Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within

by Jasper T. Scott

  “A maze,” Addy said as she touched down beside them with another noisy crunch.

  “It’s hot in there,” Garek added.

  “It’s already hot,” Addy replied. “Over 350 K.”

  “Well, it gets a lot hotter in those tunnels. I can only get readings up to a couple klicks from here, but we’re talking at least 400 K.”

  Lucien grimaced. “That’s over a hundred degrees Celsius. I guess we’re not going to find any water down here, then.”

  Garek nodded. “On the bright side that means we’re less likely to find anything alive down here.”

  Lucien shook his head. “That’s not much of a bright side. Our suits have limited cooling capacity. We can’t stay down here for more than...” He queried his suit’s systems to project how long they could last in a 400 K environment.

  “We’ve got about twelve hours before our cooling systems shut down,” Garek said just as Lucien got the same result on his HUD.

  “We’ll run out of air before then,” Addy said. “In just under six hours.”

  “The air’s breathable down here,” Lucien said. “We could open up our vents and run it through suit filters.”

  “That would overload our cooling capacity in minutes!” Addy said.

  “Those might be the minutes we need to make a break for the surface,” Lucien countered.

  “Well, we’re wasting them arguing about this,” Garek replied. “Pick a tunnel and let’s go.”

  Lucien checked his scanners and pointed to the one that seemed the longest and least winding. “That one,” he said, his eyes still glued to his sensors.

  “Wait...” Addy whispered and pointed. “Look...”

  Lucien followed that gesture and promptly sucked in a breath. He was just in time to see a glowing ball of light with hundreds of luminous tentacles darting into one of the other tunnels.

  “Did you see that?” Addy asked. “Tell me someone saw it this time.”

  “I saw it,” Garek said.

  “That’s one of those Polypus creatures we met eight years ago,” Lucien said. “What are they doing all the way out here on Mokar?”

  Garek shook his head. “If they’re extra-dimensional beings as we suspect, then time and space might not mean the same things to them as they do to us. Two points halfway around the universe from each other might look close to them.”

  “They helped us the last time we met them,” Lucien said. “They might be trying to help us again.” As if to confirm his thoughts, the creature bobbed back into view, and hovered briefly in the entrance of the tunnel that it had darted down. “Look!”

  “I think it wants us to follow it...” Addy said.

  “What if it’s a trap?” Garek asked.

  “We’re already in one,” Lucien said. “What’s the worst that could happen? Let’s go,” he said, and started toward the glowing creature.

  * * *

  Mokar: Underworld

  Just as they were about to reach the entrance of the tunnel, the Polypus darted inside.

  “Don’t let it get away!” Garek said, breaking into a run.

  Lucien poured on a burst of speed, spraying gravel as he ran. He reached the tunnel entrance first and found the Polypus hovering just inside, waiting. As soon as he entered the tunnel, it zipped away. Lucien boosted his suit’s power-assist to keep up. The creature darted around a bend in the tunnel and he careened into the wall with his momentum.

  “Damn it!” he muttered as he bounced off into the opposite wall. He managed to keep running, but it was all he could do to keep the Polypus in sight. It kept darting out of view, around the next bend. “Slow down!” he called out over his external speakers, hoping the thing would hear him—but even if it did, how would it understand?

  The creature raced on, not slowing down or stopping. Lucien glanced at his sensors to keep track of it, but of course the Polypus didn’t appear on his sensors. He did, however, spot the others running up behind him.

  “Don’t let it get... out of your sight!” Garek panted over the comms.

  “Why’s it going so fast?” Addy asked.

  “Perhaps it knows that our air is limited,” Brak said, sounding barely winded.

  “Or else it’s trying to get away,” Addy suggested.

  “If it—” Lucien interrupted himself as he ricocheted off another bend in the tunnel. He glimpsed the Polypus darting down the rightmost of three branching paths, and he raced to follow. “If it were trying to get away from us, it would fly through the tunnel walls,” Lucien finally said.

