At ground level, perfectly placed at the center of the cavern was a shallow concavity measuring thirty meters across. The walls of the concavity were made up of angled triangular planes that tapered to a point at the concavity's center. At the center was a three-sided jet-black pyramid-like protuberance, the apex of which rose about three meters above ground level.
The energy stream the team had followed to this point snaked across the floor to the center of the cavern. When it reached the concavity it fractured and broke apart, swirling in a maelstrom of twisting threads that shot upward through the pyramid-shaped object toward the cavern's ceiling in a reverse waterfall of light, before spreading outward in an uncountable array of narrow trails that stretched across the curve of the roof, then split again into smaller ribbons of light. Each ribbon terminated at one of the fissures. The whole cavern glowed and flickered in what would have, under different circumstances, been a visual effect that would have rivaled the aurora borealis.
At exact intervals around the circumference of the central concavity were twenty smaller, shallower indentations that made Emily think of inground spas. These indentations, although smaller than the central concavity, were easily as deep as Mac was tall, and three or four times as wide.
Three tunnels extended off from the cavern, with each new tunnel opening placed at ninety-degree increments to where Emily and Mac now crouched.
Mac turned to Emily, "Does this look like the place Adam said we needed to locate?"
Emily nodded vigorously. "No doubt about it," she said. "The energy stream is being channeled directly from the surface into that cavern and then to whatever is in those fissures. This is the place. It has to be.
CHAPTER 16
Mac nodded his agreement. He did another quick scan of the cavern, then whispered to Emily, "Let's get back to the others," his gaze not straying from the mass of alien constructs scurrying over the walls of the cavern.
While Emily edged back toward the rest of the waiting team, Mac reached into his pack, removed a radio repeater unit, then positioned it just inside the cavern. He turned and followed Emily, signaling the two teams to follow him a short distance away from the opening of the cavern.
"Seems like we've found where we need to be," Mac said, then went on to recount what he and Emily had just discovered in the cavern. "The next thing we have to do is get Emily into that room so she can activate the cube."
"So, are these creatures the Locusts or not?" Petter asked.
Mac looked at Emily, conferring wordlessly. When she shook her head, he nodded, confirming her silent assessment. "We don't think so. They look to be exact duplicates of the creature we crossed paths with earlier. I think they're more like...drones or helpers. They seem to be doing a very specific task of tending to whatever is in the fissures in the wall of that cavern."
Emily nodded her agreement. "I think whatever is in those fissures might be the Locusts." She nodded at the energy stream. "The energy stream is being diverted into each of the fissures through a mechanism in the cavern's floor. Adam told me that the Locusts' only interest in this planet was for its energy, so it makes sense that it would be them that the energy is being fed to."
Mac nodded in agreement. "So, where do you need the cube to go?"
Emily thought back to what Adam had told her. He hadn't actually specified where exactly he wanted Emily to place the cube; just that it needed to be as close to the location where the energy was being collected by the Locusts as possible. For all she knew, she could just toss it into the room and that would be that. But doing that ran the risk of the drones tending the fissures spotting it and destroying it or moving it. No, it needed to be hidden, somewhere that it would not be noticed.
Emily unslung her backpack and reached in, lifting out the cube. It spun gently on its axis, floating above the palm of her hand. "The concavity in the center of the cavern is surrounded by these big indentations," Emily said. "If I place it in one of them it should be out of sight enough until Adam does whatever it is he plans on doing with it."
"Is it a bomb?" Petter asked. He stared (along with everyone else) at the rotating cube. "It seems very small if it is."
Emily shook her head. "I don't think it's a bomb. When I was abducted by the Caretakers, they used the cube to immobilize me. I saw them using it to analyze plants and I'm pretty sure they also used it to transport me to their ship."
"So, it's like some kind of alien Swiss Army knife?" said Mac.
Emily shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. What I do know is that Adam wants me to get it into that cavern and that's what I intend to do."
"The question now," said Mac, "is how do we get it into the cavern and get out again without those drones spotting us?"
