by T Hodden
“I speak for this project.” Ishmael said. “I can negotiate with you. I have much I can offer you.”
“Oh that is a very bad idea.” Wendy whimpered.
“You offer Tribute?” The voice asked.
“No!” I shouted. “Absolutely not.”
“Y-” Ishmael started to speak.
“Forgive us.” Windfall chimed in. “We are scientists who hoped that we would discover knowledge here to benefit all mankind. We do not understand the terms you use. Please define the terms of this tribute?”
“You give them ten percent of your tribe and they offer you the chance to be preferential slaves. The slaved trusted to bully around other slaves. You are all slaves, but the ones who pay to be guards get to wear uniforms and have a more comfortable bed.” I said.
“Twenty.” The voice corrected me. “The Psybernetix tribe will offer twenty percent of their population to us in exchange they will serve us in our conquest of this world.”
“That is not what we are seeking from you.” Ishmael said. “We are not a nation state. Our influence is different.” He smiled. “What I can offer you is different.”
The screens blinked out.
“So is there any good news?” Windfall asked after a few seconds.
“Time travelling clones from the future will be unlikely to invade before the world ends.” Ginger said brightly. He smiled at Windfall. “See, thing is they were planning to invade before this happened because they had been established for years when we met them.” He took a pad from his pocket and started jotting out a fairly complex flow chart. “Oooh. I think I worked something out.”
“He has a point.” Wendy said. “The Horizon came back to kill us because we were resisting them while they prepared for this. If this is happening now...”
“Oh.” I looked at the researchers. “Did this thing start those little earthquakes because you did something or are you here-”
“The survey team investigating the earthquakes and found the doors. We did not cause the quake.” Mary said. “So... The doors did those to attract our attention?”
“Why now?” I asked.
Nobody answered, but there was a loud noise from the corridor. I glanced out and saw the squad of mercenaries had gathered inside and were keeping their eyes and guns trained at the airlock.
One of the screens flickered back to life. Windows of data opened as personnel files flashed over the screen.
“Please do not tell me you have a link to a mainframe at your HQ.” Ted whimpered.
“No. That is all on my files here.” Ishmael said.
“Is that the Door?” Windfall asked.
“Expara.” I said. “Yes. This is them searching your drives for what they want.”
“Twenty percent of our citizens?” Mary glared at the screen. “They are choosing twenty percent of our staff to be our tribute to them?”
I nodded.
“This is bad.” Windfall whispered.
“Oh you get used to it.” Tiger sighed. “So why do you have a list of potential tributes on your computer?”
“Personnel files.” Ishmael corrected her. “For human resource purposes.”
“Oh sure.” Tiger snorted. “There are like fourteen people in this base and we already saw seventy three different pictures on the screen. You keep every file ever on every computer for no reason?”
“Why DO we need all those files?” Mary asked.
“To offer tribute.” Tiger insisted. “He knew what the doors were when he got here.”
“So what happens when it makes its selection?” Windfall asked.
“Nothing good.” I whispered. “Most people who petitioned them had the sacrifice ready and allowed their own souls to be consumed so they could become... Well... The kind of people who would keep killing over and again providing souls for the Expara to consume.”
“So what was your plan?” Windfall addressed the bears for some reason. “When you all broke in the mine? What were you hoping to do?”
“Stop it before it reached this point.” Doreen said.
“My rough plan was to set a magic circle up inside of the chamber and exorcise the doors and the whole room back to where ever it belongs. It is literally not of this world.” I said. “But you caught us and put a stop to that.”
“Why?” Windfall looked at me. “Can't you still do that?”
“Not now the door is open.” Ted said gloomily.
“The doors haven't moved.” Mary said, looking at a hand held device. “We have cameras in the chamber. The doors have not moved. The mortar seals are in place.”
“Oh but they are open.” Ishmael smiled. “I can feel it.”
“Can you now.” I said gently. “I suppose you feel that if you walked up to the doors and touched a finger against them the seals would fall open, the doors would swing open...”
“And the secrets I have spent so many years seeking will waiting there.” His eyes were wide.
“What is that?” I asked. “You knew what those doors were, what were you hoping to use them for?”
The scans stopped flickering through personnel files.
“Do our selections meet your expectations?” Ishmael demanded of the screens. The screens responded by flickering back to life. “Do our selections meet your expectations?”
“Yes.” The voice of the Expara confirmed. “They are ready for delivery?”
“Within twenty four hours.” Ishmael tugged at his lapels. “But I have another gift for you, something that will show good faith.” He walked to the nearest console, took a solid state memory stick from his pocket and plugged it in. The screen flashed through the information. “This pleases you?”
He was answered by the ground rumbling under his feet. Everything in the room shook around us. Mary showed me the hand held device of hers. The doors in the mine were swinging open, inwards into a pool of pure darkness.
“Excellent.” Ishmael grinned at me. “Truly remarkable.”
“Ishmael, you have no idea what you are doing.” I told him sharply. “These things wish to destroy the world.”
“No. They wish to own it.” Ishmael said. “And that means they are willing to deal. Which means they can be used to our advantage. Just like any other government. Just like any other population.”
