The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3 Read online

  Footsteps, no more than a day old, were scattered around the husk of a strange, futuristic capsule. They ultimately led further up the undulating rugged peaks. Not trusting his eyesight, Franz hurried closer, ignoring the sweat dripping from his brow and whatever question had encouraged him to walk up Cotopaxi in the first place.

  As he came closer to the object, Franz tripped in the thin snow and slammed his chin against the ground. He tasted copper in his mouth, but his excitement dulled the pain as his eyes focused on what sat before him.

  A weathered light perched atop the capsule flickered green. On the horizon, some miles away, a matching signal flashed through the dusky night for a moment, trailing like a firework, so quick that Franz thought it was perhaps only his imagination.

  But when another flare fired into the air a few minutes later, Franz brought himself to his feet faster than he thought possible, racing off to follow the other light.

  Refocusing his gaze, Keene’s peripheral vision caught a glimpse of light on the horizon, a speck that flashed like a shooting star. Keene shook his head, certain that such an image was a hallucination, a product of terrestrial impact and exhaustion, but it reoccurred no less than three times over his ensuing mile-long descent.

  When it flashed for a fifth time at the same interval, briefly bathing the murky gray dusk in a green glow, there was no doubt. The capsule’s destruction had activated The Blue Maybelle’s signal flares, sent out some twelve hours after a catastrophic life-boat if the occupant failed to return to the ship.

  And no one else remained on board.

  The last of the last resorts.

  The realization he was alone on this uncharted world sent a chilling fear through Keene’s body. But there was no time to stop and confront his feelings. Instead, he sped up so much that it felt as if a burst of wind could drive him straight down the steep, uneven slope. After spending the better part of a day scrambling up ridges to keep pace with the shepherd, the change of pace was nice. It was like gliding.

  The disappearance of the sun had brought a new frigidity to the air, although the decline in altitude helped mitigate the drop in temperature. Thankful for the boy’s coat and boots, Keene threw a glance over his shoulder, at the towering peaks from which he’d come, and shivered at the thought of spending the night further up.

  Perhaps the boy had known where The Blue Maybelle was all along, able to see things Keene could not. Rubbing his hands against the furry coat for warmth, Keene redoubled his pace, rushing down the incline as fast as he could without risking a wipeout.

  It’d been here—in a remote little crater, a dip between two rocky outcroppings—where Franz found something that would change everything. Hidden in its own little valley in a distant part of the snow-covered volcano, it was easy to see why, until now, no one had found it.

  Fate, however, had seen fit to reveal this secret to him.

  After an hour of hasty moonlit excavating, the old scientist had uncovered enough of his bizarre find to make a confident determination as to what it was: a space craft, far more advanced than anything humanity had ever seen or produced. Even mangled and twisted in the ground—it had landed flat on its belly, and created a crater about twenty feet deep—the machine seemed to sense his movements, react to his digging.

  In the early going, he had, by accident, nicked one of its ruined wings with his hand trowel, and the craft had returned in kind with a nasty shock that had flung him back a few yards and frazzled his already unkempt hair into an upright Mohawk.

  From then on, he had been more careful. Most of the craft remained stuck in the chilly ground—digging in frozen soil with manual tools was no small task, and even though he was hearty, Franz was still but one man.

  The green flares launched in intermittent bursts while he worked.

  By the second hour, Franz had made enough progress—due to sheer excitement from his newfound discovery—to remove the frost blocking the craft’s loading bay. As night settled in above, he blew into his chilled hands, red and bleeding from tearing at the snow. Franz panted, bones and muscles weary, but renewed by the prospect of what waited inside.

  He tossed a final trowel of snow over his shoulder and stared at the scarred metal door. There were no hooks, handles or anything else to open it by. Franz stepped closer and raised an arm to bang against the hull. Before he could make contact, a torrent of snow came down on his head. A creaking sound indicated that part of the craft was shifting.

  It just so happened to be the cargo bay door—right on Franz’s head.

