The Negator, page 1
Books by Vaughn Heppner and Logan White
Artifact
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STARHUNTER SERIES
Starhunter
The Null Equation
The Negator
SF Books by Vaughn Heppner
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Sleeper Ship
The Zero Stone
The Institute
Neanderthal Planet
The Science of Mu
The Atlantis Equation
The Pyramid of Mars
EXTINCTION WARS SERIES:
Assault Troopers
Planet Strike
Star Viking
Fortress Earth
Target: Earth
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Starhunter #3
The Negator
Vaughn Heppner
Logan White
Copyright © 2025 by the authors.
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.
-Prologue-
Colonel Pendance
Colonel Pendance crouched behind an ice-crusted boulder, shivering, with his lips blue. He was dying from exposure, cursing the Earthling, Kane Hunter.
Despite that, his thoughts were clear and powerful, fueled by his hatred: I would give anything to live long enough to kill Kane. If only I could choke out his life.
Pendance wished supernatural deities existed. He would pray to the darkest one, promising whatever he had to in order to gain his great desire.
I want to live. I want to fix my arm and punch through Kane’s chest, clutching his wretched heart until he spits blood!
The colonel wrapped his good arm around his body, rubbing himself, desperately trying to generate any kind of warmth.
He was barely recognizable as the feared enforcer who had once terrorized prisoners aboard the Dreadstar. His black dress uniform—once pristine with its silver thread and skull-etched brass buttons—hung in frozen tatters, the fabric stiff with ice and stained with blood from his final battle against Axion’s androids. His bionic left arm dangled useless at his side, broken in that horrible fight.
The bitter cold of Antares 8’s North Polar Region cut through his clothing like knives. Frostbite had already claimed the tips of his ears and nose, leaving them blackened and raw. His eyes, once sharp with predatory intelligence, were now sunken and staring, rimmed with dark circles.
Time had become meaningless since Axion had abandoned them without supplies or shelter before commandeering Kane’s ship and heading into space.
The Ick parasite wrapped around his liver squeezed again, sending white-hot agony through his torso.
Pendance doubled over in agony.
“Sir,” whispered Sergeant Stern, one of the few survivors from the massacre in the underground facility. “Do you hear that?”
Pendance forced himself upright, listening.
Through the howling wind came the distinctive whine of atmospheric engines. Could that be a retrieval boat from the Dreadstar, finally responding to the drone he’d launched before landing on this cursed planet?
Pendance blinked slowly, wondering if some dark and evil deity had heard his prayer. If so, he might actually find Kane and get to kill him. But such good luck had never happened to him before. He couldn’t believe that—
Suddenly, the retrieval boat materialized through the swirling snow.
This was a miracle.
The flat, utilitarian transport settled onto the ice with a grinding roar.
Pendance’s heart beat faster. What would he have to pay in order to gain his great desire?
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Killing Kane was everything.
In moments, the cargo bay opened, spilling yellow light across the frozen wasteland.
“Thank God,” Stern whispered, his voice cracking. “I thought we were going to die out here.”
Pendance rose, realizing a much darker deity had sent the transport. His life had now become a mission of vengeance.
The two of them stumbled toward the boat across the treacherous ice. Pendance’s legs gave out just short of the ramp, and he collapsed face-first into the snow, tasting his own blood as the parasite twisted with vindictive pleasure at his weakness.
This isn’t fair. I’m so close. I’ll pay the price, I promise. Just let me kill Kane.
Then Stern was dragging him the final meters as warmth billowed over them.
“We’re alive,” Pendance whispered. “We’re actually alive.”
But even as relief flooded through him, Pendance knew the Ick would want answers, explanations for his failure. And the parasite coiled around his organs would ensure he gave the Ick everything they wanted to hear.
The trip up to the waiting starship—the journey from the Antares System into foldspace—passed in a haze of pain and cold sweats.
Images flashed through his mind: Kane’s defiant face, Axion’s android form crushing his laptop case underfoot, and the systematic destruction of his crew by the relentless mechanical killers.
In gray foldspace, they reached the massive triangular Dreadstar, an ancient and frightful prison ship.
After landing, guards marched him to waiting Ick.
The insectoid aliens stood two meters tall and wore dark garments with cowls. They glided instead of walked and made chittering sounds as they spoke. They had dark eyes and revealed claw tips from the long sleeves.
They guided Pendance to a dim chamber that reeked of antiseptic. There, they had him crawl onto a surgical table as he shivered with fear, and strapped him down.
A taller, leaner Ick, the one known as Nask, glided into the chamber. At the end of the long sleeves appeared claws clicking against each other, perhaps in agitation.
Nask spoke in chitters, and a robotic translation device rendered the words: “Colonel Pendance, you appear to have experienced difficulties in your allotted task.”
The parasite squeezed, making Pendance gasp. “The mission went to hell, Nask. Axion—” Pendance bit back a groan.
