The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology)

by Brittany M. Willows

  Alana shrugged and let her arms hang at her sides. “What the hell do we do now?”

  Levian had a suggestion. “The Legacy of Night still rests somewhere within the tunnels. We could retrace our steps and—”

  “I highly doubt we have that kind of time available,” the Doctor interrupted. “It took us long enough to get out of that winter wonderland, and I assume you lot were down in those tunnels for far longer. Am I correct?” she asked. Alana nodded in confirmation, and when no one spoke, Chambers added, “I have a private shuttle out behind my laboratory—Pioneer. It has a passenger capacity of seventeen with room to spare. If we leave right now we may just make it in time.”

  “Wait, hold up a second. What the hell are you two suggesting we do?” the Corporal asked. “Whether the Legacy or the shuttle, what were you planning to do with either of those transports?”

  “Follow the Nepheran vessel through the portal, of course,” the blue warrior replied, as if it was the obvious decision. “Both my homeworld and the young warrior’s reside within that star system. Whereas Thei’legh is guarded by its own Fleet of Defense, Dyre is not—making it extremely vulnerable to oncoming attackers. This is because the Drahkori seem to have the idea lodged in their thick skulls that if they refuse to become a part of this war, no harm will come to them. What they do not know is that the Leh’kin have been diverting every human threat away from their planet.”

  “The Drahkori are naïve,” Kenon said as he stood, a quiver in his words, “and blinded by their own foolish way of life—I will not disagree. But if the Nephera intend to bring harm to them, then we cannot simply stand here and allow that to happen! And why the Nephera would choose Dyre, I do not know . . . There is nothing there for them!”

  Levian walked over to Kenon and placed a firm hand on his shoulder with a sigh. “Keep calm, warrior. We will devise a plan in time. But until we do, we should be on our way to the Doctor’s lab—” He stopped abruptly as the cliff began to shake.

  Loose stones clattered about as the quake’s intensity grew stronger. A crack appeared in the mossy stone and traveled between the two warriors, all the way up to the end of the rocky ledge.

  Kenon and Levian retreated from the fissure as the ground shifted. One side tilted backward, increasing the size of the break, while the side that Kenon and Alana stood on began to sink. The patterns in the ground beneath them ignited with a brilliant light that snaked through the engravings, and when the Drahkori looked out over the marshland, the same thing was happening down there—only worse, and on a much larger scale.

  What started out as six small fissures spreading outward from the base of the cliff had turned into a couple of chasms that were gradually expanding. Murky marshland water cascaded into the shadows, dragging trees along with it.

  Levian put his arm out in front of Dr. Chambers in an unspoken order for her to stay back.

  The shifting plates of the cliff then came to a standstill, and the team of six remained unmoving as a thunderous rumble started up, followed by a series of mechanical sighs and clicks.

  Out of the marshland chasms arose six towering spires. Each one had three sets of rings rotating in its upper section, and in the center of these rings, blue spherules of light pulsed. Beams of energy shot out from them and connected to the top of a central spire rising from the peak of the cliff.

  A droning hum emitted from deep within this seventh spire, and another beam launched from its tip, appearing to strike a certain point in the sky.

  At once, the beams began to pulse, transferring wave after wave of energy, and slowly, from the central beam’s position in the clouds, a turquoise film flowed outward. It looked like a blanket of water and electricity, gleaming on its outer edges.

  “A shield? Do my eyes deceive me?” Levian breathed, awestruck by the sight.

  Kenon looked down when he felt something popping under his feet and saw tiny bursts of hot air punching small holes in the stone. His eyes tracked roaming fractures as they spread under Alana’s armored boots, all the way along the previous crack that had separated them from their teammates.

  The young warrior reached out to push the soldier to safety, but he wasn’t fast enough. Before he could even touch her, the ground crumbled away and dragged them both along with it.

