The darkened streets below lit up as two streams of lightning discharged from LeBoeuf and Maxwell’s rifles, while the particle beams from Boyd and Chevallier’s rifles shot forward. Every shot hit their target dead-on, scenario one wasn’t going to happen, much to her relief. Chevallier’s targeting scanners reported that the Dragon Maiden’s barrier and vitals still remained, scenario two wasn’t happening either.
The Dragon Maiden yelped and staggered backward upon realizing the danger it was now in. Her Voelika entered her hands via telekinesis, and the dragon wing figures at both ends of the staff weapon began to glow orange. The Dragon Maiden vanished into blue light, darkness enveloped the park afterwards. Where she had jump ported to was anyone’s guess.
The HUD feeds for the three turned into static, their screams of pain followed. The Dragon Maiden wasn’t interested in Chevallier.
“Fuck!” she cursed while frantically searching from the rooftops as to where exactly the Dragon Maiden had materialized.
Chevallier charged to the opposite end of the building, peered into her scope scanning the nearby rooftops, the streets below, and the palm trees her team had hidden behind. There was nothing. She checked the next corner, the downed Marines still remained. The fourth and final side neared as she made a mad dash over to it. The scope unveiled the same sights, no movement, no activity, and no comm chatter. Visually, she was alone. Realistically, her target was out there, stalking her and her unresponsive team. The two became furious lionesses hunting each other as they both saw one another as the only threat in the AO.
Cracking sounds followed. Chevallier’s motion detector flared and placed red pulses of lights on her HUD, directing her attention behind.
A flawless one-eighty-degree turn made her face and aim at the staircase entrance she came from. There was nothing in it, nothing behind it, nothing else on the rooftops.
Her motion detector flared up again, this time it didn’t stop. Its pulsing red lights flashed ominously on her HUD, it was growing in strength. That’s when it became apparent what was moving as her feet felt vibrations, vibrations that quickly spread into her legs.
The building she stood on was rumbling.
Leaping off and using her MRF to slow her fall to the streets below crossed her mind, until she fell backwards and rolled chaotically over to the opposite end. The building began to tip over, crashing into another. Sparks flew up, glass shattered, and a deadly domino effect began to play out as the weight of the building forced the one it crashed into to tip over.
It was a frightening display to look at, especially from Chevallier’s point of view. She held on with one free hand at the edge of the building, watching the shattered glass from its blown-out windows rain to the streets, along with office desks, water coolers, computers, and whatever the hell else people in this year used in an office. It all slid out and down, plunging into blinding dust that rose up.
The Dragon Maiden appeared high above, floating in the skies, admiring her work, heckling and laughing at Chevallier like a witch. It snapped its fingers and a pulse of kinetic energy slammed against the building. The impact of it caused the edge Chevallier was holding onto to crumble. Her body tumbled to the madness below.
MRF plus shields prevented Chevallier from falling to her death as she hit the surface and crashed upon a cabinet that fell from above. As for her surviving everything else that was coming down upon her, well, only luck, dodge rolling, and what remained of her shields would get her through that. The dust cloud in the dark she was in didn’t help.
Minutes had passed, or was it hours? Chevallier wasn’t counting.
Her armored hand rose from the rubble that had buried her, rubble she had to dig herself out of. She made note of the various warnings her HUD reported, ranging from her shields being down, to significant damage done to her armor, though the massive crack on her screen was a clear sign of that.
The lone Dragon Maiden had returned to its previous spot in the park, unmoving, standing focused as the glowing orb-like drone continued to burn and cut away at the ground. It was trying to conserve its psionic power Chevallier figured, that would explain why it didn’t straight-up fight her as she was expecting. Easier to push buildings over by thinking about it and let the chaos do the rest.
