Invaders: Dreadnought Ocelot (Invaders Series Book 4)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Exhausted and shivering like a sick sea turtle, I crawled up the beach toward the portal. Why hadn’t Sliths or Ailuros shown up? Were they too busy fighting each other to worry about me?

  Upon reaching a stone portal strut, I collapsed, too exhausted to keep my eyes open, knowing that Rax would certainly warn me in time if something bad crept toward us.

  -36-

  My eyes snapped open although otherwise I lay perfectly still. Something had alerted me. It was dark, with stars shining brightly in the night sky. No moon had risen yet.

  I was stiff and sore and hungrier than ever. How long had I slept? Why hadn’t Sliths or Ailuros landed and taken my stuff? If I was lucky, they had both killed each other.

  Thinking about that, I shifted my gaze. The duffel bag was still secured to me. I frowned, unable to believe the Sliths had slain Ailuros. Was she sneaking up on me? Is that what had woken me?

  I heard surf crashing against the nearby seawall. Slowly, I turned my head toward the inlet where the sea monsters had eaten the great apes. The tide had gone out and was starting to come back in, probably the reason the waves hit the seawall so hard. Slowly moving my head the other way, I eyed the tree line. It was dark and eerie, and a feeling of something troublesome was emanating from that direction.

  “Rax,” I whispered.

  “Yes, Logan,” the crystal said just as quietly.

  “Do you sense anything out of order?”

  “Negative.”

  “No Sliths have landed, Ailuros did not come by and nothing has been slipped out of the portal?”

  “I would have woken you if that was the case.”

  “How do we power the portal so we can leave?”

  “We cannot from here,” Rax whispered. “We are waiting for someone else to activate it. Once that happens, you must enter as fast as you can. I will set the coordinates just like last time.”

  “We’re going to head home?”

  “Negative. We need the next piece of the great weapon first.”

  I hadn’t wanted to hear that, thinking that maybe the Prometheus Stone was good enough to dispatch Nerelon Brontios. Couldn’t a different Polarion like Argon maybe wield the stone and use the cosmic energy against him?

  I sensed movement in the jungle and stiffened. “Something is just inside the tree line,” I whispered.

  “That rings false, as I do not detect anything.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “Are you suggesting that your senses are better than my sensors?”

  “Maybe this time,” I whispered.

  “I will run a self-diagnostic. Oh,” Rax whispered several seconds later. “This is quite odd. I have sustained something akin to a stun. I wonder if that is due to my prolonged proximity to the Prometheus Stone. The lead container may not be enough to fully shield me. Hmm…I am glad you bragged, Logan. I would not have run the diagnostic otherwise.”

  A branch broke in the jungle, a loud sound, indicating the presence of a large dinosaur breaking it.

  “I heard that,” Rax said quietly. “I suggest you ready your rifle and investigate.”

  Another branch snapped in half, and this time, a tree swayed and crashed down to the ground. I caught a dark glimpse of something the size of a tree. Was that a Tyrannosaurus Rex? I waited for a roar, and I realized I was crouched behind the stone arch of the portal with the rifle in my hands. I hadn’t recalled tearing it out of the duffel bag, nor did I remember scrambling to my feet.

  “It is mechanical,” Rax declared.

  Mechanical? That didn’t make sense. I stared so hard it felt as if my eyeballs were going to pop out of my head.

  “I detect a machine, Logan.”

  At that point, so did I. A searchlight snapped on in the middle of its torso. The intensely bright light beamed against half the stone portal while illuminating some of the sandy beach. The thing walked like a robot and I heard a whine like a machine.

  The robot was much larger than Sand’s nine-foot, box-like robots. It moved with greater agility and—

  “Ailuros,” I whispered.

  “She is not the robot.”

  “I’ve seen it before, Rax. It was at the top of the ziggurat.”

  “It must seek the Prometheus Stone.”

