“See here.” She zoomed in. “There are small pools of water where the metal breaches out of the ice.”
We kept the drone there for some time while I tried to recall the hidden maps from the portals that Kareem had entrusted solely to me. Sarlun had asked about it when I told him of my promise to the dying Deltra. I had seen frustration across Sarlun’s face as his proboscis twitched, but he didn’t press me.
“It might be one of the locked-away worlds. I just can’t recall them all.” These two knew of their existence, but we hadn’t visited any of those planets yet, and I planned on staying away from them if possible.
“Look around the symbol.” Slate ran a finger in a circle over the metal in the image, and I squinted to see what he was seeing. Once I did, I couldn’t unsee it. “The ground sinks in a concave ring in a perimeter around the mark. I think there’s something under it.”
“We won’t be able to tell from here. How far is it?” I asked. Mary checked the readout and answered quickly.
“Eleven miles as the crow flies.” Her voice held an energy she hadn’t expressed since we’d been shown the first sign of the Theos by Sarlun. I knew she felt like we were about to be thrust into a mystery she could solve.
“Then one of us better go back and retrieve the rover.” Mary and I both turned to look at Slate.
Two
The rover moved along at a far better speed than we’d be able to make on foot. We had to take it around the peak and down a valley cutting through the first range, but once clear of that, it would be smooth sailing for the last nine miles.
“What can it be?” I asked, open to any speculation. We’d been in our suits for hours now. I was getting the itch to tear my helmet off and take a deep breath, but the results on this world wouldn’t be good.
“Could be nothing, but someone was here and left a message. That warrants a visit to the site,” Mary said from beside me. The rover had a single seat in front for the driver, with a bench behind it. Our supplies were loaded in the rear cab.
The tires were large and studded for just such a trip, but the wheels still spun on occasion as Slate took us over a steep hill. Twice we slid back down, and he had to go around. Still, the trip was over before we knew it, and we arrived just as the planet’s sun set behind the horizon. I checked the temperature, and it was dropping quickly.
I exited the rover first and spotted the drone we’d left. It had been easier to leave it for a physical pickup than to fly it back and wait. I’d bent down to grab it and load it in the rover when Slate made an incomprehensible noise. He was running up to the protrusion from the ice.
“Boss, look!” He was already there, and I saw the symbol was much taller than I’d initially thought from the drone’s viewpoint. It had to be sticking twenty feet in the air.
I left the drone on the ground and ran to join him. He was skimming a gloved hand on the matte black material. There were symbols etched in the sides, grooves running a quarter of an inch deep. When I’d looked at them from a distance, I could hardly make them out, but this close, there were at least five symbols repeated over and over. Goosebumps rose on my arms, and the hair on my neck reiterated my uneasy feeling.
“The Theos,” Mary said, even though we had no proof of anything.
“We don’t know that,” I whispered.
Slate was capturing images with his arm console so we could study them later. “Whatever left this was making it obvious.”
“Yeah, but if you didn’t know about the portals, it wouldn’t make any sense at all. They were either commonplace when this was left or it’s a message to the Gatekeepers,” I said.
For the first time since we’d arrived, I remembered why we drove here in the first place. I looked down. The ice-covered ground was crystal-clear, and water slushed against the symbol’s edges. I knelt, peering deep into the transparent surface, and I saw an object below.
“There’s something down there!” I yelled loudly, hurting even my own ears. The other two didn’t seem to notice. They were right beside me in seconds, and Slate was laughing.
“I’ll be, boss. Looks like we have some digging to do.” I could hear the excitement in his voice.
“With what?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t going to pick out the utility shovel from the tool crib in the rover.
“How about this?” He raised his rifle again. It had worked earlier to cut through the ice, so why not now?
I nodded, stepping back. Mary and I went past the perimeter, and I saw her wobble slightly. “How’s the head?”
“It’s as good as I can expect,” she answered. “I feel a little off, but I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I’ve been hoping for us to cross paths with a hint to their location all year, and here we finally have one.”
Slate started to fire his rifle at low power, getting the result he wanted. He first cut a line, then made three more, creating a small box. From there, he made lines about half a foot apart, criss-crossing until there was nothing but small squares within the opening.
“How deep did that cut?” I asked through my mic.
He shrugged and bent down, using two hands to lift one of the ice squares. It pulled free in a three-foot length. “About that deep.”
We moved to join him, prying out the squares until we could see a shape below. “I can see it more clearly.” Mary aimed her high-powered light down, and I made out a dark solid object.
This time, we each grabbed a rifle and took a section, Slate jumping into his accessed hole and going deeper. After repeating the process three times, Slate called us over to show us his discovery. He’d cut through ten feet of ice and was standing on a metallic surface.
“How wide do you think it is?” I asked, trying to see in the dim night. The rover headlights were now directed at our excavation site, allowing us to see, but creating more glare than was ideal.
“I can’t say. Let’s keep going.” Slate was already moving on, hitting the next section. We continued this way for an hour; soon we’d uncovered an area, starting ten feet to the left of the symbol in the ice, that was thirty feet wide by another twenty.
