The Seryys Chronicles: Death Wish

by Joseph Nicholson

  “So,” Bria tried to break the tension. “You were saying about your operation?”

  “Of course,” Tander said, grateful for the distraction. “Most of it came from my mining operations all over the western hemisphere. Both Tandy and I were left a large sum of money from our parents when they passed. Tandy bought a house, a ship and a car, while I invested my money in this mining operation. It was in shambles when I bought it, but now it’s one of the top ore providers for the military. Our family was not happy with Tandy’s choice of spending, but he was an adult. They didn’t like the fact that he wanted to become a soldier and, later, a cop instead of a business owner like the rest of us.”

  “I like helping people, making a difference in the lives of the common people,” Tandy defended himself.

  “But you are so much smarter than that!” Tander pleaded. “You know, Bria. I offered to make him a partner in my business, but he refused.”

  “I don’t like being a blue-blood. I like working for my money.”

  “You call what I do ‘not working’?”

  “No!” Tandy was losing his patience with his brother’s stubbornness. “I just don’t like being in charge of hundreds of others’ lives.”

  “You are, just in a different capacity.”

  “I protect them,” Tandy corrected his brother. “It’s different. I put myself in harm’s way, so others don’t have to.”

  “You were just destined for more, little brother. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “So you bought a mining facility and Tandy bought a ship?” Bria, once again, tried to break the tension.

  “Yep,” “Tandy beamed with pride. “And I still have that ship.”

  “You mean that was the Star Splitter? What the hell happened to it?”

  “A friend of mine upgraded her.”

  “That’s some friend.”

  “Well, he was.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He’s died on… Base Twelve”

  “You mean, Khail, the traitor?” Once the base burned up in the atmosphere, the base’s existence was released to the public.

  “He’s not a traitor!” Tandy snapped. “Trall was going to use a highly classified weapon called the-”

  “Hammer Cannon?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Oh come on!” Tander laughed. “Don’t you ever watch the Net’Vyyd? True Conspiracy is one of my favorite shows. They’ve covered that ship several times. But, of course, they never had any solid proof.”

  “You’ve got it now.”

  “Huh! That’s very interesting. But what does it have to do with Khail?”

  “Trall was going to use it on Seryys City. Khai stopped him and died doing it. He sent me a prerecorded message in the event that he didn’t make it.”

  “I can’t believe it…” Tander said, his breath taken away.

  “That’s not all,” Tandy added.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Puar is still alive somewhere. I have proof that his accident was staged.”

  “This can’t be…” Tander couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So what was this all about? Power? Money?”

  “Maybe both,” Tandy said with a sigh. “Only Khai knew the answer. My suspicion is that Trall was after the large Ti’tan’lium deposit under the city. With Director San from D-PAG out, and Khai dead, he’s the only one who can lay claim to it.”

  “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that the government wanted to destroy this world’s greatest city for money!”

  “I do, because it’s the truth.”

  “You said you have proof…” Tander said.

  “Right here,” Tandy held up a memstick. “It has Doctor Rashad’s autopsy reports. The two bodies recovered were that of a Puar’s driver and an unidentified male not matching any description even close to Puar.”

  “Let me see that,” Tander demanded.

  “No,” Tandy refused. “I’ll put it into the computer for you to look at. Too many people have died for this for me to just give it up to anyone.”

  “Fair enough,” Tander relented.

  An hour later, Tander was speechless. The findings were conclusive. Puar was definitely alive somewhere.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Tander admitted.

  “You can start with ‘I’m sorry’,” Tandy said.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Painkillers aren’t working as well as they were a while ago,” Khai said to Moon.

  “Well,” Moon replied sarcastically. “You’ve been popping them for days now. You need to back off of the pills.”

  “I’ve got to be getting closer to Tanbarder,” Khai said. “We’ve been traveling for days.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right,” Moon remarked, pointing off into the distance.

  Khai looked, squinting against the sun’s rays. That’s when he saw it, a glint on the top of the canyon wall several miles away. “That’s gotta be it!”

  Khai started running. Moon stayed with him.

  It wasn’t long before the glint turned into a large building with tubes hanging out over the canyon and running down the canyon wall. A large service lift was bolted into the rock wall as well. That was his key up.

  Just about an hour later, he had arrived. The building was in far worse shape from this distance. The lift was operational, and had power, but the rest of the facility was in shambles. He took the lift up. It was a rickety ride of about twenty feet up the hundred-foot wall when the lift chunked to a stop. The metal railings bolted to the wall were old and rusted; they creaked with fatigue and the bolts holding them to the wall started popping out.

  “Figures,” Khai said with a sigh!

  He looked around, knowing he only had seconds to find a way out. Ten feet to the right of the lift was a service pipe about three feet in diameter. Every five feet there was a support strut that fastened the pipe to the canyon wall. Khai took three steps and leapt for the piping. He caught a strut and the lift stopped its fall. Apparently it was his weight that stopped the lift. He climbed up the pipe the rest of the way and crawled over the ledge.