  The distraught calls of their comrades followed them into the darkness, and then another echoed in Kenon’s head—ethereal and strangely familiar . . .

  Farewell, old friend.

  A dull ache ran through the young warrior’s body and a warm sensation washed over him, making his skin prickle. He opened blurry eyes to the glimmering of glyphs carved in the stone he lay upon. And beyond the lights, he noticed a peculiar red glow on the rocky walls that surrounded him.

  Kenon got on his hands and knees, then stood with a tremble in his limbs and looked toward the sky. At least fifty feet above, he could see a hazy beam of white light spilling in through the hole he and the Corporal had fallen into.

  Falling that far . . . It was no wonder the impact had knocked him unconscious. But how had he survived?

  “Kenon? A– . . .—still alive?” the Ship Commander asked over the radio, his voice barely audible over background noise and the interference on the channel.

  “Surprisingly,” Kenon replied, blinking a couple of times to clear his vision. “Levian, have you left the cliff yet?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Then you must leave right away. Hurry to the Doctor’s shuttle and follow that ship through the portal—we cannot afford to lose it!”

  “What about you and the girl, warrior?”

  “If we are not at the Doctor’s laboratory within twenty minutes of your arrival, leave without us.”

  “Understood. I hope to see you there. Good luck, my friend.”

  The connection was severed almost as soon as their conversation ended. They would have to do without communications for a while.

  Kenon looked around the cavern, trying to get an idea of where he was. Curious to see what was casting the orange-red glow on the walls, he inched closer to the end of the ridge and leaned out. A wave of heat rose up to greet him, and below he saw a boiling river of molten matter.

  Then he heard a scream.

  Kenon jerked his head back up and looked across the rolling lava flow to a ledge jutting off the wall opposite him—hardly a ledge; it was the skeleton of some structure, not much more than a knotted clutter of silvery beams overlaid with jagged metal sheets.

  Sitting atop the rickety framework was Alana, who scrambled to her feet in a panic and retreated as far away from the edge as she could. She pressed herself against the wall, hands gripping the stone behind her as she stared at the spitting river of lava.

  This was going to be a difficult rescue.

  Kenon crouched down, careful not to lean too heavily on the end of the ledge. There was no telling how much weight it could carry, and he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

  When he felt stable enough, he held his hand out and called across the divide, “Alana, come to me!”

  She looked at him, then studied the distance between the two ledges. There was a four meter gap between them. However, the framework she was standing on was set quite a bit higher on the wall, giving her an advantage if she were to jump.

  But even with that advantage, she was still afraid.

  “Are you crazy?” she exclaimed, and he knew she was giving him an incredulous stare through her helmet’s tinted visor. “Kenon, there’s no way in hell I can make that jump—not even with this suit! It’s too far!”

  “You need to trust me, Alana,” he persisted, his efforts to remain calm beginning to wane as the bubbling stream continued to rise. And when the metal beams holding the soldier up started to creak and groan, turning red under the intensely high heat, terror bolted through the Drahkori like lightning. “You have to jump now!”

  ————

  “I can’t!” Alana screamed at him—not out of anger, but out of terro
r. She was shaking uncontrollably, every muscle in her body had tightened and she felt as though she were about to pass out.

  Alana had no desire to die here today. She wanted more than anything right now to be back on the surface, to escape these tunnels and never return—but her feet would not move. Fear had glued them to the floor.

  “Alana, if you do not jump now, you will certainly fall to your death!” Kenon was still trying desperately to persuade her and losing his composure in the process; she could see panic in his eyes.

  If I stay here, I haven’t got a chance in hell at making it out alive, she thought. And Kenon’s not going to leave, so I’m not just putting my own life in danger—his is on the line, too. I have to do this. The odds were not in her favor, but at least the jump would give her a fighting chance.

  Do or die trying.

  Alana drew in a deep breath and gathered up all the courage she could, then took a cautious step away from the rock wall, shaking her arms out to banish the tension. She clenched her fists and sprinted forward, not giving herself even a second to think twice about it.