  I had come to the same conclusion. In a second, I pictured what must have happened. The golden robot of Ailuros had climbed down the golden staircase and begun seeking the Prometheus Stone taken from it. Why the robot did this, I could not tell. I had a feeling the real Ailuros was behind it.

  Even as that came full-blown to my thoughts, the golden statue’s chest beam moved until it shined on the far end of the portal. The beam washed toward me—

  I raised the rifle and fired at the chest lens. The rifle beam burned into the searchlight, breaking it and causing the intense light to quit. Maybe I held the switch down too long.

  “Cease firing,” Rax said.

  I did several seconds later.

  The darkness afterward was intense. The stars still shone, but I was no longer accustomed to the darkness.

  I could still see the outline of the robot-statue. It swayed back and forth and suddenly pitched forward, crashing onto its beautiful face. The robot lay on the sand, the head a good fifty feet from the giant stone portal.

  I slowly approached the thing, certain it would begin to twitch like in a bad horror movie and start to get up to chase me. Instead, a hatch in the back blew open, the hatch flying through the air to land with a thud on sand fifteen feet away.

  That stunned me. I realized now that this statue was even bigger than the one I’d seen at the top of the ziggurat. Where had it come from then? Why did it look like Ailuros before the cat-head surgery?

  I waited for someone to climb out, but no one did.

  “Can you sense anything?” I asked.

  “Negative,” Rax said. “The heavy gold stops my stone-weakened sensors.”

  I cautiously approached the fallen statue or walker. Finally, I stood by it. Should I call out? I did not. I did the stupid thing instead. I climbed up the robot and peered into the darkness. There was a tiny amount of illumination inside from various glowing switches. There was also a small control chair. Strapped into the chair was a hominid, a hundred-pound Homo habilis like Philemon. Blood pumped from the beam wound in his hairy torso.

  “He’s dead,” Rax declared.

  “Looks like.”

  “No. He is dead.”

  “I think he’s a Homo habilis.”

  “Agreed,” Rax said. “That would indicate the walker belongs to Nerelon Brontios. He must have made it in Ailuros’s image because this is or was her world. From what I know, Nerelon is a Polarion traditionalist. This could be a failsafe on his part, or an advance party scout.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Then I heard humming. I twisted around. An eerie blue glow from the portal lit up the sand before it.

  “Hey,” I shouted. “The portal has activated.”

  “Hurry, Logan. I believe more Gigantopithecuses may be coming or Nerelon Brontios himself. I believe your action has triggered the event.”

  I jumped from the golden walker onto jungle dirt, ran across sand, grabbed my duffel bag and scrambled toward the front of the portal.

  At that point, a tall, majestic individual stumbled out of the portal. He seemed stunned from the journey. I might have tried to kill him, but a huge great ape stumbled out next.

  I needed to see no more than that, so I leaped into the glowing blue portal. I hoped Rax knew how to set our coordinates fast and that I didn’t bump into anyone coming out. It must have worked, for like that, I left the pristine Jurassic alien world.

  -37-

  Unlike the first time I did this—using a portal—the sights, sounds and smells exploding against my senses were vile. In my mind’s eye, I saw dripping green rot and heard banshee wails of misery as the stench of death invaded my nostrils. It felt as if I were plunging through a mire, as if this was the end
of existence or—

  I tripped coming out of a different portal and rolled across scorching hot sand. My passage over it was much faster than I would have expected. Then, I was airborne. I could hardly understand it. I fell as a black cliff passed before me, areas of the cliff dotted with badger-sized holes. I felt eyes watching me from the holes. I realized then that I’d rolled over a cliff top and rocketed down—

  I turned my head and looked down seconds before impact, bracing myself as I slammed onto black sand on my back. The air whooshed from my lungs and I twisted in agony. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t—my lungs unlocked and I sucked down hot air. I had already begun to sweat due to the heat.

  “Logan, we are in trouble,” Rax said.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering if he was going to tell me I’d broken something.

  “We must leave this place at once,” Rax said.

