Fractured Prophecy Read online

  FRACTURED PROPHECY

  A Science Fiction Action Adventure

  By PJ McDermott

  Copyright © 2019

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9780648092131

  CHAPTER 1

  The Ark

  George Sebastian Lace, Admiral in the Galactic Alliance of Federated Planets, called the meeting to order. “Are we good to go?” He shuffled the papers in front of him and glanced at the five attendees seated around the oval boardroom table. Each nodded their assent. Before he could begin, the door slid open and a young woman with green eyes and long, burnished red hair popped her head inside. “Hickory, glad you could make it. Come in, come in.” He waved his arm to indicate she should take a seat.

  Hickory Lace slipped in between her partners, Jess Parker and Gareth Blanquette and nodded to James Brandt and the two Agency staffers sitting beside him. “My apologies, Admiral. I’ve been in detox all week and only now got your message.” She spoke in a husky voice then coughed, raising a hand to her mouth. “Sorry, still have a touch of bronchitis from the trip.”

  Gareth grinned wryly then assumed a straight face at the Admiral’s stern look.

  "Everyone knows my daughter? Hickory’s on temporary loan from the Alien Corps. She’s been on assignment to a class IV planet in Canis Major where she needed a Maquillage procedure to help her lungs cope with the high levels of Xenon in the atmosphere. Since her return, she’s been in our med center regressing to Earth-normal.” He nodded at his daughter. Well, now we're all here, let’s get started.” He went straight to the point. “Our friends the Bikashi have been spotted entering the quadrant.”

  Hickory glanced at Jess and Gareth and raised her eyebrows. Although not currently at war, the Bikashi were friends with no one in the Allied Federation of Planets. If they were hereabouts, it spelled trouble.

  The Admiral continued. “In the last week, several Alpha-class jets exited hyperspace inside the Eridanus system and rendezvoused with a mother ship in high orbit over the planet Prosperine. At first, we thought this might be the start of another attempt by the Bikashi Warlord, Kabutai, to grab the planet’s FTL fuel. Auriga’s faster-than-light capability is inferior to ours, as you know, and they’d do anything to get their hands on some crynidium.”

  He leaned forward and slapped his palms on the table. “Well, we were wrong. The jets flew to a point in space, about three million miles from Prosperine’s sun, and held their position.”

  Gareth whistled through his teeth. “As close as they could get, eh? Any nearer and they’d burn up.”

  The Admiral nodded. “They stayed there a little over six hours, then hightailed it back to their mother ship.” He paused, looking up from the podium. “Then, five days ago, the jets stopped coming, and the mother ship disappeared.”

  Jess emitted a nervous laugh. “What—were they hoping to find the Ark?” She folded her arms across her stomach. “Good luck with that. It blew up into a million pieces.”

  “They found something.” Surprise made Hickory’s voice rise in pitch. She wondered what there could possibly have been left to salvage. She’d witnessed the Teacher’s spaceship, nicknamed the Ark, fly into Eridani’s corona where the temperature was over 35,000 degrees, Kelvin. The ship had lit up like a Roman candle. Jess was right, there couldn’t have been anything left to find. She felt a flare of anger tinged with guilt at the mere hint the Bikashi might think differently.

  Jess gripped her wrist. “Take it easy, Hick. We don’t know whether they found anything. Maybe they simply got bored looking.” She shrugged at Gareth’s scornful face.

  The Admiral stood and paced around the table. “I don’t think so, Jess—”

  “They found the Sword.” Hickory completed her thought.

  “The odds on that are a zillion to one,” said Gareth, shaking his head. “When the ship went nova, it was the equivalent of a thousand simultaneous nuclear explosions. Nothing could have survived. There wouldn’t be any wreckage.”

  In the end, I left him to go to his death alone. She’d fought to stay with him, but her father had dragged her to safety.