“This could be a roof,” Mary said, kneeling on the black alloy. “If it is, we either try to find a way in, or we dig around it.”
Slate slumped down. “If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been out here for hours, and I think my suit may need an empty.”
I cringed as I realized mine could too. There was no good way to go to the bathroom on an angry ice world.
Mary wouldn’t be discouraged, and as Slate and I leaned against the cut-out ice wall we’d created to make this opening, she crawled around, looking for something…anything.
“Guys.” Her voice had a shake in it, and I was worried about her having a head injury.
“Mary, what is it?” I got up quickly, nearly falling over as my ice cleats slid on the metal surface. I retracted them and rushed to her.
She turned her head, her face split in half with a massive grin. “I found it!”
I ducked down, trying to see, and when she moved her hand, I understood. There was a clean fracture in the otherwise smooth surface. I followed it, and the line went in a small rectangle. “Slate, grab a pry bar!” I called to him, and he was back in a minute with one.
I pointed to the lip, and he jammed the flat face of the bar into it, using his body weight to push on the tool’s fulcrum. It lifted, to our surprise. The far side was hinged, and the metal hatch slammed down after Slate pushed it with great effort.
“You first,” I said to the big guy, but he didn’t even smile. He just looked into the blackness of the opening with a frown.
Mary leaned forward, shining her light inside. The space looked empty, the floor only ten or so feet down. She was about to go in for a better look, and I grabbed her shoulder. “You remember what happened last time you stuck your head into something? It was today, and you could have killed yourself. Let me do it.” She waved her hand as if to say, “Be my guest,” and I got to my knees. “Slate, would you min
d holding on?”
He grabbed my legs as I lay flat on the surface, sliding forward with my hands and sticking my head into the three-foot opening. I felt Slate’s firm grip on my ankles and knew I’d be safe with him watching my back.
Mary passed me her flashlight. I stuck my left arm inside, moving the light slowly. There was nothing to see. It was empty. The inside looked just like the outside: black and smooth.
“There’s nothing down here. Why the hell would there be an empty alien box on a lifeless planet?” I asked, ready to get back up. I felt a vibration in my stomach, and before I could react, the whole box was shaking like we were in the middle of an earthquake. “Slate, don’t let go!” I called, but it was too late.
With a bang, the large alien box shook wildly, knocking Slate over and sending me flying down the hole. I tried to duck and roll as best as I could and saved myself from landing straight on my head. My shoulders took the brunt as I rolled over and slammed into the inside of the box’s wall.
The shaking stopped as I lay there, trying to stay still. “Dean!” Mary called from above, and I groaned, letting them know I was fine. Getting to a sitting position, I scanned the room with my flashlight. It was empty, and digging it up had been a complete waste of our time.
“There’s nothing here. Can you lower one of our tethers and lift me out?” I got to my feet and moved along the perimeter of the room. The exact same symbols above me appeared to be on the surrounding walls. I made sure my helmet cam was up and running, and continued on, running a glove over the otherwise smooth surface. What did the symbols mean? I couldn’t wait to compare them to the portal guide or to the hidden portal worlds. These must be relevant. Could they have anything to do with the Theos Mary seemed so intent on finding?
The tether lowered down, and just as I started to cross the room to grab it, I spotted something from the corner of my eye. The room was wide open, with no interior walls. About fifteen feet from the opening, just right of where I fell in, sat a small object.
“I found something,” I whispered, getting a flurry of comments from my friends above. I ignored them and walked right up to it, crouching to see what it was before touching it. A small square stone sat there, about six inches on all sides. The green stone looked familiar, and I thought of the necklace Janine had given me, the one I still wore to this day.
“What is it?” Mary asked through my earpiece.
I rotated it in my hand and saw the symbol from the ice above carved on one side. The other five symbols were on each of the other faces, but smaller than the first one. Otherwise, it seemed like a simple rock. Familiar, but different from the artifact Sarlun had claimed to be a Theos relic. They’d found it a year ago and had been racking their brains trying to determine just what it did.
“I’m coming up,” I said, shoving the stone into the small pack still on my suit. I did one last sweep through the room to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and was confident the cube was all it was housing.
As I clipped the tether to my belt, a cracking sound echoed around me. It was like the ice around the buried room was moving, threatening to squash the foreign object. “Get me out!” I shouted, feeling claustrophobic as the noises increased in volume.
My belt was tugged hard, and I gripped the rope, letting Slate do the heavy lifting. Soon I was exiting the cube, the sounds getting louder around us.
“The ice is cracking; we need to move!” Slate called as I undid the belt clip and ran for the rover behind the other two. We hopped in, throwing what supplies we had lingering around into the back first.
The ground shook as Slate gunned it, skidding forward on the smooth surface. He raced away, and I looked back, seeing one of our night lanterns still sitting at the site. It illuminated the side of the symbol. Moments later, a screeching noise carried to us, and the symbol fell down, everything in the area sinking into the ground.
Slate spun the rover around when we were a half mile away, and from there, we could see no sign of the symbol or the hole we’d been digging. The planet had swallowed it whole.