  “Did I break any bones?” I whispered.

  “Not to my knowledge. Does it feel as if you did?”

  I groaned as I sat up, feeling my ribs, testing my legs, arms, wrists and fingers. They all seemed to be in working order.

  “Haste is required if we wish to survive,” Rax said.

  “What do you sense?”

  “Doom. The end of everything.”

  I finally looked around, taking stock of my surroundings. It was nothing like the beautiful world I had left. Behind me was a giant black cliff. I could not tell what kind of rock, maybe burned granite. In the opposite direction, the sun was a bloated red giant as it sank into the horizon. The red sky…I blanched in horror. A vast cratered moon dominated it, filling half the hellish sky. Surely that meant the moon was much closer to us than on our Earth. Meteors rained down from the cracked moon, moving slower than seemed reasonable as they blazed fiery trails across the sky.

  The ground trembled under me, as if one of the meteors had struck the surface at some distant locale and made it shake.

  I had been on a Jurassic-like planet. Maybe this was an end-of-days world. If the world’s moon had spiraled closer throughout the eons, cracking, possibly splintering, the blazing, fiery meteors must be moon chunks falling to the planet’s surface.

  “You said doom?” I asked shakily.

  “Correct.”

  I tried to gather my wits. The fall and the transfer to another world possibly hundreds of light-years away combined to disorient me. I had a glimmer of an idea how Nerelon Brontios must have felt a few moments ago. That had been him I’d seen, right? I shook my head. I needed to concentrate on the here and now.

  “Do you detect any life in this place?” I asked Rax.

  “I most certainly do. Creatures watch us from the cliff. Can you see any eyes?”

  I twisted around to look up at the holes. I did not—oh, but I did see eyes. They glowed like hot coals, hungry little devils that lusted after my flesh. I shuddered. I had the feeling a deer might have when a pack of winter-starved wolves stumbled across it.

  Even though my muscles were bruised and aching, I climbed to my feet.

  “Which way should I go?” I asked.

  “I suggest you get back to the portal so we can go elsewhere. The meteors might have already smashed the structure and destroyed the item we seek. This world is dying, along with everyone in it.”

  I craned my neck, looking at the cliff top. It was far higher than I wanted to climb. I was surprised, frankly, that I’d survived the fall. Was the world’s gravity less here than Earth’s?

  “Since we’re already here,” I said. “Let’s find the next piece to the super-weapon.”

  “Move away from the cliff until you can get a better picture of its surroundings,” Rax suggested. “See if there is a back path leading up to the portal.”

  I glanced at the sinking sun. “Will the creatures in the cliff come out once it’s dark?”

  “Or you could scale the cliff directly if you dare,” Rax said, ignoring my question. “You must decide now if you hope to escape this world. There is no help for us here.”

  “Yeah,” I said, slinging the Polarion rifle and duffel bag over my shoulder. They had slipped off during my drop. I checked the waist pack next—it was still secure—and began trudging away from the cliff. I wasn’t able to jump like a grasshopper with incredible bounds, so I no longer thought this world had less gravity than Earth. But some property was at work so the meteors fell slower, and my impact had done less damage to me than it should have.

  More meteors blazed across the burnt-colored sky. Would they provide me light at night like the moons on the pristine planet? Heck, the gigantic moon would shine and illuminate this doom world just fine.

  I trudged faster across the burning sand. I could feel the heat of it through the soles of my boots. I sweated and knew I needed water. It was a good thing I’d drunk as much as I had on the other planet.

  The ground trembled worse than before.

  “What’s causing the shaking?” I asked.

  “The obvious,” Rax replied.

  “Meteors striking the surface?”

  “Correct.”

  I nodded, studying the red sky, the falling fireballs. “Why would Polarions build a portal to such a place?”

  “Clearly, back then, it was not in the process of being destroyed.”

  “Wouldn’t Polarions be able to calculate the future event?”

  “Logan, haste is in order.”

  “Just a second, Rax. What are we looking for this time?”

