Chapter Twenty-Eight
Madelaine felt squishy all over, like her legs and body didn’t want to hold her up. She needed to sit down before she fell down. She walked across the room and sat down hard on the sofa, hoping it was as clean as the room smelled.
A plume of dust did not encircle her as soon as she plopped herself down on it, so it must’ve been. That was the only good news she had going for her at the moment.
She thought of the phone tucked in the hidden spot in her waistband. The Secret Keeper. She pulled it out and hit Send, which dialed the Secret Keeper, before realizing that she was in a basement bunker of some sort and the call likely wouldn’t go through. But it did.
“Madelaine. Where are you?” The Secret Keeper sounded alarmed and relieved to hear from her.
“I’m in some sort of basement bunker with the Fearless Leader of the Big Bang Truck Stop. I got the last package from him, but he doesn’t have the final location. He said no one has it. My question to you is…please tell me he’s misinformed. I’m on a narrowing timeline.”
“How is she talking to anyone? There’s no reception down here,” Diesel said to Jack.
Jack shrugged. “The Secret Keeper gave her a special phone.”
“She can just call the Secret Keeper?” Diesel seemed as shocked about that as Jack had been.
Jack shrugged.
The Secret Keeper said, “Yes. That is true, Madelaine. Listen, let me call Diesel on the video phone so all four of us can communicate. Unfortunately, I have more bad news. I need to explain the circumstances of how we got here. Maybe you and Jack have some insight from your travels about where we can look for the final location we need, the coordinates of something called the Mechanism. That is where you must assemble all the pieces you’ve collected and place the device. ”
She hung up the phone, shoving it back into her waistband. Seconds later, a loud buzzing sound came from one of the desks.
Diesel pushed a button on an old-fashioned landline phone she hadn’t even noticed.
A long rectangle popped open from above and a screen lowered from the ceiling near one of the desks.
Once unfurled, it lit up with the Secret Keeper’s face.
She didn’t recognize the background. It wasn’t his office.
But she was glad to see him all the same.
“Fearless Leader,” he said.
“Secret Keeper,” Diesel responded. “I haven’t heard from the Paladin Cabal about the information the Paladin Courier needs to go with the package I just gave her.”
Madelaine said, “He told me on the phone he has more bad news. Can’t wait to hear it.” She didn’t mean to sound so dejected, but it felt like a huge letdown to be so close to the end of this arduous trip only to be hindered seconds before completing it.
“What’s happened?” Diesel asked.
The Secret Keeper pushed out a long sigh. “Someone murdered Tando Elroy.”
“What?! No! What in the rotted space potato farm are we supposed to do now? He was the only one who knew the final location.”
“Who is Tando Elroy?” Jack and Madelaine asked at the same time a shocked Diesel cursed about what they were supposed to do now.
The Secret Keeper said, “Listen, Madelaine. At this juncture, I believe you deserve to be told all we know. The Paladin Cabal will not agree with me because they are terminally stingy about any information being shared, but I’ll accept full responsibility for any fallout.”
“All right. Tell me. What’s really going on?”
“Did you hear about the Dravo star going supernova a few months ago?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I’m not certain.” She didn’t get much current news from Quell-don or the Paladin Cabal. She didn’t remember any supernova news.
“I heard about it,” Jack said. “There were some folks talking about it in the audience at the bachelor auction before I went up on stage. They mentioned that it’s been expected to go supernova for more than a century, but no one knew exactly when it would happen.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “I also understand wagers have been placed for more than half a century and many gambling dollars have been lost to that elusive explosion date.”
“Yes,” the Secret Keeper said. “That is accurate. Over one hundred years ago, scientists on Alpha-Prime discovered that sometime in the next century, Dravo would go supernova. They felt it was far enough from inhabited planets in the Caldera Forte Galaxy and the Tri-Spiral Galaxy that no harm would come to any of them. However, there was one planet on the edge of both systems, Tryxas. Have either of you heard of it?”
“Nope,” Madelaine said and Jack shook his head.
“Tryxas was never inhabited because of the toxic elements encrusting the planet’s surface. No one was ever going to be able to inhabit any part of it. Unfortunately, the scientists discovered a problem.
