by T. R. Harris
Fund raising email, Alien Relief Society, 2081.
22
First Insir Bahsor surveyed the battle stats on the screen at his command station. The Humans had only lost two ships to their fire, although nine were out of the battle due to damage. His own force had suffered three complete losses and two damaged. By all rights, the engagement was favored to the Antaere. But his mission was not to engage the enemy, but to provide transport of the Rowin to Iz’zar. He evaluated the fight in those terms.
To continue with the diminished escort all the way to the planet would be a risk, as would returning to Antara. Yet the risk would lessen the closer they got to their homeworld. And the battle was continuing. He could not predict the final outcome, even if it were a victory for the Antaere.
He keyed the comm for the Rowin’s vessel.
By the time the slender, yellow-skin royal came on the screen, First Insir Bahsor had made his decision.
“My Lord, I recommend a return to Antara,” he said to the young heir-apparent.
Andus Zaphin considered the words for a moment. “Is the battle going against us? I was not aware.”
“That is not the reason for my recommendation. There is still a dangerous section of the Grid to cross. Your escort has been diminished. You safety could be in jeopardy.”
The royal sighed, appearing resigned to the outcome. “I had so hoped for a return to the Temple. The spirit there is so much more vibrant than the ancient Temple of Order on Antara.” He smiled at the military officer. “Do not tell my father I said that.”
Bahsor remained silent.
“Insir, a development,” said a voice to Bahsor’s right.
He turned to the sound, upset that a crew member would interrupt his conversation with the Rowin.
“The Humans are retreating.”
Bahsor returned his attention to Andus. “Pardon me, my Lord.”
“Please, I would be interested in the report myself.”
“Continue.” Bahsor called out to the reporting crew member. “The Humans have retreated before, as a reprieve before resuming their attack.”
“Insir, they are engaging gravity drives and a distance and leaving the area.”
Bahsor went to the contact screen for confirmation. “My Lord, the Humans are leaving, yet my recommendation still stands.”
Andus smiled. “Your sage advice is noted, yet I believe we shall continue to Iz’zar. We must trust in the Order to protect us. Please proceed.”
First Insir Bahsor nodded. “Of course, my Lord. Immediately.”
Even as the commander began to bark orders for a resumption of the transit to the Temple world, he wished he had the Rowin’s confidence in the Order. Sometimes it took more than faith for events to unfold as desired. Sometimes it took caution.
Well now they’ve done! They’ve opened a training facility for REVs. Sorry, but bullshit. You can’t rain REVs, not the REVs we have today. All you can do is activate them and then get out of the way. That’s not very efficient. David doesn’t very upset. He just made major and strutting around here like a peacock. He’s the military’s go-to guy now when it comes to NT-4. Frankly, he can have it.
Journal Entry, July 21, 2079, Dr. Clifford Slater
23
The Twilight was administered to Zac and his four REVs after a return burst signal was received confirming that the mission was a go. The pods were powered down to bare minimal life support. It would take five days to reach Iz’zar, but to the team it would be just a heartbeat. One did not dream while under the influence of Twilight.
They were set to awake as the royal starship was on final approach to the Temple spaceport. Zac snapped out of the prolonged sleep with his mind alert and fresh, although his joints seemed a little stiff and cranky. A few stretches in the confined space of the pod and he was ready to go.
He triggered a tiny camera embedded within the back side of the pod, allowing for a view of the approach to the planet. The other members of the team were doing the same, trying to gain any insight as to the layout of the complex and the surrounding topography. Although they had ample photographic intel, it was always good to get a personal feel for the site.
The huge ship was dropping toward the surface, being lowered by a small, slowly decaying gravity well seventeen hundred miles above it in the cold of space. At about two thousand feet, the well would fade completely and the huge ship would ride plumes of landing exhaust for the rest of the way down.
Zac panned the camera around. The aft end of the starship was pointed to the south and the shores of a vast ocean about a hundred miles away. There was a contiguous city running from the water all the way to with about ten miles from the walls of the Temple Complex. Beyond a mile-wide buffer, another city formed that continued to the tall, white walls of the Complex. This was where the quarter-million loyal natives lived who were deemed worthy enough to be this close to the revered aliens. According to intel, they were also the first line of defense against a surface attack. The fact that the settlement surrounding the complex resembled a rundown ghetto on Earth made Zac wonder about the effectiveness of such a defensive force. Yet as the ship dropped lower, he noticed how there were no main thoroughfares in the ghetto, just a confused mass of buildings with no defined urban plan. Moving a force up to the gates of the Temple through that would have been impossible. Maybe that was the plan all along.
Zac’s view was obscured by roiling clouds of white and gray smoke as the ship neared the surface. That was too bad. They were now within the walls of the complex, and it would have been nice to see more before they touched down.
“Get ready,” Zac said through the comm. “Once things settle down outside, the crew will be out inspecting the ship and preparing it for the return trip. The nullifiers are pretty high up and will probably be one of the last things inspected. We should have about an hour to get the document before the pods are discovered.”