  “A way to escape this place.”

  “No. I have the Prometheus Stone. What’s the next component of the super-science weapon?”

  “The Celestial Cybernetic Circuit,” Rax said. “It has the size and shape of a human hearing aid, although there is nothing I know of that is more complex and sophisticated.”

  “Is it in a temple?”

  “A vault, I should think.”

  “Great,” I said.

  I looked up as the mother of all meteors blazed across the burnt sky. I could feel the bastard’s heat, and I swear I could hear the roar of its passage. The fireball was horrific, terrible, majestic and beautiful all at once. I shivered and wondered if this was Earth’s eventual fate. Would all the works of man disappear in a fiery holocaust of destruction from the moon? What was the point of existence if this was how it all ended? Was a man’s nature to eat, drink and screw all the days of his life and have it mean not a damn thing?

  I wasn’t normally a downer kind of guy, but watching that enormous meteor blaze its way across the doom-laden red sky made one think. I dearly wanted off this world. I wanted to go home. I wanted to eat hamburgers again, drink beer and kick my feet up as I watched a good movie on the internet. I wanted to find a girl, a sweet girl that smiled at me because she loved me.

  I trudged, looked back and saw the cliff and its surroundings. There was a way back up if I went around to the left. There was also a dilapidated seven-story metal building with empty windows. I could not spy a door and wondered if more of the steel building was buried under black sand.

  “Listen, Rax. This is a grim place. It looks like it was civilized once, but everything seems like it has already gone through the apocalypse.”

  “Apt and poetic,” Rax said.

  “But…where would we go if I went through the portal? Didn’t you tell me the Great Machine blocks portal transfers to Earth?”

  “Mostly that is true. We used a chronowarp once to reach a place in another dimension to a gate to the Eshom world.”

  “I remember.”

  “We lack a chronowarp, which was really a way to nullify the effects of the Great Machine.”

  “That’s my point,” I said. “Can we step through the portal and get back to Earth?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Could we activate the portal to go anywhere else?”

  “Clever, Logan, very clever. No. We need the Celestial Cybernetic Circuit to activate it, or so I believe. Ah. I have accessed an old memory. The building you saw is the guar
dian tower to the vault.”

  “Vault as in underground?”

  “Logically deduced; you are correct.”

  “Okay. Where is the entrance to the vault?”

  “The guardian tower is the key.”

  I looked up at the fiery sky, the meteors crisscrossing everywhere.

  “This is most incredible,” Rax said. “I have made a quick scan. According to it, the vault entrance is behind the portal. There have been earthquakes, as the guardian tower once soared above the vault entrance and portal. They have changed places, the land rising and falling.”

  “The metal building looks intact.”

  “It was vastly taller once, I assure you. Something is seriously wrong on this world.”

  “Right,” I said, spinning around, heading back the way I had come. “We’re going to the portal, but first we’ll have to pass the remnant of the guardian tower so we can go left of the cliff.”

  “Dangerous but considering our alternatives reasonable.”

  I looked at the cliff top and could barely make out the portal, the ancient arch of stone. There was a flickering blue glow from it.

  “Do you sense that?” I asked.

  “Since I am not a mind reader, I do not know what you are referring to.”

  “I can see the portal and some flickering blue.”

  “Oh, interesting indeed,” Rax said. “I should have detected that. Maybe the Prometheus Stone is still playing havoc with my sensors. I will attempt another concentrated scan. Maybe someone else is coming through.”

  I looked skyward as Rax did. The great fireball I’d seen earlier seemed awfully close now. Worse than that, it seemed as if the fireball was heading directly for us.

  “Uh…Rax,” I said.

  “Logan, please, I am in the middle of delicate analysis, having to make adjustments for the proximity of the Prometheus Stone.”

  “Scan upward,” I said, holding Rax high. “What do you make of that fireball?”

  Rax said nothing for several seconds, until, “Run, Logan! The fireball is falling directly for us.”