When Earth Reigned Supreme (The Human Chronicles Saga Book 12)

by T. R. Harris

  “Yes, sir. C’mon, Mr. Connors. Bring your toys.”

  The back of the truck was opened to find an array of electronic equipment and spare parts. The team—along with the two equipment carts—wouldn’t fit in without some of the items being removed, so Adam had his men set to work emptying out the back. In a couple of minutes they were ready to go.

  “I’ll drive. Mac, you’re in the passenger seat with your M-101. The rest of you in the back. Mac, we’ll be wearing our masks.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that…sir.”

  MacTavish was a big man, and although the masks were designed to fit all the team members, Mac was the exception. He struggled to get the rubber hood over his visor and around the back of his head, requiring Adam to step in and help. Finally the mask was in place, fitting so snugly the shape of the visor was evident.

  Adam grimaced. “Riyad, you know how to handle an M-101, don’t you?”

  “If I say yes, I’ll have to wear the mask again…”

  “Can you or not?”

  “Give it to me, Mac,” Riyad said. He took the long-barrel sniper rifle from the relieved ensign. Mac’s mask came off easier than it went on, even though the visor came with it. He fished the plastic device out of the twisted rubber and placed it around his huge head. With a grunt, he moved to the back of the truck.

  “You owe me,” Riyad said to Adam.

  “Relax, it’ll be fun. And you’ll get to take in the sights on the way to see your girlfriend. I’m sure she’ll be just as excited to see you as you will to see her.”

  “We’re all set here,” reported Chief Warrant Officer Marsh Foster.

  “Set the timers for five minutes. Everyone aboard. Riyad, care to get the door?”

  Riyad slipped the Sol-Kor mask over his head. “I repeat, you owe me…big time.”

  “A beer at Hamilton’s in San Diego when we get back.”

  “You know I do not drink…though in this case I’ll make an exception.”

  With a wink, Adam hopped into the driver’s seat of the alien truck and grabbed the central steering stick. “Head ‘em up, move ‘em out!”

  “Hee haw!” came a call through his visor.

  “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’…”

  “C’mon, you guys are too young to know that!” Adam exclaimed as he pulled the truck out into the sunlight of the planet Kor and turned left.

  “At least one of us is an ancient history buff, gramps.”

  “Ancient? And gramps…who said that?”

  There was silence on the comm.

  Adam turned to Riyad seated next to him. “I don’t get no respect!”

  Chapter 6

  The alien truck was electric. It hummed along the road at a blistering twenty miles per hour, apparently its top speed. Adam headed in the direction the stoned Sol-Kor technician had indicated, seeking out the entrance to the underground tunnel into the mountain to the north.

  The street was wide, with other vehicles appearing now and then. The commandos had moved about a half mile down the road when an explosion reverberated behind them, and Adam glanced back to see a billowing ball of fire climbing into the sky.

  “That should keep them busy,” he said to Riyad, who was watching the growing inferno from a side-view mirror.

  There were very few Sol-Kor on the streets, and the ones they did see appeared to be moving from buildings to vehicles, or the reverse, hurrying off on missions of vital importance to the Colony. Everything the Sol-Kor did was for the good of the Colony, so there were no leisurely strolls down the sidewalk on a warm, spring day. But now the fire was attracting attention, and dozens of natives were emerging from the rows of identical buildings to stare at the inferno.

  Adam soon reached a major crossroad, one with more traffic, most heading to the right. Adam turned here, and five minutes later a looming back rectangle could be seen in the distance. The entrance to the tunnel grew larger the closer they got, until Adam could see that the opening was huge, easily measuring a hundred meters across and fifty high. There was a large parking area to each side of the road, with hundreds of uniform vehicles parked in neat rows.