  The old man rolled out of the way just as the sheath of solid metal crashed into the snow, sending up a plume of soil and dusty snow. Franz blinked and coughed.

  Excitement soon overtaking over any qualms he had about setting foot inside the craft, Franz hopped to his feet and brushed himself off. His boots clanged against the dirty, ruined ramp. It appeared that the ramp was not meant to be unleashed at random, and had only unfurled because its fasteners had weakened during impact. Still another closed door stood before him—the double-wall design, Franz reasoned, a fail-safe for deep-space travel—and this one showed no signs of opening.

  Franz hopped about waving his hands and shouting, but the craft, so responsive and aware of his movements before, now seemed unwilling to acknowledge his presence. Franz chucked the small trowel against the loading bay door, and a series of faint lights sprung to life.

  An automated female voice, sultry and inviting, said, “Disturbance detected. Please check airlock and loading door for damage.” The words were not English, but some unknown tongue long since lost to the sands of time.

  “Oye,” Franz said in Spanish, “let me in.” He shook his head, lamenting that he had not prepared anything more eloquent to say for this, humanity’s first encounter with alien lifeforms.

  “Unknown language detected,” the voice said. “Processing through language database now. Please wait for a match.”

  Franz waited, arms crossed, staring at the door. Nothing happened. “Well?”

  “Analyzing tone and vocal patterns. Similarities found, but no direct matches can be made at this time. Inferences made based on cadence, rhythm and location. Please excuse any errors in comprehension or accuracy.”

  The machine’s words remained incomprehensible, but its accent and cadence gradually became more familiar to Franz’s ears.

  The series of lights lining the door flashed. Then the door said, in perfect Spanish, “Is this satisfactory?” Franz was so stunned that he said nothing, only nodded. “Your response has been noted. Detecting no movement from craft. Nano-fusion engines offline and absent. Atmospheric pressure acceptable. Please stand back a safe distance for decompression.”

  Franz scurried from the craft and watched from a nearby snowdrift as the inner door opened and stopped moving. Inside, the contents, untouched for untold years, seemed to gleam. Franz made strides back towards the downed ship, tentative at first, unsure whether the machine would still have active defenses for potential intruders.

  But his excitement soon overtook him, and he darted into the craft. When he got to what must have once doubled as a wash room, he stopped.

  Four tube-like capsules stood hooked up to strange machines. Two had occupants suspended in frozen stasis. The other two tubes were shattered, a material resembling glass strewn about the floor. In the midst of the wreckage lay two bare skeletons, long yellowed by time’s passing, scraps of fabric hanging from ancient bones. The third and fourth canisters appeared undamaged, their still frozen occupants seemingly managing to escape a similar fate.

  These pods, as fantastic as they were, did not interest Franz as much as an empty space in the room. There was a similar array of instruments and machines standing next to the bare floor. Franz, upon kneeling down, detected the outlines of a missing fifth pod.

  After running his worn fingers through the ridges carved into
the floor by the absent pod’s slight shifts, Franz checked the console. To his surprise, everything was displayed in perfect Spanish. He pressed a finger to the jelly-like screen, and it rippled before humming to life.

  A prompt appeared on a monitor that hadn’t seen human contact in years.

  “Would you like to locate Kip Keene’s cryogenic capsule? Please note that Mr. Keene may be experiencing slight disorientation from prolonged cryogenic exposure, and should be considered—”

  Franz pushed yes before the automated voice could finish, and watched as the screen blinked with directions to a part of the mountain no more than four or five miles away. The other strange craft he had found, that capsule which had led him to this far larger find.

  Keene’s picture stared back at him from the lower-left corner of the screen.

  “Is Mr. Keene still alive,” he asked, not expecting a response.

  But the ship answered him in its smooth voice, “Mr. Keene was ejected approximately four hundred forty-three years ago. A diagnostic check fourteen hours ago indicated that he was alive, when he was awoken. No further information is available at this time.”

