“That’s the worst thing I ever saw,” Razak said, rubbing his forehead. “Damn, holy hell, man. Have you ever seen anything like this? We’ve seen some stuff, but… oh, shit… this?”
“I don’t even know what just happened. That was… there was also… outside I saw… This is so screwed. I’m getting a real bad feeling, Raz. Those creepy vibes you were talking about, I’m feeling them too. Maybe we should restrain him. There’s no telling what he might do when he wakes up. We should do it while we still can.”
“I’m not so sure, moving him might kill him,” Razak said, shaking his head. “The guy had live maggots crawling across his brain. That’s enough to make anyone go nuts. Can you imagine, your brain doing things against your will? That’s scary stuff, like being possessed by some evil spirit or something. We can’t be sure any of what he did was a conscious decision. I just… I dunno.”
“He tried to kill us back at starcom, he shot us in our sleep! The only reason he failed is because he didn’t know how to use the javelin he stole. The idiot had it set to stun. He’s dangerous, Raz. We gotta restrain him.”
“Look at the guy, he’s half dead,” Razak said, casting out a hand. “Let’s leave him be for now. We’ll keep an eye on him. We’re armed, he’s not. He won’t be able to pull anything. I don’t think he’s gonna be able to pull anything for a good while. I’m not even sure he’ll survive. Look at him, does that look like a dangerous man, he’s barely breathing?”
Molotov looked down on Aleksi, wrapped in blankets so only his deformed face was poking through. He looked like a bloodworm, barely human.
“I’m calling it in,” Molotov said, engaging his comms system. “Commander, do you copy?”
“Copy, five by five, what is it Molotov?”
“Commander, those maggots just hatched from Aleksi’s head. The guy’s half dead.”
“Hatched?”
“Yeah, you don’t wanna know. I’ve seen some stuff, but oh my god, sir. It was rough. We had to remove his restraints. I think Razak saved his life. We’re not sure. He’s out for the count. We’ve done everything we can.”
“Don’t take your eyes off him. Don’t trust him. We just opened the temple, we’ll be back soon. I want one of you with eyes on that psycho at all times, you hear? Don’t take them off him for a second. Take shifts. Full vigilance.”
“Will do, sir. Did you find anything?”
“Nori’s just prepping a batch of drones to scan and take readings. As far as I can see it looks mostly empty, some kind of hollow glass pyramid inside the mountain.”
“Has anything… I mean… have you seen anything strange?” Molotov asked, thinking back to the apparitions he’d seen across the ice.
“No, why, have you?”
“Uh… I think… we’re just a little shaken is all. It was bad, sir.”
“Sit tight, we might be back sooner than we imagined. The temple looks like a bust. There doesn’t appear to be any artefacts or relics as far as I can see. There is something in there though, I can’t… it’s too dark. We’ll probably have to go inside to check it out, providing the scans are clear.”
“Okay, Commander. Can you guys hurry back though? I have a real bad feeling. I think we should leave as soon as we can.”
“Ha, now you get it. Welcome to the chain of command, son. We’ll be back as soon as we can. Keep me informed of any developments. Also, stay off the ice. There are creatures below it, some kind of dinosaur manta ray hybrid. They’re huge. One nearly took out Fang and Scarlet. They barely escaped. Don’t risk going out there. They can break through and drag you under.”
“Copy, sir.”
“Alright then, Blake out.”
“Roger that, Commander. Hon?” Molotov continued.
“I didn’t know you and the Commander had pet names,” Schweighofer responded, chuckling softly.
“Hey you… Um… I’m… uh… sorry about earlier,” Molotov managed. He balled a fist and thumped his forehead, cursing himself silently, annoyed he couldn’t find anything better to say. Sorry seemed hopelessly inadequate to convey how bad he felt and how desperately he wished she was there at that moment.
“Is that your rare vulnerable side I hear?”
“I’m always vulnerable without you, baby, you know that,” he said, smiling. “It’s all yours, all of me, it always was. Just hurry back and it’s all yours. I hate it when we argue.”
