“Slumber seizes Him not, nor sleep,” Al-Sabani continued. “To Him belongs whatsoever is in the heavens, and whatsoever is in the earth.” All of the squad was firing now, as well as Calvin. He could see that both creatures appeared to come in three different colors. About half of both types were a putrid shade of green in color. Nearly all of these went down in the first round of grenade and laser fire. There were also six or seven of each at the start that were a sickly yellow in color; about half of them had been hit and were on the ground not moving.
“Who is he that will intercede with Him except by His permission?” continued Al-Sabani, his speakers as high as they would go. “He knows what is before them, and what is behind them.” The smallest group was blue in color. While there hadn’t been as many of these, they seemed to know instinctively when the Terrans would fire and would become non-corporeal. One blue dog was down, but Calvin couldn’t see that any of the blue horned creatures had been shot. If anything, they were now running even faster toward the Terrans.
“And they encompass nothing of His knowledge except what He pleases,” Al-Sabani was joined by Master Chief; both were yelling. “His knowledge extends over the heavens and the Earth!” All of the yellow ones were down now, too, and one of the blue horned creatures had been hit. Two blue ones of each variety were still coming. The first of the creatures materialized next to Petty Officer Sherkov and appeared to reach inside his suit. Sherkov collapsed with a sigh. The rest of the creatures were now 20 feet away and coming on hard. They gathered themselves to spring on the Terrans.
“And the care of them burdens Him not; and He is the Most High. The Supreme!” finished both Al-Sabani and Master Chief at the top of their lungs. The four remaining monsters looked like they had run into a wall. The three that were still charging at them stopped and remained motionless with dazed expressions on their faces. The monster standing over Sherkov froze, looking down at him. Blue laser beams hit blue skin over and over as the squad was finally able to target the creatures. A whistling noise like a steam kettle was heard as a number of holes were drilled through each of the remaining creatures. Like balloons with holes, they appeared to deflate, turning insubstantial and disappearing. As Calvin looked around the room, he could see the ones that had been hit earlier were dissolving as well.
“Did you say ghouls?” Calvin asked. “As in the undead?”
“The horned ones were ghuls,” Master Chief replied, looking around in awe, “as in ghul jinn. They are one of about 10 different types of jinn. According to my mother, they are nocturnal creatures who inhabit graveyards and ruins. They usually come out at night to feast on the living and the dead. You remember I told you one time that my mother was Persian? She believed in all of this stuff, although I never did. She spoke to her qarin all the time; I just thought she was crazy. She said I had one, a good one, and that I would hear it if I listened. I refused.” He looked Al-Sabani, who was rubbing some sort of talisman that he had pulled from a pocket. “I may have to re-think that.”
“The ones that looked like dogs were hinn jinn,” said Al-Sabani, taking off his helmet. “They are weak jinn, not much more than animals.” He put the talisman on around his neck and refastened his helmet. “Their color is important. Green ones are young and immature; they are easily dealt with. The yellow ones are leaders of families and small clans. They are more powerful than the greens, but less than the blue ones. Watch out for the blue ones. They are old and intelligent. Their touch can poison a person and send them into a dream world. That is where the myth of granting wishes comes from. They drink your blood while promising you anything that you want.”
Sergeant Andrews took off Petty Officer Sherkov’s helmet. They could see a big smile on his face. “He will be all right shortly,” noted Al-Sabani. “We stopped it before it could drink heavily of him. The Throne Verse is effective against most of the lesser jinni, but not against the more powerful ones. Pray we do not run into any of the efreet or shaitans.”
“And what the hell are those?” asked Calvin. His upbringing had not prepared him for dealing with creatures that could turn invisible at will.
Al-Sabani shook his head. “They are the most powerful of the jinn,” he said. “They would be very difficult to defeat.”
