A rustle in the bushes cut their conversation short. Their heads snapped right, to a cluster of broad trees and ferns.
“What was that?” Alana asked in a hushed tone. “Parker, what do you see?” The forest was too dense to make anything out in the shadows, but at least he still had his HUD.
“Motion sensor’s blank. Whatever it was, it’s not moving anymore.” He drew his pistol and aimed blindly into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
The ferns quivered.
Parker leaned from side to side, straining to see. Then he glanced at his motion sensor again, and lowered his weapon as an human-sized figure emerged from the undergrowth.
“Kurt!” Alana exclaimed.
Leaves clung to his mud-caked suit, shrouding the lights that would have otherwise made him visible. Dried blood streaked his chin. He grinned despite the split in his lip. “Boy, am I glad to see you two.”
————
The long-anticipated storm finally broke. Lightning zipped through the clouds, offering a brief reprieve from the gloom, and rain beat down upon the jungle canopy with deafening force. While it had chased away the stifling humidity, it also added a whole new level of difficult to the search.
“Echo Team, call out!” Carter bellowed.
Lieutenant Knoble squinted through the watery veil, scanning the forest for any signs of the missing soldiers. They had been tracking a pillar of smoke, hoping the Bandwagon’s cockpit would be at the bottom of it. Having lost sight of it when the storm rolled in, they had moved to higher ground. With any luck, their lost teammates would have done the same.
Corporal West stumbled into a tree, face flushed and knees quaking. “Foster, Mäkinen!” she shouted. Even her cries were growing weak.
“We’re gonna have to turn back soon,” Knoble said. Several hours had already passed. Small streams were beginning to form, erasing any traces that may have been here before. The last thing he wanted to do was call off the search, but they couldn’t stay out all night—not in this weather.
“I’m not leaving until I find the rest of my team!” Carter snapped. Water poured down his visor. He swept his hand over the glass to clear it and marched on, mud squelching under his boots.
Knoble jogged after him. “Look, I get it, alright? But we can’t just abandon the others. We have no idea what’s out here, and I’d like to avoid another incident like the one on Calypsis with the tyliven.”
“Then go.”
“You realize you’d be alone, right?”
Drawing his combat knife, Carter carved an X into the bark of a tree to mark their path. “Last I checked, Valinquint wasn’t under your command. So how ‘bout you take West back to camp, and I’ll keep the lizard?”
“He’s not under your command, either,” Knoble pointed out.
Technically, Kenon wasn’t a member of either team. He probably chose to travel with Echo because an old friend from his homeworld had joined the team. Although, that may not have been the only reason.
It was no secret that the warrior had formed an attachment to Alana. She was, after all, the first human he had aligned himself with. Plus, she spoke to him as an equal—understood him on a deeper level than most humans could or would be willing to. That acceptance went a long way when it came to operating as a unit on the field.
“Lieutenant, over here! We’ve got prints,” West called from up ahead, where she and Kenon had stopped. If not for the colored lights on their armor, they would have been practically invisible against the trees.
Knoble trudged through the undergrowth and crouched beside them to examine the trail. Several sets of footprints marked the sodden path, though most were far too large to be human. Upon closer inspection, he noticed the larger indentations only had two toes. “They’re Nepheran,” he said. “They must be searching for survivors.” He cast his helmet light upon the smaller prints. Boot tracks; unmistakably human. “And it looks like they found some.”
Lightning flashed overhead.
Kenon moved further up the trail, head cocked as if he had spotted something. He bent down and combed through the trampled grass, revealing a scattering of silver shells. Bullet casings. When he lifted his hand again, his fingertips came away sticky and red.
West gulped. “That’s not good.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Knoble said. “Don’t forget: the Nephera bleed red like us. We have to—” Before he could finished that sentence, a bout of gunfire tore through the night. The search party snapped out their weapons and charged up the path.