  Sol-Kor mobile transportation seemed to consist mostly of two basic designs: a truck identical to the one the team was in, and a smaller, car-like vehicle about the size of an SUV. Along the outer perimeter of the parking lot, Adam saw a third type—a massive truck with four sets of double tires and with what looked to be refrigeration units taking up the roof of the thirty-meter-long cargo cabins. Meat haulers, Adam guessed, used to carry the remains of intelligent creatures to the dinner tables of the Sol-Kor.

  Adam entered a line of traffic made up mostly of trucks such as his, along with a few of the large meat haulers. There was also a stream of pedestrians entering and leaving the vast tunnel opening, and as his truck left the bright light of day and entered the artificial light of the huge tunnel complex, he found out why.

  A large station to the left of the four-lane road disappeared into the distance of the vast cavern. At least eight wide tracks guided dozens of bullet-shaped passenger pods to and from the station. Hundreds of Sol-Kor were crowding aboard. With a swoosh, each loaded pod shot off into its assigned tube, headed for the mountain ten miles away.

  ********

  The traffic crawled along. No stops and starts, just a slow and steady movement deeper into the tunnel. Two lanes to Adam’s right contained traffic leaving the mountain, also at the same, steady pace.

  He was careful to maintain distance and speed with the flow, thinking there might be an autopilot function somewhere on his dashboard that allowed the other vehicles to move with such precision. He didn’t dare glance down to look for the control, knowing he’d probably run into the truck in front of him if he did.

  But soon it became apparent that his speed and spacing wasn’t what was attracting the most attention. It was their masks.

  In the lane to the left, trucks matched their speed, or moved along slightly faster, causing a slow parade of drivers and passengers to glance over in their direction. It wasn’t unusual to see three Sol-Kor abreast, just as it was in Adam’s cab. What made most of the aliens in the other vehicles do a double-take was the fact that all three of the Sol-Kor in Adam’s truck looked identical.

  When the rubber face masks had been designed and manufactured, no one had thought to give them a variety of looks. Every mask was the same, even as most Sol-Kor had very distinctive and unique faces.

  Fortunately, the interior of the tunnel was dim, but the passengers in the other trucks were not more than fifteen feet away from Adam most of the time. To further shield his face, Adam rested his elbow on the window sill and cradled his head in his hand, trying to look bored and uninterested.

  Riyad and Chief Foster also noticed the unwanted scrutiny and turned their heads to the right, where the passing traffic going in the other direction was zipping past at a relative speed of around thirty miles per hour, too fast to notice anything about the three people in the black truck.

  At one point, both lanes heading into the mountain became synchronized, and a two-person truck remained directly across from Adam for several minutes. With occasional glances to his left, Adam noticed the passenger couldn’t take his eyes off of him, the alien’s scale-covered forehead plowed with a perpetual frown.

  “We need to look for a way out of here,” Adam said to the other two men in the cab, the movements of his mouth shielded by the mask. “This guy’s going to raise the alarm any time now.”

  “I think we’re screwed,” Riyad replied. “I haven’t seen any of the trucks change lanes, and we’re on the inside. At this pace, we could have another half an hour or more to go.”

  “What can the guy do, Captain?” Chief Foster asked. “I don’t see any communications equipment in the truck.”

  “That’s a good point, except when we reach our destination he could really raise a stink,” Adam said. “Dammit, if we were just in the other lane, we could pull off. I
keep seeing doors along that far wall. There’s probably a parallel service corridor running the length of the tunnel. You know…these trucks must run out of juice eventually, and mechanical things have to go wrong now and then. Heads up, everyone. I’m going to try something.”

  Adam began to alternately slow down and speed up, at the same time looking down at the control panel and flailing his arms about. The truck behind him even tapped his rear bumper at one point before backing off. Then he sped up again as Adam did as well.

  But then Adam repeated the entire process several times.

  By now the curious passenger next to them had continued in his lane unabated, so Adam began to weave the truck in the lane while inching ever-closer to the left lane. After a few moments, the message was received that the black truck was having trouble with its motor. Vehicles in the neighboring lane eventually backed off and let Adam move over. The entire maneuver was completed in silence, since the Sol-Kor trucks apparently didn’t have horns; however, this didn’t stop the occupants of the other trucks from expressing their discontent with arm gestures of their own.

