The Lost Artifact Read online

  “Then why did you still pop up like that?”

  “You must hurry to medical,” Galyan said. “Valerie sent me. I urge you to hurry.”

  “Why?” Meta asked, worried now.

  Galyan hesitated.

  “Tell me,” she shouted, moving closer, trying to grab him. Her hands went through the holoimage. She backed up, shaking her hands, finding the experience troubling, highly unsettling.

  “Is it Maddox?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” Galyan said. “During the fold…”

  “Yes, yes, what? Spit it out, Galyan.”

  “The captain went into a seizure. They are rushing him to medical.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “I do not know, Meta. That is why I think you should hurry.”

  Meta stared at the holoimage a second longer. Then she whirled around and began to sprint.

  -18-

  Captain Maddox felt weak.

  He didn’t know how much time had passed. But for some time, it had felt as if he was falling down into an endless abyss.

  Fortunately, the sensation had ceased. He lay on something soft as people murmured around him. He tried to dredge up the strength to open his eyes. He did not understand this weakness. He hated it. He was Captain Maddox. Nothing was beyond him. He needed to concentrate, to force his will…

  By slow degrees, Maddox forced his eyelids to flutter open.

  “Look,” a woman said. “He’s coming out of it.”

  Someone rushed near. Warm hands grasped his right arm. “Darling!”

  Maddox looked up into Meta’s sweet face. She was beautiful, and she seemed concerned.

  Maddox moistened his mouth. “What…?” he whispered.

  Meta looked back at someone else.

  “Tell…” Maddox said weakly.

  “Please, allow me,” a woman said from behind Meta.

  Reluctantly, Meta released his arm and stepped to the side. Maddox had difficulty tracking her.

  “Captain,” a woman said.

  Maddox’s gaze slid away from Meta, making him feel sad. It took time for him to refocus on a thin-faced woman with a beak of a nose and a high forehead. He felt he should know her.

  “I’m Doctor Lister,” the woman said. “I’m Victory’s chief medical officer.”

  Maddox continued to stare at her.

  “You had a seizure,” Lister said.

  Maddox moistened his mouth again. “When did…it…hap…?” he whispered ever so slowly.

  “We believe the fold caused it,” Lister said.

  Maddox let that sink in, and he finally noticed the worry in the doctor’s eyes.

  “Implant…” he said, too tired to finish his thought.

  “We know about that,” Lister said. “We believe the implant had something to do with the seizure. In fact…”

  Maddox started to fade away, which made him stubborn. He refused to pass out. Fear nibbled at him, but he was going to face down the fear.

  By slow degrees, Doctor Lister’s narrow face reappeared.

  “He’s coherent again,” Meta said from somewhere.

  Doctor Lister regarded Maddox. “Can you understand me?”

  “Implant trigger…?” Maddox whispered.

  Lister glanced at Meta before focusing on Maddox. “Yes. We’ve tested the linkage. This implant is subtle. It is…booby-trapped I believe is the correct word. I have to tell you, sir, I don’t think I can take it out.”

  Maddox understood what she was saying, and the implications. A grim smile tugged at his lips.

  “I’m quite serious,” Lister told him.

  “He knows that,” Meta said.

  Maddox managed the slightest of nods. “Listen… Operate. Take…out…”

  “I’m not sure you understand the risks of my doing that just now,” Lister said.

  “Don’t…care,” Maddox said. “Take…out…now.”

  The worry in Doctor Lister’s eyes turned into fear. “I’m not sure I’m skilled enough to do that.”

  “Do…it…anyway,” Maddox whispered.

  “Sir—”

  “Just a minute,” Meta told the doctor. “Let me talk to him.”

  Lister seemed relieved. She backed away from Maddox.

  Meta took the doctor’s place. She put her warm hands on his right arm again. She leaned near as she stared into his eyes.

  Maddox smiled. He loved Meta, and he knew she would force the doctor to operate.

  “The operation could kill you,” Meta said.