“Mine forever, just for me?”
“All yours, forever and always.”
“You’re too cute, baby. I gotta go, looks like the drones are moving in. I’m sorry too. Don’t beat yourself up. We can make it up to each other when we get home. Love ya, you big idiot. Out.”
The Temple
T he drones passed over the temple’s threshold and into the darkness, pencil beams of green laser light scanning diligently, leaving no quarter unchecked. Almost immediately, the temple’s interior came alive, glassy walls reflecting the laser beams, creating a dazzling spectacle of crisscrossing rays, an infinitely shifting lightshow. Becca crouched, her line of sight following the intersecting neon pathways upwards. The temple’s four walls tapered to a peak high inside the mountain, forming a perfectly smooth black glass pyramid.
“Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” Hadley said. “Dude...”
“It’s glass, all glass, massive,” Scarlet said. “It all looks like one piece. I can’t see any joins. How’s that even possible? How’d’you even build something like this?”
Becca dropped her gaze, searching the alien cathedral for anything identifiable as having useful purpose or revealing signs of previous habitation. The only object in the room was a giant black claw, suspended dead center, hanging over a dish shaped table cradling a faintly flickering flame.
“It’s impossible to map the dimensions,” Nori said. “There’s too much deflection. The numbers keep going up, they don’t make any sense.”
“What about radiation?” Commander Blake asked, signing off his conversation with Molotov.
“Nothing. Just above one Sievert, normal background.”
“Where’s all the treasure?” Fang moaned dejectedly, peering inside. “Where are all the piles of ancient treasure? I thought there’d be something, shelves, jars, flasks, gold things, corridors, chambers. It’s empty, nothing!”
“On the plus side,” Hadley said, “is all we need is some Pink Floyd and we got ourselves one hell of a retro revival concert. Have you got any music stored in those databanks?” He asked Nori. “Got any Pink Floyd, Shine on you Crazy Diamond? That’d work.”
“I don’t understand,” Nori said, ignoring Hadley. “I can’t understand why anyone would build something this enormous and intricate for no reason. All the signs pointed to it having relevance. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Could be grave robbers,” Scarlet said, “like in Egypt. Almost as soon as they built those things people dug their way in to get at the rich stuff. It’s amazing Tutankhamun’s burial chamber went untouched for as long as it did. The last undiscovered tomb, so far anyway.”
“So, we’re too late,” Fang said. “These idiots went and hid their treasure in a massive super pyramid. No wonder it’s gone. They basically advertised it. My dad always said, never boast about your fortunes, it’ll only tempt desperate people to do desperate things.”
“If anything had been stolen, the first thing to go would have been the gold on those pictograms and prayer wheels,” Nori said. “No, this has to be something different, something other than an ark. It can’t have been built to store artefacts.”
“There’s something in there though. That thing in the middle,” Reece said, pointing to the claw hanging in the center of the pyramid. “It looks like an eagle’s foot, with talons, hooked talons.”
“Is there anybody in there?” Hadley yelled through cupped hands, his voice echoing back again and again. “Woah… dude…” he said, beaming a smile at the group. “Trippy, man.”
“Why tempt
fate?” Scarlet said. “Don’t anger it.”
“Anger what, there’s nothing in there?”
“I dunno, the massive claw thing, you don’t know what it does.”
“It vants to eat your face,” Hadley said in a Dracula voice, turning his hands to claws, making Scarlet chuckle.
The drones moved to investigate the hovering structure, green lasers slewing inwards and converging at the center of the chamber. Nori held out his hand and projected a hologram from a ring of lights on his palm. An image slowly built up as the drones scanned. It began to resemble nine curved chairs hanging from spoked booms radiating from a central hub. The chairs surrounded a concave table, scooped like an elongated half-eggshell. The detailing across the seating appeared organic in design, rounded and swirling. Everything flowed. There were no hard edges or straight lines.