Petter answered, "The one we encountered earlier seemed oblivious to us as long as we stayed near the energy stream. I think it would be safe for me to crawl in with the cube and place it where it needs to be without being detected."
Before Emily could say anything more, a scream—human and full of terror—echoed down the tunnel from the direction of the cavern. Emily quickly scanned the group, no one was missing, which meant only one thing...
"Survivors," Mac said. He started to jog back toward the cavern, Emily and Petter following right behind him.
Mac stopped at the opening and leaned in. "Shit!" he spat.
"What is it? What's going on?" said Emily.
Mac reached back and slowly moved Emily around until she had a view of what Mac saw; two constructs stood with their backs to the tunnel the humans sheltered in, about ten meters away from Emily, Mac, and Petter. Held between the two constructs, struggling vainly to escape the hold they had on each of his arms was a human, a man. His clothes were streaked with dirt, his arms thin, the hair on his head matted and unkempt. He screeched and wailed and struggled but was unable to shake himself free of the stick creatures' grips.
"What the ever loving—" Mac began to say then stopped as his eyes rose halfway up the opposite wall where a flurry of motion had attracted his attention. "Look at that," he said, pointing.
Two of the constructs converged on a fissure. They extended their foremost set of legs and made four neat slices through the membrane covering, which fell away, fluttering and spinning to the ground. A small gush of liquid spilled from the inside, then a bulk, rust brown and glistening, slid over the lip of the fissure, only to be deftly caught by the middle set of legs of each of the constructs. Globules of liquid dripped from the motionless bulk as the two constructs heaved it completely from the fissure and began to carry it slowly and carefully toward the ground.
The shape the constructs carried between them was twice as large as the two helpers. Emily could make out a somewhat humanoid body with a pair of powerful, muscular legs. It had two sets of arms. The first—long enough to reach down to its knee joints—culminated in powerful-looking hands that sprouted an opposable thumb-like appendage and three long fingers that each split into two smaller whip-like extensions which writhed and shifted like serpents. A second set of arms—shorter than the first but just as muscular—projected from its midsection, each with a more conventional human-like hand and fingers made for gripping...or crushing. A bulbous, bullet-shaped head sat on a short neck. There were jaws, Emily thought, but she could not be sure. And a single eye that must have been the size of Mac's head sat in a protuberance of flesh that allowed the eye to maneuver in whichever direction it desired. It wore what Emily first took to be a suit of armor that extended outward at each joint but she soon realized this was not armor in the conventional sense and was instead a carapace; a natural (if this thing could ever be described as natural) growth that covered the creature's body in plate armor.
Here, then, the veil of time and distance that had hidden them finally removed, was one of the creatures that had brought so much calamity to the Earth. This thing...this Locust...was responsible for the deaths of God knew how many planets and civilizations, stretching back for thousands or even millions of years. A
nd now it had come here, to Earth, with the same murderous intent; to strip the planet clean of every resource it could. Emily felt a shudder pass down her spine; part fear, part revulsion, but mostly anger. She unconsciously reached out and laid a hand against her husband's shoulder.
The human prisoner had become still and silent when he had seen the Locust birthed into the arms of its helpers. Now, as the three aliens descended rapidly toward the ground he began to struggle again.
"No! No! Please," he begged.
When the helpers reached the floor and began to carry the limp body of the Locust toward him, the man began to scream again.
Petter let loose a string of expletives in his native tongue. "We must do something to help him," he said. He leveled his automatic rifle at the aliens, took a step toward the struggling man.
Mac spun around and grabbed Petter by his forearm, positioning himself between the rifle's barrel and the Locust and its helpers. "No!" he said from between clenched teeth. "We can't afford to give ourselves away. Not until we've placed the cube."