When they broke through the tree line, they unleashed hell on the unsuspecting Nephera on the other side. Muzzle flashes peppered the darkness. Energy blades hissed with electric fury, illuminating spurts of blood. In a matter of minutes, the firing ceased.
The jungle grew still once more.
Three green visors popped up over the crest of the hill.
Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, Knoble stepped over the steaming carcasses and led the search party up the slope. “Everybody in one piece?”
Lieutenant Jenkinson put his index finger and thumb together in an O to say he was okay, then slumped against the boulder they had been hiding behind. “Thank god you showed up. I was beginning to think we were goners.”
“And you wanted to turn back.” Carter pushed past Knoble, the resentment practically rolling off him, and hurried to help Parker, who was struggling to stand on a twisted prosthesis. “You’ve gotta stop busting that leg, man.”
As Knoble took in the scene, he realized with a pang of frustration that a couple of people were still missing. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where Foster and Mäkinen are, do you?”
Echo exchanged a glance.
Alana pushed herself to her feet and limped over, retrieving two pairs of dog tags from her suit. “Mäkinen was already dead at the crash site. I found Foster alive, but I couldn’t save him. And, well . . . I can’t imagine Dahan survived.”
West took the tags from her. She stared at the names engraved in each metal plate, then closed her fingers over them. “They didn’t deserve this,” she muttered. “They didn’t deserve to die in a fucking crash.”
Knoble gripped her shoulder in an attempt to console her. You couldn’t spend three years with a person without forming some sort of attachment to them. Regardless of how much grief Foster had caused the team, a loss was a loss, and the Alpha Team would mourn his.
“What about Bennett, Sevadi, and Jhiral?” Alana asked.
“They’re okay,” he said. “They’re at the campsite.”
“Campsite?” Jenkinson piped up inquisitively.
Knoble nodded. “Bennett’s there tinkering with the radio while Sevadi recuperates. It’s well secluded, almost impossible to spot from the air.” He jerked his head in the direction they came from. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Chapter
———NINETEEN———
1400 Hours, September 10, 2442 (Earth Calendar) / Etna Tower, planet Chelwood Gate, Schwarzschild System
A lilting melody disrupted the peaceful solitude of Agent O’Connor’s office. He glanced up from the mountain of paper in front of him and noticed a tab blinking in the lower corner of his monitor. The text read: INCOMING VIDEO CALL. Beneath the notification was Agent Stedman’s name.
Just when I was starting to make some progress, O’Connor grumbled to himself, glaring at the folders upon his desk. If he had been allowed to access them on his tablet, he probably would have finished reading all of them by now.
Each one contained top-secret documents detailing recent events and future plans that electronic devices could not be trusted with. These days, the only way to ensure things couldn’t fall into the wrong hands was to put them down on paper.
With a reluctant groan, O’Connor accepted the call and reclined as Stedman’s image filled the monitor. The haggard woman appeared even more exhausted than usual under the fluorescent lights of her cabin.
She was currently stationed
above the planet Calypsis on a BSI stealth vessel known as the Raven. From there, she could go about her duties without drawing unwanted attention, and no doubt that was all she’d been doing. She probably hadn’t slept a wink in days.
“This had better be good, Gretchen,” O’Connor muttered, resting on the arms of his chair. “You caught me right in the middle of work, and I’ve got deadlines to meet by noon tomorrow.”
“Trust me, you’re going to like this.” Her words stuttered slightly over the comm, disturbed by the intense electrical energy radiating from Calypsis. “Lincoln managed to triangulate the location of that foreign AI.”
O’Connor perked up at that. “I’m listening.”
Stedman swiveled around to reveal the wide screen on the wall behind her, which depicted a vast desert dotted with shrubs and boulders. “We’ve tracked it here—to a place on the Drahkori homeworld they call ‘the Deadlands’. The AI’s signal is originating from beneath the surface.”