“Whoever sat in those seats had to be important,” Hadley said. “To build a place like this and only have two… six… nine seats. Those had to be nine important people. You don’t build something like this for people like me. If we built something like this back at home it’d take years.”
“Over ten,” Nori said. “That’s how long it took to dig out a mountain in China’s Xinjiang range when we constructed the Jurassic Earth Resort and Starport. It cost over a trillion dollars and involved thousands of workers and machines. It’s one of the most ambitious construction projects ever undertaken. It seems such a waste now it’s confiscated. I can’t believe I might never get to see it again.”
“They’ll lift the sanctions when we hand over knowledge of this place,” Becca said. “I mean, look at it. It’s incredible. When you do get it back though, maybe don’t bring tourists back here. That didn’t work out too well. Scrap the Starport bit. A theme park in a mountain, fine. Bringing tourists to a world full of super-predators, not such a great idea as it turns out.”
“I understand that now,” Nori said. “I never thought things could go as badly wrong as they did. I was so carried away with the thrill of what we’d accomplished, I lost sight of the dangers. I wouldn’t bring another civilian back here as long as I live.”
“You might change your mind in a few hundred years,” Reece said. “When all the people you’ve made promises to are no longer around, you might see things differently.”
“No, not after what happened to those children. Never again. And I intend on sharing this DENTON technology with all mankind when it’s perfected,” Nori said, holding up and rotating a robotic arm, tattooed with the insignia D.E.N.T.O.N. “The thought of moving into a future without the people I love doesn’t bear thinking about. I don’t want to go there alone.”
“Tread carefully rolling out a world of mechanized super-humans,” Reece said. “Don’t get carried away by the thrill of what you’ve accomplished and lose sight of the dangers. Not everyone has good intentions.”
“Noted. And again, that’s why I need people like you to help me. It’s why I chose you, because I need you, all of you.”
“Yeah, and you also chose Aleksi,” Reece said. “I’m just saying, be careful. Good intentions are not always shared. Sometimes people pretend, they tell you what you wanna hear to get the power they want, and when they have it… man, when the worst people have power over others, when they’re demanding your total obedience… I’m just saying, don’t forget, not everyone has good intentions, not everyone believes in freedom.”
Nori dipped his robotic head and nodded.
“Just wondering, how are those chairs hovering like that?” Schweighofer said, waving a hand over the hologram above Nori’s palm. “I don’t see any wires or supports.”
“My best guess is mag-lev,” Nori said. “Magnetic levitation.”
“What about that light on the table?” Becca said, motioning through the temple doorway to the cradled illumination.
“It could be a projection,” Nori replied. “If it’s comprised of light the drones wouldn’t be able to image it. Their lasers would pass straight through.”
“Obviously,” Becca said, “what I’m getting at is this place still has power. It’s still plugged in. This ancient ruin has a power source that’s still operating.”
Nori tilted his head towards Becca, his mechanical reticules widening with surprise.
“Oh, you need us alright,” Reece said, chuckling. “Man, do you need us.”
“It seems safe,” Commander Blake’s voice echoed.
Becca turned and saw the Commander moving into the pyramid, slewing his rifle from side to side, mounted torch shining a bright beam, tritium stitching across his survival suit casting a pale green glow, his image perfectly reflected in the glassy floor and walls.
“Well, if he’s going in,” Scarlet said, swinging her rifle forwards and setting off. “Bring it.”
“Meh, why not?” Fang said. “Let’s check it out. Ancient claw, you owe me some treasure, bitch.”
“Party dude!” Hadley said in a stoner voice, flashing a hang-loose sign and jogging after Fang.
“Stay behind us just in case,” Schweighofer said to Reece and Becca, moving off after Hadley. “If this goes south make for the fuel tank, we’ll cover you.”
Becca, Reece and Nori followed the armed Renegades into the mountain, echoing footsteps clopping loudly. Becca marvelled at the scale of the shining glass structure, which reflected the group from all sides, making them look like astronauts venturing across space and time. The occasional wave of nausea caused her to take deep breaths and remind herself she wasn’t untethered and about to drift away.