  Once in the left lane, Adam pulled over onto the wide shoulder and up next to the gray concrete wall lining the tunnel. He limped along, continuing with the jerky motions until he reached one of the doors spaced uniformly along the corridor. There he stopped.

  The shoulder was wide enough to allow service vehicles to race along to assist any disabled trucks, so the team had limited time to make their move. Adam opened the truck door and slipped out, moving quickly to the doorway. As it was with most—all—Sol-Kor doors he’d experienced to date, this one wasn’t locked. He opened it and stepped inside.

  As suspected, this was a wide and unobstructed service corridor running off in both directions parallel to the roadway. But there was more. Along the ceiling, huge tubes, air ducts, electrical conduits, and massive fans were set high in the ceiling. Adam saw that the corridor was actually a tunnel within a tunnel, looping high over the traffic tube to connect with a similar corridor on the other side.

  There was no one around and plenty of room for the team to move within.

  He went back to the truck and pulled it around until the tail end was at the doorway. The position looked odd, but after the team had disembarked and entered the service corridor, Adam repositioned it quickly before being the last man to enter the passageway.

  “Be on the lookout for any security cameras. I haven’t seen any, but that doesn’t mean they’re not here. Sorry, but we’re going to have to wear the masks, just in case. Conman and Ace, take point. When we come upon any Sol-Kor, take them out and hide the bodies. I figure we have about a five mile jog ahead of us. In this light gravity, we should be able to make good time. Bring the carts. They should be able to keep up. All right, let’s move out.”

  The adrenalin coursing through his body as a result of the light jog made Adam feel much better. The repetitiveness of his strides was slightly hypnotic—a runner’s high—and he felt a renewed confidence come to him. The episode in the truck had made him nervous, and feel trapped. Now he felt more in his element, with the M-91 assault rifle cradled in his hands and a team of highly-training special ops warriors around him.

  Occasionally, the team did encounter Sol-Kor service personnel. They would appear out of recesses in the corridor, or would already be working there, and stop to gawk at the strange cluster of creatures coming toward them at what appeared to be an unbelievable speed. In the lead, Connors and Harbison cut them down with pinpoint bursts from their rifles, long before the aliens could grasp what was happening. The men in the back of the squad would hustle the fallen bodies back among the many pipes and equipment blinds along the way, before rushing to rejoin the formation.

  All told, the team dispatched sixteen Sol-Kor during the half-an-hour jog. They made good time, aided by the light gravity of Kor.

  Then up ahead the corridor spread out into a vast cavern, and the wall to the right gave way to show the long line of trucks coming and going along the roadway. The two traffic directions separated. The line Adam had been in entered another tunnel, and he could see it began a slow climb along a huge circular path.

  The team fell back into the maze of air ducts and other assorted pipes and tubes.

  “So no elevator,” Adam said to Riyad, who in spite of the light gravity was still panting heavily.

  “Vosmin may have used a priority access. That’s all I can think of.”

  “Makes sense. It also probably took you directly into the Queen’s section of the pyramid. Do any of you see anything that looks like an elevator large enough to hold a truck?”

  Several negatives were heard through his visor, although the men pointed out the large bank of pedestrian elevators directly in front of them. Besides seeing where the line of traffic fed into the spiraling tunnels leading up and down the mountain, they also found where the passenger pod station was located. Dozens of the pods were being loaded and unloaded by what appeared to be thousands of Sol-Kor, along with quite a few of the Salifen slaves.

  The twelve Humans each now sported their rubber Sol-Kor masks—including big-head Mac MacTavish. The place was swarming with Sol-Kor, and with the flaw in the mask’s design having been revealed, it wouldn’t be possible for them to move from their hiding places without raising the alarm.