“Is that when we get to start blowing things up?” Mike asked.
“We’ll see. Let’s go. There’s still a lot of smoke in the area. That will help.”
Zac slipped on the full-head mask and then released a side panel in the pod. He slid out, dangling from the edge of the opening to keep from falling to the ground. It was about a hundred feet down. He let go.
Even before landing, Zac felt a slight cascading of strength and energy as his body reacted to the fall. Powerful leg muscles absorbed the force without a problem. The other REVs were plopping to the ground all around him.
They looked up as the sixth pod deposited their backpacks. They caught the packages and immediately locked them into place. They fit on the back of each REV, with two sets of straps that fastened across their waists and chests. The bottom half of the packs were designed to swivel to the front when needed, allowing access to their knocked down rifles and the HK-14 handguns, along with the ammo. The top half carried the uniforms and light sections of armor, should that become necessary.
With whiffs of sweet-smelling exhaust smoke still lingering the air, Zac and his team—dressed in their gaudy mechanics’ outfits—marched off toward the main Temple building half a mile away.
The huge complex was made up of several buildings, but the one that stood out the most was the actual Temple of Light. It was a towering dome a hundred stories tall and capped off with a lens two hundred feet in diameter that allowed the light of the yellow sun to enter the vast chamber below. Intricate baffles on the underside of the lens guided the light, directing multiple beams to five-hundred-foot-tall stacks of more crystal lenses, climbing from wide bases until ending at needle-like points halfway toward the arching ceiling. The effect was to cast spectrums of dancing colors along the inner wall, which was coated in mirrors of metal.
The volume of the chamber was immense and designed for the wow-factor.
On the floor was a large seating area capable of holding ten thousand worshippers, all set before a series of stair-step platforms leading up to a silver-lined podium where th
e main priest would speak. The seating was reserved for the Antaere exclusively. The native worshippers were herded through side doors and allowed to stand behind barricades along a hundred-eight-degree arc around the seating area. During sermons, the non-Antaere were kept moving, albeit slowly, so as many followers as possible could pass through the chamber. It wasn’t important that they hear the complete sermon just that they attended, for however brief a time.
There were dozens of anterooms, offices and other areas along the outer perimeter of the sermon room designed to serve the faithful. And the entire interior of the Temple was kept spotless, with only reverent tones spoken while on the floor.
Besides the sheer grandeur the spectacle of the chamber, there was also a balance and order, the prime directives of the Antaere race. Although overwhelming to the average citizen, everything inside the Temple was to scale without appearing outsized or grandiose. There was beauty and function, meaning and respect.
During their tenue, the Antaere had built a smaller version of the Temple on Earth, so the Humans had a pretty good idea as to the layout of the building. Underneath the main structure was where the business took place, including church administration, the priests’ quarters…and their study library. The Temple on Earth contained only a few rare volumes of Antaere teachings, and none of the Corollaries. There was a stripped down version of the Book of Order—every Temple had one—but none of the one-or-two kind of documents you find on either Antara or Iz’zar. And where the temple of Earth had nine lower levels, the Temple of Light had twelve.
On Earth the library was on the lowest level, so mission planners assumed that would be where Zac and his REVs would find the one on Iz’zar.
The grounds surrounding the Temple were what gave the complex its impression of size. It was four miles across and formed into an octagon, with the spaceport to the rear, the Temple in the center and security barracks running along the walls to the left and right. In the vast courtyard to the front of the Temple dome were two sets of ornamental buildings along a ceremonial path from the main gate to the front of the Temple. In the distant past, this tiled walkway had been used for grand parades by Antaere royalty and other dignitaries. Yet with the squalor now outside the walls, no one entered through the main gates anymore. Inside they arrived by starship or shuttle, or through the cleaner gates near the troop quarters. The natives—when they were allowed to attend the services—were brought through an entrance along the south wall, paraded through the sermon chamber, and then spit out through another gate to the north.
As Zac and his men walked toward the massive dome, he checked the gate to the north. It was visible from the tarmac of the spaceport and appeared to be lightly guarded. There was no sermons scheduled, at least not that the natives could attend. With the arrival of the Rowin, the Temple grounds had been cleared of any outsiders, and now only Antaere occupied the vast complex.
There was a grand entrance along the side of the Temple facing the spaceport. Guards, dressed in ceremonial attire, were stationed there and eyed the five approaching workers with distain.
One of the Qwin with a bright yellow collar on his blue coat was shaking his head. “Restricted, you know this. What are you doing off the ship?”
Zac reached around and tapped his hard-shelled backpack. “Special coding equipment for the Rowin,” he said through the translator bug he had implanted behind his right ear. It would take his Human speak and seamlessly convert it to Antaere. The movement of his lips would be out of sync with the words spoken, but the full-face mask hid his mouth from the guards.
“Be that so, you must still use the service entrance on the side.”
“Forgive us, first visit to the Temple.”
He led his men around the side, still feeling the lead guard’s eyes on his back until they turned the corner. There were more guards at the next entrance, but after another set of questions, they were allowed inside.