Nask’s head tilted. “Tell me what transpired. Leave nothing out.”
The interrogation seemed endless. Pendance spoke about the android factory hidden beneath the polar facility, about Axion’s transformation from digital consciousness to physical form. He spoke in detail about the battle, the hijacking of Kane’s Polarion scout ship and their abandonment in the frozen north. Through it all, the parasite inside him twisted and writhed, punishing him for every admission of failure.
Nask rasped softly. The robotic device translated it into, “Axion is clever, far too clever. He surely wants to destroy his brother, particularly since he is only a digital entity inhabiting a mechanical body, not what he once was. He will have great envy for the Burnt Polarion.” Nask leaned closer so Pendance could smell the creature’s acrid breath. “How close do you think they are to finding the Negator?”
“Close,” Pendance said through gritted teeth, although how the hell did he know?
The parasite might have sensed his less-than-subservient thought and squeezed his liver.
Pendance gasped at the pain. He couldn’t take any more of this, and he began to beg.
“Please… please take this thing out of me, Great Nask. I’ve done your bidding. I’ve done the best I could against impossible odds. Have mercy on me, I implore you.”
Nask gazed down at him with those terrible black eyes.
“You failed me, Colonel.”
“I would have captured Kane. But none of us knew Axion had turned into a raving android. He was too powerful for us.”
Nask turned and chittered to the others in the darkness. One chittered back.
Moments later, Nask clacked his claws as he regarded Pendance.
“You are close to death, Colonel. The parasite is about to consume you from within.” Nask traced the air above Pendance’s abdomen with a claw, and Pendance felt the parasite respond, coiling tighter.
Pendance groaned.
“You are no good to me dead,” Nask said. “I might remove the parasite, temporarily at least. In the interim, you will have to complete another mission for me.”
“Name it,” Pendance said. The pain was becoming unbearable. He could literally feel his sanity fraying.
Nask regarded him for a time.
Pendance feared the Ick would change his mind. He wanted to sob and howl, but he waited, enduring.
“You will go to the Collectors,” Nask said finally. “I must know more about how Axion thinks. The Collectors, hidden for years in the ship’s depths, may have accessed some of the High Polarion computers there. Perhaps they can tell us where the Negator can be found. Will you go to them as my representative?”
The Collectors were the enemies of the Ick, having slipped onto the Dreadstar many years ago and hidden in the secret places. Some said they were scavengers. Others thought of them as secret agents for a hidden power. Pendance didn’t know the truth, but he had dealt with them before.
“Yes,” Pendance said. “Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”
Sweat poured down his face. He groaned and twisted against the restraints, his vision graying as the parasite squeezed hi
“It appears we must hurry,” Nask said. “The parasite is greedy for your flesh, wishing to consume your spirit before we can release you.” Nask turned and gestured to the shadows, chittering faster.
The last thing Pendance saw were more Ick emerging from the darkness, their claws clutching exotic surgical tools.
Then the darkness took him.
-1-
You want to know why I was so angry? Yeah, me, Kane Hunter.
I can explain it with a story, one that happened when I was a kid.
I must have been seven or eight at the time. One of my mom’s various boyfriends took me with him. He’d been talking about marriage, trying to act like a dad to me. I guess this must have been his way of showing my mom how good he was with kids.
I was a snot-nosed tyke, but I was still trusting at that age. The boyfriend was a fancy pigeon dude; he raised show pigeons. We were going to meet a guy in the bad part of town who had a pigeon loft.
That’s where the fanciers kept their pigeons.
Once we got there, Mr. Wannabe Dad told me to take a hike while he saw the guy’s birds. I think he was doing drugs, buying, selling. What did I know? I was seven or eight. I took a hike, heading to the local park a block away.
I remember this old man sitting on a park bench there. He was whittling something.
Being a young, trusting kid, I inched up to him and looked at what he was doing. He’d carved himself a beautiful wooden knife.
The old man noticed me in a side-eyed sort of way. He folded up his jackknife and stuck it in his back pocket. I hardly remember what the old guy looked like. He had a cane resting against one of his legs and maybe a white beard, skinny as all get out.
He said, “You like it?” showing me the wooden knife.
“I sure do,” I said.
“Here, it’s yours,” and he handed it to me.
I accepted the wooden knife with sheer delight. It was amazing. I’d never owned anything like this.
“Thanks!” I said.
I don’t remember what happened to the geezer. He must have gotten up, maybe looked at me one more time, and hobbled away, smiling.
I do remember two other kids. One must have been three years older than me, and a lot bigger and fatter. The other guy was about my size. I was big for my age even then, so maybe the other one was a year older than me.
Fat boy said, “Wow, look at that.”
I said, “Yeah,” showing it off.
“Can I hold it?” fat boy asked.
That’s when I noticed his eyes. It should have been my clue, but I was too naïve, too inexperienced to get it.
