Lost Kingdom: Book 1 in the Lost Kingdom Series Read online

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  Lost Kingdom Copyright © 2021 by Terry Maggert

  Book design and layout copyright © 2021 by Terry Maggert

  This novel 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, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

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  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

  1st Edition

  Lost Kingdom

  Book 1 in the Lost Kingdom Series

  Terry Maggert

  Connect with Terry Maggert

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  To my son, Teddy, who is the very best of me and more.

  Special thanks to Cat Imb, who took an imaginary river and made it real.

  Contents

  Cable Island

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Connect with Terry Maggert

  About the Author

  Cable Island

  Prologue

  The missiles streaked past, their engines scorching points of light in the forward screens, but Nolan banked hard enough to taste copper as his ship fell toward the jump point.

  It wasn’t his ship, but that was more of a technicality. He was piloting the ship, but it was—say borrowed and leave it at that.

  “I need thirty seconds, Cherry. Can you get me that?” Nolan asked his AI.

  Her answer came over the speakers instead of in his head via direct link. “Maybe. This is a rusting deathtrap, but I’m rerouting power to buy time—”

  “Yes or no?”

  The AI paused for just long enough to be coy. “Yes. That’s thirteen more—make that ten, nine—”

  The screen lit up in total chaos as no fewer than six pairs of missiles sizzled toward him, their long, curving arcs adjusting on the fly by their own onboard avionics packages. Nolan’s luck had just run out, and he would die less than nine thousand klicks away from the only known jump point in this godforsaken route between nowhere and bumfuck. He fought the urge to scream at the display, instead pulling hard at the controls to show as little profile as possible.

  “Nolan. Tunnel end is near. Short ride.” Cherry’s female voice flared with surprise as she lit up a new point and steered them right into a signal he hadn’t expected—certainly not this soon. It was an uncharted point—the locus flickering in and out like a mirage on the ship’s stolen screens.

  “I’ll take what I can get,” Nolan barked as the first four missiles closed in on the heaving craft. The ship bucked, shrieked, and slid soundlessly into the unknown tunnel as weapons detonated behind it, their silent blooms filling the viewscreens to overload.

  Nolan sat, panting, then took his hands off the controls, watching the formless maelstrom around them as they dove ahead in the wan light, stars vanishing in a greasy smear. Around them, a sliding blur fled past, like a short tunnel to nowhere—or somewhere, but hell if they knew what waited on the other side. Nolan was transfixed and rode in silence long enough to enter a near-hypnotic state, his heart and breathing returning to normal and then relaxed levels.

  “What the hell is this?” Nolan asked, shaking himself from a reverie.

  “Uncharted,” came Cherry’s bland answer.

  “Well, no shit. I mean is it a standard jump? Why did it appear? And where the hell are we going?” he said. “Get me scans. Get me data. Hell, get a sketch pad and draw it for me, but find out where we’re going.”

  For a moment, Cherry was silent, but then she spoke, her voice only moderately snarky. “Scans on the way. I don’t sketch because that requires a personality other than the programmed snark of your ex-wife. Data arriving—now.”

  “Yeah?”

  A contact point flared to life on the forward screen. The jump was collapsing, or on the verge of burping them out into regular space at a point that could be anywhere within light-years. It was a complete unknown. There were two things on the screen that were known. The borrowed ship and a single missile, almost close enough to touch. And both entered the jump at the same instant, and the warhead flew as if tidally locked, just off the port section.

  “I’d say we’re going there,” Cherry said, and the location pulsed on the screen. “When we get there, of course, we’re dead. Or rather, you’re dead. I’ll be returned to a state of nothing, but you’ll be an expanding cloud of gas, much like after you’ve been drinking beer. This time, though, it will be fatal.”

  “I don’t like it. Combat options?”

  The ship twitched. Then it whined, and then every bit of feedback from the screens went batshit crazy. They’d been nicked before the point opened, and the effects of the grazing hit were just now rattling through the ship.

  “Maybe we don’t need to worry about that missile out there,” Nolan said.

  “Possibly. Calculating engine failures now, but the location remains the same. Across the jump pool to the inevitable end. It’s the only possibility,” Cherry said. There was no sass in her tone now, just cool facts.

  Nolan snorted and began feathering the controls, trying to find a way to shut down the systems that were turning them into a flying bomb. “Call it a hunch. Why there?” he asked, tapping the screen.

  “Other than the fact that we’re going to impersonate a small nova? It’s the designated exit, and we won’t make it far past that junction. Wait—recalculating. We’ve got control of some systems. It’s bad, but not fatal. The hull is intact, some external sensors gone. One section is cooked off from the missile. It was a dirty shot, designed to kill us and save the ship. It missed,” Cherry said.

