by Barry Kirwan
Something snagged her attention. One of the eggs looked different. She realized it was because there was light reflecting from it. Not daylight as such, but a pale, cyan, electric glow. She heard a low hum, looked behind her toward the outer wall, and saw a Q’Roth scout ship enter the chamber. She crouched, her back to one of the eggs, and watched, careful not to move.
It was not a big craft. It resembled a giant fly, with two oval-shaped glass bubbles at the front for a cockpit, and small, mobile turrets on each underside. After the front end, the rest of the craft tapered to a point several meters behind, like a helicopter. The craft had six jointed legs that cushioned its landing as it settled onto the rock floor. Two Q’Roth stood in the front part of the ship. Kat saw how much like insects they were, their abdomens consisting of ribbed circular sections that looked very tough – and their legs were barbed. But the trapezoidal heads with their blood red slits on either side rendered them demonic.
She called to Blake before the ship had fully powered down.
"Captain," she shouted in her loudest whisper, in case their sensors could pick her up. "A small ship’s arrived just thirty meters from my position. Do you see it?" The engines were almost quiet, and there was a hiss as the two glass-like domes, each sheltering a Q’Roth guardian, unsealed and retracted. "Radio silence!" she barked, before Blake had a chance to reply. Muting the radio, she hid behind the egg.
She had no idea what sensory capacities the Q’Roth had, but she was betting they could see in the dark, probably by infra-red or some kind of sonar – there had been no natural or artificial lighting in here, so clearly there was no need for light, even for the hatchlings. She also suspected they had advanced motion detectors like many evolved predators, so she remained very still, out of their line of sight, her right hand on the pulse rifle trigger, the left on the grenade pin. She closed her eyes, trying to listen. It sounded as if they were moving toward the centre of the chamber, scampering softly through the egg rows, muffled drum beats of claws on rocky ground.
A series of fast clicks came in a short burst. Simultaneously she felt the vibration of her wristcom. With minimal body movement, she turned her left wrist towards her face, and touched a small button once, for back-lit illumination. She read the message in red LED: Stay down. Have found second corridor to lower level. Try to get back to ship alone. Kat pressed the acknowledge key.
Just as she was deciding what to do, a bone-thumping crack knocked her forward, nearly making her drop the rifle; the egg she was leaning on was starting to hatch. But the two guardians were still not far enough away. Reluctantly she sat back against the splintering shell, pressing her weight against it, digging her heels into the ground. The Q’Roth footfalls paused. She held her breath, then mouthed "Shit!" as she realized they had changed direction and were heading her way.
Her palms were clammy; she hoped they couldn’t smell her sweat, her fear. Still she hadn’t moved, and wasn’t yet in their line of sight. Her breathing came in short rasps, high up in her chest – she tried to slow it down, but had no effect. Her hands began to shake. At that point she felt her wristcom vibrate again. She risked a glance at it. It said simply: Cover your ears. Kat stared at it, then, just in time, clapped her hands over her ears as an explosion at the far side of the chamber punched its way across the cave. She guessed Blake had just sealed the other entrance. Echoes reverberated half a dozen times all around her. She took her hands off her ears to crawl around the other side of the egg, seeing both Q’Roth, only five meters away, stood up on their two hind legs, facing the direction of the explosion. From her perspective they looked like deformed, giant locusts. She watched as they dropped down and galloped back to their craft, zig-zagging past several eggs with astonishing speed and precision. Within a matter of seconds they were onboard. The engines powered up and the craft lifted off, soaring across the egg-field towards Blake.
Her shakes increased. She had to get moving, but before she could get up the next egg crack not only threw her away from the egg, but cut her as well. She stared in disbelief at the dark blood oozing from her thigh, and then gaped at the egg shell – what was left of it. A full third had come free, and two praying mantis-like legs were hanging outside of the shell – one of them had a spray of her blood on its barbed edge.
