THE VROL TRILOGY (9 page)

"Draagh, I have a question. If you knew
I was coming here, and you knew all about my life, then you
probably know who's coming after me, right?"

Draagh, also relaxing back against a
log, nodded his head. "Yes, Max. There are coming. They will reach
Sol system, as you call it, by tomorrow afternoon, and then need
another day to get into orbit around Earth. Why do you
ask?"

Max shot him a look of spite. "Wait,
you know this, and yet you sit here hitting on a pipe and drinking
whisky? I really need to make some plans, because there is no way I
can go back without showing some sort of success on this trip. It
was an incredible risk I took in the first place. Hey! Can you tell
me where the surviving humans are? Maybe I can go
there."

Draagh shook his head side to side,
looking down slightly. "No my son. There is no need. We can stay
right here. Do not worry, my son. No, no, no. There is nothing to
worry about at all. I have a wondrous plan that will all come to
fruition quite soon. We are quite safe! Such excitement! This will
be most brilliant!" Draagh shot his fist up in the air, almost in a
victorious fashion.

Great
, thought Max,
he's loaded. I'm so
screwed.

###

Max woke up to the sounds of birds
singing as they jumped from branch to branch in the thick
vegetation overhead. His fire had self-extinguished due to lack of
attention, but it had only been for effect anyway. His sensor
perimeter would have protected him in any case, and the weather in
the Urubamba Valley was quite warm, even during the wintertime.
Rubbing his eyes, he got up from his blanket and nearly spilling
the opened bottle of whisky at his side.

Hmm
,
what a weird
dream
.

Staggering over to his ship, he went up
the loading ramp and into the cargo hold.

God, I'm gonna need some
pain killers
.

He knew drinking on an empty stomach
was always a bad bet, so he stumbled up to the gallery and pushed
for a painkiller cocktail. Taking it out of the dispenser tray he
moved across the aisle to his cabin, opened the door, and almost
dropped his newly acquired medicine on the floor. There, on his
bed, was Draagh, passed out, snoring, partially disrobed, and
wearing what appeared to be some sort of cloth diaper.

"Nooooooo!" Max painfully yelled out.
"Crap, it wasn't a dream!"

He backed up, tossed the pain med
concoction down his throat and bounded up the stairs to the
cockpit, sitting in the pilot's chair, trying to get his brain
straight with his head in his hands and yelling, "A diaper. Oh my
God, he's wearing a diaper! Draagh! Wake up!"

Max started clanging some scrap metal
pieces together as Draagh tried to get out of bed, but ended up
falling on the gray deck of the cabin. Then, quickly righting
himself and dressing, he exited the small room with a slight
stumble and a feeble smile.

"Good morning, my son," he said, in his
most authoritative voice, "Shall I assist you in preparing to break
the fast?"

"Huh?" replied Max as he dropped his
scrap pieces, making loud clanging noises. He then stepped into the
galley and grabbed some foodstuffs from the refrigerator. "Naw,
that's ok. I'll cook up some desa. It's a camping trip, after all.
Just a camping trip on a distant planet - where aliens wiped out
the majority of humanity, and military forces are coming to kill
me. No big deal - I'll cook. Not like it's weird or anything,
right? Immortal Viking dude in a diaper?"

Max made a silly face, which was good.
It showed he had come to terms with the fact that he was in the
company of someone with perhaps the ability to save his hide, if it
came down to that. Or at least he believed this to be true.
Trotting out the back of the Machu Picchu, he used his Stinger on a
low setting and torched some wood, starting the fire up again. He
then set a screen over the flames and put down his cast iron
skillet. Eggs and jraxon meat - that was on the menu. He didn't
have coffee grounds, so they would have to settle for synth'd
coffee from the dispenser, but it tasted good anyway.

Sitting on their respective logs, both
men ate in silence. Draagh looked no worse for wear, as he ate the
hot meal that Max had expertly prepared in a matter of minutes.
Once finished, Max took their plates and set them down off to the
side, and then looking at Draagh with a stern
expression.

"Ok Draagh, can you tell me more? You
said something about going somewhere, and I have a feeling that you
left a lot out."

Draagh went for his pipe, but then
reconsidered. "Max, last night our conversation went all over the
place. That was simply normal, as we had met for the first time and
you had numerous questions, but now I am going to speak, and I need
for you to listen. I need for you to listen, understand and believe
everything I am about to tell you. Are you fine with
this?"

Max made a deadpan expression and
nodded. "Ok, dude, I'm game. Speak away."

"There are many worlds in
the universe. Yes, hundreds of trillions of worlds. In these many
worlds there have been civilizations that have come and gone -
empires that existed long before fish on Earth crawled out of the
oceans and took their first breaths of deadly atmosphere. Mankind
is not alone in the universe, as you already might have surmised.
There indeed
is
an alien fleet on its way to Azul, and your people are
alarmed - for good reason, I might add. Every society needs to do
its utmost to protect itself, but time is not linear, nor is it in
a loop. It is more like a - how can I put it - a bicycle wheel.
Have you seen the wheels of a bicycle?"

"Sure I am," Max said as he nodded. He
had bicycles when he was a child, so he was familiar with the
concept of spoked wheels.

Draagh waved his hand in the air and
conjured a holograph that vaguely resembled a bicycle wheel, but
with complex, moving spokes. Max watched intently as animated light
from the holograph moved across his face. The old man moved his
fingers, causing the wheel to spin around, and then delicately
pulled at some of the spokes, bringing it into a zoomed view, in
what could have resembled puling individual threads from a silkworm
cocoon. Max could actually see things moving along the line –things
that resembled chromosomes, as if they were some form of
code.