“Oh, thank you,” moaned Sherkov. His head rolled, and then he shook himself. He looked up to see Sergeant Andrews’ face six inches in front of his. “Wait,” he said. “You’re not Nadia; where did she go?” A look of utter sadness crossed his face, and then he shook himself again. As he opened his eyes this time, they seemed clear. “What happened?” he asked. “I just had the strangest dream.” He rolled out of Witch’s arms and got up, still shaking his head.
As Al-Sabani told him what happened, Calvin looked around the chamber. The room was huge; extending into the gloom in all directions. “Master Chief, let’s get a few more illumination rounds in here so that we can see what we’re doing. I’d like to take a quick survey of the room and then get the hell out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Master Chief, “the sooner, the better.” He passed on the order and eight more illumination rounds were fired throughout the room, including two to replace the first two that were going out.
By the light of the rounds, Calvin could see that the room was an enormous square; with walls well over 150 yards long. Pillars spread throughout the room helped hold up the vaulted ceilings that rose to 25 feet high in its center. The additional light gave them an unwelcome view of the corpses in the middle of the room but did not reveal any more jinn. At least 50 corpses were near the room’s center although it was hard to tell exactly how many due to the decomposition of some and the dismemberment of others. The bodies had dark skin and appeared from a little ways away to be from members of the planet’s humanoid race. None of the soldiers wanted to go any closer to confirm.
As the squad neared the other side of the room and the illumination began to fade, they received a shock as they saw two women chained to the wall. They couldn’t be sure that they were women, as their heads hung down forward onto their chests, but from the long hair and feminine dress that was what they appeared to be. Ready for a trap, the squad formed a semi-circle around the two with weapons at the ready.
Master Chief shouldered his trident, drew his laser pistol and moved forward toward the women. He had advanced to within five feet when the illumination rounds went out. Automatically, he switched to low light/thermal on his suit’s viewers. The bodies didn’t move, but he could see a heat source on both of them, stronger than he would have believed in the cool, dank room. Something about the women made his skin crawl. “Bob and Doug, pop another illumination round,” Master Chief ordered.
He watched the women as the light came back up, but nothing changed. He moved forward and started to reach forward to touch the one on the right. He stopped with his hand about a foot from the woman as he had a thought. Straightening, he asked, “Hey, Al-Sabani, what’s your qarin say about these women?”
Vice Sergeant Al-Sabani cocked his head, a strange look on his face. “That is odd,” he said. “He won’t tell me anything about them. The word that he uses can mean either he ‘can’t’ or ‘won’t’ tell me about them. He won’t say anything else. He has never done this before. The only thing that he will say about them is that they do not have an evil aura about them, and that it should be OK to wake them up.”
“Maybe he’d like to wake them up, then,” muttered Master Chief as he reached back toward the woman’s shoulder. He activated his speakers. “Ma’am, ma’am, are you OK?” he asked, gently shaking her.
After a couple of seconds, the woman moaned and then flinched away from him. “Don’t eat me!” she cried. This startled the second woman, who woke up, looked at the soldiers in their suits and screamed. This caused the first woman to scream, as well.
Master Chief turned down his external input to compensate for the screaming, while turning up his output so that he could be heard.
“Ma’am, it’s OK, we’re here to help!” he said. The women did not appear to hear; they kept screaming. If anything, they screamed louder.
“Dammit,” Master Chief said. Holstering his pistol, he reached up, unsealed his helmet and took it off. “Ladies!” he yelled. “We’re here to help.”
Seeing his face appeared to help, and they calmed visibly. “Oh, thank you,” cried the one in front of him. “We were sure that they had finally come to sacrifice us.”
“Sacrifice you?” Master Chief asked as he pulled out his laser pistol.
“Yes,” said the woman. “We were to be sacrificed on the altar.”
“Well,” replied Master Chief, “you don’t have to worry about that any more. I’m Master Chief Ryan O’Leary; I’ll get you out of here.” He dialed his pistol to a fine beam, turning it into a laser cutter. “Don’t move,” he added as he cut off her shackles. He moved over to the other woman and cut off her shackles. Both women thanked him as they slowly stood up, stretching muscles that hadn’t been used in some time.