“What was that?” Mary asked.
With a shaking hand, I reached into my pack and pulled out the green cube, which was glowing lightly now. “I think it has something to do with this.”
Three
“Why couldn’t we go straight to Shimmal?” Mary asked, still frustrated with me. She paced around our living room like a caged bear, and I didn’t want to answer her. I already had three times.
Maggie chased her around, barking at her heels. She wasn’t the only one put off by Mary’s behavior.
Mary stopped walking, and I could feel her stare boring a hole in the back of my head. “Fine, we’ll go first thing in the morning. We have a meeting with the Keepers in two days. I thought it could wait.”
“But…”
“Let’s just save the fight and agree that this is important. I was tired, and I wanted you to get your head checked out.” My real reason sneaked out of my lips, and I heard Mary sigh from behind me. Her hands rested on my shoulders and gave me a light squeeze.
“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” she asked softly.
“Because you’re bullheaded, and you would’ve just told me you were fine.”
“Maybe you’re right.” She kissed the top of my head, and I set my right hand on her left, still resting on my shoulder.
“Of course I am,” I jested. “Why are you suddenly so excited by all of this?”
“By this?” Her voice rose in pitch. “We’re talking about finding a long-lost ancient alien race. Maybe gods, according to the theology we’ve been hearing.”
“You don’t believe that, do you? The gods part?”
She was tinkering in the kitchen, the smell of lemon tea carrying into the living room. She came into view, setting a steaming cup down on the coffee table in front of me. I mouthed thank you to her; she sat in the chair opposite me, her legs folded to the side, hands wrapped around the hot mug. Her hair hung down in her face as she gazed into her tea. When she peeked up at me, I felt like a young man in love for the first time.
“I don’t know what to believe. Are you telling me you don’t think what we just saw was a clue left for a deserving Keeper to find?”
I grabbed the mug, blowing on the tea lightly before taking a sip. Maggie had migrated onto my lap, and I was careful to not spill any on her as I drank it. “You might be onto something there. A symbol with a buried green stone nearby. What were the chances anyone would find either of them on a remote ice world?”
“Exactly. When you picked up the artifact, the place self-destructed.”
“It nearly took me with it, so I’m not sure I like their tactics,” I said.
“That’s just it. Only the worthy would have escaped with the artifact intact. We have an object that’s the clue to the Theos’ location. I know it.” She drank some tea, and I found myself being drawn into her excitement.
What if we could find them? Then what? Ask them why they built the portals? Ask them why they ran away, abandoning the universe? For all the talk I’d heard about them over the last year, no one had anything more than hearsay and speculation. We had no idea what they looked like, or where they were last seen.
“We still have that agreement I made with the Bhlat. Do you think the Gatekeepers will agree to let us give them that ice world now that we have this discovery?” I asked, curious as to Mary’s opinion.
“I’m not sure. Do you think there could be more artifacts?” she asked.
“I really don’t know, but my gut tells me that was it.”
“I think it fits with the piece Sarlun has.” She finally said it. I’d been waiting to see if she’d thought so too, but didn’t want to put it in her head first.
“Same.” My pulse quickened at the implications. If we set the cube into the object Sarlun had in his possession, what would it do? It could be a weapon, for all we knew. Maybe the Theos had created these back-door portals into worlds so they
could take over and infiltrate them all whenever they wanted. “It’s hard to trust anyone after the Event, and then the Bhlat invasion.”
“You trust Sarlun and Suma. Now we’re part of a group of beings we couldn’t even comprehend a few years ago,” Mary said, reminding me of our first Gatekeeper meeting. There had been ten worlds represented, each very different from the next. I wished Sarlun had warned me one of them was made of a gas. I’d walked right through it, breaking several protocols.
“Yes, I do, but they’ve earned our trust, and we earned theirs. The Theos, on the other hand, haven’t done anything one way or the other. Actually, if they were behind the old ‘hidden green cube in a box’ trick, then they did try to kill me, so strike one.”
Mary smirked at this and took another drink. Her eyes were closing a little more, a clear-cut sign she was wearing out. I was too, and the warm tea, mixed with the soft snores of a cocker spaniel, were lulling me into a daze.
“We’ll learn more tomorrow. Let’s go to bed,” Mary said.
“I’ll be right there.”
I started to move, and Maggie sat upright, hopping down and running to the front door. Her left paw touched it ever so slightly, her sign to tell me to let her out.
It was late, the sky dark and ominous. Through the clouds, a few stars shone down, and I wondered if they were still there casting light, or if they were millions of years gone. Maybe that was what we were seeing from the Theos: signs of them long after they’d vanished, like a dead star shining in the distance.
Maggie did her business and walked inside, light-footed, straight for the bedroom. Soon all three of us were in bed, my mind still racing with unanswered questions.
____________
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked Sarlun as we were led to his office on Shimmal.
The slender alien twitched his snout and locked gazes with me, his eyes dark and wide. “It’s only us today.”
“Shouldn’t the others hear what we have to say?” Mary asked.
The Survivors: Books 1-6 Page 66