Beyond Armageddon: Book 03 - Parallels

by Anthony DeCosmo

  Given the confines of the halls and rooms, the Behemoths were relegated to the larger landing bays which they shared with a squad of dormant Golems. They fed on slabs of Husker meat and slept in piles of straw shoveled onboard prior to departure. After a few hours in the air, a rather pungent aroma escaped the hangers and gave the ship a barn-like scent.

  While not experienced, the bridge crew had trained extensively for this mission, using parts from a downed Geryon blimp to assemble that simulator in Fromm's mountain hideaway. As Trevor and his armies had co-opted Centaurian—or 'Redcoat'—transports, Fromm intended to build a fleet of zeppelin battleships through theft and reverse-engineering.

  Trevor and Nina shared a cabin. Despite her experience as a pilot, she suffered bouts of air sickness. Or, perhaps, frayed nerves deserved the blame, considering that if all went well she would return to Sirius soon and if all did not go well she would soon be dead.

  The first day and the first night of the voyage passed without incident.

  Trevor and Major Forest ate at Fromm’s table in the Captain’s quarters. The two leaders shared stories of their wars although Trevor left out a few details of the Battle of Five Armies.

  Fromm had not yet faced the Hivvans. Trevor advised him of the matter-makers and how they had solved much of his people’s supply problems.

  Conversely, Fromm warned again of the Witiko. Apparently they were humanoid and rather splendid looking, but were masters of deception and intrigue. Fromm's opinion of the Witiko translated roughly into ‘snobbish princes’ and ‘task masters.’

  On the second day they traveled through heavy cloud cover. Swift gusts buffeted the air ship and wind-blown rain splashed against the circular view ports in the halls and cabins. While they had a difficult time seeing what lay below, Fromm informed that they had left behind the northern seas and now flew over land, commencing the final leg of their journey.

  ---

  Trevor and Nina lay on a bunk in their dark, windowless cabin. In fact, the only light in the room came from a tiny red dot above the exit door.

  She lay in his arms but no romance remained between the two; their relationship had grown far more complex since leaving Thebes.

  He whispered in her ear, "What will happen to you when you go home?"

  Either she did not hear his question or she ignored it. Instead, she quickly asked, "I know I can't make up for what I did, and I know you can't forgive me, but I am sorry, Trevor. I'm sorry for everything."

  At first, he did not respond. How could he? She had tricked, kidnapped, and manipulated him. While others—like Director Snowe—played major parts in the scheme, it had been this Nina Forest who had purposely sought and released that dark spot inside.

  Then again, it was his dark spot. And it had been his duplicate who had so beaten and corrupted this woman that she thought the only chance at happiness laid in resurrecting her tormentor. Sick and twisted, yes, but his twin bore responsibility for doing the twisting.

  "I don't know, Nina," eventually he replied. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself. I've done some hard things on my world, all in the name of fighting the invaders. The whole time I told myself that I have a mission and it's a good one, even if some bad things need to be done. I've sort of, I don't know, sort of come to terms that I'm the guy who has to do the nasty stuff now and then. But now I find out that I could just as easily be one of those invaders. Not just because your Trevor was one of the bad guys, but because of how easily I filled his shoes."

  "You thought you were defending your planet."

  "I can tell myself that, sure. Maybe I'll sleep better. On my Earth I've got people to keep me in check; friends. Here…here I was set free to act however I wanted and I took full advantage. Since this invasion began, I've learned I'm capable of a lot of big things, and now I've found out I'm capable of a lot of petty, nasty things, too."

  A soft shimmer carried through the cabin, probably a wind gust buffeting the zeppelin.

  She answered his initial question, "I’m thinking I’ll be the first one of us to ever return home. Like, everyone who came through the gate on our side has never gone back to Sirius."

  "Nina, the important thing is that when you get home, you tell them what's happening here."

  "I'll try."