“Oh you absolute idiot.” I said.
“I didn't say anything!” Ted complained. “Oh. You meant him.” He pointed at Ishmael then he burst into laughter. “Oh! Oh! He isn't!”
“I think he is.” I agreed.
“Think he is what?” Tiger asked.
“Planning to steal something from the Expara then somehow sabotage their awakening.” Ted said. “He thinks he will be able to use something the Expara have for profit and not have the world reduced to rubble and slaves around him.”
“That sounds unlikely.” Doreen offered.
“Ah, but it is so much more likely now I have you.” Ishmael put his hand on my shoulder. “Because somehow I expect you already have a plan to seal those doors and prevent the Expara from waking up and walking our world?”
“No.” I mumbled. “Like I said, my plan was to stop the doors being messed with.”
“How many people are you giving these things?” Windfall asked. Her voice was barely a whisper, but it silenced everybody in the room.
“Fewer than I will save with the knowledge we gain in the next few days.” Ishmael said. “It will revolutionise medicine in ways you can not begin to imagine. They live for millions of years. They make people immortal, or as close to it as makes no odds.”
“At a cost that should never be paid.” Wendy said.
“At a cost that should never be considered.” Tiger spat. “The last vampire I met needed a whole town of children to be sick just so he could tick over.”
“You can't really expect us to let you do this?” Mary loomed over Ishmael as best she could.
“Well, I do have the armed mercenaries.” Ishmael smiled. “Jones, Freida, loc
k these people away.”
For the second time that day men with guns waved me to the storage room and locked the door.
“Okay.” I said as the locks clunked shut. “This time had better empty your pockets.”
Mary and Windfall did not look happy with their new predicament. They shifted uncomfortably against one of the walls. Doreen stood next to them and knelt softly to give them an encouraging smile.
“Do not worry.” Doreen said. “Fish and the Bears do this all the time. They are pretty good at breaking out of places.”
Six: The Shadows Beyond
I stared at what the bears had pulled from under their coats and piled on the floor. Nano-Thermite fireworks, a small cricket bat, a crow bar, a hammer, a gas powered flaming torch, several bags of sweets, a socket set, a small arc welder, a hydraulic jack, lock picks, a hack saw, and other items I barely recognised.
“How did they get those through customs?” I asked.
“How did they fit them in their coats?” Doreen asked.
“So what do we do?” Mary asked.
“Once we are out of this cell everybody goes to my hired van and drive as far away as you can with the bears.” I told her as Tiger fiddled at the door with her lock picks. Ginger, who had found a red towel to pin to his sweater as a cape pushed her aside and shoved one of the fireworks in. He shooed her back.
“Will that work?” Windfall asked.
“Er,” I ushered back out of the way. “Ginger really likes burning things, he has a knack for it.”
“But will it work?” Windfall repeated. I gave her a confident smile.
“Fire,” Ginger squeaked, “in the-” His last words were drowned by a thumping sound as the lock of the door dissolved in a shower of white hot sparks and noise. The rest of the door flew across the corridor and thudded against the far wall. “Cool.” Ginger said as he let out his breath.
“Doreen, show them the way back to the van. Keep out of sight and move quickly. Do not wait for me.” I told her.
“Keep out of sight of...whom?” Wendy asked from the now smoky doorway. I poked my head out and was surprised to not see armed guards running our way. “Where are all the mercenaries?”
“I can guess.” Ted said.
“Me too.” Tiger sighed.
“And me.” Said another bear.
“I think we can too...” Said some others.
“The doors.” Windfall said. “That idiot Ishmael has taken them into the doors.”
“Can you drive?” I asked.
Windfall nodded at Mary so I tossed her the keys.
“Where are you going?” Doreen asked quietly.
“To close the doors and put the end of the world on hold.” I grinned. “I will be fine.”
“I am not losing you again.” She breathed the words as we kissed.
“You wont.” I promised her. “I really, really want to live through this.”
“Are the all powerful creatures of darkness likely to care about that?” Doreen raised an eyebrow.
“I know what I'm doing.” I promised. “I just have to go save the world, then we could go find somewhere by the sea to have a few weeks of quiet holiday.”
“I would like both of those to be true.” Doreen agreed. “I will keep the bears safe.”
We suited up in the airlock, then while everybody else went back to the fence line I ran rather than walked towards the mouth of the mine. My breath echoed in the mask and my sweat clung to me as I stepped into the shadow filled maw and followed the sloping pathway back down into the seam that branched towards the doors. I paused as a figure staggered away from the chamber towards me. One of the mercenaries, his face ashen, and uncovered by a mask. His eyes were wide and wild. He looked at me, but did not even raise his gun. Instead he raised his hands.
“What happened?” I demanded.
“I aint a soldier.” He whimpered. “I just said I was to get the job. I mean I know more about it than most knuckle headed squaddies and that. But... But even if I was....”
“What happened.” I repeated, surprised how cold and hard my tone became.
