“If we move, I might drop you,” Harley cautioned.
“If you don’t, we all die.” I snapped back. Kris-10, strained with the weight, swayed, causing all of us to sway with her. My fingers touched the door, but I couldn’t grab hold. “Again!” I called. I swung farther back, always aware of the heavy load about to snap all our necks if I wasn’t quick enough. I used the toe of my boot to kick off from the wall and thrust forward. This time, I caught the door with my fingers and, with all the strength I could manage pulled the doors apart. Kris-10’s abdomen was as strong as steel, and in fact may have been made of steel. She thrust Harley and me through the doorway with a powerful contraction of her stomach. Drasheel leapt from her torso and Kris-10 jumped from the cable a brief second before the elevator shaft came crashing down behind us.
“Ni-nice going,” I told Kris-10, catching my breath as I rose from the floor. She smiled simply, straightening her skirt as if she’d just had to jump a few stairs to catch a train.
“Everyone okay?” I asked around.
“Okkaaayy” gurgled Drasheel.
“Well, now that you’ve gotten your elbow out of my tits, yes, thank you,” replied Harley haughtily.
“Sorry,” I muttered. I stood to survey our surroundings. This new tunnel was nothing like the last one. It was covered top to floor in a geometric pattern so intimate and complicated that the patterns of lines left almost no breaks or empty space. I looked down the hallway, expecting the pattern to repeat, but I couldn’t find anywhere that it did. The lines and shapes would go off in one direction, getting denser here and thinner there without any suggestion of a coherent whole.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Kris-10 asked.
“Uh, yeah,” said Harley, not wanting to appear rude. “What’s it supposed to be?”
“This is Voltec,” Kris-10 said, explaining that the geometric patterns where expressions of extremely esoteric mathematical proofs which were uncovered by the Voltec centuries ago.
“Centuries? What the hell is this place?” I wondered aloud. First a tunnel that looked like it belonged in an Earth city, now this tribute to the Voltec. What was the connection?
“You think someone was curating all this stuff?” asked Harley.
“Well, Dawn was built by scavengers. Maybe the colony was built around some kind of special project to build all this stuff,” I suggested.
“Seems like a lot of work, and for what?” Harley said.
This level feels warm.
“Drasheel’s right,” I said.
“About what?” Harley asked.
“That warm sensation that we felt in the elevator shaft. It’s strong here. I think that what we’re after may actually be near here.”
So, we walked. The Voltec tunnel was shorter and more narrow than the first had been. At the end of it, there was a single door. From the big wheel on the front, it looked like it could lead to an airlock. For safety’s sake, we put back on our breathing devices and protective space suits back on before opening the door. I turned the wheel with my gloved hand and threw it open. Whatever lay inside was pitch black, too dark even to be open space.
“I’ll go first,” I said.
Be careful, Drasheel cautioned.
I stepped in, surprised to find that the surface under my feet was solid. But I couldn’t see anything in front of me. No matter where I cast my headlamp, nothing around me was illuminated. It was like stepping into a world of absolute blackness, with only the pinhole of light from the door behind me giving me a point of reference.
“Ted Derringer, what do you observe?” Kris-10 called.
“Nothing,” I answered. “It’s just pitch black.” I scanned the horizon, though I had no idea where it began. But as I looked, I could see a tiny flicker of light, like seeing a campfire across a lake on the opposite shore.
“Wait, I see something.” I waved for my little party to follow me. “Come on!” I turned and to my horror the shaft of light coming from the door had disappeared. I turned 360 degrees carefully, but there was nothing but that distant light ahead of me.
Shit. Well, I obviously had precisely one course of action left to me. I proceeded towards the distant campfire. As I drew closer, I realized that there was music coming from somewhere. Then I saw that the glow was from a Teracini pipe. A hunched-over outline of a scruffy man sat in front of it.
“Hello, Teru,” I said. The old man turned, gave me a smile with his blackened teeth.
“We’ve met before,” he said.
“This time I actually remember,” I said.
