The young man who went by the name Sevadi had suffered a deep laceration across his brow and a tear at the side of his mouth, yet he joked about his injuries—making references to some form of human entertainment.
Once everyone had regained their strength and bid a final farewell to their fallen teammates, the remaining eight moved on down the tunnels through the gate the Nephera had used to ambush them.
After some time, Levian began to notice a change in the atmosphere. The temperature had risen considerably and the musty scent of soil lingered in the air. The floor sloped upward; the sounds of machinery and distant explosions shook the tunnels from above.
This path led the group to another much smaller passageway—a mineshaft, perhaps—that appeared as though it’d been built by human hands. Cracked, wooden cribbing lined the walls, supporting a twelve foot-high ceiling made from rusty metal sheets that looked like they could collapse at any given moment.
It seemed no one had been down here in quite a while. There were cobwebs everywhere, and the dust was so thick it could have been mistaken for unclean snow.
Levian halted suddenly, a wave of fatigue hitting him when he spotted the mound of boulders and melted vehicle wreckage that obstructed the path ahead.
This was not an accident, not a cave-in. It was obvious that crytal weaponry had turned these transports to slag, melted them and glued them together. The tunnel must have been purposely collapsed on top of the debris to prevent the team from traveling any further.
There was no way through. It was a dead end.
“Well that’s just fucking great!” Lieutenant Knoble shouted furiously, balling his hand into a tight fist and throwing a forceful punch at the hard steel wall.
“Calm yourself, Lieutenant.” The Ship Commander flashed his fangs at the human soldier, then tipped his head back and studied the ceiling. It didn’t appear to be too heavily reinforced, and judging by the volume of the sounds coming from the planet’s surface, it couldn’t be much more than two meters thick.
“Oh, fuck you!” Knoble shot back, shaking his hand in an effort to banish the pain he’d inflicted upon himself. “Do you realize how far back we would have to travel in order to find another exit? It could be days before we find another way out of here. We should have stayed in the ship!”
Ignoring the infuriated human, Levian drew Alkastoran’s Fire, pointed the weapon’s finely crafted barrel toward the ceiling, and pulled the trigger.
A spout of golden liquid burst out and cut straight through the steel, leaving a smoldering red-hot trail behind it. Globules of molten metal and liquid crytal rained down and speckled the floor, causing the humans to take a few involuntary steps backward.
The warrior finished his work within a couple of minutes and withdrew from the circle he’d so dexterously carved.
With a clamorous thunk, a four-foot thick slab of metal and stone fell to the ground. To the surprise of Green Team, the top was covered with cracked white tiles.
Pouring in from the steaming hole, rays of unnatural light beckoned the curious soldiers forward.
Levian stepped onto the slab, then jumped and grabbed the upper rim of the hole, managing to pull himself up with a bit of difficulty.
The room into which he emerged was painfully bright and colorless, save for a few uprooted plants in black pots. Sitting atop wooden tables were computing systems and what appeared to be testing equipment.
Then the all-too familiar click of a human weapon sounded behind him and he cursed himself, turning around slowly.
A dark-haired human stood there with her index finger on the trigger of a battle rifle. The red laser was trained on Levian’s head, but he knew that if she tried to shoot him she would still have to break through his shields to cause any real damage.
“Get the hell out of my lab,” the human ordered, undaunted. She clearly knew how to operate a firearm, but it was easy to see she wasn’t a soldier. She wore no bodysuit, no armor, nothing of the sort—just simple civilian-grade garments.
Lieutenant Knoble rose up on the shoulders of a Drocain warrior, poking his head up through the hole in the floor. He craned his neck to look up at the woman, an astonished expression on his face.
“Lieutenant?” The woman glanced at Knoble, a mixture of shock and anger in her voice. She didn’t take her aim off the Leh’kin warrior in front of her.