The service entrance didn’t open directly into the Grand Chamber, but rather a utilitarian lobby area that branched off into corridors leading either along the side of the building or to stairways and elevators to access the lower levels.
And there were Qwin everywhere, all conveying a buzz of energy in anticipation of the Rowin entering the building. Unlike Zac and his REVs, the royal would enter through the main entrance and into the Grand Chamber. There were accommodations for the royal family under the main sermon level, although he wouldn’t spend much time there. The royalty of the Antaere spent a lot of time among the commoners of their race. They said it was to bind them to the masses, when in fact it was merely an ego thing for the bloodline. Honor and acceptance of their position was expected; it was part of the Order of the Universe. For people to do otherwise was almost incomprehensible, especially among the Antaere. Yet as the race reached into space and encountered other species, they didn’t always get the respect they deserved. They were cruel and vindictive when this happened on worlds without advanced technology or a formidable military. For those that did, the Antaere were more subtle with their revenge.
Earth had been one of those worlds, where billions refused to bow down to the glory of the aliens. Of course there were a few who did, and they helped initiate the war with the Qwin through their terrorist activities against their own race. Humans can be threatened and intimidating into obeying for only so long. After that, all bets were off.
But on Iz’zar, the minority of non-believers lived a more cautious and clandestine existence. There were plenty of them for sure, but they didn’t show themselves to others or make huge demonstrations against the Antaere. That would have been fatal.
The aliens had been on the planet for two hundred years and for most of that time, the Antaere were the only star-traveling species with the technology to subjugate entire planets. Then the Humans got involved. Now with a second star-traveling race—and one with military skills that rivaled the Qwin—resistance to the Order was spreading across all the advanced worlds of the Grid. Although Iz’zar was immune to the more violent uprisings, there was still a sizeable network of non-believers that Zac and his team would use to make their escape from the planet, if they got that far.
The team began to make their way down into the depths of the Antaere Temple. The first two levels—out of twelve—proved a non-issue. No one gave them a second glance as they were too busy preparing for the Rowin’s arrival to pay attention to anything but their own tasks. Yet the lower they went, the tighter the security. The High Priests lived down here, with the last six levels dedicated to them exclusively. There were cafeterias, residences, meeting rooms; even grooming stations of questionable repute.
Eventually the team came to an immoveable force…in the form of a defiant Antaere female.
“You will not pass. I am surprised you are here at this level. You should not have been allowed.”
“How then are we to deliver these filters to the Enlightenment Chamber? Without them the sacred text could become damaged.”
“I have no record of such a maintenance request. And what are these uniforms you wear? I have never seen such. They appear to serve no purpose…other than to hide your appearance.” The expression on the alien’s face changed….
Zac had no choice. He stepped around the counter to where the female was standing and took a swipe at her. He’d learned his lesson back at Camp Slater not to hit as hard as he was able. He didn’t want to kill the female, just knock her out a little.
But if one had never hit someone with the purpose of only rendering them unconscious, one would have a tendency not to give it their all. And Zac did just that. He didn’t knock her out; all he did was make her mad.
Antaere females are every bit a match for the males, sometimes even stronger, if not definitely meaner. The Qwin recovered from the hit instantly and jumped with spongy legs onto Zac’s chest, wrapping strong legs around his torso and her arms around his head. She ripped the mask off his head and begin to bite at his neck.
The other REVs wer
e on her in a second, easily pulling her off their leader. Donovan wasn’t so subtle, and a moment later the Qwin female was laid out on the floor, dead.
Zac’s mask was in shreds, which took away his disguise, not only for the remainder of the mission to the Enlightenment Chamber, but also on the way out.
“Feisty little bitch, wasn’t she,” Mike said.
“Get her behind the counter in case someone comes along,” Zac ordered. “You guys are going to have to give me cover from here on.” They were on the eighth level, with four to go. And that was assuming the Enlightenment Chamber was at the lowest level.
They were in a huge room with ceiling twice as high as the other floors. This was definitely VIP territory. But the place was empty; a condition Zac credited to the arrival of the Rowin. Either the priests were already in position to greet him, or they were in their chambers getting ready.
They moved across the room to a bank of lifting platforms. The other floors had traditional enough elevators, but down here there were a series of rotating platforms, like a circular escalator. With this setup, no priest would have to wait for an elevator. It essentially put all the floors on the same level.
Just as the team was about to step on, a group of six elaborately adorned Antaere swung up on the back platform to face them. There was a moment of uncertainty, as the aliens sized up the four uniformed figures—and one Human. They recognized Zac instantly; Humans were the greatest threat the Antaere had ever faced. Everyone knew what they looked like.
Zac rushed forward, slamming two of the priests toward the back of the platform. They fell back and onto the next one, with Zac on top. He was surprised at the viciousness with which they fought—until he remembered he’d never fought a Qwin outside of a Run. He had no idea how they fought as a general rule. After the female—and now the priests—he was beginning to understand why they were such a tough enemy. They fought like wild dogs.