Invardii Series Boxset

by Warwick Gibson

  Celia acknowledged, and got Andre to leave the link open while the transport climbed up inside the mountain. Which was why she and Roberto heard the exchange between Andre and Jeneen that followed, and had to stop themselves laughing. Celia wondered if Andre said what he did to ease the tension, now they were so close to their goal.

  “Where would m’lady desireth her chariot take her?” said Andre, as the shuttle dwindled away to nothing in the sky above the plateau.

  Ursul and Cantoselli looked up from their work as the linguist earpieces made a garbled attempt to translate what he was saying, and Sallyanne looked startled.

  “Ignore him,” said Jeneen, “he’s been reading historical stuff again. Meddle, no, middle Earth.”

  “Medieval Earth,” corrected Andre. “Would m’lady permit this poor night to hold her colours while he attempts to pilot this death-defying beast?”

  “No she would not,” said Jeneen, having no idea what the jousting reference meant.

  “Just pressurise the shuttle and hold a position near the top of the mountains, she said, patting him on the shoulder like a demented child.

  “Yes, m’lady,” said Andre, turning the shuttle north and flying toward the mountain peaks ahead, while Jeneen gave him a half-hearted clip across the back of the head, before resting her hand gently on the back of his neck.

  “Still picking you up,” said Andre over Celia’s commslink. “You’re heading approximately north in a straight line, and climbing. Your speed is also increasing steadily. Are you reading me?”

  “Loud and clear,” replied Celia. “It’s a comfortable ride down here, we hardly know we’re moving. We can’t see the walls of the tunnel.”

  “Your speed is steady now,” said Andre. “The transport has stopped accelerating. You’re passing under the last of the forests on the slopes of the mountain, and you’ll be approaching the snowline soon.”

  There was silence in the transport. The tension was starting to build as they approached their destination. Celia hoped it wouldn’t be too much higher on the mountain. She looked at Roberto, and he gave her a reassuring smile.

  “There’s nothing but moss and rock above you at this point,” said Andre. “The thermo-incline hasn’t really started yet, but you’ll be into it soon if you keep going at this speed. It’s not a problem for the shuttle to fly on instruments, but I’ll lose visual of the mountainside soon.”

  There was some chatter from the cabin as Andre and Jeneen set up more scans.

  “I’m assuming you’re not far under the surface,” said Jeneen. “Your comms signal is telling me that’s the case, but we don’t have an exact fix on your location. The air pressure where you are on the mountain is down to 78 percent, which means oxygen levels are also reduced by the same.”

  Celia had noticed the air pressure inside the shuttle dropping. So far it wasn’t low enough to cause any problems for the passengers. She figured the Rothii knew so much about their Human cargo they would provide oxygen masks of some sort if they were needed.

  Then she felt a gentle deceleration drag her body forward.

  “You’re slowing,” said Andre, a few seconds later. “It looks like you won’t be going much higher. I’m trying to get an exact fix on you so we can meet you at your destination. I’ll know where you are once you’ve stopped.”

  “Understood,” said Celia. “We’ll wait until you’ve done scans of the location, and we can assess our surroundings, before moving away from the transport. Much as we’d like to rush off and explore, I can see the sense in not being in too much of a hurry.”

  The transport continued to slow, and Celia felt the front of it drop down as it levelled off, just before it came to a halt. The sides split apart and retreated into the ceiling and floors, allowing them to leave the vehicle on either side if they wished.

  They were in a long hall, and theirs was the only track coming into it. The hall had little else of interest in it, and no adornments. None of the murals and architecture of the archive on the Rothii home planet, or the work stations and inscriptions on the plateau archive. The hall was purely functional.

  The big problem, as they could all see at once, was the enormous pile of rubble that filled the far end of the hall.

  “Some sort of cave-in?” said Roberto, and the Hud pilots climbed out of their seats and stood beside the transport, partly to get a better look at the damage, and partly to establish a defensive perimeter.

  The discussion between Celia and Andre was brief. She and her team would stay put, while he and the shuttle team would get a fix on the transport’s location, and see what had happened topside to cause the cave-in.

  “That has to be it,” said Andre, as the shuttle slowed its descent above a valley that nestled between two ridges coming down off the mountain. The cloud cover lifted for a moment at that point, but it soon closed in again.

  Jeneen nodded, and handed him an electronic map of the valley with the shuttle’s position marked by a glowing cross.

  The head of the valley had once been a vertical cliff, but its collapse some time during the intervening aeons had covered the top half of the valley in boulders the size of houses. It was hard to say where the transport was, without the fix Jeneen had on Celia’s commslink, but with the aid of the electronic map Andre could see it was directly under the worst of the collapse.

  “You’re good and properly buried,” he said, as he relayed the news to Celia, and heard her hiss out a breath in exasperation.

  “You’d think the Rothii would over-engineer this place,” she said, “if it was so important to them!”

  “You’re not thinking like an engineer,” said Andre. “There’s a limit to that sort of thing. Would you engineer your house to withstand a meteor strike? It’s too unlikely.”

  Celia grumbled for a moment, and then went quiet.