  The Admiral held up a hand to forestall further argument. “Normally, I’d agree with you, but we need to remember the Ark was constructed from materials unknown to us. The technology of its drive systems was incomprehensible—it still is. We’ve pored over the visual records left by the Ark builders and, to be honest, we’ve made little progress. We know the ship was designed to withstand extreme conditions—it was intended for a long space migration to New Prosperine, somewhere on the other side of the universe.”

  He picked up the holoscreen remote and dimmed the lights. “I asked for a review of all the data we had on the Ark’s first and only flight. This is a recording from two hours after the Ark exploded. Look at the lower left corner of the projection, just… there.” He paused the video and waited for their reactions.

  At first, Hickory could see nothing unusual.

  Gareth shook his head, and Jess squinted, trying to make out anything other than the sun, its corona and the outlying stars.

  “I’ll increase the magnification,” said the Admiral. “Now do you see it?”

  Hickory’s heart missed a beat. She clutched at the emerald-encrusted crucifix around her neck. There, in the bottom left quadrant, was a point of light that shouldn’t have been there.

  “What is that, some sort of computer glitch? A cyber ghost?” said Jess, pointing her finger at the screen.

  “It’s a reflection,” said Gareth, awed. “A solid body of some sort, but too smooth for a meteor, eh?”

  “It’s a life pod.” Hickory bit her lip, then coughed uncontrollably into her handkerchief.

  The Admiral frowned at his stepdaughter, then his stern expression softened. “I’m sorry, Hickory. It’s a capsule, approximately five feet long by two in diameter at its widest point. It’s much too small to sustain organic life for very long. If you watch the recording again in real time, you’ll see it sparkle like a star. Or like a beacon.” He paused. “We think it’s some sort of black box, jettisoned by the Ark before it exploded.”

  Hickory’s mind was in turmoil. No, you don’t know that! It might be Kar; he might have survived. But the spark of hope dimmed quickly in the face of the Admiral’s certainty. “You’re sure it couldn’t be a life pod?” Her hoarse whisper was lost amid Gareth’s outburst.

  He jumped from his seat, his eyes wide and face flushed. “Where is it, is it here?” His eyes swiveled around the room as though expecting the pod to be displayed nearby.

  “I wish it were,” said the Admiral. “But it’s gone, vanished, poof!” He snapped his fingers, then walked over to the side table and poured himself some coffee.

  The three Alien Corps executives glanced at each other. “You think Kabutai has it, don’t you?” Jess asked.

  The Admiral pressed his lips together and sipped his coffee. “It’s the logical explanation.” He shrugged and the others stared at him, waiting. He blew on his coffee before taking a second sip. A pink blush appeared above his collar. “You three have been through so much already, especially you, Gareth, after the treatment the Bikashi Commander, Vogel, dished out to you.” He paused, placing his cup on the table. “And you’re due to return to your regular post at the Alien Corps soon, Hickory, but if there’s the slightest chance the Bikashi have that capsule, we must make certain they don’t use it.

  “The Ark builders were the furthest advanced of any people in the galaxy then and now, and their science is still centuries ahead of ours. If Kabutai manages to harness their technology, it will change the balance of power. I don’t want to be dramatic, but I’m talking a doomsday scenario.

  “We must prevent that happening at
all costs, but I can’t risk all-out war by sending in the troops, not yet anyway. This has to be a clandestine operation. You three are our most senior agents when it comes to dealing with the Bikashi. I would understand if you refused to go to Auriga, but…” He let the question hang in the air.

  Hickory gripped her hands to stop them shaking. It’s big enough for the Sword, but not the Teacher. She replayed in her mind the last few moments of her final encounter with Vogel. The Sword had transformed him into a gigantic horror who’d only been destroyed because of an underhand attack on him by one of his own. But Vogel was no more, and neither was Thurle, his lieutenant. She looked up and realized the others were waiting.

  #

  Since the discovery of the prophecy that the Messiah would appear on distant planets prior to the end of days, the Alien Corps had encountered many false prophets and would-be redeemers throughout the galaxy, but never a true Messiah. Three years previously, a spiritual leader calling himself The Teacher was reported to be performing miracles on Prosperine—a medieval planet critically important to Earth and its allies.