  He stroked one of her short ponytails. As he did, Trevor felt a pang in the pit of his stomach as he realized this adventure neared an end. Most of him wished it never occurred. What he had done…what he had nearly become…the loss of his friend. At the same time, part of him—a small, tiny fragment but a part nonetheless—did not want it to come to a close.

  She was not the woman he loved. But she was so close…so close to being her. An illusion but, as Johnny had warned, sometimes the heart is a fair-weathered friend.

  …when it has not been fed the diet it desires…it will coax and coerce.

  She said, "I’m going to miss you."

  "I hope you find a better life when you get home, Nina," he answered. "But that’s going to be up to you."

  They lay together in the dark, both fearing the future ahead but knowing they had no choice but to face it.

  Alone.

  ---

  Steeply angled windows faced forward as well as to either side of the battleship's bridge. Most of those windows included control consoles underneath, no doubt nearly identical to the training simulator back at the Chaktaw base.

  A high-backed, elevated Captain's chair sat at the center of the room with a bank of monitors and displays overhead. Of course Fromm manned that particular station.

  Trevor and Nina spent the last few hours of their journey on the bridge, watching the dance of the northern lights: sweeping sheets of white, yellow, green and red hovering in the sky.

  At several points during the last stretch of the flight, Trevor wondered if they actually moved at all. The ocean of pure white below seemed unchanging, as if they stared at the same vision for hour after hour. Only the occasional rattle from a wind gust and the hum of the churning engines gave any clue of momentum.

  Still, he felt fortunate to see that stretch of white. Had they arrived a few weeks prior, they would have traveled in perpetual darkness or, at best, twilight. When Jon Brewer followed this same path a world away during late summer, he benefited from the ‘midnight sun’. The opposite would have held true during the heart of winter; nothing but night for weeks on end.

  Finally, the navigator turned in his seat and spoke directly to Fromm who stood, drew his eyes taut, and stared at his human prisoners.

  All-of-a-sudden Trevor felt like an alien again.

  The human slave translated the Chaktaw leader's words.

  "We have arrived. There is nothing here."

  ---

  The Chaktaw infantry still wore their ponchos, albeit slightly heavier versions with thicker undergarments. Trevor and Nina wrapped blankets around their battle suits, yet still shivered in sub-zero temperatures.

  A half-dozen Golems moved in mechanical strides along the perimeter of the landing party. They wore streaks of white and yellow as to proclaim their new masters, Chaktaw soldiers plugged in to virtual reality consoles high above the target zone in the captured battleship.

  If the weather bothered the Behemoths it did not show. The nasty-looking creatures trotted along the crusty snow cover with seemingly no concern for the dry, bitter wind or the dead freeze permeating the Ring of Ice.

  With Behemoths and soldiers and Chaktaw-operated Golems surrounding him, Trevor stared forward at the big plain of nothingness where he expected to find the obelisk containing the runes. He checked and re-checked the coordinates he remembered with the maps Fromm provided, allowing for all manner of incorrect translations between Chaktaw and human topography. No matter how many times he ran it, he reached the same conclusion. The city-sized structure should be directly in front of him.

  "I don’t understand!" Trevor called out as much to the Gods as to the people and creatures around him. "It’s s
upposed to be here! It has to be here!"

  Major Forest said for about the third time, "Could it be buried underground?"

  Each time she asked, her voice grew shakier.

  Through his translator, Fromm answered for the third time, "We have used the battleship's sonar to scan this entire area. The scanners would have found any structure hidden beneath the surface."

  Each time he answered, his voice grew angrier. However, this time he continued to speak.

  "I warned you about deception. Did you think I jest?"

  Trevor, still staring at the empty plain of snow shouted, "No! I told the truth! They should be here!"

  Behind him, he heard Fromm mutter an order followed by a soft vibration in the ground that grew more pronounced as the Jaw-Wolf eased into position behind Trevor, its massive grin filling the world behind him.

  "…they should…they must be here…"

  He felt Fromm’s eyes on his back. He sensed the reluctance of the Chaktaw leader to give the order. Sometimes, Trevor knew, orders were hard to give even when you were certain they had to be given.

