SF Books by Vaughn Heppner

  THE TRAVELER SERIES:

  Galactic Marine

  Sleeper Ship

  The Zero Stone

  THE SOLDIER SERIES:

  The X-Ship

  Escape Vector

  Final Odyssey

  EXTINCTION WARS SERIES:

  Assault Troopers

  Planet Strike

  Star Viking

  Fortress Earth

  Target: Earth

  Visit VaughnHeppner.com for more information

  The Zero Stone

  (The Traveler #3)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Copyright © 2022 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.

  -1-

  I slowly became aware that I sat in a pitch-black room. My head throbbed, and my eyes—right. That was why I was in the dark. I’d been screaming in agony, the light stabbing my pupils like electric needles that shocked all the way to my brain.

  I reached up, feeling a damp cloth wound around my head and over my eyes. The moisture in the special material had some sort of soothing and healing property.

  I was weak…I wasn’t sure why. I could hardly remember anything in this dark universe.

  My head throbbed so I winced from time to time. My mouth was bone dry and tasted foul. Lethargy or weariness made it almost impossible to string these thoughts together like this.

  What had happened to me, and who was—?

  “Jake,” I whispered. I was Jake Bayard, a…a U.S. Marine. No. I used to be a Marine. I’d been granted an honorable discharge and become a Traveler—

  I groaned as my head exploded with searing pain, and now my eyes throbbed as if they swelled to twice their normal size.

  I bent my head, massaging my forehead, trying to knead away the pain. I rubbed, kneaded and tried to relax, gaining some relief after a time.

  I realized they had been using me—no, no, that wasn’t it. They hadn’t used me exactly, but…drained me of information. They wanted to know things I didn’t want to tell them. Did I have secrets, then? Did I hold classified governmental data or some new manufacturing technique for a powerful corporation?

  No to both, I thought. It had something to do with being a… I didn’t want to think the word again, but veered away from it in order to avoid more agony.

  These people wanted facts. I’d concentrate on that. What sort of facts did they want, then?

  “We want information, Number…” I couldn’t remember what number I was supposed to be—four, five, maybe seven. For some reason, not knowing helped diminish the throbbing and lessened the shocks torturing my brain.

  I found that I was breathing heavily and trembling, so I hugged myself and discovered that I was nude here in the dark.

  Despite the lethargy that filled me, making it so I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep, I felt around and discovered a folded blanket to the side. I was sitting on a hard pallet that might serve as a bed of sorts. My shins dangled over the edge. My feet were in the air, not touching a floor.

  How far was the floor from my feet? I had no idea in the darkness.

  Instead of jumping down to find out, I just wanted to curl up on the pallet. I’d wrap myself with the blanket and sleep. I’d feel better later—

  No, you won’t, said the worse half of me, the kind that knew how ruthless and evil men could be. This is the first time in a long time you’re able to think for yourself. Use it to your advantage, Bayard.

  With the blanket wrapped around my shoulders, even as I kept sitting up, I tested the idea.

  Hmm. I did have a feeling I’d undergone a long period of…I would have shaken my head, but that would have hurt. I didn’t know what I’d undergone, and that troubled me.

  “Start from the beginning,” I whispered.

  The mumbling caused my ultra-dry, cracked lips to seep blood. I hadn’t known they were in such a state. I licked my lips and tasted the coppery flavor. The tiny amount helped to moisten my mouth.

  I must have been drugged.

  I sat there with the new thought, and it was almost as if my blood had given me the energy to think. But that was wrong, right? I couldn’t feed off myself. To sustain life, I needed outside sustenance.

  I swallowed in a parched throat. Philosophical thoughts were useless. I needed to stick to concrete things and get out of this mess, whatever mess this was.

  As I scrunched my brow, hunched my shoulders and readied myself for pain, I thought the awful word, recollecting that I was a…Traveler.

  I grunted because my head throbbed at the thought, but this time, not enough to debilitate me.

  I grinned despite everything, and that made my cracked lips bleed again. I had to keep my head in the game and concentrate on practicalities. And not smile like an idiot.

  What was a Traveler? A Traveler could cross to another world, to another planet if he had an obelisk, a teleporter. I was unique in this ability, possibly the only one on Planet Earth that could do this, thanks to my off-world father.

  As I realized that, more memories flooded back, and they came in great shockwaves that battered what little physical strength I possessed. I collapsed onto the pallet as I trembled, and snot flowed from my nose. It must have all been too much for me, as I blanked out.

  In a memory or dream as I slept, I saw myself on a gurney, naked, strapped down, with an IV drip in either wrist. Lights passed overhead as men in hospital whites wheeled me down the long hall.

  The men hurried me down the underground passage. There were two of them, one on each side of me. Each wore a mask, and each had a thick neck and powerful-looking hands.

  They pushed me into a sterile white room full of special equipment, lifting me from the gurney and placing me upright in a machine, putting a steel band around my head and shackling my hands, arms, feet and legs. The forehead band had antennae on it. I faced a huge white screen.