  “So, what’s our best way forward?” she said.

  “We’re going to put the shuttle down in the unaffected art of the valley,” he said, “and see if there’s a way we can get to you. It’s unlikely, but worth a shot. Our scans don’t show anything dangerous near your location, so I think your best bet is to get out and about and do some exploring yourselves.

  “Does the roof look safe, apart from the end that’s caved in?”

  Celia assured him it was untouched apart from the far end.

  “We’ll keep in touch,” he assured her, as the shuttle came to rest in a round bowl of moss-covered granite with a picturesque stream running through it. The ridges on either side gave the location a secluded feel, and the swirling mist completed the impression of wild highlands and the possibility of stumbling across some hill country people.

  The hazmat suits in the back of the shuttle were the lightest and most flexible wear they had that would also keep out the weather, so Andre and Sallyanne emerged in bright orange, with flashing beacons on their back.

  “No chance of losing you in the rock pile while you’re shouting out your location like that!” said Jeneen, as Andre and Sallyanne crossed the stream and headed for the nearest of the huge boulders.

  “You just keep a good track of us,” said Andre gruffly.

  Some distance below them, Celia’s team left the transport and headed for the far end of the hall. There were no openings along the side walls as they made their way toward the cave-in. Everything they saw appeared to be rather spartan.

  They skirted the rubble and looked up at the incline above them.

  “Climbable,” said Roberto, but they both realised there was little point in that. At the best they would end up outside, on the mountain, and that wouldn’t take them any closer to their destination.

  Habid and Tunak started digging at one corner of the rock slide, where a little of the back wall showed. They were able to roll some fairly impressive boulders aside, but only exposed more blank wall. Then there was a shout from above them.

  “Do we have to do everything for you!’ said Andre, emerging from behind a huge boulder that was
wedged against the roof on one side, and half buried in the rubble of the rock slide on the other. Sallyanne followed tentatively behind him.

  “What, you’re going to single-handedly clear this lot!’ said Roberto, pointing toward the rubble that blocked the team’s access to the back wall, where presumably they would find a way onward.

  “No, but the shuttle will,” said Andre, now almost to the bottom of the slope. Sallyanne pitched over behind him, and surfaced a moment later shaking her hand.

  “There would be blood everywhere if that suit wasn’t made of non-tearing material,” said Andre quietly, with a grin on his face.

  “I heard that!” said Sallyanne, coming up behind him. “I would put up with this and more to look inside Maka’H’Rosh.”

  “Where is it?” she said, looking around.

  Celia pointed to the rock slide.

  “Behind that,” she said.

  CHAPTER 26

  ________________

  It took Andre some time to clamber up the rubble pile, and work his way behind the giant boulder that had allowed him access in the first place. Sallyanne took one look at the climb and decided to stay with Celia and her team. Roberto smiled. Sallyanne was known as a bit of a ‘city girl’.

  Working through the commslink, the rest of the group sheltered some distance down the tunnel they had just come out of, riding in the transport. The tunnel was tall enough to stand up in, except for Roberto, who dropped his head and bent his knees a little.

  When the rest of the group were safely out of the way, Andre used the industrial lasers on the shuttle to cut through the several of the boulders. The lasers were used to repair hull breaches in larger space ships, when the ships were damaged far from home.

  It was slow work, but eventually he made a hole through the ceiling that let a fair amount of light in. Then, when the thermo-incline shifted lower on the mountain, it also let in a fair amount of drizzle. The group sheltering in the tunnel were a respectable distance from his handiwork, but they soon had to make breathing masks out of whatever was at hand.

  Spreading the laser beam a little wider, and charging it negatively, Andre was able to blast a lot of the rubble out of the way, the lasers now working something like a fire hose. It wasn’t long before he had cleared away most of the end wall.

  “Try that!” he said into the commslink, as the lasers cut off and the voluminous amounts of dust began to settle.

  “I think we might have to leave it for a while,” said Celia, coughing as she and the others huddled against the sides of their hiding place, letting the worst of the dust clouds roll past them down the tunnel.

  Some time later the worst of the dust and grit seemed to have settled, and the Hud pilots went forward to see what Andre had achieved. They came back very excited.

  “There are double doors in the far wall,” said Habid, “huge doors, four times my height, and they look undamaged. We have to work out how to open them, but there must be something on the other side!”

  Andre came to join them in the hall when he heard the news, and he brought Cantoselli from the comms team. Jeneen was on standby in the shuttle, in case they needed a quick getaway. Most of them thought that a remote possibility.

  Celia had wanted Cantoselli present during the final moments, whatever those moments turned out to be, as a symbol of the unified alliance Cordez had brought together against the savagery of the Invardii. She was pleased the little Mersa was now present.

  Then the six members of three different species were standing in front of the door at the end of the hall. When they could find no apparent controls for the door, Roberto motioned to Celia to say something. It appeared the doors were voice activated.

  “Representatives of the alliance, friends of the Rothii, request access to Maka’H’Rosh,” she said simply.

  The giant doors swung inward. There was no Rothii voice this time.

