I stood up and stretched a hand out. He took it with his lower right arm, and I shook. “Gatekeeper Sarlun, you’ve been more than helpful. I look forward to sharing stories with you when this is all done with.”
“I as well. Come, we’ll escort you to the Shandra.”
Mary chatted with Sarlun on the way down, and Suma sidled up to me in the hallway. “Dean, please make sure you save Slate. I like him.”
“I like him too.”
“And be sure to contact me whenever you like. I need to get updates.”
“Suma, thank you so much for everything. You’ve been a godsend.” The squeaks and squawks that came from my translator sounded excited.
She looked up at me with her big seal-black eyes. “Who would have thought that being abandoned on that world would have turned into the most fun day of my life?”
Fun? I wished I could look back at it and feel the same way. “It was meant to happen.”
We walked the corridors, passing numerous white-uniformed Shimmalians. Some spoke greetings; others kept to themselves. It wasn’t long before we were at the Shandra room, where two guards were stationed at the doors. They saw Sarlun, bowed, and let us through without hesitation.
Inside the large white room, I spotted supplies by the gemstone and table. It had me thinking that we could transport larger items than just people from planet to planet, depending on how large a room the Shandra at the other end was housed in. New Spero’s room wasn’t that large, but a room like this could take a transport vessel or a large group of people.
“This should be enough to get you there. These will allow you to move quickly.” Sarlun pointed at two vehicles that looked a lot like motorized scooters. You sat on them, but there were no wheels. “The tutorial is on it, and we loaded your path into the mapping system already.”
“Thank you,” Mary said, running a hand over the cool metal of the machine. She loved motorbikes, so taking a rip through an alien planet on a hovering scooter would be just up her alley.
“We also have provided cooling tents. From what you said, the temperatures are similar to our planet, and if you’re stuck outdoors at night, you’ll get eaten alive outside or sweat too much inside. Our tents will keep you safe from both.”
I was eternally grateful for their assistance and hoped the combination of their supplies and ours would be enough to get us to Kareem, and home again quickly. We didn’t have time to spare.
Suma ran to me, giving me a hug, and hesitantly gave Mary one too.
The pair started to walk away, and Sarlun stopped, turning to us. “Be careful. May the Theos guide your path.” With that, they left.
His words rang in my mind, sending goosebumps over my body.
“Mary, are you ready for this?” I asked, knowing her answer.
She nodded, and we found the icon for the planet Kareem, Leslie, and Terrance were on. At least we hoped they were still there. Mary took the honors and tapped the table. Blinding light enveloped us, and then it was gone.
FOURTEEN
When I opened my eyes, the room was black. I hit the LEDs on my suit, and so did Mary on hers. We found ourselves in a room, four posts in the corners, and it couldn’t have been more than forty feet by forty feet in size.
“You good?” Mary asked.
“Just looking at the room. If the Theos made each of these rooms, why do they look so different from each other?” I asked.
“Some of the races may have updated or adjusted the aesthetics. Do you think Suma’s people found theirs like that? I’d say they moved and upgraded it to suit their Gatekeeper needs. See the walls here? Wood supports with dried vines. They used the local plants and supplies to build the room, and it appears we’re underground too. So they dig it up, support it, install their columns, carve their hieroglyphs, and voila; we have a Shandra.” Mary waved her arm in a flourish.
“Sounds plausible. Let’s see if we can get out of here.” The hover scooters sat on the ground, propped up on their bases. Mary tapped the screen and we watched a quick tutorial, using our earpiece translators to decipher the message. In a matter of minutes, they were up and running, blue light softly glowing underneath as the scooters lifted off the ground.
We slung our supplies over the seats and moved for the doorway, which wasn’t mechanical like the others we’d seen. It was a large wooden door, ancient-looking, on thick black metal hinges. It squealed as I pushed it open, and I wondered when it had last been used. Maybe Kareem had come to the planet using it, contrary to his previous story. I wouldn’t blame him for trying to keep the portals a secret. I’d done the same, even with my own people.
With the scooters hovering along with our hands controlling them, we wound our way down the dark soil-walled corridor. At times, it was too narrow to walk side by side, and I took the lead, rifle ready for anything coming at us. Nothing did. It was silent and sealed off. The incline told me we were underground, and that an exit would appear soon.
The end came abruptly, and only a short distance from the portal room. We used the door, both of us having to use all our weight to pry it open, and soon the humid night air hit us. We were outside. When we closed the door, we noticed it was well hidden away in the face of the hill, a wooden handle almost invisible among the shrubs and rocks placed beside it.
Mary tapped her screen. “I’ll mark our location.”
“Good idea. I’m all out of bread crumbs.” The joke didn’t stick, and I let it go. I was nervous. Anxious about traveling a couple hundred miles at night on a floating Vespa, and not knowing whether Kareem would cooperate. That was if they were still on this out-of-the-way world.
“Terrance and Leslie aren’t going to be happy,” Mary said as she straddled her hover scooter’s seat.
“We’ll make the promise again.” I had already told them I’d try to get the other hybrids on a ship to unite them here. I’d failed to do that. It weighed on me alongside everything else I’d done and would have to do.