The drone before the Dragon Maiden vanished along with the cutting beam, its tunneling had completed. Chevallier went for her rifle, a rifle that had fallen out of her grasp and got buried behind the fallen and crumpled building behind her. She yanked a pistol that was stored within her side leg storage slot and strode to the Dragon Maiden. The two made eye contact, the Dragon Maiden muttered parting words to Chevallier in its language, and then leaped into the newly created pit in the park.
Digging for her rifle would take too long as would signaling for help, not that it would be of any use with the HNI disruption still in effect. Chevallier was the one and only person on the face of the planet that could put an end to whatever the Dragon Maiden had intended to accomplish, and she had a pistol, no shields, and a damaged protect suit at her disposal.
Chevallier tilted her head downward at the pit seeing nothing but darkness, as the earth at the mouth of the pit glowed red with rippling heat waves rising above it. Her scanners revealed a long straight dip down, approximately six kilometers. Six kilometers? That sounds familiar, she thought while reminiscing about Tiamat’s tomb. Not a fucking chance I’m going down there.
Maxwell’s voice began to groan over the comm lines, followed by Boyd and LeBoeuf’s voice. The HNI disruption was over. The Dragon Maiden moved too far away for its ability to be of any threat. Where the pit below took her became a worrying and troublesome thought that would keep Chevallier awake at night for months to come.
“Hey, Sergeant,” she communicated to Boyd. “I’m gonna need a vacation.”
30 Williams
Open Plateau
New Babylon (formally SA-115), Sirius A system
August 10, 2118, 12:00 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The more time Williams spent away from the home he now shared with Foster’s mother, more he began to wonder if leaving so abruptly was a wise course of action. True, he did give her the heads-up he’d be heading out for a few days. What he didn’t do was explain why he and Chang took it upon themselves to travel to the Poniga homeworld, New Babylon—appropriately named as the Poniga were descendants of the people from Babylon—on what looked like a camping trip, complete with oversized hiking bags strapped to their backs. Of course, the real reason was to conduct a search for Chef Bailey, a member of the Carl Sagan’s crew that was fortunate enough to not be aboard during the night it vanished.
New Babylon being a UNE protected world meant the two had to wait for approval to enter via planetside wormholes, originally constructed by the Lyonria, now operated by the UNE. Thankfully, Williams being a member of IESA despite his condition and Chang being enlisted in the navy, gave them clearance with little issues and questions.
Bailey’s past service to the Carl Sagan probably allowed him to freely come here as well, Williams thought as they stepped into the wormhole, and into a planet barely changed over the course of the last sixty-eight years.
New Babylon, by rights, should be a dead world due to its close proximity to Sirius A. It was a star that had the power to ravage the surface of the planet with blinding light, radiation, and heat hot enough to vaporize anyone or anything that stood in it without shields. Shields being the main reason why life, grass, trees, lakes, and an otherwise Earth-like environment existed. Massive dome-shaped shields, built during ancient times, littered random regions throughout the planet, protecting everything on the inside from what existed outside, allowing the Poniga people to live their peaceful, yet primitive, life.
Most of the Poniga villages still stood that were around when the Carl Sagan was, though some of them featured minor upgrades, made possible by the downfall of Marduk and his army that had enslaved the human-like population of the planet for thousands of years. Or
so Williams had remembered from the reports, he and Chang had spent most of their tour in Sirius aboard the Carl Sagan. The two of them making their hiking trek across the planet, was their first time stepping foot on it.
The two had travelled from village to village over the course of several days, speaking with the locals, acquiring hand-written maps, feasting on their limited food and water supply, and camping out whenever they got tired. Sleeping was by no means an easy task due to the long day and night cycles the planet had. There were some moments where they had to camp out in the shade just to sleep and stay cool from the punishing heat and sunlight from the white main-sequence star. Poniga villages that had vacant inns were a godsend.
Highlands appeared in the distance and grew larger the closer they trekked to them, and with that came new Poniga villages. Many of the residents of the villages, despite the language barrier, seemed to have known about Bailey whenever Williams presented them a holographic photo of him from his holo pad. With each village they arrived at as they neared the highlands, the more often they encountered Poniga that crossed paths with Bailey.
