The Ruins of Anthalas (The Ember War Saga Book 2)

by Richard Fox

  “It’s boarded up. … I’ve got an idea,” Hale said. “Bravo team, cover me and alpha. We’re going to pry up one of those boards. If the canal is empty, we can take it straight to the pyramids without being exposed.”

  Hale made his way to the canal and knelt next to the edge. Deep-red wooden beams cut into rectangles extended from one concrete lip to the other. Hale looked closer—the wood was stained red, like its sap had bled through the wood when it was hewn. He tried to stuff his fingers into the gap between the wood and the concrete, but his armor was too thick to get any purchase.

  Hale squeezed his right hand into a fist and cocked his hand to the side twice. A blade snapped from the gauntlet housing. He raised his arm then plunged the blade into the beam. He pressed his body weight against the blade, using the next beam over as a fulcrum. The beam raised a few inches in the air and Cortaro grabbed hold of it. He lifted the beam higher and Standish and Torni struggled to push it aside.

  “Almost …,” Standish grunted. “Got it!”

  The beam tumbled over and Standish slipped. He fell face-first into the gap and Hale heard a dry snap as he yanked his blade free from the beam.

  Standish let out a wail and flopped away from the gap, backing away on his hands and knees as fast as he could. Cortaro and Torni crossed themselves.

  “What is it?” Hale looked into the gap.

  Skulls. Dozens and dozens of Shanishol skulls were exposed, their bulbous craniums and bone spurs stained red and brown from dried blood, mouths agape in eternal screams. More bones lay beneath the skulls, filling the entire canal to the brim. The skulls ranged from adult sized down to ones so small they must have belonged to Shanishol children.

  “Put it back. Put the beam back,” Hale said quietly.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, sir,” Standish gasped, on the verge of hyperventilating. “What the hell happened to them?”

  “You think I know? You think any of this makes sense to me?” Hale set a foot against the beam and shoved it toward the gap. He kept his head turned from the charnel house beneath the beams. “This happened a long, long time ago. There’s not a damn thing we can do about it so get off your ass and get this covered up so we can keep moving!”

  Torni and Cortaro got the beam put back in place. Standish looked down and when saw he was still sitting on the beams, he scampered off like he suddenly realized he was on a hot plate.

  Hale’s hands squeezed his rifle again and again. He felt his heartbeat pounding in his ears as he tried to focus on what to do next. He’d led his Marines into a crypt, and he didn’t know how to get them out.

  A peal of thunder cut across the sky. He looked up and a drop of red rain hit his visor. The sky darkened as sheets of rain poured from magenta clouds. The rain fell harder, but it didn’t make a sound as it fell around Hale.

  Just when it can’t get any worse, he thought.

  “Whoa,” Yarrow said.

  Hale looked at the medic, who was backing into a Shanishol house. Raindrops were suspended in the air around the medic’s ankles, each new drop coming to a halt just above the ground, never touching the cobblestones.

  Around the Marines, rainfall formed a carpet of drops, quivering and glistening in the sun light.

  “I hate this planet. Hate it, hate it, hate it,” Standish muttered.

  The raindrops started moving, running together and forming a stream of red water as thick as Hale’s arm. The new stream, which never touched the ground, ran over the canal and toward the pyramids. Newly fallen raindrops wavered over the ground, then traveled over to join the stream. Raindrops never touched the buildings either. Water ran down invisible drains from the roofs and walls and into the ever-growing stream.

  “There’s no delta on the city’s edges,” Lowenn said. “No place where all this water’s being dumped. If it’s been like this for a thousand years, all this water must be going into a sewer system of some kind.”

  “We get beneath the city, maybe we’ll find a way into the pyramids,” Steuben said.

  Hale was about to answer when a golden mote of light zipped past his face.

  “Did anyone else see that?” Hale asked.

  “Sir, look up,” Cortaro said.

  Golden motes streaked through the sky, bending like magnetic waves toward terminal points along the boulevard that ran through the center of the city.

  Hale held his arm out. Motes passed through his body without sensation or effect to him or the motes.