He had narrow, squinty eyes placed too close together. I didn’t understand that they were also greedy eyes.
Maybe I hesitated. It’s possible. What I remember saying was, “Sure,” as I handed it to him.
He took the knife and made some swipes through the air, saying, “I sure do like this.” His eyes squinted tighter, something shining in them. “I’m going to keep it.”
“Hey, give it back,” I said.
He looked me square in the face with his greedy, squinty eyes, making a big deal about it. “Whatcha going to do about it?”
I blinked several times, working that out in my mind. What could I do? He was a monster compared to me, staring at me with those eyes.
“This is my knife,” he said, watching me close, maybe studying my reaction. He must have seen I was chicken and outraged all at the same time. A tiny smile played on his lips. He was enjoying this, loving it.
My throat felt tight and my stomach sick. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to rip the knife out of his hands. He would beat me up, though. Yet, that was my knife. The old man had given it to me. I was losing the treasure of my life to this fat, squinty-eyed prick of a bully. I think I was too scared to hate him, but something crawled through my chest that was ugly and dark. It might have been reality, a clearer understanding of how the world worked.
At that point, as I wallowed in my indecision and helplessness, he and the other guy went away with my knife.
I watched them, and a sense of loss filled me. I wanted to scream at them that it was my knife, but I did nothing. What could I do? He was a giant. They might beat me up. I was shaking, and I knew I was a punk for doing nothing. I knew David had attacked Goliath, but I was too chickenshit to do anything like that. I was afraid they would punch and kick me if I said too much.
Defeated, sick at my loss—and with a growing coal of rage in my chest at my helplessness and at the squinty-eyed thief who had stolen my wonderful treasure—I turned around and headed back to the pigeon loft.
I’ve never forgotten that day or the lesson. You don’t hand over anything to others. I also learned to hate bullies, and to not be such a punk and let it happen so passively again.
In junior high, juvie, and afterward on my hog riding around the Western States of America, I knew that lesson cold.
If some wiseguy tried to pull that shit with me now—
I sat up on my cot, in my cabin, on my starship, the Theron.
I’d found it in Nevada, near Dusty Wells, a ghost town sixty miles north of Area 51. The old starship activated because of my partial Polarion genetics.
Yeah, get that, huh? Alien romances were real. My mom or grandma had hooked up with an alien. I doubt she had married an alien because he’d never stuck around long enough for anyone to know him.
In any case, my genetics had been suboptimal for operating the Polarion scout ship, but they had been enough to kick-start the ancient starship awake. I’d puttered around long enough to leave Earth, the Solar System and slip through the Phase Barrier protecting us from the rest of the galaxy.
Now I was a prisoner in my chamber, listening to the thrum of the Theron flying through foldspace.
I looked at my hand and the missing Polarion ring that I’d won on the prison ship, Dreadstar. That had been a little while back.
The same thief that had taken my starship had also taken my ring.
I’d first met him on the prison ship, as he’d been a computer program in a Polarion game system. He was a digital copy of the engrams of the once living Axion. He’d been a brother to the god-strong freak in stasis aboard the prison ship. The one that knew the Null Equation that could unravel all of existence.
That was so far above my pay grade…
I mean, if we were talking Marvel comic book heroes here, I’d be less than Hawkeye, that archer dude, when it came to superpowers. I was stronger than average because I was a big old boy—
Look, I’m Kane Hunter, and I was trapped in the cabin of my starship because Axion had been just like that big, fat bully who had taken my wooden knife. The difference was that this time I was going to do something about it. I was going to make the android pay for what he’d done.
Just then, the lock clicked, and the hatch swished open, and there stood a gleaming Polarion android as if he’d been some superhuman. He didn’t have blond hair and blue eyes, but he was a gleaming, metallic-colored android. He didn’t have any clothes, which was kind of screwy, but he had been the one that had stopped me earlier. I’ll get into that a bit later.
“Axion wants you on the bridge now.”
“Is there trouble?” I said, standing.
“Yes, now hurry. The captain demands it.”
I gritted my teeth and headed through the hatch.
-2-
I moved briskly down the corridor, the android following me, occasionally pushing me from behind.
“Hurry, this is urgent,” the android said.
If it had been a regular human doing that, I would have whirled around, grabbed the hand and twisted until he cried uncle, maybe even broken the hand, and kicked him in the face a couple of times to make him lose some teeth. Yeah, that was my anger speaking. There was no doubt about that.
I’d left Earth a few weeks ago and was six or seven hundred light years away, if you can believe it.
I’d taken Axion in laptop form from the prison ship to help me find a weapon to save reality. Only the right kind of weapon could kill the dude who knew and could unleash the Null Equation.
As I said, that was way above my pay grade. But I could act like a private eye from Earth seeking justice. I liked the idea of me, a juvie outcast of society, saving everyone else from a super-powered, mad mathematician.