  “Good point,” Addy said, breathing hard.

  In their initial encounter aboard the Inquisitor, the Polypuses had proven they could fly through walls, thanks to their extra-dimensionality. They were like ghosts, non-corporeal, but somehow capable of interacting with the three-dimensional universe when they wanted to—such as they had done to remove the timer implants in their brains.

  They ran on for what seemed like hours, until Lucien’s legs felt numb, and his lungs were screaming for him to stop. Sensors showed that Addy and Brak had fallen behind by about fifty meters—though in the Gor’s case that was probably because he was keeping an eye on her.

  “Where is it?” Garek asked as they rounded another corner only to find that this time the Polypus was nowhere to be seen. Lucien slowed his pace, almost tripping over his own feet. “Don’t slow down!” Garek roared, and ran by him. Lucien let him go, and stopped to lean on the nearest wall and catch his breath.

  Garek rounded the corner up ahead, and skidded to a sudden stop. “The frek...?” he trailed off.

  “You found him?” Lucien asked.

  Garek said nothing; he just stood there, frozen.

  Seeing Garek’s reaction, excitement stirred in Lucien’s veins, spurring him to life. He poured on a final burst of speed and caught up fast—only to go skidding to a stop just as Garek had. Now he could see what had given Garek pause, and he was equally shocked.

  They were still standing there by the time Addy and Brak caught up to them. Addy gasped at the sight.

  At least three different tunnels came together where they now stood. It was a high-ceilinged chamber several hundred meters across, filled with the broken remains of colorful stalagmites and stalactites. The rocks shone red, blue, and orange in the light of their headlamps, but none of that was what had given them pause—scattered amongst that colorful rubble were hundreds and hundreds of bodies.

  Some of them wore black suits of Faro armor, while others wore nothing but rough-hewn black and gray Faro robes, their bare blue skin exposed where their robes ended. An entire Faro army had died down here.

  Lucien shook off his shock and walked up to the nearest corpse with his heart beating in his throat. It was a blue-skinned Faro, not wearing any armor. The body was half-buried in rubble, but from what he could see of it, it was in pristine condition, with no obvious signs of decomposition. He half-expected the Faro to leap up and attack him, but the body didn’t so much as twitch. Then Lucien saw why—

  It was headless.

  “They must have died very recently,” Addy whispered as she came to stand beside him. “They haven’t even begun to decompose.”

  Lucien frowned. “We can’t assume that. Oorgurak told us that Abaddon and the Elementals modified themselves to the point that they don’t need exosuits or armor to survive in extreme environments like this one. That might also mean that their bodies don’t decompose.”

  Garek joined them, holding a severed blue head. “This one looks like an Abaddon to me,” he said.

  Lucien examined the familiar features of that head and nodded slowly.

  “How can we tell how old the bodies are if they don’t decompose?” Addy asked.

  “Carbon dating them might still work,” Garek said. “Let me see...” A fan of blue light flickered out from Garek’s helmet, passing briefly over the head he was holding. “Damn it,” he sighed after just a moment.

  “What?” Lucien asked.

&n
bsp; “We can’t use carbon dating, because we don’t know what the proper ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 is for a living Faro. I can tell you what the ratio is right now, but that’s meaningless without a baseline to compare it to.”

  “What does it matter if they die yesterday or they die a thousand years ago?” Brak asked. “They are dead, and that is all that matters.”

  “But what killed them?” Addy asked.

  “And is it a threat to us?” Lucien added, as he picked his way among the bodies. He shone his headlamps into the helmet of the nearest armored Faro and saw papery green skin barely clinging to jutting white bones. Hollow black eye sockets glared sightlessly up at the dripping fangs of stalactites above. The head looked shrunken, and very old. “This one’s been mummified by his armor,” Lucien said, noting that the soldier’s armor appeared to be intact. “They definitely didn’t die recently.” He rolled the body over, looking for damage he couldn’t see, but the glossy black armor was pristine.