  “It’s the energy field that keeps the city pristine,” Yarrow said. “There’s an access point where the fields converge.”

  “Marine, how the hell do you know that?” Cortaro asked.

  “Know what, gunney?”

  “About energy fields and this city. What you just said.”

  “I didn’t say anything, gunney,” Yarrow tapped the base of his palm against the side of his helmet.

  “How much longer will we stand in this rain?” Steuben asked.

  “We’re going to the source of the energy fields,” Hale said. “The source of what keeps this place looking like new should be more important than where they flush the toilet. Anyone have a better idea?” No one spoke up. “Let’s move out before the rain stops.”

  ****

  A Toth menial in a space suit floated through space, adjusting its course with a handheld vector gun that shot compressed air.

  It could see the human buoy, matte black but just visible against the dead gray of the moon’s surface. The menial shot off most of its vector fuel to bring it to a dead stop just above the buoy. The creature took a ruby-colored lens from a pouch and placed it over the IR receiver/transmitter node.

  The menial’s face twitched as it waited. Its tongue lashed over an eye to clear away a mote of dust. A double beep came through the suit’s IR system; its mission was accomplished. The Toth had a wiretap on the humans’ communication system. The information the overlord pulled from the fragmented and incomplete human minds hinted at an IR relay system. Finding it hadn’t proved difficult.

  The Toth underling fired off the last of its vector fuel and went tumbling end over end into space. Its mission didn’t include recovery.

  CHAPTER 10

  The motes flowed into a tower that stood fifty feet over the boulevard, which was nothing but packed earth as wide as a football field. The tower was a square with a single door and two windows at the very top through which motes converged.

  The rain had faded away, but not before it coated the Marines with a sticky film of red mud. Their armor looked like it was as bloodstained as the planks over the canal of the dead. Golden rays of sunlight stabbed through the passing storm clouds and flowed across the pyramids.

  Hale ran into the tower, which held nothing but a dirt floor. He looked up and saw a few stray motes of light come and go, but there was nothing else to see. As he wandered into the middle of the room, his foot hit something. He jabbed his toe into the dirt and found a thick metal ring attached to the floor.

  “Let’s lift it up,” Hale said.

  “Move.” Steuben waved Hale away and grabbed the ring. He pulled and lifted a metal hatch into the air, dirt billowing through the enclosure as Hale wondered just how long it had been since anyone—or anything—had disturbed this place. A ladder with wrought-iron rungs descended into the darkness.

  A hot wave of air blew out of the hole and Hale felt the heat seep through his armor like it was a breath from the devil.

  “You first, sir?” Torni asked. “Like always?”

  If ever there was a time to reconsider his lead from the front ethos, this wasn’t it. Hale snapped his rifle against the magnetic locks on his back and turned on his visor’s night-vision filter. He could see the next couple rungs, but not the bottom of the ladder. He grabbed the first rung and lowered himself down.

  The wide-spaced ladder demanded caution; the biomechanics of the Shanishol weren’t easily compatible with his smaller frame. He counted nineteen rungs before his foot hit the gr
ound. His Marines followed. Bailey, the shortest Marine, complaining bitterly and with an amazing assortment of expletives as she struggled down the ladder.

  His filter didn’t pick up anything past more than a few yards. Hale touched his temple and an IR light illuminated the cave around him. The walls were bare stone, rough angles and slick with moisture.

  “Going to have to use the lamps,” Hale said. “Go vocal. The IR suit-to-suit will get washed out.” His Marines knew the drill, but it never failed that one person would forget what to do and end up talking to themselves the entire time they were down here, wondering why everyone was ignoring him or her.

  The tunnel extended away from the ladder, a pathway just big enough for a Shanishol but with plenty of overhead clearance for Hale’s team. Hale set his gauss rifle to SCATTER. His cobalt-coated tungsten bullets would fire as several small-shot rounds when he pulled the trigger. He desperately wanted not to get into a firefight down here; it would be as quick and deadly as a knife fight in a closet.