“Of all the places we could have come out . . .” Knoble clambered up into the room and grasped the barrel of her rifle. “Stand down, Dr. Chambers,” he commanded sternly, refusing to release his grip until she gave in and pointed it to the floor.
“What is going on here?” the Doctor questioned. “I never in a million years would have expected you to break into my laboratory—and with a Drocain warrior? Do you have any idea how expensive repairs are for this building? No way am I paying for this! It’s coming out of your—”
Knoble slapped his hand over the woman’s mouth and urged her to keep her voice down. “We bust in here and all you’re worried about is how much it’s going to cost to get your floor fixed? Did you even stop to think we might have bigger problems to deal with?”
Chambers pulled his hand from her face. “Well you’d better get to explaining fast, because you just set off every alarm in the damn building and it won’t be long before security turns this place upside down!”
As she finished, a rush of footsteps thundered in the hallway outside, and through the gaps in the blinds covering the windows Levian could see guards trying to override the door’s control panel. There were too many to fight.
Lieutenant Knoble grabbed the Doctor by the shoulders and met her eyes. “Stop them. Please,” he begged. “What we’re dealing with is bigger than all of us, and if those guards catch my team working with Drocain warriors, we’ll be arrested and charged with treason.”
Levian caught sight of movement below and looked to the floor. The hole they’d entered the lab through was beginning to close—rebuilding itself.
Nanotechnology? he wondered, then motioned to the ground and said, “Lieutenant, we must leave now or we will be trapped.”
“I’m coming with you,” Dr. Chambers said unexpectedly.
“What?” Knoble let go of her and took a step back.
“BSI will arrest me as well if they see what’s on the security cameras. They hate it when people keep secrets from them, and I would be the luckiest person in the world if they believed that I had no idea what you were doing here.”
“It’s too dangerous!”
“That’s cute, but you forget that I’m from Earth. I know danger and I can handle myself just fine.”
Lieutenant Knoble shook his head and sighed, and without another word, hopped down into the tunnels. Dr. Chambers rushed to a locker and grabbed a bulletproof vest before following.
Levian jumped just as the laboratory doors burst open, the hole closing behind him in time to block the guards’ fire. Looking back up, he saw tiny specks of red light glittering where the hole had been, confirming his earlier supposition—this was, in fact, the meticulous work of nanomachines.
“Good news is, they can’t follow us.” Knoble took his helmet off and ran his hand over the stubble on his head, then waved in the direction of the blockage. “Bad news . . . we still don’t know where to go with all this crap sitting in our way.”
Dr. Chambers was pulling on the collar of her sweater, trying to readjust the twisted fabric after strapping the vest to herself, seeming almost oblivious to the other warriors around her. She brushed her hair from her face and asked Knoble, “Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that your stepdaughter is behind all of this?”
“I assume that means she managed to talk with you?”
“Yes, she did,” Chambers said. “And Orion pointed out near the end of our conversation that there was more to her story than she was willing to tell us. Naturally, I wanted to ask about it, but Orion advised otherwise.”
“I swear your AI is a damn psychic,” Knoble grumble
d. “I spoke to Alana before she went running off to talk to you. I told her not to say anything to you about what was going on because, at the time, we had no idea how we were going to deal with this mess. And honestly, we still don’t know what the hell we’re doing.”
“What exactly is going on?”
Knoble put his hand to the back of his neck, clearly uncertain about exposing the Calypsis Project to the scientist. “I’ll try to keep it brief,” he said. “There was a private communications unit on Anahk. Admiral Anderson sent my team to retrieve it but the Drocain nabbed the thing before we could get it. This guy’s ship”—he gestured to Levian—“crashed on Calypsis and Echo Team recovered the PCU from the crash site. Alana listened to some audio file on it and found out about a plan called the ‘Calypsis Project.’ She first passed the news on to the Drocain warrior she met in the marsh, then she passed it on to me.