Emily saw a cloud of anger pass over the Norwegian officer's face, and for a moment she thought Mac was going to be forced to physically restrain him. But Petter's anger quickly vanished, replaced by a new look as his eyes grew wide in horror. Emily's attention flipped back to the captive human...in time to see the Locust—its construct escorts still holding it upright—lift its head and gaze coldly at the wretched man presented to it with that single giant eye. Its smaller set of arms twitched once, twice, as though they had received an order to move but were unable to. The third time, however, they reached slowly, inexorably, for the now gibbering man and clutched him by the shoulders.
The human struggled, his voice already ragged from screaming, now barely audible to the three humans watching in horror as the Locust drew him to its chest like a mother would gather a child to her breast. It was difficult for Emily to perceive what happened next, but the quiet gasp of revulsion she heard from both Mac and Petter told her that what she was witnessing was really happening: the Locust was absorbing the man through its carapace. Even from where they hid, they could hear the fizz and hiss, smell the acrid scent of dissolving flesh as the man's skin and blood and bone and cartilage and clothing began to liquefy, then flow into the Locust. The man, or what was now left of him, jerked and convulsed. The two constructs holding the victim finally released him once he was halfway absorbed, the Locust now able to clutch his rapidly dissolving body to itself.
"Dear God," Mac exclaimed. "Dear God Almighty."
As the Locust continued to feed, its posture began to change. The two constructs that had helped it from its birthing fissure and carried it to the ground released it. It wobbled a little on its two giant legs, then steadied itself as the remains of the unlucky man disappeared into its chest, leaving nothing but a small pool of glistening liquid—Blood? Water? Urine? Emily could not tell—where he had met his demise.
The Locust stumbled, and the two constructs on either side of it grasped at it, steadying the creature as though it were an old decrepit man. Together, the two drones began to carry the Locust toward the concavity at the center of the cavern. They guided it to one of the indentations around the main concavity, helping the Locust into the closest one. The Locust extended itself fully and lay still within the space. The two constructs that had brought the human to the Locust turned as one and vanished into one of the three tunnels, the two others returning to the wall and their duties.
Emily's mind raced at what she had just witnessed and the implications of the entire event bounced around her skull.
"We need to get the cube in there and get the hell out of here right now," said Mac. He was reaching for the cube that had rested forgotten in Emily's hands during the horror show that had just played out before them.
"No!" Emily spat, whisking the cube out of reach of Mac's hands. Then more gently, "Don't you understand what we just saw?"
Mac looked at her blankly, but Petter grasped the true importance. "The survivors," he said. "That man had to have been abducted from Point Loma. And if there's one, then there must be more."
"Right!" Emily said, "And if we don't follow the two constructs that dragged that guy here then the chances are we'll never find any of them down here. We need to go now, Mac, or we risk them all being turned into snacks for the Locusts."
"Shit!" Mac sighed. He turned and jogged back to the team of soldiers waiting in the tunnel.
"Here," said Emily, releasing the cube to Petter's outstretched hands. "Give us thirty minutes then get that in the cavern, okay?"
Petter nodded.
Mac was on his way back, Bishop and Cleaver jogging alongside him. "Ready?" Mac asked Emily, knowing he did not have to outline for her what they needed to do next.
"Ready," she told him; then to Petter, "Thirty minutes. Don't fuck it up."
Petter nodded and smiled.
Emily, Mac and their two escorts stepped into the cavern.
CHAPTER 17
Emily, Mac, and the two soldiers crept into the cavern. Fifty meters of open ground lay between where they were and the mouth of the tunnel the two constructs had disappeared into. Fifty meters of open ground that would leave them totally exposed to the remaining constructs that continued to blindly work at their task of tending the nascent Locusts. But blindly was the operative word within that observation, Emily thought, because if their experience with the construct in the tunnel was not an exception to the rule, then the humans’ presence within this Locust birthing cavern should go undetected.