  I’m sorry, Jorgie.

  The ground exploded and a ripple of earth—a wave of white and black—carried toward them casting snow and ice into the air like a geyser. Trevor, Fromm, Nina, the soldiers, the Jaw-Wolves, and the Golems were thrown up and came crashing back down as if tossed from a bucking bronco.

  Ahead of them, the ice cap splintered with cracks reaching out from some massive epicenter. The landing party retreated in a sprint. Trevor had to grab the stunned Major by her arm to yank her out of the way of dropping ice slabs that had been thrown into the air.

  A black wall rose from the ground. No, a black building the size of a small city. Round and darker than a moonless night. It loomed above the puny humans and Chaktaw below and towered over the Earth—all of the Earths—a symbol of powers beyond comprehension.

  Higher and higher into the sky. The wind whipped like madness across the barren white wilderness; the sound of its arrival came in such a powerful roar that it threatened to shake the battleship from the sky.

  Finally the ascension ceased; the gargantuan obelisk had grown to full height.

  An eerie silence replaced the chaos and roar of the enigma’s arrival. For several long moments no sounds came, not from the wind, not from the air ship, not from the people or beasts on the ground.

  Then the great puzzle began to turn. Each of the obelisk’s many layers rotated in different directions, creating a sound of stone grinding on stone.

  Trevor did not have a clever line to speak or a comical crack to offer. He was not even so much relieved at the sight of the gigantic structure as he was afraid. It was one thing to hear the descriptions and see the digital photographs; it was another to be dwarfed by the object itself, an object that spoke of entities capable of controlling time and space.

  Fromm finally found his voice. He had to repeat his words twice because his human translator still struggled to regain her concentration, the most sign of humanity behind those beaten eyes Trevor had yet seen.

  "What do we do now, Trevor Stone?"

  Trevor licked his lips as he tried to remember what Jon had told him.

  "It's like a puzzle box," Trevor said. "It's solving itself. I don't know how long that will take."

  "Again, what do we do now?"

  Trevor turned to Fromm and could not help the smug expression he threw at the Chaktaw leader. He wanted to shout 'see, I told you' but instead just said, "We wait."

  ---

  Indeed they waited. They waited for hours as the layers of the structure rotated and turned at varying speeds and intervals. They waited as morning turned to early afternoon and a hazy sun drove temperatures above zero.

  Trevor studied Fromm as they watched, first from the surface, then again from the warmer bridge when they returned to the airship. He saw that the Chaktaw leader tried to understand the rhythm of the turning enigma; his lips moving as if performing calculations in his mind.

  Whether Fromm ever grasped the equation buried in the rotating layers, Trevor did not know but the enigma did finally stop. The constant grinding noise ended and all eyes—even some that were barely awake—turned to the structure and saw one large black hole of an entrance beckoning.

  Through the slave, Fromm told the two humans, "You will remain here."

  Trevor repeated a warning based on Jon Brewer's experiences, "Remember what I told you. It's chaos in there; a giant machine with gears and parts that could crush you without even taking notice. Plus, my team encountered several guardians that were indigenous to the obelisk."

  "I understand," Fromm replied. "If I am not successful, Jaff will take a second team inside. You two are not allowed to enter the obelisk until the hands of a Chaktaw have possessed the runes. If you try, you will be killed."

  "Of course."

  Then Fromm was off, leaving Jaff in the Captain’s chair.

  Trevor and Nina stood on the bridge watching through the main windows while the crew monitored readings, checked systems, and otherwise kept busy.

  A soft vibration shook the gondola as the landing module separated from the undercarriage and sped to the ground. It wobbled and shook on its spring-loaded landing gear until, after several seconds, it stabilized and the long door fell open. Fromm, a pack of Behemoths, and several squads of infantry exited. They rendezvoused with a patrol of six Golems standing watch below the airship.

  Then it happened.

