

  Cook frowned for just a moment. Then, he began to choose his words with care as he spoke to the Prime Minister.

  “The Commonwealth has peace, maybe real peace for the first time in a long time. Throughout these past years we’ve faced a New Man invasion, androids trying to take over, a Destroyer from the Nameless Ones smashing the Wahhabi Caliphate and hitting Earth, among other places. We’ve had a massive Swarm Invasion Fleet attack us, and a smaller one later. We’ve had planetary systems engaging in open rebellion. We’re still trying to absorb the caliphate planets and Windsor League worlds that joined the Commonwealth. We’ve had a dramatic increase in piracy—”

  “I know all these things,” Sanders snapped, interrupting.

  Once more, Lord High Admiral Cook blinked several times, mastering himself. He wasn’t used to a little prick like Sanders interrupting him so rudely as he tried to make a point. Why did the Prime Minister allow this? Just who was running the show here?

  Cook scowled—and that made Doctor Meyers sit just a little straighter, if that was possible.

  Cook glanced at her, noting the way she watched him, how her dark eyes glittered with fantastic sex appeal. The old admiral actually felt his groin stir as if he was a teenager again. While she was striking and highly desirable, there was something more that troubled him about her. Yes. She was like a shark waiting to attack.

  Just where had Hampton found her?

 
Cook inhaled and exhaled several times to calm himself and get back on track.

  “You say that you know all these things,” Cook said, addressing Sanders. “Yet, you want me to stir the pot and possibly make trouble for ourselves.” He couldn’t do it anymore and faced the Prime Minister. “Begging your pardon, sir, that strikes me as damn stupid.”

  Sanders’ bald head jerked up. He swiveled to look across at Doctor Meyers.

  The Prime Minister must have noticed, because Hampton also looked at stunning, statuesque Lisa Meyers.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  Cook’s eyes widened. He hadn’t heard her speak until now, and her voice was amazingly, throatily sensuous. Why, he wanted to reach over and rip off her—

  The Lord High Admiral had will power, a considerable amount, in fact. He used it now, not allowing his lustful desires to sidetrack him.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “You’re not sure about what?” Cook forced himself to say.

  It was possible the corners of her mouth quirked up the tiniest fraction, but maybe it was the admiral’s imagination. She did arch her eyebrows at him before turning to the Prime Minister.

  “Sir?” she asked Hampton.

  “What do you think, Bill?” the Prime Minister asked Sanders. “Should we tell him?”

  Sanders used his right forefinger to stroke a cheek.

  “Tell me what?” Cook asked.

  “Yes,” Sanders said. “Go ahead. Tell him. It’s time.”

  Prime Minister Hampton turned to the woman.

  Meyers opened a purse that had been in her lap. Incredibly, she drew a small black gun from it and set the gun on the table. She kept her right hand on it, her forefinger touching the trigger.

  “Do you plan to shoot me?” Cook asked, stunned at this development.

  “One word,” Sanders said, “and your career is over. Don’t doubt we have the political muscle to do it.”

  Cook looked askance at dour old Sanders. The Prime Minister’s chief political advisor stared right back at him, daring him to do something.