Qiraks, who had been living on the planet trading with the Poniga for years, were most forthcoming with information. Information that came at a cost, jewels and gold were the most commonly exchanged currency. Williams’ and Chang’s rank pins found themselves lining the pockets of the Qiraks as a result.
The information, however, paid off as they were led up a path into the hills of the highlands. Looking back as they reached the maximum height up the hills, treated Williams to an elevated view of the region they had trekked across. The lush forests, lakes, multiple Poniga villages . . . and a reminder of how much time they’d need to spend to walk back to the wormhole.
An hour later, the two stopped at the entrance of a mountainside hamlet of Poniga design. Tents made of leather, skinned from the local wildlife, gave shelter to those that made this place their home. Camp fires roared roasting slabs of meat on a rotating spit, or boiling pots of what smelt like stew bubbling. In the rear of the hamlet was a white, flowing waterfall, raining down a torrent of fresh mountain water into a nearby river. Bodies of naked men and women rose from the river, swimming and laughing with each other.
It wasn’t until those men and women dove into the river that Williams gasped at the sight of their long fishlike tails that rose briefly. Those in the river weren’t Poniga out for a swim. They were the humanoid Undine, the Sirens. I thought the Undine and Poniga didn’t get along? A lot must have changed.
“Well . . .” Chang said, staring at the river full of Sirens. “I can see why Chef wanted to retreat here.”
“If this is where we’ll find him,” Williams said.
“Oh, dude, we will find him here, just look, man.” Chang pointed at a female Siren that plopped out of the waters. Droplets of water dripped off her breasts and her drenched long black hair. “If I was stranded on this planet for years, I’d probably hang out here too.”
“You might want to keep your distance from them, remember what happened to McDowell and Kingston?”
“Yeah, yeah, they had a little death by snu-snu moment, but you know what? The galaxy is fucked, if I had to choose between getting vaporized by the invaders and dying in her hands?”
The Siren had perched herself up onto a rock, wading her eight-foot-long tail through the waters. “Look at her,” Williams said.
“Oh, believe me, I am.”
“Do you see a vagina?”
Chang’s face dropped as the reality hit him and obliterated his fantasy. “Ah, I see . . .”
“They reproduce by impaling males with tendrils that suck all genetic material out from their body to impregnate themselves.” Not sure why we or the other men here haven’t been lured by their psionic mind control. Marduk’s fall must have really changed the rules—
A secondary female form rapidly rose from the small river before the two, at speeds fast enough to drench their outfits with spring water, triggering them to leap backwards startled by the rush.
“Jesus!”
“Holy shit!
A familiar face stood in front of them, a young woman with a human-like appearance, raven-blue hair that was wet and sticking to her back and shoulders, covering the gills on her neck, standing with no shame at the fact she was naked.
Chang winced. “Hey, is that?”
“Nereid . . .” Williams said, and then quickly looked away from her bare form.
Chang didn’t, until Williams slapped him across the shoulder to do the same.
“Commander Williams . . .” Nereid’s mysterious voice said. “Flight Lieutenant Chang.”
Nereid was of the same species of the Undine, just a different type, one that was born with human-like features from the waist down. Some sort of genetic defect, though the side effects were that she possessed enhanced psionic powers and suppressed memories of her father, Commander McDowell, a deceased member of the Carl Sagan’s crew.
Like the Undine, she needed to keep her body wet with water periodically in order to prevent fatal dehydration. The concept of clothing was a foreign one. It took Foster a good while to remind Nereid she needed to stay clothed while being aboard the ship.
“Uh, Dominic is fine as of now, Nereid.”
“As you wish,” she said, reaching for a damp robe in the baking sunlight. “Has the Goddess sought to guide you here as well?”
“Define here . . .” Williams glanced at her from the corner of his eye, noting her body had been covered by the robe. His elbow gave Chang a nudge as they were free to look at her again. “Last time I checked, Poniga and the Undine didn’t get along.”