Mary didn’t reply. She just donned her EVA suit’s mask, which would give us night vision and better oxygen supply as we raced into the night. I copied her and felt the rumble of the hover device as I sat on it.
I’d never been one for riding motorbikes or all-terrain vehicles, so the concept was a little foreign. The tutorial had made it seem so easy, and when Mary sped away, I hit the map function, showing the terrain and a line leading to our destination. This unit was all hand-controlled, and I hit the thruster. It started me forward too fast at first, and I almost flew off the thing. In a couple of minutes, I caught up to Mary, who was clearly waiting for me.
“Do you have the hang of it?” she asked through my helmet’s earpiece.
I gave her a thumbs-up and nearly bucked myself again. I needed both hands.
Once I was going at a decent speed, and not worried about falling off or hitting a cliffside, I started to look at my surroundings. A large moon hung in the sky, light from the close star showcasing the lines and craters of the celestial body. The area looked much the same as I remembered the planet: mossy, warm, and lined with the large trees we’d seen before.
The map showed us making good time, and though it was on a different time system than we understood, I estimated another two hours before we arrived. An hour in, and the scenery was getting repetitive; I already wished the journey was over. My mind wandered to the task at hand. A lot of pieces needed to come into place in order for us to defeat the Bhlat, but did we need to defeat them? I set the goal in my head to work with them, to show them we were strong and not someone to be walked over, but that we also had compassion. Would a malevolent race understand the concept of compassion and empathy, or was war so engrained in them from birth that they were well past negotiation?
The base we’d arrived at almost a year ago had shown me a different side of the Bhlat. We didn’t know much about them, and the details we’d downloaded from their base were mostly military. But there were children, women, and scientists on the base, telling me n
ot everyone was a warrior. That was a good sign. The downside to that whole scenario was…I’d killed them all. I could still see them when I closed my eyes some nights, mixing together with the image of the Kraski puking out green bile, and the Deltra becoming all but extinct as we blew up the Kraski mothership.
Every one of them wanted to take our world, so I had to let it go. It still hung over my head like a dark cloud most days. As if on cue, real clouds rolled in as the wind picked up.
“Hang on,” Mary said.
The wind blew from the west, pushing us to the right as we generally headed north. The speed was picking up, and rain began to fall on us: light drops at first, then fat heavy drops that made our visibility near nothing.
“What should we do?” I asked, fighting to stay upright.
From a few yards away, Mary fiddled with her map. “When I zoom, I see hills a couple miles to the east. Let’s head there and hunt for some reprieve from the storm. If this is anything like a tropical storm, it may only last a short time.”
I agreed and followed her lead, the wind pushing hard at our backs now.
The ground changed from swampy moss to something a little firmer-looking as it became unlevel, small hills protruding from the surface. Moments later, we stopped on the far side of a large hill, with a flat cliff on the east side. We were protected from the wind and most of the rain as we stepped off the scooters and leaned our backs on the soft wall of the knoll.
“I guess we wait it out,” I said, wiping my face mask with a gloved hand. The night vision was on, and it gave me a basic view of the dark swamp that stood before us. It went on as far as my eyes could see, and I tried to step farther away from it, remembering the creature that had pulled me under the last time we were on this planet. I didn’t want a duplication of that, especially at night in a storm.
Mary got off her scooter and started to walk along the hillside, looking for a spot for reprieve from the onslaught of rain. I joined her, jogging to catch up.
“Doesn’t look like much… wait, what’s that?” She pointed to a crevice where two hills met up. They were pushed close together, but there was enough room to walk between them, and trees grew from both sides at angles, creating a makeshift canopy.
“Looks good to me. Better than standing beside this swamp.”
We grabbed our supplies and brought them over to our new resting spot. My stomach rumbled as we settled along the wall of the opening, small splashes of water dripping down from the trees above, giving way to the torrential downpour.
Unclasping my helmet, I set it to the side and reached for my pack, when I heard howling. Mary was moving around, and I raised a finger to my lips. She stopped, and the howl rang through the night air again, this time closer.
“Can’t we find a liveable world with no deadly animals on it? Just once?” I joked, grabbing my pulse rifle.
“Let’s just hope they stay away, and the rain subsides sooner rather than later so we can keep going.” She passed me an energy bar. “Here, take this. We may need it.”
We sat back to back, watching each end of the opening we sat in, guns in our laps, and chewed on our bars.
“Just once, I want something to be hassle free. Remember our old lives? We used to complain about having to get up in the morning to go to work. But at the end of the day, we could just relax and watch the game on TV with a cold one. I guess those times are gone.”
“I never felt that way. I was in the Air Force and loved doing it. What’s that old saying? ‘If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life’? That’s how I felt,” Mary said.
“I was an accountant, so working on small business ledgers wasn’t something I could classify as loving. Though there was something calming about going through the sheets and balancing on the first try. It acted like a meditation for me at times. There were worse careers I could have chosen.” I shifted closer to Mary, moving away from a drip from the rain above. “Do you miss it?”