  Despite the chill air, Franz mopped his brow and unzipped his coat, settling in to uncover what other secrets the craft held.

  Kip Keene stumbled and fell face first down the ridge, catching himself just before he crashed into a rock at the bottom of the valley. Maybe it was the mountain air or his cramped capsule stay, but trying to walk felt like wading through a swamp with three people strapped to his shoulders.

  Keene scowled and sprayed the snow crimson with spit, a tooth from the back of his mouth coming loose and skittering onto the frosty ground. He stared at it for a moment, but then something just ahead caught his eye and took his breath away.

  He wiped the remaining saliva from his face and blinked. Then he fell to his knees.

  Here she was, his magnificent ship—albeit twisted up a little bit, covered in snow, and looking not-quite-space-worthy. A ghost from the past. The Blue Maybelle.

  Or maybe a ghost of the present, seeing the type of shape the poor girl was in. From the looks of the damage, the prospect of getting her airborne seemed remote. That didn’t matter. She was just about the only damn thing on this planet Keene recognized—the snow wasn’t cold enough, the locals were nice to strangers, and he could’ve sworn he’d petted a mutant rug with legs earlier in the day.

  He tore across the remaining tenth of a mile and ran up the loading ramp, taking in the smell. A little musty and stale, but one thing was damn sure: this was home.

  “Hello, Kip Keene,” the craft said in his native tongue. “It has been 443 years since your last visit. Welcome back.”

  His mind pondered the message as he dashed into the wash room and skidded to a halt. Maybe it was a glitch. The craft looked pretty banged up. But his thoughts soon shifted to more pressing matters. Before him was a hunched, solid man tapping away at one of the consoles. At the sound of the footsteps coming into the small room, the man had stopped his work and turned to face Keene.

  The pair stared at one another, uncertain what to do next. Keene scanned this fellow who seemed to possess a stoutness and vitality that his small stature belied. Thinking that the man could be friendly, Keene took a step forward, but stopped, noting an archaic pistol adorning his belt. This must indeed be a fringe planet, where such brutal and insane firearms—which tore holes in one’s skin via launched projectiles—were still acceptable.

  Keene knew much about using such weaponry. He touched his shoulder, the crisscross of scar tissue right at the front. The memory made him wince, even though it no longer hurt.

  The gun could mean only one thing: this man would be no friend of Keene’s.

  The man opened his mouth to speak, but Keene had no plans for banter. If this old man wasn’t looking to strip The Blue Maybelle of her goods, then he had come for its people. And backup would be here soon. Marauders never travelled solo.

  Keene rushed forward and dropped a lithe, lean shoulder into the old man’s sternum. The man, stunned by the sudden appearance of Keene, let loose a surprised oomph. Bones cracked as his backside landed on an ancient skeleton.

  The sound gave Keene slight pause, and he looked down, noting that two of his former comrades had perished many years before. Keene shook his head and shivered from the chill breeze swirling through the craft, sweeping out the long bottled-up air. There was a freshness, a crisp, clean taste to it that he was unfamiliar with—unlike any planet he had traveled to during his numerous sojourns across the universe.

  There was little time to contemplate the weather, however, as the old man stirred on the ground, groaning and rubbing his back.

  On his way out of the wash room, Keene caught a glimpse of one of his frozen compatriots. For a moment, he paused, foot hanging in the air, tempted to go back and free her from the icy confines of the cryopod. But the sight of the other remaining crew member hanging in stasis sent a flood of anger rippling through his chest. Coupled with the sound of his adversary rolling about on the bones, Keene made a determination.

  There just wasn’t time. Their fates had been sealed when bandits had uncovered the craft.

  Keene turned his back on his old friends and rushed into the armory. The contents of the crew’s lockers had been strewn about the floor without ceremony or organization. That was confirmation enough for Keene that hurrying was the right decision, so he dropped to his knees and rifled through the mess, tossing clothes, nudie mags and other useless sundries into the hall, searching for his belongings.