  The research team stepped out into a cave the size of a cathedral that had been cut out of the heart of the mountain. Some sort of power plant must have been warming up since the transport arrived, and the faint glow that surrounded everything as they entered brightened. Then they could see their surroundings more clearly.

  For a long while there was just silence, as they tried to take it all in.

  “What an amazing place,” said Sallyanne, looking at the sculptured walls, reminiscent of the complex artistry in the Ba’H’Roth archive. The roof overhead shimmered as the designs worked into it came alive, and complex patterns on the floor looked like a series of interlocking mandalas.

  “Is this another archive?” said Roberto. “Where are the work stations? I’m not seeing anything we can use.”

  He was disappointed, despite the beauty of the place. It appeared the goal was not information, not this time. Celia had never thought it was.

  “I think we have to go this way,” said Habid, pointing to the far end of the immense cave. The lights only brightened where they were needed, and the far end of the imposing space was still dark.

  Habid’s eyesight turned out to be exceptional, and the awed members of the alliance made out the same bulky something stacked in front of the far wall as they got closer. The lighting followed them as they walked, until they could see more clearly what stood at the end of the patterned floor ahead of them.

  “Goddamit, what are those things?” said Roberto, coming to a halt beside Celia. She shrugged her shoulders. Rows of giant figures stood across the end wall, many layers deep.

  “They’re what they look like, Roberto,” answered Sallyanne softly. “They’re the gods the archive on Ba’H’Roth talked about, battle gods in the Rothii language. It’s why Cordez sent us here.”

  Roberto found himself incapable of a reply.

  Together the little party walked on, and the giant figures ahead of them grew in size, until the researchers walked among them, heads tilted back as they looked up at figures more than twenty times their own height.

  “How many of them are there?” said Habid, as he tapped one enormous leg. It made a dull sound not exactly metal or fibre.

  “Um, don’t know,” said Celia, rousing from a trance-like state. “They’re standing in a sort of square, could be fifteen by maybe a dozen deep. What does that come to, 180? Maybe more?”

  A metallic rattle caught Celia’s attention, and she turned to see Andre climbing a sparse metal ladder to what looked like a mezzanine floor, high overhead. One of the Hud pilots hurried to catch up with him, worried that he didn’t have a bodyguard with him.

  Taking a deep breath, Sallyanne started to work her way up the ladder after them.

  “Don’t look down! Don’t look down!” she said to herself, all the way up the ladder and across the mezzanine floor, until she could sit on a bench well away from the edge. The rest of the party were content to examine the giant figures from floor level.

  “You want to see them from up here!” called a breathless Sallyanne a little later, keeping well back from the minimal rail around the front of the mezzanine floor.

  “They look like us, more or less, and there’s a work station up here, I think, though it’s more of a general console really. We might be able to ask the console what these things are, and what they do.”

  “I think we know what they do,” said Celia quietly to Roberto. “They’re the ultimate weapons of war, and the Rothii left them to us.” Roberto looked like he was having trouble taking the concept in.

  “We’re coming up!” called Celia. Tunak joined them, and that left Jeneen and Cantoselli on the ground, tinkering with a control panel set into the back of each giant heel.

  From the mezzanine floor the full majesty of the giant figures could more easily be seen. Mostly the people of the mezzanine floor were looking at the backs of massive heads, and across a sea of giant shoulders.

  The figures were distinctly Human in shape, and seemed to draw artistically from many sources. The gods of legend, the physical prowess of great athletes, and the fierceness of warl
ords down the ages. All of these looked out across the cavern, embodied in the giant machines.

  “That one looks like you,” said Sallyanne, smiling at Roberto.

  “Well, that one has Celia’s hair,” said Roberto, nudging Celia with his elbow.

  “Maybe, but I do not have a beard and moustache,” said Celia indignantly.

  “Goddammit, they’re all male!” said Sallyanne suddenly. “The Rothii thought we would still be ruled by a male power structure by the time we arrived here!”

  “They were looking 200 thousand years ahead,” said Celia cautiously. “You have to admit the imprint of the male warrior is still strong in our unconscious mind. Another thing they didn’t quite get right is our racial mix. The features on most of them look more Asian than anything else, and the sparse beards would support that.”

  “But not all,” said Roberto, “so they were laying bets on a reasonable genetic mix evolving during our time on Earth.”

  There was silence for a long while, as the two of them examined the giant figures in awe.

  CHAPTER 27

  ________________

  Celia looked across from the mezzanine floor at the majesty of the giant figures. Each one was dressed in a richly embroidered battledress carved into the layer of composite material that covered them. Their faces were stern, as if ready to administer some sort of justice.

  “I’ve got the control panel in the heel of this one open,” called Jeneen. She was a long way below Celia, working on the floor of the cavern.

  “It’s asking for a handprint ID I think,” she said. “There is a space here that looks designed to take a hand, but there was no response when Cantoselli tried it – I couldn’t stop her, Celia – and Habid just tried his hand for a fit, and nothing happened for him either.”

  “That makes sense,” said Celia. “The Rothii set up these giants for the people they transferred to Earth. Do you think we could adapt the ID so the people of Hud or Alamos could use them?”