  After a few dozen yards, Hale saw a pale green light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel opened up into a larger tunnel shaped like a half cylinder. Individually cut blocks, each a jagged starburst, fit against each other as they stretched across the ceiling. Raised walkways ran along the sides. Frescos of Shanishol following and worshiping the white-cloaked Shanishol with the glowing eyes decorated the walls. The loop-and-whirls script bordered the top and bottom of the frescos. Hot air ran across the top of the new tunnel, moved along quickly by an unseen force.

  “It’s like the subways in Washington, DC,” Yarrow said, “but alien and without any rats or that pee smell.”

  “What’s that writing say?” Hale asked Lowenn.

  “‘Follow the path to exaltation’ over and over again,” she said.

  The wide tunnel led to their right and left. Hale tossed a rock toward the roof and the airstream pulled it to the right.

  “That way,” Hale said.

  “Anyone else notice that the prophet-looking guy is the only one with the glowing eyes in all the murals?” Bailey asked.

  “It’s probably a religious observance. Catholic and Christian Orthodox medieval art put golden halos around the heads of saints,” Lowenn said.

  “But he had glowing eyes in that weirdo invitation he sent out to the whole galaxy, didn’t he?” Bailey asked.

  “That is an astute observation,” Lowenn said. She stopped to peer closely at one of the murals. She drew her analysis wand and pressed it against the golden eyes of the prophet on the mural.

  “Omnium,” she said and snapped the wand back into her armor.

  “That guy sure loves the stuff,” Orozco said.

  They came to a cross section where a stone circle lay in the middle of two tunnels showing Shanishol script and a carving of a Shanishol arm pointing to each direction.

  Lowenn walked around the circle and looked over her shoulder toward each direction.

  “Well?” Hale asked.

  “We came from ‘The Waiting Place of Souls,’ which translates roughly to purgatory. To the left is ‘Servants to the Prophet’ and to the right is ‘The Long Death.’ Hell? Maybe. Straight ahead is … um ….” She put her hands on her hips and turned around to read the script from another direction.

  “Lowenn, we brought you down here for precisely this reason,” Hale said.

  “It’s not Shanishol! It’s some sort of phonetic transcription but there are a few honorific marks denoting high status,” she said.

  “I vote any direction but hell,” Standish said. “Anyone else?” Bailey raised her hand.

  “Straight,” Hale said.

  “I see a wall straight ahead,” Steuben said. “My eyes are a bit better than yours down here.”

  The wall Steuben saw was a mural the size of the entire tunnel. The same prophet stood at the top of the central pyramid, his feet floating just above the stairway, arms held open and light emanating from his eyes and mouth. Guards wearing the gold and silver armor led a naked Shanishol up the stairs to a huge sphere, depicted with the same swirling fractals Hale and his Marines had seen on the bodies of Xaros drones.

  “‘Exaltation,’” Lowenn said.

  “This part wasn’t in the video,” Bailey said.

  “How much you want to bet the next scene in this little church drama ends with that naked Shanishol dead and in that ditch we uncovered?” Orozco asked.

  Hale heard the clatter of claws on stone from the tunnel leading off from the mural, like the sound of a gigantic rat in a ceiling. Hale swung his weapon toward the sound and his Marines did the same.

  “I know that sound—a Toth menial,” Steuben said.

  “Did it see us?” Hale asked.

  “Their vision is poor. Their hearing is even worse. Doubtful we were detected, but if a menial is here, so are the warriors.” Steuben said.

  “You mean the big ones with six arms aren’t the overlords?” Bailey asked.

  “Correct. The overlords won’t come down here until they’re certain there’s no risk to themselves. I suggest we hurry,” Steuben said.

  “Sir,” Cortaro said, “why don’t we get up on those walkways? It leads all the way down the tunnel and those damn big Toth can’t fit up there.”

  “Good idea, help me up there,” Hale said. Cortaro laced his fingers together and hoisted Hale to the upper walkway, the pseudo muscle layer in the gunnery sergeant’s armor straining to lift Hale’s armored bulk. Hale’s fingertips gripped the edge and he pulled himself onto the walkway.