“You can take off your helmet,” Teru offered. “The air’s just fine, see?” He said, demonstrating by taking a long rip on his pipe. My helmet retracted and I took a seat on the sleek blackness beside Teru.
“So, Alpha Wing, you don’t seem surprised to see me,” Teru said, smiling.
“Not really,” I admitted, “I figured that there was probably some kind of mystical experience waiting for me down here. And you’re a likely suspect for my spirit guide.”
“You’ve come a long way,” said Teru appraisingly.
He was right, certainly. I’d gone from believing that spiritualism was a complete lie to having spiritual vision quests on a regular basis. “But what have I really learned? That I’m the chosen one? So, what? It didn’t help me save your life in battle.”
“You did what you could. I don’t regret my choices.”
“I still feel like nothing’s really been resolved. You tried to show me how to live beyond the perspective of this one life, right? And I fucked it all up. I sabotaged everything for a woman. Not exactly transcending the nature of my reality.”
“What makes you think that it’s all that simple?”
“Ted! Derringer!” the voices were echoes from a great distance, muddled and indistinct.
“I’ve gotten close to the power you tried to show me. I’ve experienced that escape. And it’s greater than anything I could have had before. I see that now. But none of it, none of it actually helps me to do the things I need to do.”
Teru held up the nozzle of his pipe. “Is this a path?”
“What?”
“You know. Is this a path, or isn’t it?”
“No,” I answered.
“No,” Teru intoned. “What this is is a tool to reveal the path to you. You can’t use the path as a weapon against your enemies. It’s a journey, not an outcome. And you’ve still got a long way to walk.”
“How? Where? Dawn is over.”
“It’s not over. Not so long as you’ve got people to fight for.”
“And then?”
“Follow Dawn’s light where it leads you.” I contemplated this advice for a moment.
“Earth,” I said. “That’s where I need to go if I’m going to bring the fight to Celeste. I can find allies. There’s no way that the whole military is on her side.”
“You’ll need a ship.”
“I was just thinking the same thing. Know of any I could use?” I turned my head to look at him, but Teru and his pipe had disappeared. Off in the distance, I saw an object illuminated by some unseen light. I stood and walked to it. As I drew closer, I started to make out some of its features. The craft was unlike any I’d seen before. It looked like it was made from a single piece of metal, sleek and rounded at the edges. It looked agile, more so than my Phantom or my Cutlass had been. I don’t know how, but the ship spoke to me. It told me its name. Excalibre.
“Derringer!” came the same voices.
“I’m here!” I called back. The door opened out of the darkness and I saw the faces of Harley, Kris-10, and Drasheel.
“Are you okay?” Harley asked. I nodded.
“Come on. We’ve got planets to save.”
From the Author
My fellow military men turned space vikings, I want to thank you for coming on this journey with Max and me.
I absolutely want to continue this story! But to do so, I need your help. The #1 way that you can ens
ure the next book in this series is written and released, is to leave a review. Once this first book reaches 50 reviews on Amazon, I’ll start on the next one. You’ve spent hours reading the story, take 30 seconds to make sure I can finish the saga!
As always, I appreciate you all from the bottom of my Sol Ring.
Come hang out with me on Facebook! You can either send me a friend request or join my Facebook group!
There are also a couple of harem lit groups that you should totally check out! These are where many authors and fans hang out and generally discuss the genre.
Harem Gamelit
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Or if e-mail is your thing then join my newsletter so I can let you know about new releases, giveaways, and other cool stuff !
-Marco
And while you wait for the next installment, here are some of my other awesome series!
SOLAR KING A Utah mine worker discovers that he is the key to uniting the 12 Zodiac goddesses and saving the galaxy!
IMMORTAL NINJA ACADEMY Two alpha ninjas, two luscious harems, one epic rivalry!
DUNGEONS & GANGSTERS A hobgoblin mobster rising up through the ranks of the Los Angeles criminal underworld.
WOLF BLADE A werewolf barbarian conquering his enemies and a bevy of luscious women.
SKETCH A broke comic book artist gains the power to draw anything into reality!
Alpha Wing Page 20