  Nolan looked at the screen, then shook his head in disgust. “Program it. Time to leave this rust bucket as soon as we can. Preferably before she implodes because of the second missile. I’ve got plans for next week.”

  Cherry took the controls for a few seconds, and the ship began to slide out of the unreal jump-point lighting, then it emerged into a starscape dominated by a large blue world. There were feathery clouds over a massive southern ocean, and a river as wide as a lake split the northern continent in two, like a silver wedge, fanning into huge deltas at the southern end.

  “Do your plans involve ditching on this world?” Cherry asked.

  Something gave way behind them, and the sting of burning insulation filled Nolan’s eyes and nose. “They do now.”

  The missile veered unerringly toward them as Nolan jammed the controls forward, pouring every bit of residual kick from the engines into a course that took them straight into the planet’s gravity well. The missile struck aft, shattering the stolen craft like glass, but too far back to compromise the bridge and life support.

  “Break us off and go for the exosphere,” Nolan said over the rising howl of the disintegrating ship.

  In seconds, thin clouds began to buffet the ship as they streaked across the planet’s upper atmosphere like a stone skipping on a po
nd. Then the air caught them, and they plunged, hard, into the well of gases, the roar of wind so loud Nolan switched Cherry to internal communication.

  “Closing off the forward hatches. We’re going in red hot,” she said calmly in his mind.

  “Ready.”

  Nolan’s teeth rattled—again- as the ship began to break up. He made a decision.

  “Cherry. Those two specials intact?”

  “The small drones? Yes. Outer hull, in blisters. They cost enough to—are you ordering me to—”

  The ship shook again. “I am. Protocol Saving Throw. Light up Jack and Diane.” The tiny drones, packed with cameras and an AI subroutine, had cost more than the ship they were in. If he’d paid for them, of course.

  “Drones active. Code commands?” Cherry asked.

  “Dump data to me, and me only. One gig limit, text and short videos. Send them over—send them into stationary orbits over that big ass river. Points of interest, the usual. Use hot mics and get me names, politics, money, whatever. Send as bursts.”

  Two small bangs rattled over the other array of noise, and Cherry flashed a command. “Jack and Diane are away. They’ll arrive in twenty-six minutes. Fuel for two years.”

  “Good work. Okay, I—shiii----” Nolan’s voice trailed off as the atmosphere thickened into a fist, punching him in the gut as the ship was torn to pieces behind them. The pilot’s section began a long, arcing fall to the uncharted world under twin parachutes the size of a stadium. As they drifted, Nolan checked for injuries and found an array of bruises but little more. He spat against the deck, cleared his mouth, and spat again, then felt for his sidearm as the yawning sky opened underneath.

  Into the wind they sailed, until the land came up to greet them with a thud.

  Chapter One

  Nolan Arrives

  “Nolan,” came the voice.

  “Fuck off,” he mumbled.

  “Nolan Hayes. Wake the fuck up,” Cherry said.

  “I’m—shit, you used my first and last names,” he groaned. “What is it? Am I dead?”

  “No, but you will be shortly. Listen.”

  He listened. There was a snapping sound, like a flag in the wind but much louder, and at the edge of his perception—there it was, then again. A grinding. Metal on metal, maybe.

  “Are we under attack again? Someone trying to get in?” Nolan said, head clearing. He was a mass of bruises but sat up anyway, having thrown himself against the automated safety harness at about five G’s.

  “My chest feels like there were steel bands around it,” Nolan groused. “Gotta piss, too. Badly.”

  “Not an attack, based on the one working exterior sensor. Something worse. Can you stand?” Cherry asked. The forward capsule was at an angle, but not so severe that up was down.

  “I can. Pop the door,” he said.

  “You better button up first.”

  “Button up? Why? Hard vacuum? Where the hell are we?” he asked but was already in motion because he believed Cherry above any gauges or instruments. Keeping his lungs intact had always been a strong instinct for Nolan, but Cherry was a fixed point. She hadn’t been wrong yet.

  “Not where but how high. The capsule landed on a mountain. The top, or close to it. It’s killing cold out there, and the—”

  The capsule shifted, and he knew what she was going to say. “The chutes are in the wind, about to drag me off into an abyss, where I’ll die screaming?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Got it.” Nolan began pulling the envirosuit on, teeth clamped together from the pain. He got it on and stood swaying before the door.

  “Pop it and link directly to my eye,” Nolan said, focusing his inorganic right eye with a thought. The eye—pale blue to match his own and worth as much as a small ship—was a veritable tool kit on its own, which also let Cherry link to him when he was out of the ship. She could speak to him directly, flash data, gather intel, or—and this clogged the cache more often than not—irritate him with cute pictures of baby animals when they were bored.