  He already knew that.

  “It could cause permanent brain damage,” she added.

  That gave him pause. The idea that he would be less than he used to be was galling indeed. But in the end, that didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to have a Strand control unit in his head. He would rather die than allow such a thing to stay.

  “I understand,” Meta said quietly, as she searched his eyes. “And I’ll honor your wish, my husband. But if you die on me…” Her grip tightened on his flesh.

  “Must…fight,” Maddox whispered.

  Meta nodded, and tears welled in her eyes. The tears began to drip onto his shirt. “Say it,” she whispered.

  “Love…” he said.

  “Yes,” Meta said, letting the tears continue to drip. “I love you, too.”

  Maddox smiled once more. Then, he faded away. Meta had understood his desire. He no longer had to fight to remain conscious. They did what he wanted.

  ***

  “You don’t understand,” Doctor Lister said. “I—”

  “Listen to me,” Meta said, interrupting the doctor. “Captain Maddox wants you to take the risk. He trusts your skills.”

  The high forehead of Doctor Lister wrinkled in concern. “What if I fail?”

  “Then you fail,” Meta said grimly. “He cannot stand the idea of anyone or anything controlling him.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Lister said. “But let’s wait until we reach a better facility. This is too important for any of us to take such an unneeded risk.”

  Meta shook her head. “That’s not how Maddox thinks. He has a task to perform. He—”

  “He’s sick,” Lister said, interrupting. “He’s in no condition to make such a demand. I’m the chief medical officer. I’m the one who decides these things. He’s going to have to wait.”

  “Maddox doesn’t wait for anything if there’s a faster way to do it,” Meta said. “You have your orders. Now, perform them, Doctor.”

  Lister became stubborn. “Not from the captain, I don’t have any orders. I have your interpretation of what you think he wants.”

  Meta’s face screwed up with outrage. “Are you saying I don’t know what my husband was trying to communicate to us?”

  Lister looked down. “No…I suppose not. It’s just—”

  “Listen to me,” Meta said earnestly. “You signed up for Starship Victory. Here, Captain Maddox expects everyone to do their assigned duty. You’re the surgeon. That means this task falls to you. You cannot escape the risk because you think…you fear…you might fail.”

  “Do you understand what you’re asking me to do?”

  Meta snorted. “Doctor, Star Watch has had its back to the wall with the Swarm Invasion. The present bug assault might be over, but there might be more Swarm fleets readying to invade the Commonwealth. We’ve all had to do things that frighten us. You signed up as a doctor. Now, you have your back to the wall with this operation. You’d better do this surgery to perfection. Because if you don’t—”

  “Just a minute,” Lister said, interrupting. “Are you threatening to kill me if I fail to perform the surgery correctly?”

  Meta’s face took on a cold, hard cast. “Yes, Doctor, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “No,” Galyan said. The holoimage had popped into existence. “Meta is a former assassin. Killing those who disappoint her is Meta’s way. Meta loves the captain. If you fail to save
the captain, Meta will follow her emotions and kill you.”

  Lister stared in disbelief from Meta to Galyan. “You’re all crazy.”

  “Meta is correct in saying this is a trying time,” Galyan said. “I suggest you listen to her and do the best you can. I will attempt to assist you to the best of my ability.”

  “How can a holoimage help me perform a surgery?” Doctor Lister demanded.

  “I have been tracing the implant’s connectives,” Galyan said. “I believe I can be of great service to you in mapping out his brain.”

  Lister took a deep, perhaps calming, breath. “All right, I’ll operate.” She looked as if she wanted to say more but seemingly decided against it.

  “You’re going to have to leave, though,” Lister told Meta. “I can’t do this if I feel as if you’re standing behind me with a knife in your hands, waiting to plunge it in my back.”

  It took Meta three seconds. She nodded. She also determined that she was going to find the person who had ordered the implant put in Maddox’s skull. Once she found the person, she was going to kill him or her in a yearlong process filled with intense agony.

