Mike grinned as in thirty seconds time, there was soft snoring coming from under her mud-spattered cap.
*****
Harris came in fast and crouched. “Got a signal up on the rise; they’re close by, less than a mile, and stationary.”
Nadia jerked forward. “Did you see them? Are they alive?”
“No idea,” Harris replied. “But the tracker is still giving off a signal. That’s good enough for me.”
Then they heard it: the horn.
Ally froze and Nadia’s eyes went wide. “This is the sound we heard before the attack.”
Jane turned to Mike and grabbed his arm. “Like back at the cave city, just before…”
Ally sprang to her feet and went through a quick weapon’s check. Jane stood, held out a hand to Mike and pulled him up. Alistair also got to his feet, slowly, now looking like he’d aged ten years.
Harris turned slowly. “Whatever it was, it was a long way away. Might have been some sort of animal.”
“That was no animal,” Mike replied.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s finish this.” Harris gave them one last look over, and then waved them on. This time he took the lead and Ally dropped back to rear.
They moved fast, but tried to stay alert. Though the jungle here was still thick, there seemed to be no animals to bother them or even take an interest in them.
After about thirty minutes of moving fast and staying low, they came to a small clearing with something piled at its center.
“What the..?” Harris frowned as he stared at the small tracking device. “Signal receiver says that’s our target,” he whispered. “Stay here.”
He crept to the mound, and when he was just a few feet away he stopped to slowly scan the jungle surrounding him. Satisfied, he waved the group in closer.
“What happened here, comrade?” Harris asked Nadia.
They stared down at the mound which consisted of clothing, weapons and ammunition, climbing equipment, water cans, and even food packs. But thankfully, no blood.
“I, I have no idea.” Nadia lowered herself to lift some of the clothing and examine it. “My team.”
“They stripped?” Alistair asked. “Why?”
“I doubt they did it by choice,” Jane said.
Ally pulled clothing and equipment aside. “Bingo… boss.” She dragged out the suitcase-sized box. “Nadia, is this what we’re looking for?”
She nodded. “That is their pulse weapon.”
They heard it again, the long mournful blare of the horn.
Jane’s jaw clenched and she glared at Harris. “That was closer.”
“Nearly done here.” Harris quickly went to the machine, flipped it open, and looked along the dials and switches. All were in Russian. “It’s undamaged. Quick translation here, Mike.”
Mike came and crouched beside him and translated the settings and naming conventions, from direction, distance, strength, and duration, while Jane looked over his shoulder. It seemed that basically all that was required for calibration was to tell it where, how far, and what power level, and then you aimed and fired it.
Harris nodded and grinned. “Ladies and gentlemen, our job here is done.”
“What about my friends?” Nadia asked.
“You mean those guys who came down here to kill my people?” Harris looked up at her. “Fuck ‘em.
“Bring the pulser,” Harris said. “Also grab anything else we can use for the return trip.” He began to take suitable rifle magazines, grenades, and also began to shake water bottles and sort through foil packs of dehydrated rations. He tossed a grenade to Mike who caught it and examined the Russian device. And Ally set to putting all the food and water she could find into a single pack.
Nadia squeaked and cringed as the horn blared from even closer.
“They’re here,” Nadia whispered, her eyes like saucers.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Mike began to pull Jane with him.
A small flock of flying creatures took to the air like an iridescent cloud, and the group momentarily cringed at the sound of their screeching fright.
Mike spun to Jane: it was too late.
The nets seemed to fly over the jungle top to land with expert precision amongst them. They were heavy mesh, made of some sort of woven hemp-like material, and must have weighed fifty pounds with rocks tied to the edges to ensure they flared wide as they flew.
The first pinned Ally and she quickly began to move to its edge.
“Run,” Harris yelled.
The next nets fell over him and Alistair. Mike and Jane ran to the forest line and when they were just a dozen paces from the shadows of the canopy, out stepped the nightmarish creatures they remembered from the city cave of crystals over a year before.
Twitching eyes on stalks, mouths hanging with tendrils that quivered with anticipation on top of seven-foot high, powerful bodies of chitin. And all with extra sets of arms at their waists.
They carried spears and things like crossbows. Squeaks and pops emanated from their alien mouths, and Jane and Mike had to split, forced to flee in opposite directions.
As Mike sprinted away, he turned back briefly to see the group more interested in following Jane.
“No.” He stopped. “Hey!” Mike yelled back at them.
They ignored him and continued to pursue her, so he quickly fumbled in his pouch pocket for the Russian grenade Harris had given him. He pulled the pin and tossed it after them.
The effect was devastating; several of the creatures were blown to pieces and showered the clearing in fishy-smelling shell fragments and translucent meat.
It also worked in distracting them from Jane as the remaining creatures now came for him. He turned, put his head down and began to sprint again.
As he went to exit the clearing, he saw that Harris, Nadia and Alistair were being collected up and ropes looped around their necks. His plan was to enter the jungle and loop around to try and meet up with Jane and then form a plan to rescue the rest.