  Hale’s feet hit corrugated metal, surprising him. Everything else about the tunnel was cut stone and harkened back to some historical period in the Shanishol past. The metal was an anachronism.

  The Shanishol walking the hallway wouldn’t see this, no need to keep up whatever show the prophet had going, he thought.

  Hale helped the rest of his squad onto the walkway and they continued on.

  A light appeared in the distance, undulating as whatever carried it ran through the corridor. The Marines sank against the side of the walkway and held still. The click-clack of Toth claws against stone passed beneath them and the light vanished down a different corridor.

  “We need to follow them,” Steuben said. “They reek of command pheromones. A warrior wants his menials to return to him. He must have found something.”

  “Maybe they found nothing and they’re leaving,” Orozco said.

  “No, they’d smell of failure and fear if that was the case.”

  “Follow them,” Hale said. He stood and traced the menial’s path.

  “Steuben,” Lowenn said, “how do you know the Toth so well? I thought they betrayed everyone centuries ago.”

  “The Karigole and the Toth had formed a joint-species fleet to defeat a Xaros invasion of my home world. We trained with the Toth for a time before our cohort went on a reconnaissance mission to a different star system. We weren’t there when the Toth turned against us,” Steuben said.

  “Wait, how old are you? In human years?” Lowenn asked.

  “I am … four hundred and twelve,” the Karigole said.

  Hale stopped and looked back at Steuben. “That can’t be right.”

  “It is correct. My species is very long-lived. That made us irresistible to the Toth. We should have seen their betrayal as inevitable.”

  “I don’t follow,” Lowenn said.

  “I have had enough of your incessant pestering, she-ape,” Steuben said. He raked his thumb claw against the other clawed fingertips. Hale took the gesture as Karigole body language for “drop it.”

  A faint glow from around a distant corner grew brighter as they approached. More packs of menials ran toward the glow from connecting tunnels. Hale turned his suit-to-suit IR on and looked over his shoulder. He tapped a knuckle to the mouthpiece on his visor, sending the team the hand signal to kill their IR lamps and go back to their secure—and quiet—communication channels.

  “Toth ahead. Let’s sneak up and get a
look,” Hale said. He secured his rifle against his back and went to his hands and knees. The team followed suit, Steuben’s wide shoulders scraping against the side of the walkway.

  As they crossed in front of the lit hallway, Hale heard the Toth speaking to each other in hisses and purrs. The clang and whirl of heavy equipment drowned out any noise the Marines made as they crept forward. Hale didn’t stop until every Marine was stretched across the open hallway. If they were about to get into a firefight, he wanted every rifle in action at the same time.

  The lieutenant slowly raised his rifle, sending the camera feed to the rest of his team. The camera edged over the lip of walkway, and they saw the Toth.

  There were nearly two dozen menials swarming around a standing drill pointed at a silver wall that stretched beyond the edge of the tunnel. Round symbols full of squares and circles were embossed over the silver wall. Two large warriors shouted commands to the smaller menials, emphasizing their orders with strikes to any menial that got too close to them.

  One of the warriors had human armor plates attached to a belt around its waist—rank plates and bits of gear that Rangers never would have parted with while they were still alive. There was no doubt in Hale’s mind now that the Toth were hostile.

  “Lowenn, what is that place?” Hale asked.

  “I have no idea, but it’s definitely not Shanishol.”

  “I’m so glad we brought you this far. You have as little idea of what’s going on as the rest of us,” Torni said.

  “Stow it,” Hale hissed.

  The Toth drill whirled to life. The tip blurred as it revved faster, then touched against the silver wall. Sparks flew from the contact and the reek of ozone filled the air. The drill came to a halt with a crunch.

  One of the warriors shouted and grabbed a menial by the leg. The warrior slung the menial in the air then slammed it into the ground. The crack of bones echoed through the corridor. The injured menial struggled to crawl away, its futile move ending when the warrior hurled it across the corridor and into a mural. Yellow blood splattered against the wall and the menial fell to the ground, its limbs twitching.