  When he stood, Moon was there, smiling and not in the least bit tired.

  “A little help would’ve been nice back there, you know.”

  “Not my style,” was all Moon said.

  “No,” Khai grumbled, his voice full of sarcasm. “Of course not.”

  The mining facility was abandoned. Not much remained except broken tools and antiquated mining equipment. There were several ore haulers all around the compound, but Khai was convinced that he wasn’t going to find an operational one. And a quick visual survey confirmed that assessment.

  A quick reconnoiter of the compound revealed that the facility still had partial power and was once a facility owned by Dah Ore Extraction. Dack’s family? Khai thought. He knew his only hope at this point was to venture in and see if there was a working communication console somewhere within the bowels of that building. There were several ways in, and all of them were viable options. He also found what appeared to be a small administrative office outside of the main building.

  The office had been ransacked at one time, though nothing seemed to be stolen per se. It looked like this place hadn’t been in service in about fifteen years; there was a newspaper sitting on a desk next to a console dated fifteen years ago. The office itself was ruined, stripped of anything of value. The only things that remained were papers, office supplies and one remaining console—which was active.

  He accessed the computer and got nothing more than a schematic of the mining building. He called up the building’s internal sensors and got a reading on the facility. It was large facility, several hundreds of thousands of square feet, three levels tall above ground and seven levels below ground. As most designs were, the communication tower was on the top floor of the building and the consoles to operate it were there, too. The computer gave him the most direct route to the communication tower and
he moved out. He managed to find a small codepad that would open any door inside and provide him with a map to his destination. The codepad also had a wireless earpiece that gave him a hands-free interface with it and the facility’s main computer.

  The most direct route wasn’t direct at all. There were two main lifts in the building. One was down and according to the computer wasn’t going to be operable anytime soon. The other lift was in working order, but wasn’t accessible from the main level or five levels below it. The main reactor on level five had ruptured and flooded levels three, four, five, six and seven with high levels of deadly radiation.

  The facility possessed two stairwells, one on either side. The one on the far side, same side as the operational lift, looked to have collapsed and the one on his side was visibly destroyed due to the large hole in the side of the building where he could see at least two levels of stairs were gone. It looked to be a rather large explosion from something that looked less like a mining charge and more like an RPG. The stairwells were lead-lined and the only safe place to be in the event that the reactor melted down. Most safety protocols instructed the miners to remain in the stairwells until radiation relief teams came to their aid.

  So his only course was to traverse the lower levels of the mining facility—which was definitely not the most ideal path—and brave the brief exposure to radiation on the lift ride up—again, not the best situation. He pried open the huge iron door; it creaked open sending an echo reverberating the down the stairwell and into the long, abandoned corridors of the facility.

  He peered in, his flashlight in one hand and his trusted pistol in the other. He was not prepared for what he saw. What he saw was carnage. Dried blood was all over the walls and floor of the corridor. Though long decomposed, dismembered skeletons lay everywhere. They wore tattered mining uniforms belonging to Dah Ore Extraction.

  “What the hell happened here?” he asked himself, realizing that Moon was nowhere to be seen.

  It was dead silent, only the sound of dripping water echoed in the lonely corridors. The musty smell of stale air with a slight accent of decay assaulted his nose. He grimaced as he slowly stepped in. This was definitely not just a core reactor going critical and the workers abandoning it; something came in here and tore these men apart, limb from limb. Small and large arms fire had riddled the area with bullet holes and there was definitely evidence of both mining-style charges and military explosives going off in the area. Maybe it was a Vyysarri attack, he thought. Though, this didn’t exactly fit the bill for a Vyysarri attack. Vyysarri didn’t tear their enemies apart—they simply drained them of blood.

  He pressed on, not venturing deeper into the facility to avoid the radiation. He slowly moved down the stairwell. He stopped only for a second to investigate the corridor of the next level and saw much of the same scene played out there; evidence of a struggle and more death. Whatever did this was not Seryysan or Vyysarri. Curiosity was eating at him, but the radiation levels were still too high. He knew that he would get his chance to find out once he reached the top level.

  The next level had some lighting; a few fluorescent light banks flickered and blinked hanging by their wires. Still, though, nothing new had surfaced; only the same dismembered skeletons everywhere.

  “This place is a tomb,” he said to the darkness and moved on.

  He reached level two and the codepad indicated that the radiation levels were safe enough to traverse the corridors.

  “Computer,” Khai called out. “What is the radiation level on this floor?”

  The garbled, male voice of the computer spoke back to him. “Radiation levels are measured at seven REPs.” REPs were Radiant Energy Particles in parts per million.

  “What REP level is fatal to humans?”

  “Five to ten REPs.”

  “How long will I survive on level two?”

  “Roughly one hour.”

  Not nearly long enough to find out what happened in here. “What about level one?” He was almost afraid to ask; the longer he was there the more uneasy he felt.

