The Forgotten Shrine

by Monica Tesler

“I appreciate your concern, but we’ll take it from here. I’m sure you’re happy to get back to your training. Thank you for your service, cadets.” She looks down at her tablet and swipes the screen like she’s checking to see what’s next on her agenda.

  The guards on either side of the admiral stand. Her words are supposed to function as a dismissal.

  Lucy throws me a panicked glance. “Wait!” she says. “Excuse me, Admiral, but we have some additional intelligence to report.”

  The admiral gestures for her guards to sit and nods at Lucy to continue.

  “We think the Alks are up to something, Admiral. Jasper has had these really vivid dreams—”

  “Dreams?” the admiral interjects.

  “They’re not dreams, exactly,” I say. “I’m pretty sure some of it’s real. We think the Alks are running tests on us at night, and we plan to prove it.”

  “In your quarters?” she asks.

  “They’re VR, sir,” Cole says. “Our rooms can easily morph into laboratories while we sleep.”

  “I’m familiar with the technology, cadet,” she says, “but that is an outrageous allegation.”

  “With all due respect,” Marco says, “the Alks are not really known as upright dudes.”

  Lucy glares at Marco. That was not the right thing to say.

  “I’ll remind you, Mr. Romero, that the Alkalinians are our allies.”

  This has gone way off track. We have to bring it back to the mission.

  Tube. Connection, Mira says through her brain patch, sending me the same picture from the Frog.

  Oh! So that’s what Mira meant! We can get to the tether through the tube.

  Mira’s foot presses against mine beneath the table. Tell her.

  “Admiral,” I say. “There’s a tube that’s anchored to the ocean floor. It leads from the Alkalinian Seat all the way here, connecting to the saucer near the tether. I believe you could traverse between the structures without the need to travel by water. That might be necessary to take down the shield. If you would authorize us to investigate the tube, we could find an access point.”

  “Yes!” Marco interjects. “We saw some of those sneaky snakes down there this morning. We should be able to get into that tube, no problem!”

  Sneaky snakes? Geez, Marco. You are not helping.

  “Cadet!” the admiral says. “I’ve warned you once! You are not to disrespect the Alkalinians. Perhaps you don’t understand how important this—”

  “He didn’t mean it, Admiral!” Lucy interrupts. “He just doesn’t always think before he speaks.” Lucy looks like she wants to keep talking and it’s taking everything in her power to reign it in. She must have realized she cut off the admiral midsentence.

  “Apparently, neither do you, cadet.” The admiral levels a cool stare at all of us. “I’ve heard enough. I regret that Officer Johnson didn’t provide more capable supervision of your pod here on Alkalinia. Obviously, you’ve grown far too comfortable with your independence. That stops now. You are not to conduct any further investigations—no looking for the tube, no nighttime science experiments in your quarters. I will station guards on the cadet hall. They will provide all the security you require. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” we say in unison.

  “You’d do well to remember that Earth Force is a hierarchy,” the admiral continues. “You follow orders that come down from above. Even if you don’t agree with those orders, you need to follow them. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m ordering you to fall in line with the rest of the Academy, and that includes complying with the Alkalinians’ directives. I shouldn’t need to say this again, but the Alkalinians are our allies. We wouldn’t want to appear ungrateful for their immense hospitality in hosting the EarthBound Academy. Many things are riding on the success of our partnership.”

  She stands, and all of her guards jump to their feet. There is no question that the meeting is over.

  As we prepare to leave, the admiral nods. “Cadets, again, thank you for your service to Earth Force.”

  “Are you sure no one followed us?” I ask as we track the lit runners away from the hangar. We want to debrief on our own after the nightmare of a briefing with Admiral Eames, and we may as well pay a visit to Serena in the process.

  “That’s the fifth time you’ve asked,” Lucy says. “I’ve been watching our backs the whole way. Stop second-guessing me.”

  “I know, it’s just that we don’t want anyone else to know about Serena.”

  “How dumb do you think I am, Jasper Adams?”

  “Oh! Can I answer that?” Marco pipes in.