She felt paralyzed as the young Q’Roth, almost full size from what she could see, writhed inside, cutting itself free of an inner mucous membrane with thick blue fibres, like giant veins. For a moment it stopped moving, and Kat pushed herself away on hands and buttocks – it was staring at her. It cocked its head, and the two sets of three slits on either side of its face glowed. Her hands reached for the rifle but, aghast, she saw it was at the foot of the egg. The creature turned its head, followed her gaze, and then in a split second one of its free legs stamped down on the rifle, pulverizing it.
A bead of cold sweat ran down her back. The moment she had dreaded had arrived. The nightmare, all those times on the ship, was finally real, and there was nothing she could do, absolutely nothing. The creature lifted its head and emitted a piercing high-pitched whine, as it kicked another part of the shell way. Kat found herself on her feet, running full-out toward the second entrance, ricocheting off several eggs that had also started vibrating. She didn’t look back. She had no need. She knew it would chase her all the way back to the ship. She ran blindly through this second, wider entrance tunnel, guided up its slope by faint starlight at the other end. She pulled out the two grenades with both hands. Without breaking step, she put them to her mouth, bit down on the pins and yanked them out, then tossed the grenades over her shoulders, leaving them to tumble back down into the burrow. She spat the pins out into the night air.
The shock wave from the two detonations caught her just as she reached the cave exit, throwing her off her feet. Coughing, sprawled on the ground, she donned the night goggles, which cast everything in a ghostly green. She tried to listen above her own hammering heart. And then she heard the unmistakable sound of relentless, galloping footfalls echoing up from the soot-black corridor. She grunted as she launched herself upright and ran downhill at top speed, dodging between bushes and rocks like a wild animal. She prayed that Zack would be there to save her, although in the nightmare Zack was always too late. And for the first time, she remembered something she had forgotten about every single nightmare on her trip to Eden – a small but now significant detail; they had all taken place at night.
Chapter 41
Night Flight
Micah hardly slept on the four hour diversion to Cocos Island, near Honduras. He watched Sandy occasionally emit small snuffling noises, her nose twitching, cat-like. He envied how some people could doze so soundly, anywhere, anytime. Even Vince indulged in power-napping on and off, interspersed with a range of calls – none of which Micah had been party to. For several of them Vince had switched to Spanish, and for one in particular, he had used an Eastern European dialect.
But he must have dozed off for at least a short time because he was woken by a vid-call to Vince. Half-awake, curled up in an executive jet sleeper seat, cranking open his eyelids a fraction, he saw Vince turn away across the aisle and whisper, "What do you mean her corpse is missing?"
Micah revisited what he had experienced during his access to the data crystal. It was still confusing, and he had the feeling that this was due to the involvement of a second alien intelligence. But it was slowly becoming clearer, like frosted ice melting. Something from the destroyed spider race was left over, still active. That could mean an important ally, if communication could be established. But whatever it was, it probably resided on Eden, and it would take months to get to it. Unless…
He tried to figure out the logic of the ships. They were on Earth, empty for a millennium, undoubtedly destined for Eden. And then what? Would they come back? With new passengers? It didn’t quite make sense to him. But then, why should alien sense make human sense? The counteraction needed was either to keep the ships here in the first place, or else
to make sure they didn’t come back. His intuition told him that the heart of the problem lay on Eden, where the astronauts were. There were only four of them, but maybe they were still alive, maybe they could help. He wondered if they knew what was going on; had more of the pieces to the puzzle. But there had been no communication now for a week. Although the Eden Mission complex had been destroyed, other deep space tracking stations would have picked up transmissions had any arrived, and it would have been all over the nets.
Vince looked up from his wristcom, and sat up sharp. "Three of the ships have left, the one in the Pacific, one in China, and one in Australia."
"Already? But how?" Micah couldn’t believe, despite his predictions, that things were now moving so quickly.