"There is a central hub," Draagh
continued, "from which all of the spokes in the wheel emanate. So
look at it like this. The Hub is the center of time. The Hub is
timeless. Each spoke is a different timeline, but one such as
myself can cross into different timelines simultaneously if The Hub
is used properly. It takes great skill, with only very few beings
who are able to do this. However, I am one of them. I watched you
from a faraway place for a very special reason. Do you remember
how, when you were young and you went for physical checkups, your
doctors always seemed to be aloof or disoriented upon performing
your examination – especially if the checkup had anything to do
with bloodwork or DNA?"

Max thought about it for a
second (unaware that the shadow of an extremely unusual Y
chromosome marker fell upon his cheek), and he
did
remember this happening. He
thought it was quite odd, and he also remembered his parents
wafting off a bit after some doctor visits.

"Yeah, I remember something like that.
I thought they were self-medicating or something." Max snickered a
bit and then gave his apt attention to Draagh.

"So, my son. As you do remember this,
it had a purpose. I did that to the doctors. Yes, it was necessary
- necessary to hide your lineage - your nature and true heritage.
Else, you would have been vivisected upon an operating table with
no further thought."

Max got an alarmed look on his face, as
well as a sickening feeling in the pits of his stomach.

"Um, Draagh, what lineage are you
talking about? I should hide being half-dego? I'm just as proud of
my dego side as my bacho side."

Draagh leaned back a bit and took a sip
of his coffee, which by then had gone cold. Then, looking Max
directly in the eyes he said, "Your lineage is from a very old
subspecies of humanity. You must understand that there were many
subspecies – Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalus,
Cro-Magnon man, which was, in essence, Modern man, as well as
others more ancient. The world - this world - it had… energies. It
had organisms and features that no longer existed long before
industrialized society came to be. We felt it necessary to prevent
access to these energies, and for mankind to develop on his own, as
he was most definitely not progressing in a timely fashion. As we
go on and get to know each other better I will explain these things
to you - and teach you. So, Max, you were not the only one
protected. There were countless others on Azul, but there were also
others, similar to me, in charge of them. I took a special interest
in you for various reasons, but one being that others would simply
pass on their recessive genes to further generations, never having
had the chance to access their innate skills. You, however, have
not been resigned to such a fate.

Being able to travel through time and
space, as I am able to do, we observe, and in some cases, correct.
Sometimes in order to correct, we must let tragedy strike. We must
let many suffer, so that we may right the wrongs so unjustly thrust
upon innocent billions. But this time, Max, we have a very
important job to do. We will stop the suffering. It does not happen
here, and it ends somewhere else, as this was simply a convenient
place for us to meet. Anyway, I need to take you somewhere so I can
further help you to realize your potential, and to prepare you for
an incredibly dangerous, yet exciting job. However, I would like to
take a little trip to a nearby location, so that you may see what
you will eventually be up against. You are not to return to Azul -
at least not right away, and we have precious little time, so I
would ask that you come along with me. It will only take a few
moments…. are you willing to come along?"

At first Max didn't like this. He had
plans, and even though things were not good with his planet's
military, he couldn't justify running off with some old Viking and
leaving his ship. He gave Draagh a roguish expression, thought for
a moment, and then shot off some questions in rapid-fire
fashion.

"Will I lose my ship? Will it be safe?
How will I get home?"

"Max," Draagh continued, "When I am
done teaching you what you need to learn, you will not need a space
ship."

Max reluctantly agreed, gave Draagh an
archaic thumbs-up sign as the two of them stood up. "Come, my boy.
Stand close to me, as you must be in the proximity of my
staff."

With that, Max stood next to Draagh,
who then tamped his staff into the ground with a mild concussive
force, causing the two to disappear from the campsite, with nothing
left of their presence save for a small whirlwind of
dust.

Chapter 6 - Hidden Agenda

"We enter Sol system in approximately 8
hours, Father. From there it could take anywhere up to 24 hours
more to cruise into Earth orbit."

Ryder paused briefly before continuing,
as he stared at the side space console vid screen. The last he had
spoken to his father was some 18 hours prior, when he informed him
of their proximity, but now that he had a more precise ETA he had
initiated contact again.

"I am retrofitting my Draeder with
supplementary fuel extraction equipment, and have stashed extended
supplies on board. Once there I will install the side space
transmitter arrays at the predefined locations and we should be
good. Then I'll find Gunnarsson's ship and take command of it,
giving us our own personal SSCC transport. As the plan goes, once I
get his ship I will crash my Draeder and move to a hidden location
with Gunnarsson's craft and wait until the fleet departs back for
Azul. I'll be listed as missing in action. From there we'll
rendezvous at our base on Vela."

The plan went further - once his
father's scientists had successfully stolen/extracted all of the
SSCC technology and could build hooks drives for a virtually
derelict fleet of barges left over from the Exodus, he would take
Gunnarsson's ship back to Azul and return the hero. He would claim
he had bailed out of his Draeder after being shot down by
Gunnarsson, and then killed the man in hand-to-hand combat. Then,
after some weeks, would have found the traitor's ship and returned
it to Azul military. Then he would be able to assist his father
with the continuation of their nefarious plans.

Councilman Johnson beamed with pride;
his son was implementing a plan hatched long ago - the re-conquest
of Earth. For too long he had been biding his time, surrounded by
weaklings who were all too willing to live a peaceful existence.
Councilman Johnson wanted power, and he was going to get it, thanks
to Max Gunnarsson's discovery of faster than light
travel.

"Son, I am pleased. Do not let me down.
Maintain secure transmissions at all times, and immediately let me
know Earth status once you have entered Sol system."