“Dyre?” O’Connor repeated incredulously. Why in the world would the construct be transmitting from there? Surely they were not dealing with an alien intelligence. “Are you sure?”
“Look.” She aimed a remote at the screen and summoned up a helmet-cam feed with the tap of a finger. “Lincoln snatched this gem from Phillip Anderson’s trove. It was recorded by Corporal Alana Carmen on December third, twenty-four-thirty-eight, in the tunnels below the Deadlands. Watch closely.”
The video began in the ruins of a city. Corporal Carmen stopped to look upon a holographic sign on a marble archway as Kenon Valinquint told her the story of this place—about the structures and the ancient technology it housed. Their chat was then interrupted by a piercing whistle, which drew their attention to the top of a crumbling staircase.
Lieutenant Lance Knoble and Private John Sevadi had passed through the marble archway and climbed to the top of a staircase. The steps ended abruptly at a glistening wall that appeared to be made of amber.
Carmen started toward the stairs, the camera shaking as she stepped over a few larger pieces of rubble. “What did you find?” she asked.
Private Sevadi jogged over when she reached the landing and asked for her flare gun. She handed it over and retreated at his request. Static burst over the footage as the bright flare erupted from the barrel and ascended into the shadows. At the height of its arc, it exploded—illuminating the cavern and revealing the enormous ship Sevadi had discovered.
It was completely encased in the amber-like substance. With its scooped prow and massive sails, it looked more like a seafaring vessel than a starship. However, O’Connor could tell by its shape and design that it was not built for water.
“Since when do the Drahkori have ships?” he asked, baffled by its uncanny resemblance to humanity’s own naval crafts. As far as he was aware, the ignorant lizards didn’t even have the means to mechanize ground transports, let alone construct magnificent vessels like this!
“They don’t. Haven’t had for over half a millennium, apparently.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
Stedman paused the video. “Valinquint goes on to say that this ship isn’t one of theirs, and he doesn’t have any idea where it came from.” She pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “Regardless of how it got there, it seems our mystery AI is trapped inside. It started transmitting the second these four discovered the ship, and it has been calling for help ever since. Now, we can’t seem to contact it ourselves, but guess who it has been talking to?”
O’Connor studied the woman’s face, searching her devious gaze for an answer as she let the anticipation build. At last he gave in and asked, “Who?”
Stedman smirked. “Orion.”
————
Back at the campsite the remnants of Alpha and Echo Team huddled under a sheet of hull plating they had peeled away from the Bandwagon’s tail end. Rain poured off the makeshift roof, soaking the ground beneath their feet.
Kenon had prayed for the storm to break and alleviate the heat. Now that it was here, he wanted nothing more than to feel the sun on his skin again—to be free of this insufferable dampness.
Beside him, Alana sat with her arms outstretched toward a small fire Jhiral had lit, soaking up every bit of warmth the flames had to offer. Upon their return, Jenkinson had given her a shot of antibiotics and redressed her knee. While the wound would not heal for some time yet, she didn’t seem to care so long as it didn’t put her out of commission.
Corporal West glowered at the pile of empty clips in her lap, then at the sparse ammo packs in Bennett’s. She, Bennett, and Sevadi had taken it upon themselves to count and distribute their remaining ammunition evenly between the teams’ weapons.
“Damn,” she said. “We’re almost out. Looks like we won’t even be able to reload all the guns.”
Knoble prodded the twigs in the ashy pit with a piece of the Bandwagon’s skeleton. “Sidearms are still full. Some of us can switch to those while everyone else sticks to primaries.”
“Sidearms won’t cut it. If we run into an enemy squadron, we’re screwed—unless by some stroke of luck every shot we make is perfect.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the only one here who could do that, Ali,” Sevadi mumbled past a yawn. “Don’t think I’ve logged a single bullseye since boot camp.”
Jhiral swung her head towards Jenkinson. “Perhaps you should have grabbed those legionnaires’ weapons on your way back. ”
“Right, and risk blowing our brains out.”