Vince flicked a switch on his seat and a rippling holonet unfurled from the ceiling. Seconds later, as Sandy stirred from her slumber; all three of them watched a WNN reporter describe the event with – for once – adjectives and superlatives that barely did it justice. One second the ship was there, and the next – it was as if it had been edited out of the picture. There was suddenly a Biblical-style basin in the ocean where the ship had been – no take off or ascent – it had simply disappeared, whereupon the waves crashed into the chasm left in its wake, and the aerial video picture rocked so much it was difficult to see anything, except several IVS ships foundering like toys in a child’s bath when the plug had been pulled.
The scene moved to another reporter interviewing one of the land-based IVS scientists, who admitted they still knew almost nothing about the ship, or how it worked, or how to activate it. The vid cut to the first reporter, and to a clip of the MIT scientist, Professor Klebensky – a well-known rival of Professor Kostakis – who had discovered how to locate the alien ships all over the world only a day ago, via a satellite-based spectrographic sweep for the ship’s unique metallic molecular signature. The reporter stated that he had been found dead in his apartment an hour ago, with no further details available. The image switched again to two dozen other ship sites worldwide. Security had been intensified due to the flocking of tens of thousands people all around them, spurred onwards by Fundie leaders worldwide proclaiming that God’s transport to Eden had finally arrived, with an added incentive in the message that the ships could carry only so many people – first come, first served.
Josefsson’s speech played out next, followed by a clearly well-rehearsed counterpoint from the Fundies – the Alicians never broadcast themselves – who proclaimed that this was nothing more than US imperialism all over again, trying to stake a claim to Eden first.
Micah sighed. "We under-estimated them. They were already prepared."
Sandy rubbed her eyes. "Of course they’re prepared Micah – from what you and Vince have told me, they’ve had a few centuries to make all sorts of contingency plans."
"She’s right," Vince said in a low voice, "and for over fifty years people have learned to distrust politicians, especially American ones. Did you notice anything about the ships’ locations?" Vince rewound the news vid to the world map WNN had displayed for a few seconds showing the location of the ships.
Micah stared at the picture. "Good grief!"
"What?" Sandy asked. "Looks pretty random to me – nicely dispersed around the globe."
"No," said Micah. "They’re all in rad-green or yellow zones. That means –"
"It means," interjected Vince, clicking off the screen, "that the Alicians supporting these Q’Roth have been orchestrating world politics and pulling strings for a very long time, even within the military, probably on both sides during the last War."
Micah pulled himself upright in the chair. He felt like a novice up against a chess grand master. "So, what do we do?" His fingers tugged absently at his hair; to have come this far, even through a nuclear war, only to end up as growth hormones for an alien race.
"Time for a shift of tactics," Vince said. "Micah, IVS have analysts, don’t they?"
"Er, sure. Including one of ours until recently." He wished he hadn’t said it. He found it hard to believe Rudi’s demise had been just a few days ago.
"Good." Vince was already typing using a holo-keyboard. "I’m going to send IVS all your data – with the key – so they can see what you and Josefsson saw."
Sandy spoke up. "I thought IVS was the enemy?"
"We only have one enemy right now," Vince said. 'The aliens, together with the Alicians working for them. IVS are lean and pretty powerful – wolves – and they’re not subject to the bureaucracy of political machinery. Besides, they’ve been trying to claim patent rights over the ships, all of them. They’ll never win that of course, but the legal process could maybe stop any more ships from leaving, or letting people enter them."
For the next half an hour, Micah and Vince worked together to download and transmit the datastream via satellite to IVS. Minutes after the first compressed data-packet had been transmitted Vince got a call from IVS in Mumbai. He put it on speaker, so they could all hear the gravelly voice at the other end.
"What game are you playing now, Vince? And what on earth did you do to my Senator?"
"No time for fencing I’m afraid," Vince replied. "Get the data to an analyst who knows what he’s doing, fast, and then see what he says. It’s the data you gave to me two days ago – check the parameters, there’s been no tampering, it just needed an analyst with the key to find the hidden data-stream. And remember what IVS said during the War about the best motivation to build a team." Vince cut off the call.