“We ended up forming this screwed up alliance, then the damn planet split open and pulled us in. Now we’re traipsing around in these godforsaken tunnels trying to find out what this project is all about, while also searching for an exit. I should also mention that we discovered another alien race. And hey, guess what? They’re a bunch of flat-faced freaks who’re apparently hell-bent on destroying us.”
“Okay,” the Doctor said, bewildered. “Okay. This is some sort of conspiracy and you’ve dragged me into it.”
“It’s a lot to think about, and I know you’re scared—”
“Oh, screw you,” Chambers muttered. “I’m not scared. You dumped a ton of info on me and it’s got my head in a mess. I’ll be able to figure it out eventually.”
Levian joined Lieutenant Knoble and the Doctor. “I believe now is as good a time as any to share a piece of knowledge of my own,” he said. “The ones who ambushed us earlier are called Nephera. They are a race of highly intelligent beings, far more advanced than any Drocain species. I have not dealt with them personally prior to the recent encounter, however I have heard many stories regarding past engagements.”
Knoble glowered at him. “You’re telling me this now?”
“A mistake on my part, I will not lie,” Levian confessed. “I chose not to speak of the matter until I was certain it was the Nephera we were facing. This was to avoid fear or confusion.”
“If you’d told us sooner we could have been ready for that attack!”
“Hey, shut up!” Private Sevadi interrupted loudly. He and the rest of Green Team were gathered over by the pile of wreckage. “We found a door!”
Knoble shot a final icy glare at the Ship Commander and then went over to his teammate.
The young man was right. There was a gate sitting half open right beside the sagging chassis of a human transport. Sparks flew from its frame as it tried tirelessly to close, but was unable to do so due to the debris lodged in its track.
“It’s a little banged up but we can still get through,” Sevadi said as he climbed over the top of the vehicle and slipped through the entryway. The rest of the team followed him into a room almost identical to the one they had been in earlier.
Despite the efforts of Lieutenant Knoble, Dr. Chambers had pushed her way to the head of the group, insisting that she remain at the front with him and the Ship Commander.
She was awfully stubborn.
Levian examined the doors in the room, most of which were locked or broken—except for one, which was already open. His mind nagged at him to retreat as he strode toward it, but there were no other routes available to the team. This one would have to do.
The moment he and Dr. Chambers entered, the door slammed shut behind them.
Alarmed, Levian spun on his toes and darted back. He curled his fingers, making a fist, and pounded on the door—only to recoil when a sharp pain shot up his arm and into his shoulder. His strike had been deflected by some kind of invisible shield.
An agonized shout from the other side indicated that the Lieutenant had discovered it as well. He then asked over the comms channel, “This is damn perfect, isn’t it? What are we supposed to do now?”
The same question was repeating in Levian’s head. Separated from the team with no way back into the room, he could think of only one option. “We have no other choice—we must continue on our separate paths and hope to regroup somewhere along the way.”
“Never split the party . . .” Lieutenant Knoble sighed. “God, I had a talk with Alana about this when she used to play Dungeons and Dragons.”
Levian didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about, and when a swarm of red appeared on his motion sensor he no longer cared to find out. “Lieutenant, I have detected enemy activity in the vicinity—advancing on your location.”
“Yeah, I see them! Alpha Team: defensive positions!” he hollered to his team, then added to Levian over the crackle and pop of gunfire, “Dr. Chambers is a vital asset to the UNPD and probably our only chance to save Earth. Keep her safe, Commander—that’s an order!”
The transmission cut out after that, and all attempts to reconnect to the channel failed. Without the radio, there was no other way to communicate with the rest of the team.
“Take this, Doctor—you will need it if we encounter any more Nepheran troops or their infernal machines,” the Ship Commander said, drawing the repeater from his thigh guard and handing it to Chambers as he passed her. Whilst she was already armed, the shotgun she carried looked like a much older model than those Alpha and Echo teams had carried and would likely be useless if they ran into trouble.