  “The service corridor must move up as well as along the traffic tunnel,” Adam noted. He looked up and saw the huge maze of electrical and environmental equipment disappear into the blackness above him. He’d noticed a slight incline during the drive into the mountain, so even though the ridgetop was estimated to be a thousand meters above the portal building, it couldn’t be more than three or four hundred from here.

  He looked around at the absurd sea of identical and expressionless Sol-Kor faces looking at him. “We’re climbing,” he said. “Each of you take what you can carry from the supply carts—they stay here. And hurry, the trail of bodies we’ve left behind won’t stay hidden forever.”

  With military efficiency, the team divided the contents of the two equipment carts among themselves. In the light gravity, the men were able to carry more than they could on Earth. But now they had a two thousand foot climb to navigate, up pipes, tubes, and conduits, all with extra weapons, rations, and ammo sacks dangling from every strap on their integrated black Sol-Kor armor MOLLE packs.

  As the men began to climb, already with their metal weapons clanging against metal tubes, Adam thought it would be a miracle if they reached the top undetected. Fortunately, the maze of equipment was far enough away from the activity of the service level that coupled with the sound of thousands of creatures and the echoing hum of the electric trucks, the noise was pretty well masked.

  About thirty meters up, they entered a separate, dedicated shaft for the equipment. There was very little light here, but the night vision feature in the visors took care of that. Adam had also allowed the men to remove their Sol-Kor masks. Without them they could see better, and it would reduce the prodigious quantities of sweat the men were dealing with in the confined space. The shaft was hot and humid, making handholds slippery and treacherous. It wouldn’t pay to have one of the men lose his grip and fall to the bottom. With Adam in the lead, they took a very slow and cautious route up, taking nearly an hour to make it to the top.

  The shaft ended at a massive equipment room, with a dozen twenty-foot-diameter fans whirling above them, feeding the air ducts. The electrical lines converged and joined at huge, gray metal boxes that stood twenty meters high by ten wide, humming with a steady cycle, a relatively few dials and gauges spinning on their faces.

  The team spread out, covering the wide area, relieved to have their extra loads now supported by the hard metal deck.

  Riyad’s dark skin was glowing red, sweat pouring from where his tight crop of jet black hair met his furrowed forehead. “Damn, I’m showing my age,” he panted from next to Adam.

  Adam was also red-faced and sweating. “Aren’t we all, bud
dy.” He looked around the room. “I wonder where the hell we are.”

  “That’s easy,” Riyad replied, attempting a feeble smile. “We’re at the base of a gigantic alien pyramid that looks like it could house twenty million of the buggers, and somewhere within it is one extremely well-guarded individual we’ve come to kill.”

  Adam nodded. “That pretty much sums it up.” Then to the team: “Listen up, we’ll set up a temporary base here. Have some rations and rehydrate. Riyad and I will scout beyond here and find a way into the pyramid. Lieutenant Johnson, you’re in charge until we get back.”

  “Don’t I get to rest, too?” Riyad asked.

  “No rest for the wicked, dude. Besides, at our age, all a rest would do is cause our muscles to tighten up and make us want to take a nap.”

  “A nap? Now that does sound appealing.”

  “Don’t give me any ideas. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 7

  Moving along the long row of electrical transformers, Adam and Riyad came upon a wall that defined the limits of the large equipment room. A double doorway—unlocked, of course—led to a wide corridor with a glassed-in control room about ten meters down from the door.

  The two men glanced around the huge window and saw a half dozen creatures inside. To their surprise, they were all Salifens. Adam was confused, thinking that with a trillion Sol-Kor, wouldn’t there be enough of them to cover all the jobs within the Colony? Obviously not. Perhaps the task of conquering galaxies took more alien-power than even the Sol-Kor could provide, leaving the more mundane jobs to be covered by their slave race.

  It would be impossible to pass the control room without being seen; many of the Salifens sat facing the window. Yet having experienced the simple-minded creatures before, Adam wasn’t too worried. The Sol-Kor masks over their heads, Adam and Riyad strode confidently in the room and up to the nearest alien.