  “What are you doing?” Addy asked, her nose wrinkled with disgust as he rolled the body back the other way.

  “I can’t figure out what killed him,” Lucien explained. He walked over to the next armored body. It was another green-skinned Faro, also mummified. He repeated his examination, and again found the soldier’s suit of armor intact. He sat back on his haunches and shook his head. “I don’t get it. There’s no visible cause of death.”

  Garek walked over, his boots crunching through gravel. The sound echoed softly through the cavern. “What do you want, an autopsy report? Let’s keep moving.”

  Lucien shook his head. “That Polypus led us here for a reason.”

  “Maybe he did, but I don’t think that reason was for us to play forensic detective.”

  Lucien glanced up at Garek. “If we can figure out what killed them, we might also figure out what we’re up against down here. The Mokari said no one has ever returned from the underworld, so whatever the threat is down here, it’s obviously an ongoing one.”

  Garek shrugged. “Maybe the Polypuses are the threat.”

  Lucien frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe they killed the Faros.”

  “But not us?”

  “And how did they kill the Faros?” Addy asked. “There are no signs of injury on the armored ones.”

  “I can’t pretend to understand their motives,” Garek said, “but think about it: eight years ago they ripped the timer implants out of our heads without hurting us or even breaking our skin. So, what’s stopping them from doing the same thing with vital organs?”

  Addy looked horrified. She cast a quick look around the chamber.

  “The Abaddon clone we found was headless,” Lucien pointed out.

  Garek shrugged. “It’s just a theory.”

  “I find something,” Brak said. “Come see.”

  They found the Gor standing about fifty feet away, gazing down at something by his feet. They all hurried over to see what had caught Brak’s attention: a large white skeleton lay at his feet, as well as another, smaller and semi-translucent one. The skulls gave them away. The larger of the two had a pronounced snout with long, sharp white teeth, while the other skull was almost as big, but with a tiny mouth, giant eye sockets, and an over-sized cranium.

  “It’s a Gray and a Mokari,” Lucien said.

  “And another Abaddon,” Garek added, pointing to another blue-skinned, gray-robed Faro, also headless, lying beside the skeletons.

  “They all died fighting together,” Addy said.

  Brak nodded. “Yes.”

  “But were they fighting against each other, or with each other?” Lucien asked.

  “Good question,” Garek said.

  “The dead cannot help us,” Brak decided. “But I find something that might.”

  “What’s that?” Lucien asked.

  “Come.” Brak led the way, picking his way through the ancient battlefield.

  After a few minutes of walking, Lucien glimpsed a pinprick of light shining at the far end of the chamber, almost three hundred meters away, according to his sensors.

  “What is that?” Addy asked, pointing to it.

  At first Lucien thought it might be the Polypus who’d led them here, but one look at his sensors revealed that it was actually an opening into a much larger adjoining chamber. That chamber seemed to go on forever, expanding rapidly across Lucien’s sensor display as they approached. It was almost perfectly spherical, and hollow.

  “I’m getting some massive energy readings from that direction,” Garek said.

  Lucien double-checked with his own sensors, and found the same thing.

  “What is it?” Addy asked.

  “It’s too uniform to be naturally occurring,” Lucien said, noting how perfectly spherical it was.

  “Yes,” Brak agreed.

  “Those power readings could be from the gateway we’re looking for,” Lucien said.

  “It can’t be that easy,” Addy replied.

  “Why not?” Lucien asked.

  “If it were so easy to find this gateway, then why didn’t Abaddon just send another army down here and take it for himself?”

  “It obviously didn’t go so well for him the last time,” Garek pointed out. They were still wading through Faro corpses.

  “Something’s obviously guarding the gateway,” Garek went on. “My bet is it’s the Polypuses.”