Calvin took off his helmet and looked at the women. With his helmet on, they had seemed pretty; with it off, they were gorgeous, even with the dirt and cuts that they had. Their long black hair framed delicate faces with brilliant blue eyes. Their light skin only accentuated how blue their eyes were. “Ladies,” he said, “I’m sorry that I can’t send anyone back with you, but if you go out the door on the other side of the room, you can make it back out of the pyramid. Unfortunately, I’ve already lost several men, and I just don’t have anyone I can send back with you.”
“We aren’t going to walk through here by ourselves,” the first one said. “It is too dangerous. We might run into one of the priests or, even worse, one of the gods.” The second one nodded her agreement. “We’ll go with you,” she added.
Calvin looked into their scared faces. “Where we’re going, it will be even more dangerous,” he said. “We are on our way to kill Quetzalcoatl.”
“Oooh,” crooned the first one, putting a hand on Calvin’s shoulder and looking up into his eyes, “you men and women must be really brave. We’ll come with you. We’ll be safer with you.”
Calvin reconsidered. “Well...it would be dangerous for you to wander through here on your own. Maybe you should come with us.”
“Are you sure?” asked Master Chief. “They’re more likely to run into something dangerous with us, since we’re actively looking for it. Besides which, we haven’t seen any Caucasians the whole time we’ve been here. Where did they come from?”
The second woman put her hands on Master Chief’s shoulder and looked up at him, batting her eyes. “We promise that we’ll stay out of the way,” she said. “We won’t be any trouble for you.”
The first one nodded her head in agreement. “Quetzalcoatl was going to have us killed,” she added. “We want to see him dead so that we know he will never come after us again.”
“Yes,” agreed the second woman, “it’s the only way we’ll ever feel safe.”
“Hmmm...” thought Master Chief. “Well, sir, if they stay back, it probably is safer for them to stay with us than for them to wander around the pyramid alone.”
“I can’t believe you’re seriously considering it, Master Chief,” remarked Mr. Jones. “I admit that it’s dangerous for them to walk around alone in the pyramid, but we’ve already cleaned out the shit behind us. They could probably walk all the way out to the main entrance without seeing a single soul. Like you asked, where the hell did they come from?”
“Maybe they could walk out on their own,” replied Calvin, “but the spearmen we fought could still be in the pyramid, and there were guards at the main entrance to the pyramid. Those guys would probably kill them outright if they thought the women were escaping prisoners. No,” he decided, “it’s better if they stay with us.” He looked at the woman next to him. “You have to stay back out of the way.”
She nodded her head. “We promise,” she said. “By the way, my name is Sella, and this is my sister Trella.”
“I’m Calvin,” he said. He indicated Master Chief. “This is Ryan O’Leary. If you need anything, let one of us know.” He put his helmet back on. “All right, Master Chief, let’s go kill some snakes.”
“Roger that, sir,” Master Chief said opening the door out of the room. “Steropes and Vice Sergeant Al-Sabani, you’ve got point.” The two on point went out the door, followed by the rest of the squad. Sella stayed close by Calvin, while her sister stayed next to Master Chief.
“Master Chief,” Bob commed on a private circuit as they walked out the door, “what were the shackles binding the women made of?”
“I don’t know,” Master Chief answered, “some kind of metal. Why?”
“I was the last one out the door,” Bob replied, “and I could swear that I saw them disappear just before the illumination rounds went out.”
“It must have been a trick of the light,” Master Chief commed. “You saw me cut them off. They were as real and solid as anything I have ever seen. They couldn’t have just disappeared.”
Bob shook his head. His race had grown up in the dismal swamps of his planet, and he knew his night vision was better than any of the humans. The shackles had disappeared. He was sure of it.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Four
Under the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
Irina looked at Leading Seaman Abdul Wazir. “Are you ready to go?”