  Hickory was sent to investigate and had witnessed the Teacher’s last moments as he’d piloted the Segniori spaceship, the Ark, into the sun to prevent a massive explosion from destroying Prosperine. The resulting impact had triggered the onset of a nuclear fusion process in 28G Eridani’s core that would generate energy for hundreds of thousands of years.

  As a result, Prosperine’s sun became a main sequence star once more, and the radiation that had been poisoning the planet’s atmosphere for the last several centuries ceased. Prosperine’s inhabitants would have eons of normal evolution to look forward to.

  She wondered whether he had known. His sacrifice was intentional, of course. He’d planned to take the spacecraft far enough away from the planet to keep Prosperine safe from the blast, but did he realize crashing into the sun would provide his people with a future free from the crippling effects of their dying star? It was the question Hickory asked herself every day. She wanted it to be true because if he did know, then Philip’s prophecy was fulfilled. Kar was a Son of God, the savior of his people—like Jesus was on Earth. And she would follow him forever.

  Hickory fingered the glittering crucifix dangling from her neck. The priceless jewel had been presented for distinguished service to Talya, her great grandmother, the co-discoverer of Philip’s prophecy, and the first female to join the Alien Corps. Hickory wore it as a talisman of sorts, but it was more than a lucky charm. It represented a connection with a heroic past and provided inspiration for her future.

  She looked at the expectant faces of her friends and the others around the boardroom table. None of them really believed there was a God, except maybe Jess. They could be right. But if the quest that had driven the Alien Corps for almost a century was based on a fallacy, meaning the prophecy was a lie, then her work over the last ten years had been worthless. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it, not really, but she needed time to get her head straight. What was the point of her volunteering for an assignment that had little to do with the Alien Corps’ quest? Surely other operatives are better suited?

  The Admiral shifted in his seat and glanced at Jess and Gareth. “Hickory, what do you say. Are you good to go?”

  Hickory’s lips were dry. She tried to moisten them with her tongue, but it too had dried up.

  “I… I don’t think I can,” she said. “Not now.

  CHAPTER 2

  Trinity

  Hickory lounged beside the pool, sipping her morning coffee. She watched the two sunbirds search for nectar among the flowers on the nearby acacia bushes. Both were beautiful creatures, but the male with his glossy midnight-blue plumage was stunning. She followed the birds’ flight across the cloudless sky and lost them in the nearby rainforest. Their departure filled her with melancholy. She sighed. It would be a bad day.

  It had already been six months since she’d arrived at this small coastal village in the far north of Queensland, and twenty-six weeks since she’d declined the mission to Auriga, the home planet of the Bikashi. She didn’t like letting the team down, but she couldn’t face the probability that the last glimmer of hope for the Teacher’s survival would be squashed if she went with them. Her mind insisted the Teacher was dead, but her heart argued if anything could come through that crash, it would be him. The response from her colleagues had surprised Hickory. Jess had hugged her, and Gareth had blustered something about all for one and one for all. Both had refused the Admiral’s request to take on the mission without her. After the Admiral gave up trying to convince them otherwise, Hickory realized she needed a break and called Prefect Cortherien, her boss at the Alien Corps, to request a sabbatical.

  She’d come to Trinity hoping to find peace in solitude, a way to put the trauma of the Teacher’s death behind her. And there were days when she forced herself to forget, pushed aside for an hour or two the memory of Kar, his hands gently caressing her hair like the father she’d never known, and the compassion in his eyes when he looked at her. But afterward, as she lay in her bed, the same unanswerable questions came back to haunt her: If Philip’s prophecy is true, why, in a hundred years of searching, had the Corps found no evidence of any other Son of God? Kar had been the closest to it. She’d really believed he could have been the Messiah she and the Corps had been searching for. But Kar was dead, wasn’t he? So, what was the point in looking?