  At the bottom of the pile, he found the jumbled remnants of his own locker. He paused for a moment to glance at a wanted poster bearing his own visage, the paper ratty and tattered, which brought up a little nostalgia for a bygone heroic era. But that man, it seemed, was already gone.

  He kicked it aside, finding a bag—a travel kit packed long ago for emergencies.

  This qualified.

  He jiggled the zipper, and despite the passage of many years, it only took a little bit of coaxing for its maw to spring open. Everything was still there. No one had pilfered his gear.

  Yet.

  Cramming a loose T-shirt into the bag, he jimmied the zipper.

  He paused for a moment, his eyes drifting to a digital calendar hanging from the room’s wall. The numbers were off, too ludicrous to be correct. Something had clearly been jarred loose when the ship had made its rather inglorious impact on this strange planet.

  There was no time for such matters. The minute collecting supplies was luxury enough, one that Keene was unsure he could even afford. He now had everything he needed, so he rushed into the hallway, where the small man stood peering at the mess with a quizzical expression painted across his wrinkled face.

  The pistol was in his hand, but not leveled at Keene. The man’s eyes showed more wonder than aggression, searching Keene’s every feature for answers.

  “Hola,” the man said in an unknown tongue, “Kip Keene.”

  Keene understood that the man was talking to him, but didn’t understand how he knew his name. With his hands raised, Keene began backing up in almost imperceptible steps towards the cargo bay ramp.

  “I don’t have anything,” Keene said. “Call off your dogs.” The ship translated Keene’s long-lost tongue into Spanish.

  The man looked confused. “Dogs? No dogs,” he said, and then repeated, “Kip Keene.” He extended a hand, nodding that it was okay to shake it.

  Keene wasn’t going to take any chances that the old man was playing tricks. Maybe the old bastard wanted him alive, to sell or gut for his organs. That had to be the only reason Keene wasn’t dead. Escape wasn’t far off now. From the sound of the wind, he wasn’t more than five yards from the ramp.

  “What’s the year,” Keene said, unable to think of anything else to say in order to stall.

  The old
man furrowed his thick caterpillar brows and said, “2015. It’s 2015.” Then he pointed at himself, and added, “Franz.”

  Keene understood that this strange man went by the name of Franz. Keene, however, did not feel it necessary to extend a similar introduction, seeing as how this person already knew him. Instead, he turned and darted out of the ship, speeding out of the snow-dappled crater.

  Keene felt the cold air whip against his body in the black night, the temperature rising gradually with the decline in altitude. When it seemed safe, and he had heard nothing for some minutes, Keene stopped to catch his breath, looking out across the once snowy terrain that had now shifted to verdant grass and bright foliage, before resuming his journey at a slight jog, craning his neck to look at the starry sky.

  200,000 years.

  They’d all been sleeping for 200,000 years.

  Thanks to Derek’s betrayal many millennia ago, Keene was deep in the expanses of this strange land, where jungle and frost danced within miles of each other.

  And he had left the only people in this life he cared about, who even knew his name, to die.

  But what was done was done.

  Keene gritted his teeth and kept moving.

  3 | Strike

  “Pop the champagne,” Keene said. “It’s a celebration.” He glanced at his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the wall. A thin pastiche of sad stubble coated his sharp jaw.

  His long, ratty hair fell into his eyes. He looked awful, which was about how he felt. At least there had to be points for expressing it in such open fashion.

  By this point, he had remembered the events that had led him here, to this strange backwater planet known as Earth. But the fading disorientation did little for his overall well-being.

  He wore his misery on his sleeve. Mothers crossed the street with their children to avoid contagion. No one at all would be surprised if Keene jumped from a tall building. Everyone would see it coming. Not that anyone on this world actually cared.

  He turned his gaze away from his own visage to watch the waitress, in her too-tight and too-high shorts, shoot the top off the Dom Pérignon, and pour him an overflowing glass.