  With only a few meters of unbalanced metal in front of her, the Corporal was very quickly running out of floor. She forced her legs to pump harder, as fast as they would take her, and as she drew near the end of the last silver sheet, a harsh, metallic screech rang out.

  The beams beneath her shifted.

  Alana ignored them and kept running, adrenaline coursing through her system. As she pushed off from the final stretch of jagged metal, the beams snapped and the makeshift floor collapsed. Her leap was stopped short.

  She fell.

  Alana squeezed her eyes shut and lashed out in the hopes that her hands would find purchase—but they didn’t. With the winds rushing by her and the heat increasing below, she waited for the boiling river to consume her.

  Then something caught her arm and everything came to an abrupt halt.

  Alana opened her eyes slowly, and, through her polarized visor, found she was staring down at her own armored boots, dangling twenty feet above the bubbling, hissing lava flow.

  Becoming conscious of the pressure on her wrist, she tipped her head back to see Kenon’s scarred, gray hand wrapped around her arm so tight that his knuckles had turned white. She then looked up further and met his pained stare, narrowed as he fought against gravity to hold up his own weight.

  His other hand was clutching the ledge he’d been standing on moments ago, and the depressions in the rock wall served as footholds. His nails left chalky, white scratches in the stone and his legs were beginning to shake.

  “Climb up,” he said through gritted teeth. “I cannot hold this position for much longer.”

  Alana swung her other hand up, grasping his gauntlet. She made her way back up to the ledge as quickly as she could, using the warrior for support as she scaled the stone wall. Kenon joined her just in time; a large portion of the ledge crumbled and fell into the lava.

  “Come now. We must hurry if we want to get to the Doctor’s laboratory before the others leave,” he said, leading the soldier down a rough, steep slope that took them to a broken-down Nepheran tunnel.

  Kenon jumped into the tunnel with ease and helped the Corporal up. As he pulled her inside, the lava stream rose suddenly, spitting globules of molten rock, and the heat caused the material on the back of her boots to blister.

  That’s not like any lava I’ve ever seen, she thought.

  Lava didn’t burn like that—it didn’t glow like that. This stuff acted more like crytal in its superheated liquefied form.

  “Where are we going?” Alana asked, trying to keep pace with the alien warrior as they dashed through the dark passageway.

  “I do not know. This was the only route I could see that had even the slightest chance of leading us to safety,” Kenon panted, skidding to a stop as he sped under a busted doorway.

  Alana spotted the defense AIs right away. There were three of them, crumpled lifelessly on the floor in pools of orange fluid—the same three she and the rest of Black Team had encountered and defeated earlier. Casting a glance behind her, she realized the doorway they’d come through was the same one Captain Nicholas had blown open with a bomb.

  This was the second room Black Team had discovered after the start of their unanticipated adventure.

  Alana turned her focus back to the young warrior, and she could tell by the look on his face that he’d also recognized the room.

  “Kenon,” she said, a sudden rush of excitement restoring lost energy to her exhausted limbs. “We can get back to the Legacy now! All we need to do is retrace our steps, then we can fly out of here!”

  “Yes, of co—” Kenon was about to agree with her, but stopped mid-syllable at a metallic, groaning sound.

  One of the support posts was beginning to buckle under the weight of a collapsing ceiling. It scrunched up like an accordion and burst apart, forcing the young warrior to leap out of the way in a hurry as it came crashing to the ground.

  “Let’s get out of here before this place caves in on us!” the soldier said, out of breath.

  The two managed to backtrack all the way to the room with the holographic map. The hallways here were heavily damaged. Ceilings were sagging, walls swelled, and the floors were bumpier than a rocky mountain hiking trail. The temperature was beginning to rise again, too, making Alana nervous.

  If she had one major fear, it would definitely have to be boiling to death in her own skin.