“I think I see something under the glass,” Fang said a few minutes in. She got to her knees and cupped her hands to the floor. “Yup, there’s something down there, electricity.”
Halfway between the entrance and the claw, everyone except Schweighofer and Commander Blake dropped and peered through the glass. It was dark and what was down there was hard to see, but Becca thought it looked like purple electricity dancing around a large metallic dome, from which pipework sprouted.
“There’s your power source,” Scarlet said, getting to her feet. “That’s a reactor if ever I saw one.”
“We don’t have anything approaching this technology,” Nori said. “A reactor that can stay powered for tens of thousands of years, amazing.”
“Looks like we might have found that treasure, Fang,” Commander Blake said, “an endless energy source.”
“It’s only treasure if you can spend it, wear it, or have dinner using it,” Fang rebuffed. “When I was dreaming about adventures as a kid, finding a futuristic reactor wasn’t exactly high on the list.”
“When we share this with the world, you’ll definitely get your Jurassic Earth Starport back,” Hadley said. “See, you will get to see it again. Not so glum now, huh?”
“Jurassic Earth Resort,” Becca corrected. “Not Starport.”
“Indeed,” Nori said. “No civilians back here ever again. But we will need to help the nations of the world travel back here safely. We’re the only ones with the technology to do that. We can’t allow a sole nation to claim this for themselves. It won’t lead to anything good. This needs to be shared. If it falls into the wrong hands it would create a catastrophic imbalance of power.”
“Then maybe we should destroy it,” Reece said. “Destroy everything, the star portal, the lot. Make it so no one can come back here ever again.”
“People will always find a way,” Nori said. “Now they know it’s possible, more will come eventually. We don’t have the firepower to level this place and the people that follow would eventually discover it, just as we did. No, we need to disclose this to everyone and bring back representatives from every nation. It must be shared.”
The group continued towards the floating seating array. It soon became apparent the central table wasn’t cradling a flame, but a photorealistic hologram of the ringed planet Saturn, its mellow clouds swirling like cream in coffee.
“That’s odd,” Schweighofer said, circling and looking up
at the looming projection, at least four by four meters. “What a weird thing to find.”
“What were you expecting?” Scarlet said. “After everything we’ve seen, this surprises you?”
“I dunno, I just didn’t expect Saturn. It’s just a strange thing to be here, you don’t think?”
“It might not be so strange,” Nori said, holding a hand to one of the floating chairs and giving it a shake. The weightless seating array wobbled. “Astrophysicists have long debated the origins of Saturn’s rings. Some even postulate they were artificially created. I’m not so sure about that, but there is consensus on one thing. With the right technology it would be possible to use the rings as a powerful radio telescope. Harnessed correctly, you’d be able to transmit, receive or make observations across the galaxy.”
“So, you think that message that repeats every fourteen minutes could be someone phoning home?” Becca said, gazing up at the ringed gas giant.
“It seems a logical explanation given all this. We’ll know soon for sure. It won’t be long until the signal repeats.”
“And it just got creepy again,” Hadley said. “Just like Pink Floyd, beautiful then creepy.”
“Look here, are these controls?” Scarlet said, pointing to one of the chairs.
Nori reached up brushed his fingers across a protrusion on one of the armrests. Suddenly, the image of Saturn shrank and stars ignited throughout the glass pyramid, all the way to the chamber’s apex. Becca grabbed Reece as Saturn flew off the table. It disappeared into a vortex of wildly spinning points of light.
Becca’s stomach went into freefall. The trails of whizzing starlight slowed and she found herself facing an unknown solar system, hovering over the table, planets orbiting a red star. The image zoomed in and up to the right of the constellation of worlds. It appeared to be homing on empty space. Then, slowly, the image of dozens of cigar shaped objects materialized, looking like shards of rock, all aligned to the same orientation. Stunned, Becca looked between the objects and the alien solar system, six gas giants and five inner rocky worlds, with at least three asteroid belts.
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 48