  -19-

  After the injections prepping him for the operation, Maddox traveled much closer to death than the doctors had anticipated. This happened because of the soul-energizing weapon he’d used a year ago against the Ska in the Alpha Centauri System.

  The ancient Builders had dreaded the day a Ska would roam freely among the weaker races. They had put a deep memory in Professor Ludendorff. The Methuselah Man had constructed a weapon to slay the Ska. Maddox had used the weapon, burning up much of his personal soul energy to power the weapon. The Ska and he had been in close contact during the fight. That contact had changed something inside Maddox’s soul.

  Maddox hadn’t perceived the change, however. No one had. It had been at a deep and fundamental level. After the soul-draining battle, the captain had struggled to want to remain alive. In the midst of that anguish, a wall in his subconscious had come down for a while, exposing his earliest memories as a baby. For the first time in his adult life, Captain Maddox had remembered his mother.

  As the captain once more plummeted toward death, as the doctors operated on his brain, trying to sever the implant from every invaded nerve fiber in his mind, something strange happened to Maddox.

  He remembered some of what had occurred to him less than a week ago in the operating theater inside the asteroid base.

  Medical personnel had inserted an implant into the back of his brain. Afterward, he had been placed in a chair with his head strapped into place. A colored wheel had spun around and around before his eyes, playing tricks with his mind. Someone unseen had injected drugs into his system.

  The wheel turned. The drugs battered his mental defenses. The implant was a distraction. It was not the true danger. Strand spoke to him. Maddox recognized the smarmy voice all too well. He recognized that the Methuselah Man attempt to bend his will through a form of alien hypnosis.

  This is what had caused the growling noises earlier in his dream state. He had been trying to remember what had happened.

  “Strand,” Maddox said in his near-death dream-state remembrance of what had happened inside the asteroid base.

  “Captain Maddox,” Strand said, “I congratulate you, sir, as you have an uncommonly stubborn will.”

  While his head had been strapped into place, Maddox had managed to shift his gaze from the spinning wheel. With a grunting effort, he’d shifted his strapped-down head enough to see the wizened bastard standing nearby.

  “That is quite amazing, my dear hybrid,” Strand said.

  “How did you escape from the Throne World?” Maddox asked.

  “I’d worry about you, hybrid, not me. You’re the one in mortal peril.”

  “No,” Maddox said. “There’s something different about you. Your skin is too smooth. Why is it so smooth, Methuselah Man?”

  “You will not goad me, Maddox, not when I know how to adjust your personality so perfectly. You are going to do something quite amazing for me. I need you to break into a place on Earth forbidden to me.”

  “I get it,” Maddox said. “You’re not the real Strand. You’re a clone of him.”

  The wizened features scowled. “I am Strand.”

  “You’re a clone of Strand.”

  “Clone or not, it makes no difference.”

  “It makes all the difference. I will defeat you, Clone, just as I defeated the original.”

  Strand grinned evilly. “I doubt that, hybrid. You’re my tool. You made a mistake coming here alone. The computer knew you would.”

  “What computer?”

  “It’s a Builder device,” Strand boasted. “With it, I have been predicting your every action. You’re an open book to me now, Maddox. Isn’t that funny?”

  “You’re a fool if you think you can use a thing like that—”

  “Enough,” Strand said, interrupting. “We will proceed to the next lesson. Listen closely, hybrid. You are going to have to remember a great deal. Are you ready?”

  Maddox had tried to resist. The drugs the doctors had injected had proven too strong, the wheel too intoxicating and Strand’s hypnotic abilities bordering on the miraculous.

  As the captain floated in the death-dream state, he pondered the clone’s instructions. He saw the cleverness of the plan, and he began to deduce the clone’s real objective. Before Maddox could pinpoint it perfectly, though, his consciousness began to shoot upward out of the realm of death.