It had taken a while to get Wazir put back together. They had taken off his suit, dumped it out and then patched the hole. He had then put it back on long enough to have the suit’s nanobots complete the cleaning of the residual toxic material. He had also received a load of nanobots that were cleaning the poisons out his system. If he hadn’t had the suit and its technology, he would either have been dead by now...or alive and just wishing he were dead. “I am ready to go,” he replied. “My throat hurts, my eyes are watering and I feel like shit, but I am functional. Let’s go.”
“I’ll lead,” Irina said to the group, ‘then Remy, then Abdul, then Sigvar. Watch for any writing or any discolorations or abnormalities on the walls and floors.” The passageway was dark, except for the light that the suits shed.
“Got it,” said Remy. “Just so that you know, I’ve only got about eight more hours of power on my suit. The swimming on the way here really drained me.”
“Da,” said Irina in acknowledgement. “Anyone else have lower than that?” No one had less, and hers was at 14 hours of power remaining. Nearly all of them had at least one part of their suit that was yellow from the fall and the acid bath; Wazir had several sections that were red. Irina had to use some of her pharmacopeia for Wazir; his pharma was one of the broken parts of his suit. They needed to get out of here. Now.
Let me know when you reach two hours remaining,” she said, starting down the hall.
Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
Looking down at Sella walking along next to him, Calvin was glad that they had brought the women along. If nothing else, Calvin knew that he felt stronger and surer of himself with her by his side. Maybe it was the strength of a good woman that people always talked about, he thought.
Their luck had been holding, too, since they found the women. Steropes had found two pressure plates before stepping on them. Looking at the holes in the ceiling above them, Steropes said that they would probably have dropped some sort of poison or acid on them, had anyone stepped on them.
They had made a circuit of the pyramid and had travelled up a ramp that had elevated them about 40 feet. At the top they reached a door.
Steropes opened the door to see a well-lit room approximately 100 yards on a side. As they went in, the door closed behind them with a ‘snick’ that seemed out of place. Calvin spun around to see that the door was a blank piece of metal on their side; no handle or other mechanism to open it existed on their side. A noise could be heard from i
nside the door as some sort of bolt was thrown. There was no going back.
Under the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“Merde,” swore Remy Martin as more powder came floating down from the ceiling, coating his suit in white. He looked at the analysis as he got yet another danger warning from the suit. “It is some kind of concentrated phencyclidine like PCP,” the Frenchman said. “The suit says it will probably cause hallucinations, and that seizures, coma and death are also likely.”
“In that case,” replied Irina from where she stood outside the white cloud, “I think we’ll just wait until it settles.” This was the second time that something had dumped on them from the ceiling. The first time it had been some sort of concentrated venom that had clogged Wazir’s suit sensors and set off another red warning light on his suit. He was now following a long way behind Remy to stay out of the area of effect of any further traps.
Remy brushed himself off as best he could and moved to stand outside of the PCP dust. “I think we are coming to the end of the maze,” he announced. “I can see a light ahead.” They had been walking in the maze for the last 30 minutes. Between following the right wall, as suggested by Leading Seaman Sigvar Borsheim, and the tracking function of their suits, they hadn’t ever gotten ‘lost,’ but the walls seemed to shift when seen from the corners of their eyes.
Irina breathed a sigh of relief. Between the feeling of not knowing where they were going and having toxic substances dumped on them randomly, their passage through the maze had been disconcerting, to say the least. She was looking forward to traveling in a straight line again...and killing something at the earliest opportunity.
The PCP settled and the rest of the group moved to join Remy at the maze exit. “As the Americans say,” announced Remy, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we made it to the end of the maze. The bad news is that there is nowhere else to go.” He moved so that the rest of the group could see the passage beyond him. After about five feet, the passage terminated in a small alcove. A torch burned in the five foot space, illuminating blank, featureless walls. It was a dead end.
When the Gods Aren't Gods: Book Two of The Theogony Page 19