  Trevor and the people of his Empire had lived with the mystery for years, yet none actually saw it occur. Scientists advanced theory after theory but the process and the substance and the meaning eluded understanding although, interestingly enough, when Trevor mentioned the phenomena of 'riding the ark' to Fromm, the Chaktaw knew nothing of it.

  As Trevor saw it happen, he moved no closer to knowing. But as he witnessed the event, he realized Voggoth had broken yet another rule.

  With two leaders of the great races so close together and with victory on two worlds so near, The Order’s living God acted.

  A flash like a humongous camera bulb exploded in front of Fromm's expedition, its light flooding the surface as well as the battleship bridge for a split second. Trevor heard no sound, but he saw a shockwave of wind as a mass materialized and displaced air.

  Fromm’s path was blocked by a massive green glob of goo similar to the sarcophagi that had transported Ashley and thousands of other human beings from his Earth through time and space. The only difference was in size. The green object on the snow stood fifty feet long, half that length wide, and dozen feet tall.

  Fromm’s forces fanned out but kept their distance. The Behemoths scraped the ground in agitation like bulls preparing to charge, held back only by Fromm's hesitation.

  Trevor, Nina, and the rest watched from the gondola windows.

  Something squirmed inside the gooey blob, poking against the walls as if trying to push out. Something big.

  The blob of green mess popped like a water balloon and evaporated, replaced by a churning, bubbling mass of brown and black puss resembling more a pile of carrion than a creature. Yet it moved and groaned and a steamy mist rose from its edges.

  Slimy, rope-like appendages reached out while three distinct mounds grew at the center of the pile. Those mounds opened black maws that bellowed a cry that was as morose a noise as any sound ever heard on any Earth.

  Such a vile sight caused a moment of hesitation and the creature seized that moment. One of the trio of maws on the three head-like lumps opened as if yawning and a crackling ball of lightning fired from the beast into the air, slamming into the forward section of the dirigible. Blue sparks and balls of flame erupted in front of the bridge windows and carried through the ship's circuitry to the point that several bridge consoles sparked enough to flash-burn Chaktaw technicians.

  Automated warnings activated throughout the ship, howling in a Geryon-programmed klaxon that sounded more an animal bark than synthetic alarm. T
he lights of the bridge flickered then darkened, replaced by small red glows from battery-operated emergency bulbs.

  Trevor and Nina fell to the hard metal floor and lay still while the crackle and sizzle of frying circuits died. The crew gathered their wits and extinguished a handful of small fires born from the electrical surge.

  Jaff issued orders in his language, no doubt calling for damage reports and medics while also urging those still at their stations to get a handle on navigation and defense systems.

  After several seconds the chaos of the attack subsided. At that point, Trevor became reasonably sure they would not fall from the sky, at least not yet. He looked to Nina who nodded in silent reply, and then they both rose to their feet.

  With the sparks and lightning-like energy weapon dissipated, Trevor could see out the gondola windows again. The creature had taken more definite form: three bulbous heads, each with one eye and a big, toothless mouth. He saw slimy hose-like arms—maybe two dozen of them—but no legs, although he assumed the mound could slither if need be.

  Some of those arms held Chaktaw infantry, banging them against the snow until their white camouflaged ponchos changed to blood-red balls. The rest of the arms flailed about hoping to grab the next victim.

  The mouths on the heads opened and closed groaning that horrid groan. The rest of its body—if it could be called a body—was a mound of dirty, undulating flesh. Its dark, hideous mass contrasted starkly with the brilliant white snow.

  Fromm's infantry fired but their usually powerful and effective magnetic rifles did not appear to damage the best.

  Trevor yelled at Jaff, "The main gun! Fire your main gun!"

  Jaff did not appreciate the distraction as he coordinated medical attention for the injured crew and repairs to the damaged controls. Nonetheless, he paused and translated Trevor’s words for himself, then gaped at the human in a manner that required no translator.

  No shit, asshole. You think I haven’t thought of that?