“They realized that once Dravo went supernova, a significant wave of heat from the explosion would make a direct hit on Tryxas. The heat wave would drill through the surface, going many miles deep and transforming the entire planet into a permanent plume factory that would send a lethal toxic cloud across both galaxies.”
“That’s not good,” Jack said. “Since Dravo has already gone supernova, how long before the lethal toxic cloud starts hurting populated planets in our galaxies?”
“We don’t have an exact timeframe,” the Secret Keeper said evasively.
“Really? Why don’t I believe you?” Madelaine asked. “Tell me, how long is the scientific estimate? I know they have one, or many thoughts on the subject.”
The Secret Keeper sighed. “The scientists say that if the device isn’t deployed by tomorrow, some of the outer planets could be severely impacted and every planet in the galaxies will suffer negative effects as time goes on.
The longer it takes to deploy the device, the more the toxic cloud will spread and severely impact more populated planets. ”
“Tomorrow?” Madelaine felt panicked.
“Technically, later tonight, three hours past midnight.”
Three in the morning. Not much time left to figure it out.
“What I don’t understand is why this wasn’t settled a century ago,” Jack said. “Why weren’t the device and the Mechanism ready to go a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago? Why are we faced with this dilemma right now?”
Diesel said, “Oh, it was set to go about eighty years back. A very smart man named Bravo Elroy, who was an elite scientist, developed the device over the span of a couple of decades.
“Once he completed it and it was launched at the planet, the Solution would nullify any large-scale toxicity from the heatwave of the supernova, turning Tryxas into a big paperweight in the sky. But they would have to wait until Dravo went supernova and the blast wave heated up Tryxas before the device could be deployed to stop the toxic cloud from forming and drifting into populated areas.”
“I feel like there is a big but coming,” Jack said.
“But seventeen years ago, Tando Elroy, the aging son of the elite scientist who had created the Solution, decided his family had not been compensated enough for the great work his father had done. So Tando did something illegal and rather dreadful.”
Madelaine asked, “What did he do?”
The Secret Keeper answered this time. “He was the one who stole the intact device, which was under guard, along with the Mechanism from Alpha-Prime, which, let me tell you, was a feat of skill and daring. The Mechanism is purported to be over eight feet tall, three feet wide and heavy as granite.
“Tando separated the device into pieces and hid them. He moved the Mechanism to one of five possible launch points across the galaxy. Initially, they’d set it on Alpha-Prime for convenience, since that was where Bravo Elroy was from.”
“Is that why I’ve been roaming around on a scavenger hunt for weeks, collecting pieces from wherever Tando hid them?”
“Not exactly,” the Secret Keeper said. “Tando Elroy was caught a few months after the theft by a clever bounty hunter. He was secured in facility where a special section of Alpha-Prime law enforcement was tasked with getting the information from him by any means necessary.
“Tando has been negotiating all these years in an effort to secure a better plea deal for himself by only telling them every couple of years where another piece of the device could be found. He knew once Dravo exploded, they would give him anything he wanted to get all the information.”
“The Paladin Cabal?” Madelaine asked.
Diesel said, “No. That is a separate entity, but they work closely with the Alpha-Prime authorities in this matter. The Paladin Cabal was tasked with keeping the parts of the Solution separated and hidden in new locations for the Paladin Courier to collect when the time came.”
The Secret Keeper said, “And now the time has come.”
Diesel added, “Tando Elroy had given up all of the pieces of the device but hadn’t divulged the location of the Mechanism needed to launch the assembled device. There are four choices, since it’s not on Alpha-Prime anymore.”
“He was about to tell the authorities everything in order to receive a sweet plea deal to set him free, but someone murdered him last night,” the Secret Keeper said. “As far as anyone knows, he never revealed the location.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Jack said. He sent a worried glance to Madelaine.
Madelaine’s mind was suddenly going a thousand revolutions a second. “We need to figure out where he hid the Mechanism.”
“Yes. That would be great,” Diesel said.
“Where could it be?” she asked.
Diesel shook his head. “It could be literally anywhere.”
“I meant, what are the four other locations?” Madelaine asked.
Diesel said sheepishly, “Ichor Delta, Epsilon Paulson, an uninhabited planet on the far edge of the Tri-Spiral Galaxy that’s likely too far to reach in time and, well, Earth, of course.”
“Earth is a possible launch site?” Madelaine said excitedly.