“We went in there and the dragons killed us all. I... Ran.” He laughed. “I wasn't stupid enough to hang around and try to fight them. I ran. I survived.” He winced with pain and reached around to his side, pulling his fatigues aside to see the blood stain soaking through his shirt. He stammered and fell to his knees. “No. That isn't fair.” He whispered. He pulled a barbed dart of bone from his side and dropped it to the floor. His fingers had already blistered and turned yellow where he had touched it. His eyes rolled back into his head as he gurgled and dropped to the floor. Carefully I used the tip of my pen-knife to fold back his fatigues. The flesh around his wound was covered in raw and bulbous blisters. The dart had hit him before I saw him, and there was nothing I could do to help him. He was dead, tarnished beyond repair.
“That looks nasty.” Wendy said.
“What is this.” Tiger poked at the bone dart with a pitchfork.
“Ah. Yes. We know you said to go to the car...” Ted grinned innocently. “But you know us.”
“And this isn't giving you second thoughts?” I asked. Ted nodded and patted his palm with a crowbar. I got the impression that behind his gas mask he was grinning. Ginger joined the trio, with a gas powered flaming torch at the ready. He was slightly out of breath, and had bandoleers of fireworks over his coveralls.
“What did I miss?” Ginger asked. He glanced over at the dead body and yelped. “Argh!”
“Yeah.” Tiger glared at him. “We know!”
“What is that?” Ginger squawked.
“We don't know yet.” Wendy explained. “But can we get moving as I really don't want to be stood here staring at it.”
“You want to find the thing that did that?” Ginger said.
We looked at the open doors. A faint red light flickered within. The bears whimpered as they followed me.
*
The doors opened to a chamber of organic looking stone. It seemed to have been grown rather than carved or hewn. There were no straight lines, only curves and undulations of an orange red marble. There were patterns that may have been carvings or may have been the veins and bones of some ancient organism. The floor was patterned like the skin of a snake. We trod carefully. The air was not still, there was a slight breeze that made a low groan as it caught on the ridges and edges of the chamber. We passed something that may have been a fountain once but, or some kind of statue, and through some circular doors that reminded me of an iris of a camera as they ground open.
We found ourselves in an octagonal chamber, so tall I felt dizzy when I looked up. The walls were covered in stone webs and latices of interweaving veins, nerves, and spines of bone. Pinned to the walls were the armed mercenaries. Their masks ripped off them and their fatigues torn to reveal their skin was covered in blisters and sores. Their eyes stared into eternity.
“They were unworthy.” A voice rumbled. The same voice from the computer screens. The voice of the Expara.
“Meaning their genes weren't ripe for manipulation.” Ishmael stepped out of the shadows. “Mine is.” He held out his arm. Three of the barbed bone darts were stuck in his flesh, his veins bright blue and swollen. His eyes were wild. “I have been chosen.” He smiled sweetly. “Chosen to become part of the great Expara.”
“Welcomed into the fold?” I glanced over my shoulders. The doors were sealing closed behind us. The bears tried very hard to make themselves look big.
“A modest role.” Ishmael admitted. “But I have been shown how much I will profit from the union. My purpose is clear. My mind opened. I will serve.” He seemed proud of that.
“All will serve.” The voice said. “The time is right.”
“And why is the time right now?” I asked.
“You of all people know that.” Ishmael whispered. “You did this. I can see it on you. Chronal Radiation covers your aura.”
“Chronal?” I put a hand to my head. �
�Time travel. You sensed time travel and decided the time was right to act?”
“This world is finally ready to carry our word through history, to spread the seeds of a new Expara empire across time and space. All of creation will be our domain. All life will kneel before us. All life will be saved from their barbaric cultures and societies, given a newer, purer, purpose. Life will be as the Creator intended. In the image the Expara know to be right.” He smiled. “We all be freed of our delusions and egos, happy and content in our rightful place under the heel of a glorious rule.”
“Because we can time travel?” I repeated. “Oh, well, I am very sorry to have to tell you this. But we can't.”
“We observed the passing through time.” The Expara spoke from every direction at once.
“People from our future.” Ted said. “Trying to stop you actually. But in an equally horrible way. Wait, are you saying that it was their time travel that woke you up? The further into their past they come to try and fight you, the sooner you wake up? So they go back a little further to find you waking up earlier.” He tugged at my sleeve. “Is that irony? I always have trouble with irony.”
“I don't think so.” Wendy said. She was looking somewhere up towards the ceiling. Slender, powerful, hairless canine shapes were crawling down the walls like lizards, powerful maws open to reveal the ripsaw teeth of their mouths. “I think it means we are doomed.”
“We have no ability to time travel.” I said.
“But you do have an understanding.” Ishmael insisted. “You can help us.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I am afraid you are very, very wrong about that. I wont.”
I glanced up. There were more of the dog-lizards now. They were appearing from voids in the wall and descending face first towards us, their bodies hunched ready to pounce.
“You will.” The Expara promised. “My dogs of war will run wild upon your world. I will release their chains. They will roam from town to city, exterminating all they meet until you concede.”
“Problem is they will die, or be enslaved, as soon as I help you anyway.” I really wished I could sound more confident. “Why would I help you?”