  Lucy whacks him in the arm.

  Almost there. Last corner, Mira says.

  “It’s just up ahead,” I say.

  Mira stops and extends her arm, blocking our path.

  “Shhh!” Lucy says. “I hear something.”

  We flatten ourselves against the wall. Sure enough, the whirring motors of flying thrones grow louder by the second.

  Marco creeps ahead and peeks down the hall, then quickly recoils. “They’re headed this way. Fly! Now!”

  We take off in our blast packs and turn left at the next fork into a dark hallway.

  Unlucky for us, we pick the only hallway with no doors. At the very end we finally reach a room. Marco twists the door handle, and we pour in after him.

  Cole activates his tablet, and the light from the screen illuminates a few-meter radius. “Whoa. What is all this stuff?”

  I turn on my tablet and shine it around me. The room is enormous, stretching back across the whole length of the hallway. Everywhere I look are piles of shiny objects in brilliant colors.

  “Oh my God!” Lucy says. “These are jewels!” She illuminates her own tablet and props it up next to a pile of sparkling green gems. “I think these are emeralds!”

  “Where’d they get all this stuff?” I ask, shining my tablet at a pile of clear crystals. “Are these—”

  Diamonds, Mira completes my thought. She dips her long fingers into the stones and lifts up a handful of the rocks. They refract the light of my tablet and cast a rainbow glare on Mira’s skin.

  “Who keeps a stockpile of precious gems in an abandoned room?” Lucy asks.

  “Who has a stockpile of precious gems?” Marco says. “This stuff has to be stolen!”

  “We don’t know that,” Cole says. “Maybe they received these gems as compensation for their services.”

  “What services, Wiki? Stealing secrets and selling them on the black market? This settles it! We need to take matters into our own hands! We need to figure out what the Alks are up to!”

  “No way,” Cole says. “You heard what the admiral said. We have to follow her orders!”

  “I heard her, all right,” Marco says. “She said she’d post some guards. Really? Guards? You know as well as I do that guards will do exactly nothing to prevent the Alks from messing with us while we sleep. Are you ready to let that happen?”

  “What choice do we have?” Lucy asks.

  Marco leans his arm against the door. “We can make any choice we want as long as we don’t get caught.”

  “Count me out,” Cole says. “I’m not violating a direct order.”

  “Come on, you know Jasper was right back there. We need a safe passage between the Seat and the saucer. We have to find out how to get into that tube! You saw those Alks down there today. Maybe they were the same Alks we nearly ran into just now. We need to know what they’re up to.”

  “Actually, no, we don’t need to know that,” Cole says. “The admiral ordered us to respect the Alks, not snoop on them.”

  Marco takes a step toward Cole, but Lucy blocks him. “Let’s take some time to think about it. As soon as we get out of this room, we’re going to see Serena. She may be able to tell us why the Alks were here. Then it will be time to head back to the hangar. Okay?”

  “Fine,” Marco says. “But this isn’t over.”

  “We’
ll talk about it later,” I say, crossing to the door. I need some time to think things through, like Lucy said. I don’t want to cross the admiral, but my gut tells me we need to do something. “I’m sure those Alks have passed by now. Let’s go.”

  We don’t encounter any other signs of the Alks on our way to the shrine. We crawl through the narrow opening and gather on the pillows in the middle of the room. Just like last time, once we settle in the center, the ceiling awakens and a majestic image of a planet comes into view. It rotates through multiple astral scenes and then zooms through the atmosphere to reveal old Alkalinia: a beautiful planet with purple rocks, deep crevices, glistening rivers leading to a turquoise sea. The mark of a modern and powerful civilization is carved into the surface.

  I’m so entranced I hardly hear the heavy swish of Serena’s thick body gliding into the room.

  She rises from the stone when she reaches me. Her head waves in the air, and she hisses and clicks. She brings her mouth so close I can see my reflection in her silver fangs. Her tongue darts out and touches my nose. I hold my breath. She’s not planning to attack me (I hope), but I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to a giant snake getting in my face.