“With the Architect gone, my people and the Poniga have reached out to mend the years of bad blood between our people,” Nereid said.
“Thought you were deported back to your homeworld of Meroien?”
Nereid gave him a smile while offering them a tour of the small hamlet. “I arrived here by accident via the wormhole, my guide inputted the wrong destination,” Nereid explained. “I was going to request that he correct the error, when I realized this was my last opportunity to visit another world before I was forced to remain on Meroien.”
“And so . . . for some reason you decided to randomly walk up here and found this camp?” Chang said.
“No,” said a deep voice from a nearby tent.
Out from the tent came a man, draped in a brown tattered robe and cloak, pants cut into shorts, sandals made by the hands of Poniga. His hands pulled the cloak shrouding his face away, the face, the smile, and the voice. It was a man of Jamaican descent, Demarion Bailey.
Smiles stretched across the faces of Williams and Chang, their long journey was not a waste.
“She, like everyone here, came here ‘cause they hear the cries at night,” Bailey finished.
Bailey exchanged firm handshakes and fist bumps with Williams and Chang. Williams glanced at Bailey’s grey unkempt hair and beard, and the fact he hadn’t aged a day since they last saw him, gene therapy no doubt at work.
“Bailey, man, it’s good to see you again,” Chang said.
“Dominic . . . Williams . . .” Bailey said, struggling to remember his name, understandably, as, from his point of view, it had been sixty-eight years. “And Dennis Chang, ya? You got no idea how great it is to see you two alive and well! When I first saw Nereid arrive here, I was like? What is this?” Bailey’s loud laughter made his gut fill with joy he hadn’t felt in years. “Thought I lost you all for good, but with you alive here now, means there really is hope for the other missing people.”
“Don’t know if Nereid told you, but we all woke up from cryo not too long ago,” Williams said. “In any case we’re alive, separated, but alive, save for a few missing crew personnel and Hammerhead members.”
“No, mon, there’s more,” Bailey grimly said. “A lot more . . .”
Bailey led the group to the edge of the hamlet, overlooking a steep hill heading back down hills of the highlands. It gave Wi
lliams yet another stunning view of the world, a world enclosed in an energy shield dome where a hellish nightmare existed beyond it.
“Nereid tells me your memories got erased,” Bailey said.
“Partially, yeah,” Williams said.
“Do you remember what happened before you went to search that ghost ship?”
Williams recalled the night, when their lives went from peaceful explorers, to victims of aliens. “We left you and a few explorers here, when we went to investigate.”
“Right, we all went to do our thing,” Bailey said. “The explorers explored the lands; I went to secure fresh crops for the kitchen. The team I was with came to these mountains, looked up to the skies and saw a storm, high up.” Bailey pointed upward. Williams’ eyes followed and saw what was behind the dome over top and its faux blue skies and clouds, the stars of space. They were hard to see, Sirius A’s light didn’t help, but they were there.
“This planet doesn’t have an atmosphere,” Chang commented.
“The domes create the illusion of blue skies,” Bailey said. “But once you reach high places like this, you can see beyond that, and see the stars peek through.”
“And you said you saw a storm from here?” Williams said.
“Ya, mon . . . But . . . but, there’s no real sky or clouds, right?”
“That storm would have been in space then,” Chang said. “Like right in orbit of the planet.”
“A storm in space . . .” The thought got Williams to connect the dots and add up the facts. “That must have been when we vanished I take it?”
“Not just you,” Bailey said. “Half the explorers that came here with me disappeared. When we came down the mountains, there were Poniga families who vanished as well.”
“The Poniga and the Undine here believe this location to be sacred because of the sighting of the shooting star here afterwards,” Nereid added.
“I saw that shooting star . . .” Bailey said. “But mark my words; it was no normal shooting star, something crashed out in that bang-up, bang-up, land outside the dome.”
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