  “Two REPs, roughly three hours until effects of radiation felt.”

  “Damn,” he whispered. Plenty of time.

  He marched down the stairs to the bottom level. The stink was strongest here. The lighting was minimal but more than enough for him to see what had happened. He ventured deeper into the labyrinth of corridors. Immediately, he came across more evidence that he didn’t like. Skeletons in SCGF fatigues and armor, armed with the standard array of weapons. The farther he dived into the facility, the worse he felt. He found gashes, deep, long and about two inches wide along the walls. Definitely not Vyysarri.

  He was about an hour into the investigation, when the flat walls gave way to rougher, cave-like walls. “Computer. Where am I?”

  “You have entered the mining corridor. This is where the building meets the mine. It also houses the entrance to the mine itself.”

  As he walked deeper into the rocky corridor, he happened upon a large metal door about ten feet tall and fifteen feet wide. It was sealed shut. “Computer, what am I looking at?”

  “This is the entrance to the mine.”

  “What’s behind it?”

  “I’m sorry. My files on what exists behind the door have been corrupted.”

  “Convenient,” Khai grumbled.

  “Can the door be opened?”

  “Negative. Power supplies are only at reserve levels. Without the core, powering the motors for the door will be impossible.”

  “What happened here?”

  “The crew tunneled into a new cavern not charted on any geological map of this area and…”

  “And what? What did they find?”

  “… I’m sorry. My files on what exists behind the door have been corrupted.”

  “By who?” Khai shouted.

  Before the computer could respond, Khai heard some skittering from behind the large, metal door. Khai pressed his ear against it to see if he could hear anything from beyond. He rested his head against the door when a solid thump came from the door. Khai jumped back, tripping over a skeleton and falling backward, rapping his head against the wall.

  “Fuck!” he gasped.

  “Computer, what is behind that door?” he shouted.

  “I’m sorry. My files on what exists-”

  “I get it! I get it!” Khai shouted over the suddenly-consistent pounding on the door. “What is the structural integrity of the door?”

  “The door is constructed of Ti’tan’lium. It is ten feet by fifteen feet by two feet. The door is undamaged, and, given the nature of the material from which the door is made and the nature of the organisms behind the door, it is highly unlikely that the structural integrity will ever fail.”

  “Organisms? What kind of organisms?”

  “I’m sorry. My files on what-”

  “Shut up!”

  The thumping became deafening! The constant pounding against the door turned to scratching at the door. Nails screeching against the metal door assaulted his ears. He instantly thought of the scratch marks he found on the walls of the corridor before he found the entrance to the mines. He put his hand on the door and felt it flex with every blow. Suddenly, he didn’t want to know what was behind the door, he only wanted to get the hell out of there.

  He started moving through the corridors, following the map on his codepad. He found the lift and punched the button for the top the level. The lift started moving and in short order, he made it to the communication room and all the equipment was in working order. It seemed that whatever was behind that door wasn’t able to get into the upper levels of the facility.

  He keyed in the frequency of the dedicated com unit he had given Dah. It patched through.

  “Tell me I’m dreaming,” Dah’s voice came over the com.

  “Okay, you’re dreaming. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, come get me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the com tower of the mining
facility time forgot. Oh, and I think it was owned by your family.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s called Dah Ore Extraction.”

  There was dead silence, then, “Activate the beacon for that facility. It should be next to the communications console. Do you see it?”

  “Yeah,” Khai said, stepping over to it. “Give me just a second to turn it on.”

  “Is he really there?” Tander’s voice was full of dread. The map of every mine owned by Dah Ore Extraction materialized in the empty space in the room. The mine in question was blinking. Dah Ore Extraction Mining Facility 11 blinked red as the beacon was activated. “Damn!”

  “What? What’s so important about that mine?”

  “I’m not allowed to discuss it with anyone for any reason. It’s been deemed classified,” Tander said cryptically.

  “Is Khai in danger?” Tandy asked.

  “No… Well, not immediately.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I can’t tell you. But we have to go—now. If the military gets that signal, they’ll be all over it like Vyysarri on blood.”

  “Khai are you there?” Tander yelled into the com unit.

  “Yeah. I read you.”

  “Turn the beacon off right now. We’re coming to get you!”

  “Right. Turning it off. Dack?”

  “Yeah?” Tander asked for his brother.

  “You have a cold or something?”

  “No. I’ll explain later.”

  “Prime Minister!” Trall’s aid shouted, panicky.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I have an urgent message from Commander Hoom!”

  “Patch him through.” There was an audible click. “What can I do for you Commander?”

  “Sir, the beacon on DOEMF Eleven was activated for only a moment then turned off! What are your orders?”

  “Send a team to investigate. We can’t have anyone ruining our plans. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir! I am dispatching the soldiers now.”

  “Good,” Trall hissed. “Do not fail me. Trall out.”