“I do. I miss the schedule of it all. Waking up at five in the morning, working out before breakfast. But even though we’re in a crazy situation, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I met you. I needed to meet you.”
“Do you think our first marriages even count?” I asked.
“How do you mean?”
“The way I see it, we were duped: married to aliens. That can’t really count.”
Mary laughed and leaned her head on my shoulder. “I suppose you’re right. I like that idea. How about you? Could you go back to pushing paper and doing someone’s books?”
“No way. All of those years of practice, and now I don’t need the skill.”
“Every skill makes up who you are. You think a certain way because of it, and that’s proven to be valuable. I won’t be flying F-16s any longer, but that training allows me to succeed in our new universe. One that’s rapidly expanding.” Mary stretched her legs out.
“At least you can still fly ships. That’s one skill that’s transferable.” The wind was decreasing; the pools of water outside rippled less and less as we talked. “I think the storm’s dying down.”
We sat there chatting, waiting to hear another howl, but we didn’t. It was a half hour before we got up, seeing the rain was nothing more than a light patter now. Mary made for her scooter, her rifle on her back, her pack in her hand. As she strapped it to her seat, I walked out, looking at the sky to see if the clouds were still moving on. To the west, I saw amnesty coming in the still-dark night.
Mary was almost done and had fired up her ride when something jumped into my view.
“Dean, look out!” Mary called, but it was too late. The thick creature hurled itself off the canopy above the hillside and landed with a squishing sound right in front of me. It sank a couple feet into the soft ground, giving me just enough time to roll out of the way before its large paw wiped my face from my head. I felt the swing just clip me as I rolled to the wet ground, my rifle all but forgotten as I scrambled to evade the second swipe.
The thing reminded me of a bear, but its face was smaller, more human, making the whole attack that much more terrifying. It released a long howl as it came at me. I fought to back away from it, but my hands sank into the mossy ground, handcuffing any movement. This was it for me. There would be no saving Earth from the Bhlat, and after everything that had happened in the past two years, I was going to die by the paw of a monster on a planet I didn’t even know the name of.
The creature stood on two legs, an angry scowl on its tortured face, and it growled as its right arm came flying toward me.
“Dean, get your head down!” Mary’s voice yelled, and the smell of burned fur and blood hit me like a brick. I ducked and got a hand out, rolling to the side as the huge thing fell beside me, surprise crossing its face before it smacked into the swamp, water splashing a yard high.
The whole attack had only been a few seconds, but I was out of breath. My hand shook so hard, I had a hard time taking Mary’s when she offered it to me. She pumped a couple more blasts from her pulse rifle into the hide of the dead monster for good measure.
“We need to go. If there’s one, there are probably more. I don’t want to be around when they show up.”
“Why do I get all the terrible attacks on this planet? Good thing I have people to help me, or I’d be dead twice already.” I made the joke to cover my dread. I’d thought I was going to die, and it wasn’t a feeling that shook off in a minute.
Howls came at us from every direction as we got onto our hover scooters. “Which way?” I asked.
“No idea.” Mary put her helmet on, and I did likewise, turning the night vision back on. “I’d suggest keeping your rifle at ready.” She started to move north, and I joined her getting around the hills. More creatures cried out in the night as we raced away, hoping to not come across any of them.
FIFTEEN
The two-hour trip took its toll on my body. The wind was still blowing, and we passed through a couple more areas with inclement weather,
reluctant to stop either time. We plowed through, ending up near the spot where we’d first landed on the planet all those months ago. We rode by the swamp where I’d been pulled under, and I recalled Mae saving my life. I shook it off as we rode, until coming to the town. It had expanded since we’d been there. More log cabins were erected, but few beings lingered on the streets as the sun started to rise, pushing through the thin clouds. Mist rose from the damp ground as we shut the scooters off.
“I hope they ask questions before shooting,” Mary said, holding her rifle.
“They did last time.”
We were in a large clearing, just past the tree line separating the village from the forest and swamps. A few ships were nearby, quietly sitting on the ground. I recognized one of them as the insectoid ship we’d seen last time. Another wasn’t familiar.
A Deltra sentry could be seen a hundred yards away, walking the other direction. Worried they might think we were sneaking in, I stuck my pinky and thumb into my mouth and whistled sharply. That got his attention. He spun around, gun raised, and I was impressed at his reaction time. I suspected the sentries didn’t have much action here, unless those smooth-faced bears were a problem in town.
He said something in Deltran and I threw my hands in the air. Mary lowered her rifle and did the same.
“This better work,” she whispered.
“Who goes there?” my translator said in my ear.
“Dean Parker and Mary Lafontaine,” I said loudly. He was only thirty yards away now, and I saw his expression change.
“Keep them up,” he said, gun still raised as he approached us. “How did you get here?”
Mary nodded toward the trees. “Hover scooter,” she said, and he looked confused, the translation likely not clear.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“We’re here to see Kareem. It’s urgent.” I was getting tired of holding my arms up, and I started to lower them. When he didn’t object, I let them drop to my sides.
The Survivors Box Set Page 54