  Alana swiftly slipped through a pair of twisted, crisscrossing beams that blocked off the gate at the opposite end of the room. She made it through easily, but Kenon, on the other hand, had a little more trouble.

  The nine-foot-tall Drahkori warrior scratched the black paint of his combat harness trying to squeeze through the gap, and nearly fell flat on his back when he did eventually get through.

  Not looking to waste any time, they darted out into the larger tunnel with the elaborate picture on the wall . . . and then stopped.

  Metal plates shifted; up and down, back and forth. The tunnel was rearranging itself, leaving a five-meter wide opening in the ground that stretched from one wall to the other. There was no going around it, and no way either one of them was going to be able to leap across—it was just too far.

  I wonder what’s down there . . .

  She walked up to the edge of the gap and about fifteen feet below was another tunnel, the same size and width as this one. It was the only way they could go; they just had to hope it would lead them in the right direction.

  Alana waved her hand for Kenon to follow as she jumped down, tucking her arms in and letting her knees buckle when she hit the ground.

  Soon, they reached the end of the tunnel, where it gave way to another deep pit of boiling hot liquid. The ingress of lava collected in the rocky hollow, eating away at the walls and rising higher with each passing second.

  But it was what lay across the pit on the remnants of a rocky ridge that caught Alana’s attention.

  The bow of the Drocain assault carrier Legacy of Night had come down through the floor of the tunnel above, its stern hidden somewhere up in the shadows. The carrier’s shields flared as lava splashed against its hull.

  Well that’s damn convenient! Alana thought. Let’s hope the door is still open when we get there.

  Kenon stepped out onto the top of a stone pillar still standing in the midst of the lava pit. There were many more ahead of him, leading all the way to the other side—the remains of a bridge, perhaps? Some looked awfully unsteady, shaking and swaying.

  “Well shit, maybe I should have invested more of my childhood in mastering The Floor is Made of Lava,” Alana muttered to herself and then, following her alien comrade’s lead, hopped onto the first stone pillar.

  It was a slow and nerve-racking trip to the other side—better safe than dead, her stepfather would say—but they made it across unharmed and sprinted to the carrier. As Alana had hoped, the gravity lift was still active and the hatch was wide
open.

  Once Kenon and Alana were inside, they headed to the console. With the forward viewscreen flickering ceaselessly, it was impossible to clearly perceive the image it displayed. The controls were dim, inactive or dysfunctional, and there was no apparent explanation as to why the artificial gravity generators had failed to suspend the ship in its original parking spot.

  Kenon settled down in the ship commander’s throne and palmed one of the panels to bring the Legacy of Night’s artificial intelligence program online.

  Alana wondered if he honestly knew how to pilot this thing. She didn’t know how long he’d trained before hitting the battlefield, nor did she know if he had gone through any sort of flight simulations.

  Even if he had, I’d think those simulations would be limited to small starfighters and dropships.

  The carrier came to life, the viewscreen cleared, diagnostics panels activated, and the console brightened. Legacy’s engines gave a tired moan, and the ship lurched forward as the artificial gravity generators came back online. Alien text scrolled down a number of other displays, words unknown to a simple human soldier with no degree in xenoarcheology.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Not a clue.”

  “Okay, well that’s comforting. Totally eradicates my fear of crashing and burning to death in a lake of molten rock.”

  “Take comfort in the fact that all Drocain vessels are equipped with AI programs; meaning this ship should be able to operate under voice commands. I have never seen Levian use them . . . Of course, he has—”

  “A lot more experience than you?” Alana finished his sentence.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  How do you address the AI, though? Do Drocain AIs have names like ours do?

  Armor creation units had names, but those were semi-organic robots with a high level of intelligence like the AIs used by the UNPD. Drocain ship AIs could be dumbed down constructs like the ones that ran entire cities on Calypsis and Anahk.

  “Legacy of Night: take off immediately,” Kenon commanded calmly.