  Soon, machines hummed and buzzed around me, and an unseen woman asked me questions, a hundred, a thousand questions.

  Soon, on the white screen before me, some of my adventure on Tynar in the Canopus System 310 light-years from Earth played out before all of us. That was crazy. Did their machines read my memories for them?

  “Information. We want information about everything you did on Tynar.”

  In the elaborate tech-chair, I shouted in rage, and the images on the screen went blank as I fought the process…

  I woke up trembling with fatigue, lying on the hard pallet, with a sweat-soaked blanket over me because of the remembered dream.

  After cleaning my nose with it, I threw off the blanket, but that only made me colder.

  With a groan, I sat up in the darkness. The cloth was still around my head and eyes, but it was no longer moist.

  I tore if off and opened my eyes.

  I was still in the dark. My shins hung off the pallet as if I was a kid swinging his legs.

  I was Jake Bayard the Traveler, and Colonel McPherson had sponsored me for their elect group of witch hunters, which had battled for millennia against the alien Krekelens on Earth. Suvorov and Qiang had joined in sponsoring me, along with two seniors. I’d arrived at the secret compound, and Qiang had come to talk with me, giving me a drink.

  “Damn,” I whispered. The drink. She’d slipped me a roofie. Qiang had been pretending to be my friend so her faction could get me in their clutches in order to drain me of information: everything I knew about the planets I’d visited. They were hungry to learn what they didn’t know, and instead of trusting me, they were using me, squeezing me like a rag.

  I was panting again. McPherson wanted me to take more journeys and learn even more. Qiang and her side figured to extract the little I knew, as it was more than they’d learned in the many centuries of fighting the Krekelen shape-shifters on Earth.

  “The bastards,” I whispered.

  But something troubled me. If Qiang and the others had drugged me, hooked me to alien machinery and kept me like this for weeks, possibly months, why had they now allowed me to regain my wits like this?

  An image struck me then. I’d been on another gurney about twelve hours ago, with an IV drip in my wrist keeping me loopy. A woman had been beside me looking around, maybe to make sure no one was watching her. She’d produced a syringe, jabbed the plastic bottle of the drip and injected a new substance into it.

  She’d stared down at me. I’d hardly been aware of it at the time. Now, I understood. I was able to think, for the moment, because of whatever had been in her syringe.

  What did that mean to me here?

  I heard the scuffle of hard-soled shoes. Feet were marching toward this room. I doubted they were the good witch hunters. They must be Qiang’s people, eager to continue the data extraction from their lone Traveler.

  That meant whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to do it now, or I would go back to being their drugged patsy as they continued to twist and squeeze the rag called Jake Bayard the Traveler.

  -2-

  A door opened, flooding the pitch-dark room wi
th light.

  I cried out in agony, most of it pretended pain. Raising my head—I lay flat on the pallet, having lain down seconds ago—I looked up to see three heavyset men in hospital whites move into the room. They all wore green surgical masks that covered their mouths and noses.

  One of them reached up, flipping a wall switch that filled my cell with fluorescent light.

  I put my hands over my eyes, moaning as I lay there. The moaning was an act. I felt off, but not nearly like before. The sleep must have recharged me at least to a degree.

  They spoke among themselves in quiet, heavy tones. They all approached me in the back of the room, one of them producing a syringe with an evil-looking steel-needled syringe. There was a goopy yellow substance with little slivery motes in it. I knew it was vile stuff and would rob me of my self-control and awareness.

  I took my hand from my eyes, slid off the pallet and dropped to the cold tiled floor, crashing in a heap. The fall, the pain, the cold floor all helped to waken me further, and it momentarily put me out of their easy reach.

  One of them cursed as they all stopped. “Pick him up,” he said, the one holding the syringe.

  “He’s naked,” a different one complained. “I don’t want to wrestle a naked man up off the floor, especially one his size.”

  “Hey,” the man with the syringe told me. “Can you get up?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Give me a second.”

  They stared at me, three heavyset bruisers with hard, merciless eyes.

  I realized something in that moment. The one had talked about my size. I was bigger than these suckers. I was a brawny dude. Was I still stronger? Or had months of drug and memory-extraction therapy drained me of that as well?

  Was it months or weeks, though? I might be stronger than I realized, more my normal self.

  “Get up,” said the man with the syringe.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

  I rolled onto my front and slowly stuck my ass into the air so I could get onto my knees. It was an extremely undignified position for a naked man. I was hoping they’d look away. As I rose up, hunching my back, leaning on my forearms, I summoned my chi as I had in my martial arts training.

  I summoned the chi, but felt hardly anything at all. Then, I worked upward, standing and feeling dizzy, facing them.

  They had turned away at my butt-ugly posture. Now they turned to face me. The two flankers moved toward me, no doubt to grab my arms.