  Lucien considered that. “If they’re against Abaddon, then why stop at guarding this place? Why not go fight him? We obviously can’t hurt them, and if Abaddon’s afraid of them, then that implies that he can’t either. They’d be an invincible army.”

  “Maybe they’re pacifists,” Garek suggested.

  “I’m reading lots of life signs on the other side of that opening,” Addy said.

  The circle of light in the distance had resolved into a pair of large metal doors that were deformed and scorched black. The doors were bowed inward, as if a plasma bomb had ripped them open. A faint blue haze rippled over the opening, indicating the presence of an atmospheric shield.

  They slowed their pace as they reached the opening. The glare from it was dazzling, making it impossible to see what was on the other side.

  “I’ll go through first,” Lucien said, and walked through before anyone could argue. He heard and felt the atmospheric shields sizzle against his exosuit as he crossed the threshold. Then his feet touched a hard, flat surface that echoed with his footsteps.

  His eyes adjusted quickly to the brightness, and he saw that he was standing inside some kind of giant concourse. Dead ahead, a high wall of shattered viewports gazed out on a blinding sphere of light. The light was as bright as a sun, and painful to look at. Lucien’s faceplate auto-polarized and more details of his surroundings snapped into focus.

  “Lucien?” Addy asked over the comms.

  “I’m fine...” he said.

  He heard faint sizzling sounds as the others walked in behind him.

  The walls and floor of the concourse looked like they might once have been opulent, but now they were discolored and broken. The floor was littered with shattered black rocks, more Faro bodies, and skeletons of Grays and Mokari. A thick layer of dust covered everything.

  Looking out through the shattered viewports once more, Lucien saw that the blinding orb of light hung suspended between two giant black towers, one coming down from the ceiling of the spherical chamber, the other rising up from the floor. All around the light source, vibrant colors assaulted Lucien’s eyes in a confusing tapestry that was somehow too intricate, or too distant to make sense of.

  “It’s incredible...” Addy breathed.

  Lucien turned away from the glaring light to find her standing to one side of the concourse, looking out over a vibrant field of flowers. He went to stand beside her and admire the view, but he quickly noticed that there was something very wrong with that scene.

  Somehow everything was turned on its end and wrapped around the inside of the spherical chambe
r. The landscape outside the concourse sprawled for tens of kilometers in all directions, defying gravity from every possible angle. A towering alien forest rose up beyond the flowering field, but it lay parallel to the floor of the concourse. Likewise for the sheer white mountains that peeked over the tops of those trees.

  Lucien looked straight up, through a broken skylight, and saw a sparkling blue lake arcing overhead, wrapped concave against the inside of the sphere and surrounded by jungle.

  The Mokari underworld was like a miniature planet that had been turned inside-out, and the only part of it where gravity still functioned the way it should was in the concourse where they stood.

  “What’s holding everything against the walls like that?” Addy asked.

  “Something’s warping the gravity in this place,” Garek said.

  “So why aren’t we falling against that wall?” Addy nodded to the broken entrance they’d walked through. It lay along the inside of the sphere, parallel to the ground outside. If gravity were warped the way Garek was suggesting, then they should have been standing on the wall of the concourse, not the floor.

  The whole setup confused Lucien’s brain to the point that he suddenly felt like he was falling. He flinched and shook his head to clear away that sensation.

  “This must be some kind of transition zone,” Garek said. “I spotted what looked like a tram station down that way.” He pointed to the viewports that looked out—up?—at the blinding ball of light in the center of the chamber.

  Lucien nodded slowly. “This is the entrance to the underworld.”

  Addy snorted. “Under-world. I didn’t realize the Mokari were being so literal when they named the place. Who do you think lived here?”

  “The Grays, who else?” Lucien asked. “I bet they built it.”

  “Then Katawa was definitely lying about not being able to join us down here because it would defile his deity,” Addy said.

  Garek snorted. “I think that goes without saying. He didn’t come down here because he was afraid of whatever killed that army outside.”