  The conflict with the Ska a year ago had changed things in Maddox. It had opened inner doors, making it seem as if Maddox possessed an inner eye. That gave him insights he never would have had otherwise. The only problem was that he had to sink near death to see with this inner eye.

  At that point, Maddox began to convulse on the operating table.

  -20-

  Galyan assisted in the operation as best he could. That was mainly in the opening procedures, giving Doctor Lister information about super-thin nerve-threads leading away from the control chip into the captain’s brain.

  Once Lister was underway with the actual operation, Galyan departed the theater. It was unexplainable, but the holoimage could not watch, finding it too distressing. He did not like seeing Maddox in such a vulnerable state, especially since the captain might very well die.

  What happened to one’s soul after death? Galyan had often pondered the idea. Had his Adok soul passed on to a different place? His engrams had given the AI program life. Yet, was he truly alive like those with souls? It was a terrible dilemma. Everyone had their own opinion on the matter. No one he knew had come back to report. How did one find out the unequivocal truth?

  It was a thorny problem, to say the least.

  To take his mind off the operation, Galyan continued to scan the Tristano System. He’d widened the search in a growing circle. The continuously widening scan had already departed the Asteroid Belt. It had also headed out-system and in-system at the same time. The growing circular scan went above and below the star-system ecliptic, the path that the majority of the planets followed as they orbited the Tristano star.

  Time passed as Galyan searched for a cloaked spaceship. As he scanned for such a vessel, he continued to monitor the situation aboard Smade’s Asteroid.

  It was quickly devolving into chaos over there. Victory could have used its star-drive jump to get to the asteroid quicker, but such a jump or fold might worsen the captain’s condition. Valerie was not willing to risk that.

  It appeared that Chang’s elaborate setup had gone to pieces on Smade’s. Too many of his key personnel were dead. According to the comm messages Galyan was picking up, some of Chang’s employees were looting his former premises. Other asteroid personnel—other space pirates—had also smashed into those premises and looted the riches as well. That had started gun battles that became hotter the longer they progressed.

  That likely meant that much useful data had already been destr
oyed over there. Maddox’s original plan—once he returned from Smade’s—had been to use Victory’s space marines to take over the asteroid base. Before that could happen, the starship had to get in range to launch the regular shuttles to ferry over the space marines.

  There were several fold-fighters in Victory’s hangar bay. Valerie could send elite marine teams onto the asteroid. She was not yet ready to order such a maneuver. Galyan was certain that under similar conditions Captain Maddox would have led the away teams over there himself.

  “Humans are quite different from each other,” Galyan said aloud.

  At that point, one of the sensors pinged. It indicated unusual gravity-wave readings. Such readings could indicate—

  “A cloaked vessel,” Galyan said.

  ***

  Lieutenant Noonan stared at Galyan as the holoimage gave his report.

  Valerie abruptly turned in the captain’s chair, giving orders to various bridge personnel. In thirty seconds, the Kai-Kaus Chief Technician, Andros Crank, confirmed Galyan’s find.

  Andros Crank was a stout, short, older man with thick fingers and unusually long gray hair. Maddox had saved Andros and ten thousand other Kai-Kaus from a Builder Dyson Sphere a thousand light-years from Earth.

  “The concentration of gravity waves indicates a cloaked vessel,” Andros declared.

  “Do you have the ship’s precise location?” Valerie asked.

  “It is at this location,” Galyan said.

  On the main screen, a tiny green circle appeared. No doubt, Galyan meant to encompass the so-called cloaked vessel.

  “Yes,” Andros said. “I detect a heavy concentration of metals at that location. It’s a spaceship all right, a cloaked one.”

  Valerie nodded slowly. The location was several million kilometers from the system’s nearest Laumer Point. That made it quite a ways from Victory, over three billion kilometers.

  “What is the ship’s heading?” Valerie asked.

  Galyan indicated the heading with an arrow on the main screen. It showed that the cloaked vessel headed directly for the Laumer Point near the third terrestrial planet.