He grew more confident as the weird squeaking language of the arthropod people began to fall behind. And then something smashed into the back of his head so hard everything immediately went black.
*****
Jane stayed down, gun pointed as she watched. Mike was dragged from the jungle by the ankles and thrown roughly to the center of the clearing where he was stripped down. He started to come around, and the shelled monstrosities spent a few moments looping him to the others in the rope capture line.
Jane held up her gun, teeth grinding but her hand shaking. She wanted to charge in, put holes in some of those horrors, or at least try and get her friends free. But the sensible side of her mind warned her against it. The things had just subdued two trained soldiers so she’d have zero chance.
She lowered her weapon and watched as the arthropod people began to pull the clothing from the rest of them, stripping them down to their nakedness. Harris and Ally seemed calm but their expression held a barely restrained fury. Alistair helped by quickly taking his own clothing off and only Nadia began to sob.
Mike was droopy-eyed when he came around and he spoke softly to Alistair. The young man just shook his head and looked white as a sheet and about to fall over, his slim, pale nakedness looking vulnerable in the harsh red light.
One of the creatures came close to him and leaned forward, examining him in detail. It reached up and dragged a clawed hand down his belly, leaving a red scratch line. It turned and made some sort of pops and squeaks to the others of its kind who responded with a similar sound: joking, laughing? He wondered.
In seconds more the people were marched out of the clearing, their clothing and possessions now joining the mound of Russian gear.
Jane waited a few minutes and then followed.
CHAPTER 27
Mike winced as he was tugged by the neck when their procession started up. His head still throbbed and he felt a trickle of blood run down the back of his head.
As they move
d through the jungle he felt his vulnerability without his clothing. There are some pieces of the human anatomy that do not take to being brushed by stiff branches, especially by anything with sharp edges.
Harris was in a worse position being lashed at the front of their line, and it was him that had to endure making a hole in the foliage. He was followed by Ally, then himself, and then Alistair.
The huge creatures walked on either side of them with their twitching and darting movements reminiscent of crabs on a shoreline that were darting back and forth to avoid waves lapping on the sand.
Their clicks, pops and squeaks were constant, and after a while, Alistair sped up a little so he was close behind Mike.
“These are the things from the wall image at the cave city,” Alistair whispered over Mike’s shoulder. “Y’ha-nthlei, the deep old ones.”
Mike nodded, and Alistair continued.
“It’s definitely a language,” he said. “There are certain repetitions, nuances, and cadences that repeat which bear all the hallmarks of conversation.”
Mike looked over his shoulder. “I don’t suppose they’re saying they want to make us their leaders.”
“Why, would they do that?” Alistair said hopefully.
“Forget it.” Mike sighed.
They hadn’t traveled far before they came to stone paving and then they encountered pits that contained tons of more discarded clothing. They saw that some had rotted down to nothing, and even had plants growing through it.
Was this the fate of the race that lived down here in the crystal cave and was unlucky enough to be captured? Mike wondered.
But then as they passed closer to one of the pits, Mike was sure there was more modern apparel, and he thought he even saw an old naval uniform, plus a rifle with a wooden stock. There were also swords, shields and items from their history, perhaps from some ancient race that existed down here or maybe even from the Earth’s surface history. And if that was true, how did they get here? Mike wondered.
Then they broke through the last of the trees and beheld the city.
“Oh wow,” Alistair breathed.
“It looks like a Mayan city,” Mike said softly. “But there’s something wrong with it.”
The stone city was built on the edge of a vast sea, with the huge sea-borne mountain column a few miles offshore.
“Maybe that’s the Y’ha-nthlei’s developmental level,” Alistair replied from over his shoulder. “They’re indigenous primitives.”
The buildings were mostly squat and crafted from stone blocks. Few were over two stories, but that was where architectural normality ended.
Mike blinked, trying to make sense of what he beheld. In his time he had worked with people on building construction and design. But the cityscape before him defied the rules of physics.
There were weird shapes of non-Euclidean construction. Towers that were larger at the top than the bottom, and a few that looked like they were made from dripping wax. There were also some smaller structures that seemed more biological as if they were grown not built. And still growing.
Also, oddly, where the city extended to the shoreline and then into the water, he could see that there were houses or buildings that were totally submerged. But there was still activity in and around them.
“I think they’re being inundated,” Alistair whispered. “The city is sinking.”
“No, I don’t think they’ve sunken,” Mike said. “I can see movement below the water. I think it’s a semi-aquatic race.”
“Oh my,” Alistair replied, spellbound.
Mike remembered now their previous time down in this hot, red world, and when they sailed across the vast sea. He had dived down to what he thought was a sunken and long-abandoned city. But maybe what he had visited had always been like that. That it had been constructed on the sea bottom to begin with.
Mike felt a sharp tug on the rope at his neck and he staggered for a moment as one of the shelled creatures wanted to slow them down as their procession was reaching its destination.
On the outskirts of the main city, they were untied and herded into stalls. There were dozens of the cells each separated by a few feet, and each contained a different sort of creature.