The air became crisp once more, bringing about old memories of the mountain ranges on Thei’legh. Levian had traveled across those vast rocky lands many years ago to spread the word about the war that’d been brewing on the border between the kingdom’s of Oe’Delavion and Oe’Nhervon.
He did not miss those expeditions in the slightest, and if the two kingdoms had simply agreed to split the tract of land they were fighting over, he would never have had to make them.
As they rounded the next bend, he and the Doctor were met by a glacial gust of wind blowing in from a set of massive gates sitting ajar at the end of the hall. The light shining through the gap was so intense that it obscured the view outside until Levian drew closer.
A seemingly infinite expanse of white stretched out before them—endless fields of snow. It spilled into the tunnel and rushed by the opening on strong winds, making it somewhat of a challenge to see into the distance. But Levian could still pick out a handful of dark green shapes thirty meters away.
How peculiar, he thought.
Traveling miles beneath the surface of the planet, he never expected to stumble upon a place such as this. A land of ice and snow inside Calypsis—something so impossibly unlikely, and yet here it was.
Levian convinced himself that this cavern could not be a natural formation, deciding it must have been constructed by the Nephera.
If so, then what is its purpose?
Braving the biting winds, the warrior stepped outside the gates.
“You can’t be serious.” Dr. Chambers was staring at the snow with apprehension, hands tucked under folded arms to keep them warm as she held her knee-length jacket closed. The clothes she wore were made of thin fabrics far too light to offer any decent protection from the cold.
“Lieutenant Knoble has asked me to ensure your safety and I intend to carry out that task to the best of my ability. But, if you will not agree to take the one and only path accessible to us . . .”
“Are you threatening me?” Chambers demanded.
“Guess.”
Dr. Chambers stalled another moment, then when Levian opened his cloak and offered shelter from the cold, she rolled her eyes and joined him. He had to wonder, though—how long could she last in this weather? There was no telling how far they would have to travel to find another way into the tunnels. They could be facing anything from hours to days out here.
Nearly fifty minutes into their journey across the rolling white hills, the Ship Commander began to hear voi
ces—faint calls reverberating off the icy stone walls he and Dr. Chambers trekked alongside. The first few calls could have easily been mistaken for an animal, but as they grew louder, the warrior knew he was hearing muffled words distorted by the howling storm.
Checking his motion sensor, there were no other signatures apart from his own and the Doctor’s—both of which winked on and off near the center of the tracker. Levian signaled for the scientist to halt as he studied the surrounding area, trying to pinpoint the source of these voices.
And there they were.
Six meters above on a rocky ledge jutting out from an alcove in the cliff’s face, Levian could make out the hazy shapes of the young Drahkori, his creature companion, Corporal Carmen, . . . and a fourth clinging to the tyliven’s long neck—the armor creation bot, Ayla.
Alana leaned out over the edge and waved her hands frantically in the air as she called out to the Ship Commander at the top of her lungs, trying to grab his attention. She had succeeded.
“Levian!” Kenon sounded greatly relieved to see him. “Thank the Gods, you are alive!”
“Stay there, we’re coming down!” the Corporal said, then conversed briefly with her teammates on the ridge before leaning out over the side of the ledge again to study the cliff wall. It was a steep slope that curved outward near the base, maybe just enough for the four of them to slide down safely.
Alana jumped first, sliding down the ice and plunging into the deep snow at the bottom. Kenon followed after her with Lithe and Ayla on his heels. The soldier stood and brushed snow from her combat suit, then ran over to Levian, freezing when her eyes locked with Chambers’.
“What are you doing here?” she asked breathlessly.
“Avoiding arrest,” the Doctor replied crossly, shivering as she rubbed her hands up and down her arms in an attempt to generate heat. “This wankjob and your stepdad busted into my lab through the damn floor and set off the alarms.”
“The forced entry was unintentional, I assure you,” Levian put in. “We were only trying to locate a viable route around a blockage in the tunnels.”
The Calypsis Project Page 18