“I’m sure we could have figured out how to use them if we actually tried.”
“That’s not the problem.” Jenkinson passed his shotgun over for Bennett to reload. “We have no idea how their technology works. For all we know, it could be rigged to self-destruct if it lands in enemy hands.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Isn’t that how your saying goes?”
“That’s not relevant here.”
“Why not?”
Jenkinson squinted at her. “Seriously? Did that whole hypothetical scenario about the guns blowing up in ours faces just fly over your goddamn head?”
Their argument faded into the background as Kenon’s focus drifted to the fire pit. Faint blue particles swirled at the edges of his vision, expanding and growing brighter the longer he stared into the flames. Their dance was almost hypnotic.
Doramire’s presence stirred. You have not realized your true power, the vykord said. You are capable of many things, child. But until you acknowledge what you are, these abilities will be beyond your control.
A stream of images flooded Kenon’s brain, different than the ones that had come before. There was nothing horrible about these at all. They showed communities harvesting crops in the morning fog, children playing in the woods, and Drahkori of all ages kneeling on the floor in front of . . . what was that? Some kind of shrine?
Before he could make out the last location, a light touch on his arm sent the images spiraling into nothingness. Blinking the lights away, he turned to see what Alana wanted and was taken aback by the concern in her expression.
And it wasn’t just her. The others were staring at him as well.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We were talking to you,” Alana told him. “You didn’t hear anything we said?” When he shook his head, she went to speak again and paused. That brief hesitation was enough to let him know what she was about to ask: “It’s happening again, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Jhiral asked. “Kenon, what’s going on with you?” She leaned towards the young warrior, and he shied away under her scrutiny.
During their years in the academy together, Jhiral was always the one he would go to when something was troubling him. Unfortunately, she lacked empathy and found it difficult to sympathize with him. Instead of helping him through the hard times, she would simply tell him to toughen up—to ignore the harsh criticisms of his peers.
That was easy for her to say.
Like her father, Jhira
l was thick-skinned. Her confidence could not be broken, and it seemed there was not a thing in the world that could faze her. Perhaps not even death. And if she hadn’t understood what he was going through all those years ago, she certainly wouldn’t understand now.
But I cannot lie to her.
Kenon glanced at Alana and found brief comfort in the depths of her azure eyes. Whatever judgments befell him, he had to come clean. “I see things the rest of you cannot,” he said. “Fleeting images of people and places I do not know, fragments of memories that are not my own . . .”
Jenkinson gaped at him. “You’ve been hallucinating?” A curse slipped out between his teeth and Alana shrank, obviously feeling a little guilty herself. She had known about this for a while and only opted to keep her mouth shut for her friend’s sake.
“I thought nothing of it at first. The visions seemed harmless. Now they overwhelm my other senses to the point where I lose awareness of the world around me.” Kenon tilted his head. “Although, I am beginning to wonder if they may be more than mere figments of my imagination.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was knocked unconscious during the crash. As I laid at the bottom of the lake, I had a peculiar dream. There was a Drahkori there who claimed to be a guide of some sort. I believe he called himself a vykord.”
“A vykord?” Jhiral repeated, a hint of familiarity in her voice that sparked a new hope in Kenon. If she knew what the old warrior was, what vykord meant, it might finally lead them to some answers.
“Yes! The voice I hear is his. What do you know?”
“I know the word. I saw it someplace when I was a child . . .”
“Where did you see it?”
Jhiral’s claws tapped rhythmically upon her gauntlets as she scoured her memory for the location. At last she said, “The Silver Forge. It was written on the wall.”
“What’s the Silver Forge?” Alana asked.
“It is a temple on our homeworld in Shindar, not far from the palace,” Jhiral said. “It was built to worship the first god, Bhelios. My mother used to take me there. Few dare set foot inside these days, though, as it is considered blasphemous to worship any who came before Athenna.”
The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology) Page 45