  Often, she’d nod off into a fitful slumber only to start awake, prodded by resentment, envy, and self-pity. What the hell did I ever do to deserve this? She’d wasted her life chasing a myth. She’d seen others fall in love, Gareth and Jenny, Jess and Mack. She’d never come close to experiencing their depth of commitment and devotion to each other. Is it because they operated on my brain when I was a kid? Did they cut out some vital part that makes me human, feminine? Why do I ache so?

  There were better times, days she treasured, when the colors and sounds, the damp smells of the tropics seemed to reflect his presence, the warmth of his love for all living things. But not today.

  She felt Bonni snuggle up against her thigh, and she stroked the kelpie’s head. It placed its chin on her knee and gazed at her expectantly.

  “Alright, dog. Get your lead and let’s go.”

  The sheepdog jumped off the couch, wagging its tail.

  The happiness displayed by the pup dispelled Hickory’s gloom. Bonni was a rescue dog, an unwanted Christmas present. She’d been discovered barking at a two-meter grass python in the nearby national park. The ranger drove her to the RSPCA where the vet adjudged she’d been mistreated and released into the rainforest to fend for herself. Why would someone do that? She couldn’t understand it, had never understood what made people cruel. Hickory had seen something in the dog’s eyes when she’d visited the kennels looking for a companion and adopted her. That was three months ago, and it had taken much of that time, going on long walks and playing games, for the dog to trust her.

  Hickory changed into her tights, singlet, and running shoes and followed the dog out the front door. It was a Monday, and the beach was almost deserted. Northeast Australia had missed the worst ravages of the third world war, but not all. A century later and the Coral Sea was a sickly gray rather than the cobalt blue she appreciated in the pre-war paintings hanging in the local museum. Higher temperatures and humidity made life uncomfortable for most.

  The dog and the woman ran side by side along the water’s edge to the southern tip of the inlet. Hickory climbed partway up the rocky cliffs to get a better view of the ocean. The Great Barrier Reef had all but disappeared at the turn of the century because of radioactive runoff and acid rain, but slowly the reef was being repopulated by corals, sea plants, and animal life. The fish were returning.

  Hickory found it hard to comprehend that humankind had almost wiped themselves off the face of the planet because of religious differences. Philip’s Gospel had been certified by the Vatican as written by a contemporary of Jesus, but not
everyone agreed. The prophecy contained therein said the Messiah would appear on many different worlds before returning to Earth, at which time the universe would be destroyed. Fundamentalists and xenophobes violently opposed the doctrine. Tensions among religious groups of all denominations rose to critical levels and ended in a nuclear war lasting ten years.

  Population numbers had fallen to one-third, but once more were on the rise. Humanity would survive, and so would the planet, thanks to the foresight of the world government and their emphases on healing, education, and social services. There was a downside, of course. Not everyone was happy to pay the taxes necessary to give everybody, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, a fair shot at life. Others bemoaned the loss of privilege, free speech, and religious freedom, but mainly those were in the minority. Most people appreciated the war had been started by those things and were glad to see the back of them.

  Hickory jogged to the small cafe on the corner of Vasey Esplanade and saw Kylie seated at a patio table waving to her. She groaned inwardly. Kylie was a well-intentioned but vacuous middle-aged lady she’d met on her morning walks not long after arriving at Trinity.

  “Hi, gorgeous. Beautiful day for a run,” said Kylie, shading her eyes as she watched Hickory cross to her.

  Hickory returned the smile. She’d noticed Kylie drinking by herself on more than one occasion and thought she must be lonely, despite being married with three kids. “Pleasant enough except for the midges. Mind if I join you?” She pulled out a chair and sat down, signaling to the waiter. “Do you want a refill?” she asked gesturing to Kylie’s empty glass.

  “Oh, yes, definitely.” Kylie smiled at the waiter as he approached. “Two glasses of bubbly, please. Put it on my tab, there’s a dear.” Watching the waiter’s retreating back, she said, “Wouldn’t mind a gallop around the paddock with that one.” She laughed at Hickory’s raised eyes. “What? Don’t tell me you would knock him back if he gave you any encouragement. Anyway, I think he’s gay, so not much chance for either of us.” She made a rueful face.