Sandy raised an eyebrow.
"Common enemy," Vince said.
The auto-pilot’s synthetic female voice instructed them to take their seats for landing. Micah wondered if anything they did now was simply already way too late. The enemy’s last pieces were locking into place. Check-mate was almost upon them, maybe already here. He felt a chill, and zipped up his jacket.
Chapter 42
Mongolia
Sister Esma breathed in the chill, Mongolian mountain air in the last surviving cold patch on the planet, in a room that barely kept out the sub-zero winds and blinding snow. Not even the Alician scientists had predicted this strange weather phenomenon, an ice blue eye in the swirling inferno which slow-baked Earth.
She’d spent fifty years in Tibet a long time ago, and had learned the secrets of slowing and deepening her breath, even of creating heat through special breath-hold techniques. Each lean outbreath produced its own fleeting fog, which she studied as if it were an ice-sculpture. The art of patience, she had learned centuries ago, was not in doing nothing, but rather rested in finding natural art in the smallest details or events, no matter how evanescent. It was also in counting down, measuring the progress, even if glacial, to an anticipated event. She had been counting her outbreaths, and had reached three hundred after three hours. It was time to wake them, time for humanity to meet its nemesis. Eleven of her most trusted, scattered around the globe, were about to play out a similar ritual.
While she was wrapped in furs, the frail-looking, head-shaved man in front of her wore only a simple robe. Although he had only arrived ten minutes ago, he was already shivering violently. But the pale light in his eyes and their religious fervor were unmistakable. She drew a stretched sliver of the rarefied air into her lungs and spoke forcefully, shattering the silence.
"Do you make this sacrifice willingly?" It was hardly a question – rather, the beginning of a brief and terminal ceremony.
He bowed deeply. She nodded to the two other men in the room. "Bind him."
He did not resist as they tied his wrists behind his back, and shackled his legs with a heavy chain. His eyes radiated uncompromising faith, and an unspoken promise that the chains were not necessary, that he was a willing sacrifice.
Sister Esma knew better. "Proceed. Your time of glory is at hand."
The two thick-set, oily-skinned men each lit a flaming torch, and lifted up the dust-ridden carpet to reveal an oak trapdoor. They strained to heave it up, their groans under its
weight competing with the screeching of its age-rusted hinges. They propped it open and led the man down the steps. Sister Esma followed.
The undulating, narrow passage was redolent with an ancient odor of decay, mingled with the acrid smoke from the flaming oil torches, casting hideous shadows on the crudely carved tunnel walls. The young man did not falter, but his two guards walked nervously. You should indeed be afraid, Sister Esma thought. She pulled out the deep blue diamond-shaped amulet that had been inside her clothing since Alessia herself had passed it to her five hundred years ago. It shone dully, and she bathed in its warmth – it had never felt old, or cold, and now seemed to glow in anticipation, as if it knew.
After a ten minute descent, the close air felt warmer, and Sister Esma saw flecks of sweat on the guard’s faces in the flickering flame-light. They stopped at a landing before an oval metallic door. Although everything else about the tunnel reeked of centuries lost, the door had no rust or other signs of corrosion or age.
"Aside!" she commanded, and all three made way for her. She pressed her amulet into a central, diamond-shaped recess. This time there was no creaking of hinges, it withdrew soundlessly into a recess on one side, with only a faint hissing of equalizing air pressure, and the crackling of the torches as they found a fresher supply of oxygen.
"Follow," she said, and walked into the dimly-lit, circular chamber, some fifty meters across and ten meters high at its apex.
The guards scanned the area apprehensively, no doubt trying to figure where the grey, morgue-like light was coming from, but soon all eyes were on a central pedestal, surrounded by a circular stone plinth some ten meters in diameter. On the pedestal stood a three meter high egg. It was russet in color, but not smooth – blue veins wormed around its opaque external surface.