“This is unbelievable,” Alistair whispered and walked to the bars of their cage. “I wonder if they know we’re intelligent.”
“Or if they care,” Mike replied.
In the next few stalls there were some animals the size of elephants, and others only waist high. Most, but not all, were some sort of insect form. But some looked like upright lizards or tiny dinosaurs. There were also a few creatures that might have been a form of furred pig, but squinting, Mike could see more than four legs underneath them.
Some of the other animal captives turned to scrutinize the new prisoners, while others ignored them to continue to work at the bars of their confines or huddled together as if plotting. And there were still more that just stood silently in a vegetative state.
“You asked about intelligence. Well, here’s a good test.” Harris pointed. “Those that accept their fate, those that use activity to try and escape, and those that use their minds to plan.”
The ones working on the bars of the cage would sometimes elicit a jab from the butt of a spear of one of their arthropod captors.
“I see,” Harris said as he watched the response.
Their cage was about fifty feet square and obviously built for a bigger group of prisoners. But they didn’t have it all to themselves.
In the corner, small and huddled, was a wizened old human female, with her hands held over her head. Mike could see her stick-like arms were covered in sores, and maybe that was why she had been left alone.
“Oh shit.” Mike walked closer and crouched before her. “Katya,” he said softly. “Katya Babikov.”
The woman slowly took her hands away from her face. Mike wished he had some sort of cloak or garment to cover her nakedness, but he had nothing.
Though she was streaked with dirt, heavily lined and spotted with crusted sores, he knew her, and he knew, she him.
Her face creased in a rueful smile. “I told you, you were a fool to come. And a double fool to come twice, Mr. Monroe,” she said. Her eyebrows went up. “But then what does that make me? The biggest fool of all I think.”
Mike held out his hands to take hers in his. “Tell me what happened here. Where are your friends?”
“They were not all my friends. They were my chaperones, and bodyguards, and my captors.” She snorted softly. “And the captors got captured. These thinking lobsters stripped us and brought us here. Then they came back to take everyone out just a little while ago, but I think they didn’t like the look of me, too skinny, too sick, so they left me behind.” She shook her head. “I haven’t seen them again.”
“How many of you were there?” Mike asked.
She bobbed her head. “Six were captured.” Katya leaned around Mike to gaze at Nadia. “But three got away. You, Oleg and Sasha.”
Nadia nodded.
“Where is my only friend, Sasha? He was my helper,” Katya asked.
Nadia’s eyes went to Harris momentarily. “He’s dead now.”
Katya’s mouth turned down. “Of course he is. Down here, everyone dies.” She lowered her head. “I hope it wasn’t painful.”
“So only three left.” Harris snorted and turned to Ally. “No problem.”
“Heads up,” Mike said.
A small group of the arthropod beings slowly approached their cage and stopped to stare in at them. Alistair held up his hand and approached them, eliciting another round of their chirping, squeaks and pops.
“The Y’ha-nthlei are clearly intelligent,” Alistair said over his shoulder. “I’m going to try something.” He cleared his throat and began to attempt to mimic their noises.
“What are you doing?” Ally asked.
“These are the sounds they made when they first appeared. Maybe it was some sort of formal greeting.” He turned back
just as a pair of the creatures came even closer to the bars of their cage; their bulb-like eyes shivered as they lowered themselves toward Alistair. At the end of each bulb were three black dots like pupils that fixed on the young scientist.
“Phew,” Harris said. “They stink.”
“Like low tide,” Mike added.
Alistair waved to them. “Yes, that’s it,” he said and began to make more of their noises.
“Be careful, Alistair, you have no idea what you’re doing. Or saying,” Mike warned.
“Yeah, for all you know you might be asking them for a date,” Ally jeered.
One of the things reached in carefully and gently touched Alistair’s chin. It levered open his mouth and lowered its head to look inside as though checking to see if he had anything hidden in there.
Alistair reached up to pat the hard claw. “It’s just me, trying to talk to you. We are friendly. We come in peace,” he said, and then turned to wiggle his eyebrows at Mike.
“Ask them to take us to their leader,” Harris said. “So we can kill it.”
The creatures talked excitedly again and then they called more of their kin over. One of them went to the pole holding the keys and then to their stall’s gate, while others stood guard. The thing stood in the open doorway and motioned Alistair to come closer.
“Don’t.” Mike went and grabbed hold of the young scientist.
Alistair smiled, kept his eyes on the creature and carefully extracted Mike’s hand. “I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine. Like I said, they’re intelligent, and when they find out we are, we may be okay.” He turned to give them a fast smile. “I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.”
They gently led Alistair out, locked the cage door and hung the keys again.
“Goodbye, young man,” Katya said.
Mike watched him go for a moment more and then sat cross-legged in front of the old Russian woman, but not facing her directly, as he guessed she was already uncomfortable with her nudity in front of the strangers.
“So this is where Arkady Saknussov has led us both,” Katya observed.
Mike smiled. “We’re not finished yet.”
“I’m not going home this time,” Katya said softly. “This I know.”
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