  I let out a sound, my released chi, and staggered, stumbled toward the syringe-holding man. I shot out my right arm, using the palm of my hand to smash up and against his nose. As kids, we’d all talked about how you could kill a man that way so a sliver of his nose-bone smashed against his brain. I don’t know about that, but the shock against my palm and wrist hurt, and I hit him just about as good as one could.

  He collapsed onto the floor.

  Did that surprise the other two?

  I’m guessing so. Even as I acted, strength seemed to flow into me as if I tossed off my weakness like a moth-eaten cloak. I pivoted and thrust a knee against the groin of one.

  He went down silently, a horrified painful look in his eyes as he clutched his bruised and battered balls.

  That left just one. He struck me, hitting the side of my neck. It stung, I’ll give him that. Maybe I was more amped up than I realized. I turned, and I think there was an evil smile on my face.

  He was winding up for a blow, but hesitated at my look.

  I leaped upon him like a crazed lion, bearing him down onto the floor. He was a heavyset bruiser, but I was bigger and it turned out considerably stronger. I bore him down and he hit the back of his head on the floor. It must have stunned him. I grabbed the sides of his head with both hands and pounded the back of it repeatedly against the floor.

  The ball-clutcher shouted, bringing me out of my murderous daze. I turned toward him, our gazes met and he tried to scramble up. I punched him in the face, slowing him down. I grabbed the syringe from off the floor and jabbed it into his chest. He screamed. I depressed the hypo, putting the sparkly yellow sludge into him. He stared at me in horror.

  I worked up to my feet, backing away from him.

  He stared at the syringe in his chest. Then, he tried to rise.

  I rushed him, bore him down, grabbed his head and banged it on the floor several times for good measure. Either that or the yellow goop in him took him out of commission.

  I stood yet again, panting, swaying, finding myself slick with sweat. That had been brutal and tiring.

  I scowled at my handiwork and then at the open door. How long until reinforcements showed up for their side?

  I had to escape now if I could. I couldn’t do it naked, though. I studied the three, choosing the biggest and then the one with the biggest feet. His shoes might fit after a fashion.

  I’d won round one. Now, it was time to see how round two would go.

  -3-

  I tried to walk smoothly down the empty corridor. I was unsteady on my feet, though, and used a hand against a wall to help keep my balance.

  I wore tight hospital whites, the sleeves too short and the pants legs above my ankles. I hadn’t been able to close the waist button, either, but had his belt at the widest hole to make this work. The shoes pinched my feet. Only the socks fit.

  My disguise wouldn’t fool anyone, but I have to admit that wearing clothes again gave me more confidence. I would use what strength and stamina I had and maybe regain more as I acted.

  I should have made sure all three of them were dead. If one came to and sounded the alarm…

  I shook my head. That only slightly hurt my eyes now. I planned to fight to the death before letting anyone recapture me again. Qiang had drugged me. If I should stumble upon her, I’d kill her for what she’d done.

  Yeah, a knight wasn’t supposed to kill a woman. I liked to think of myself as a knightly sort. But Qiang deserved death for what she’d done, and I was feeling decidedly murderous. Maybe it would have been wiser for me to feel frightened at my plight. I mean, I was dealing with the people who had fought the vile Krekelens for centuries, a hidden war that had taken place in the shadows throughout human history. But smashing the three hospital goons had fired my blood and put me in a badass mood.

  “Bayard,” a woman hissed.

  I turned, seeing no one. Was I hearing voices?

  “Up here,” she said.

  I raised my gaze and saw the open vent in the ceiling. “Are you kidding me? A vent?” I asked.

  “Climb this,” she said, unrolling a rope ladder so the end hit the floor.

  I stared at it stupidly.

  “Climb it,” she insisted.

  I put my hands to the rope ladder, looked up at her and frowned. “That’s not a vent, is it?”

  She peered down at me like a mouse, a tiny Chinese woman with a small face and slender neck. Qiang was Chinese. Could I trust this woman?

  “You must please hurry, Bayard.”

  She had a slight Chinese accent I noticed. Was she any relation to Qiang?

  “Did you put the stuff in my drip that woke me up?”

  “Yes, yes, now hurry please while you can.”

  I awkwardly climbed the rope ladder. It was harder than it looked as it swayed under my only partly controlled weight. The tight clothes didn’t help, either. In seconds, my fingers clutched the edge of the opening, and I hauled myself into the tight confines of an access tube.

  I was panting and sweaty again, but I wasn’t trembling, so that was something.

  “Crawl past me,” she said.

  The woman was short and slender, a wisp of a thing. She wore a silver one-piece with silver slippers and wore a little silver hood like from a bad 70s science fiction movie.

  I stretched out and slithered past her, although we pressed the flesh nonetheless.

  She worked quickly, hauling up the ladder and putting a fitting over the opening, throwing the access tube into near darkness.

  I didn’t like that and had to control my claustrophobia. I panted more. I hated confined spaces like this. It made my gut ache.

  “You must crawl, Bayard,” she said in a slight voice.