  “Cole!” I whisper. “The voice box!”

  Cole digs in his blast pack and pulls out the box. He waves it in the air so Serena will see it. She pulls back from me and glides around until she reaches Cole. She hisses and dips her nose to the box.

  “Go ahead,” Cole speaks into the box. The box emits an odd clicking sound in translation.

  Serena bows low over the box and hisses. Then she clicks. Then she hisses some more. As she speaks, her body shudders, and her tail waves in the shape of a giant S. Before I even hear the translation, I can tell she’s in pain.

  Mira touches my hand. Despair.

  “My brothers and sisters were here today,” the voice box translates. “I heard them in the halls. I smelled their pungent scent. Their voices carried to me news from beyond. Oh, young ones, my people were here. They were here, but yet they did not come. They paid no respect. They ignore me and turn their backs on their past. The Shrine of Remembrance has been forgotten.”

  Serena shakes her head and emits a sound—neither hiss nor click, it’s more like a cry. It needs no translation. She’s obviously devastated. She cries out again and then lashes the side of the shrine with her tail.

  “Remember or repeat, young ones! Remember or repeat! We are doomed!” Her tail thumps against the wall so hard the ceiling panels shake.

  “Touchy subject,” Marco says.

  Lucy flashes her palm at Cole. “Hand me the voice box.”

  “I’m so sorry, Serena,” Lucy says once Cole passes it over. “Truly. All of us feel just awful that the Alks didn’t visit you and remember and stuff. But maybe—I mean, did you ever stop and consider—they were possibly very busy on an important mission and didn’t have time to stop. And, you see, that’s why we’re here. We’re happy to watch the video, of course, but we also wanted to talk to you and see if you happened to know what the Alks were doing here today.”

  Serena coils in a circle and lays her head on top of her thick, scaled body. She blinks at Lucy and jerks her head back.

  Lucy climbs off the cushions and over to Serena. She holds the voice box up to Serena’s mouth.

  Serena juts her head at Lucy’s face with a loud hiss. Lucy rears back.

  “I hear enough to know enough, young ones,” Serena says. “The cycle of war and destruction continues. Remember or repeat!”

  “That doesn’t sound too good,” Marco says.

  “What exactly do you mean?” Lucy asks. “What were the Alks doing here at the saucer?”

  Serena swings her head heavily as she clicks into the voice box. “They were securing their pipes and stockpiles. They were double-checking their shield. They do not remember. Remember or repeat!”

  “Do you mean the occludium shield?” I ask. “Is that something unusual for them to do? Do you think something’s about to happen?”

  “Do you not understand, young ones? It is happening again. All will be lost. All will be destroyed. Devastation comes to those who do not remember. Remember or repeat! Why don’t they come? Why don’t they visit the shrine? They must remember!”

  Cole taps my shoulder. “What does she mean, ‘it is happening again’? And what does it have to do with the occludium shield?”

  I shrug. I really have no idea what she’s talking about. I’m actually starting to wonder if Serena might not be all there in her mind. Being alone like she is could probably drive anyone crazy.

  Still, she’s our best lead. We have to try to piece together what she’s saying. It can’t be that weird for them to send Alks over here to check the shield. What did she say? “Devastation comes to those who do not remember”? “Remember or repeat!” This place is called the Shrine of Remembrance. It shows how amazing Alkalinia was before their planet was destroyed and they were forced to relocate.

  That’s when it clicks. The Alks’ planet, destroyed . . . in the last intragalactic war.

  I grab the voice box from Lucy. “Serena, are you saying there’s going to be a war?”

  “I pray I am wrong, young ones. I must descend. I must return to my babies. All my babies will die. Tell them to come! They must remember!”

  She slowly uncoils her heavy body and glides toward her hole, her eyes drooping in weary resignation.

  Lucy takes the voice box back. “What babies?”

  Serena emits a painful cry and continues into her hole.

  Marco leans over Lucy and shouts into the voice box. “What stockpiles?”