  As to the gear for playing a hero, Nolan had a knife in one hand and a small cutting laser in the other. His rifle was rattling around somewhere, hopefully in one piece.

  “Gonna save the chutes if I can, but in the event I need a quick disconnect, the torch comes out first, okay?” Nolan said. “Okay, pop the outer door. Keep inner seal in place, I’ll move it by hand if I have to. Only weighs a few kilos anyway.”

  The heavy outer door blew away, and a howling blast of air rushed in, so cold it sent frost racing across every surface inside the capsule.

  “Holy—you weren’t kidding. What’s the temp?” he asked, staring into the searing bright. The sky was a punishing blue, so clear the horizon seemed boundless, broken only by the ragged peak of black rock falling away into the distance. The ship rested on a long, sharp ridge, so high that the valley below had a curve to it, then the chutes came spiraling around into his view again, filled with the pitiless wind and dragging hard on the capsule. Incredibly, the surviving part of their stolen ship was wedged between two columns of ancient stone, but the rocks were about to give, and soon. Nolan was no geologist, but even he could feel the instability through his boots.

  “I hate this,” Nolan said, taking out the cutting laser. He was about to violate one of the first rules of ditching—never leave anything behind if you might need it later. A thousand meters of tough polymer parachute could be used for damned near anything, even his own burial shroud if he didn’t cut it loose. One swipe at the twisting chute cables, and they separated with a whine as the silvery material flowed into the wind like a living thing set free.

  The second chute leaned hard into the wind, taking its connecting cable out of reach. Nolan stood on the inner door edge, straining to reach the elusive lines, but the wind didn’t cooperate, and a savage crack made him twitch in alarm. He leapt away from the capsule as a brutal gust pulled hard enough to break the weathered stone in an explosion of rocky shrapnel.

  “Cherry! Button the hatch and—fucking losing you—close it up—save what we—”

  The capsule slid off into the great blue with a roar, spreading gritty debris ahead of it as the chute filled to capacity. Like a silver streak, all of their gear and hope went into open air and fell down the mountain in a series of devastating impacts that shattered rock and snow into a small avalanche.

  But the chute held.

  For long seconds, the chute pulled and offered some resistance to the relentless gravity of Nolan’s new home, then the wind failed, and the chute folded up, fluttering down next to the final resting place of their battered capsule. The fabric puddled over an area the size of a ship hangar, then began to slide further down the incline in rippling waves.

  “Well, shit.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Cherry said.

  “You made it. I’ll be damned.”

  “Made it is a bit optimistic. I’m uploaded directly to your receptors, but my unit is shattered. You’re stuck with me until you ask me to leave or by some miracle, we find a matrix and body components. The choice is yours. Awaiting command,” Cherry said, now wholly inside Nolan’s skull.

  “Stick around.”

  “Thanks,” Cherry said.

  Nolan peered down the killing slope, repressing a small shudder. “As mountains go, it’s tall, but at least it’s deadly.”

  “You’re really funny. Like, funnier than the cruise ship comedian with the dog that—”

  “Shut up, tenant. I’ll download you to a microwave and you’ll spend eternity reheating protein paste,” Nolan said.

  “Gross.”

  “That’s the idea,” Nolan replied, but there was a laugh hidden among his words. “I’m warm enough for now, got weapons, you, and the evac kit in my thigh pocket.”

  “You’ve got your boyish good looks too.”

  “And fuck-all else. Think we can make it?” Nolan asked. He dabbed at a trickle of blood clotting his blonde hair, but it was already st
icky. His body was doing the work.

  “Your body temp is beginning to fall. A tenth of a degree, but it’s starting,” Cherry said. “So, I don’t know.”

  “That fast? I’d hoped for more time. Only one way down, I think, and I don’t plan on falling. The capsule left a trail. It’s better than a free climb to the valley,” he said.

  “I’ll watch for—Nolan. Turn around, please. Slowly. Target nearby.”

  “Tar—” Nolan started to say, then a rumbling sound vibrated the air. “Um. This is unexpected.”

  The creature stared at him with small, dark eyes on an enormous head, then scraped at the ice, exposing a mass of blue lichen clinging to a rock. It stripped the lichen with a thorny tongue, then began to chew contemplatively. It was three times the size of a human, with six legs, two horns, and a coat that resembled a rug left out in the rain for a few years.

  “Hello,” Nolan said, then twitched. His faceplate was down, so the greeting was wasted.

  “It also doesn’t speak your language. Or any language,” Cherry added.

  “Threat?”

  “None yet. Herbivore. Eyesight seems weak. It’s almost certainly fast, though,” Cherry said.

  “At least there’s life here,” Nolan said. “Even if it is a mountain climbing six-legged space cow.”