The constructs, for their part seemed completely oblivious to the humans moving slowly around the cavern's edge far below them. Perhaps, Emily surmised, the idea of there being any kind of intruder within their midst was so unimaginable to them that they did not even bother to look. Perhaps they did not see as humans did. Maybe they sensed the world in a different manner, on different frequencies, frequencies that would make Emily and the men invisible. Or maybe they were just mindless tools of an arrogant species that had never once faced resistance, created to fulfill one job only; to tend and render help and sustenance to their unearthly masters. It was impossible to be sure, and Emily wasn't interested in finding out if her theory was correct or not. With luck, in a matter of hours, this place would be a smoking ruin and the Locusts and all their helpers nothing but a nightmarish memory.
"Just keep moving, don't stop, don't look around, don't make a damn sound," Mac whispered to Emily and his two men. He was on point, leading the four-person team at a crouch along the curve of the chamber wall toward the second tunnel.
Emily allowed her eyes to move around the huge cathedral-like structure that towered above her. The smoothness of the walls came from a layer of material that was about three centimeters deep. It was translucent, and beneath its glassy surface, she saw the normal rough bedrock the cavern had been excavated from. It was as though the three-centimeter outer layer of rock had been melted by some incredible heat source. Green filaments of dim light danced through the glassy layer, like tiny slow-motion lightning bolts. She had to peer closely to see them they were so dim, but the walls were transferring energy of some kind for some purpose unfathomable to Emily's mind. Above her, the Locusts' helpers continued to move back and forth across the vast expanse of the dome's surface. At any moment, Emily expected to feel the cold touch of their spindly fingers close around her face, to be snatched away, dragged off to be delivered to the wet embrace of a newly birthed Locust. Her imagination was hard at work conjuring up the heat of whatever acid had been used to dissolve that poor bastard against her own skin. "Not going to happen," she whispered under her breath, her eyes dropping to look at her feet. She would put a bullet in her brain before she would let that happen to her.
Emily almost screamed when she felt something brush against her shoulder, but stifled her yell when she realized that she had been so intent on keeping her head down and moving forward, she had almost overshot the mouth of the new tunnel, and it
was Mac's hand she felt guiding her to him. He pulled her into the cover of the tunnel's mouth. Emily heaved a sigh of relief and puffed in two deep, stuttering breaths to steady her nerves while Bishop and Cleaver caught up with them.
•••
Emily, Mac, Bishop, and Cleaver jogged down the tunnel, surreptitiously chasing after the two constructs. As they approached a sharp-right corner, Mac slowed to a steady walk, motioning for the others to slow too, then raised a finger to his lips. Quiet!
Emily caught the sound her husband had picked up; it was a faint scuffling noise that came from the tunnel ahead of them, around the corner. She cocked her head to listen. There it was again, a tap-tap-tap sound like something sharp hitting glass. Or alien legs against the smooth surface of the tunnel, she thought. The sound was growing fainter, which meant whatever was making it was moving away from their location.
Mac gave a nod and the four humans jogged quickly to the corner. Slowly, Mac edged around the corner, then beckoned the three others to join him.
Emily took a deep breath and set off down the passage in pursuit.
Ahead of them, the tunnel dropped steeply, so steeply, in fact, that Emily and the rest of the team had to lean against the wall to reduce the chance of a misstep that would send them tumbling. The tunnel went on that way for about two hundred meters, descending ever deeper into the planet's crust, curling downward like a corkscrew. The team descended at a slow but steady rate; Mac at the front trying to keep as close to the constructs as he could without catching up to them or alerting the aliens to their presence.
The incline quite suddenly leveled off as the team rounded a final corner, then angled to the right for a short enough distance that the human pursuers could easily see the two constructs already halfway along it, moving rapidly toward a circular doorway set into a wall at the end of this length of tunnel. The doorway reminded Emily of the blisters covering the fissures in the birthing cavern, but this one was much larger and seemed to be made of multiple fins that overlapped each other like the feathers on a bird's wing, fanning inward from the edge of the door until they met at the center. As the constructs approached, the fins slid apart and the two aliens moved through the opening. Emily caught sight of a weird ethereal glow from beyond the space and what sounded like...people. People yelling, some screaming in fear. Then the fins of the doorway closed again and the sound and the light vanished.
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 16