  Serena stops, but she makes no effort to return. I don’t know if she’s going to answer Marco’s question.

  “Wait! Give me the box!” Marco shouts at Lucy, grabbing it out of her hand and hurling himself over the cushions to where Serena waits.

  “Please tell us,” he says softly. “Stockpiles of what?”

  He places the translator next to Serena’s nose. She flicks her tongue and hisses.

  “Venom.”

  19

  “VENOM?” MARCO SAYS ONCE WE’VE crawled out of the shrine. “I mean, really? This place is lifted straight out of my nightmares. Actually, I’m pretty sure this is a nightmare, and I’d like to wake up right about now.”

  “Like I’ve been saying,” Lucy says, “you’re afraid of snakes.”

  “I hate snakes. Having a dream about something you hate as much as I hate snakes is called a nightmare, thank you very much.”

  Lucy shrugs. “Potato, po-tah-to.”

  After Serena told us about the venom stockpiles, we pummeled her with questions. Apparently, venom is the Alks’ currency. It’s highly valued on the galaxy’s black market. It can be used as medicine, but it’s more often used as a mood- and mind-altering drug, or even a weapon. And it drives a steep price. No wonder Seelok and his top aides drape themselves in jewels.

  “We need to get back,” Cole says. “Gedney will be wondering what happened to us.”

  “Not so fast,” Marco says. “I, for one, am not signing up to die in this waterlogged snake den. That means the time to find a way to get to that tether from the Alkalinian Seat is now. You heard Serena—those Alks were over here examining their venom stockpiles and checking their occludium tether today. You tell me: Do you feel comfortable waiting until tomorrow for the admiral’s guards to check on the tether?”

  “That would be going against a direct order,” Cole says.

  “Better to go against a direct order and live than comply and die,” Marco says.

  And die. Marco’s right. We could die, and it wouldn’t just be us. The lives of all the cadets are at risk. Addy’s life is at risk.

  “I’m with Marco,” I say. “We need to act now. We need to figure out where that tube connects. Plus, like we’ve been through before, Earth Force needs us. Even if we’re caught, what are they really going to do to us?”

  “You know what happened to
Regis,” Lucy says.

  Marco throws up his hands. “You and the drama! They are not going to kick us out! We’re their star Bounders! Their special forces unit!”

  “Punishment is not the point,” Cole says. “It’s the principle!”

  Addy’s words from this morning echo in my mind. We’ve been lied to by Earth Force our entire lives. . . . I’m not going to play that game anymore.

  “Earth Force can’t stand on principle,” I say, “not when most of what comes out of their mouths is lies.”

  Lucy looks from me to Cole. “I’m not sure what to do. Mira?”

  Mira shakes her head and walks away from our group. Too tired for words.

  My other pod mates look at me, expecting me to reach Mira.

  Fine. I chase Mira down the hall. When I catch up, she stops. Try, I tell her. We need everyone on board. I gently take her hand, and we walk back together.

  Mira sends me pictures. Our pod in the Ezone. Our pod at Gedney’s lab. Our pod in the Youli vessel. Our pod on the craft destined for Alkalinia.

  Then she tries to articulate what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling. We’re them, but we’re us first. I trust us.

  Frustration radiates from her mind. Go on, I urge her.

  Mira looks at me. Her deep-brown eyes are filled with tears. I used to trust only myself. Now I trust us. All of us. Only us. We should do this together.

  The others look at me expectantly.

  “Well? What’d she say?” Lucy asks.

  “Um . . . it’s kind of cryptic.”

  Mira smiles. A tear overflows and carves a path down her cheek.

  “She trusts us,” I continue.

  “And?” Marco asks.

  “And I think she’s saying that we need to make the decision as a pod. We need to make the best decision with the information we have, regardless of what the admiral says. Because, at the end of the day, we’re all we have.”

  “It’s all about the pod,” Marco says.

  That was our slogan last tour. It was exactly right then, and it’s exactly right now.

  “I’m in,” Lucy says quietly.

  Mira steps beside Lucy.

  I nod and look at Cole. “Well?”