by Richard Bard
Dad locked gazes with me. We both knew what had to be done.
Chapter 15
JAKE WATCHED GUALU’S BODY VANISH through the gate. He couldn’t shake the guilt he felt. After all, he was responsible for the launch of the first pyramid that had summoned the alien visitor here in the first place. And now the guy was dead.
Another notch on my belt of sins.
He stuffed the mini in his pocket, grabbed the shotgun, and moved to the tunnel entrance. “I’ll hold them off until you’re ready. You know what to do. Don’t dawdle! This sucker’s going to launch in less than two minutes.”
“I’m on it, Dad.” Alex hovered his hands over the crystalline dome and closed his eyes.
Jake had little doubt Alex could do what was necessary. Their brains had both been pummeled with data from the connection with Gualu.
There were faint echoes of movement in the tunnel. Jake hugged the wall on his side of the opening to avoid activating the first segment of interior lighting. When he peered down the darkened passage, a section lit up at the far end.
They’ll be here in about sixty seconds.
He felt a vibration deep beneath his feet, and his mind swam with images of an entire mountain blasting off with Alex and him still on it. They needed to be well gone before the launch, but they weren’t about to leave without rescuing Lucy. He looked down the tunnel again, and this time he could see Frank and the others running toward him. They were less than fifty paces away.
Flashes of movement behind him caused him to spare a glance at the platform. He’d expected to see their target destination, which would have been the forest outside the tunnel entrance. Instead, close-ups of Ellie, Jazz, Strawberry, and Simon flashed one by one across the screen, each of them showing startled expressions at Alex’s intrusion into their minds.
“Alex! What was it about not dawdling that you didn’t understand?”
“There’s light up ahead!” Frank’s voice echoed behind Jake.
Time was up.
Jake raced back to the console and placed himself between his son and the tunnel entrance. Alex had extinguished the images, suggesting he had completed his task. From where they stood, they had a direct view down the tunnel. When the final segment of the passage illuminated, Jake saw in the distance that Frank was at the front of the pack, still holding on to Lucy beside him.
Jake spoke to Alex over his shoulder. “Are you ready?”
“All set.”
The shotgun was useless with Lucy in the mix. But as he flashed on what he’d learned during the connection to Gualu and the dome, he realized that didn’t matter. He had the power of the mini in his pocket. And after the flood of data, he knew exactly how to wield it. Even so, he decided he wouldn’t kill Frank and his men. There were far more creative ways to deliver their punishment.
He slung the shotgun over his shoulder, pulled out the mini, and willed its energy to form an invisible shield around him and Alex.
Ten seconds later, Trumak, Frank, and Lucy entered the cavern and skidded to a stop. The mercs and other natives spilled into the space and fanned out behind them. Arrows were drawn, rifles aimed, and Trumak held a knife at the base of Lucy’s exposed ribcage.
Frank gleamed in satisfaction. “You’re mine now, you bleedin’ bastard.” He frowned. “Hey, now, wait a sec. It looks like you got yourself a facelift. How considerate of you. That’s going make your severed head look that much better for the camera.”
Thirty seconds to launch.
Lucy’s fearful face was bruised and bloody. There was a vacancy in her eyes that hinted at mourning. Lucy winced as the tip of Trumak’s knife made a tiny puncture in her skin. A bead of blood snaked down her abdomen, and Jake had to force himself to control his fury. Mini or not, the slightest wrong move on his part could cost Lucy her life.
“You win, Frank,” he said. “As you can see, we’re out of running room. I’ll go with you nice and easy. Just let the girl go, and my boy, too.”
Frank sneered. “Game over. You’ve cost me a fortune and turned me family against me. That’s one life too many you’ve interfered with, Jake Bronson. And now the tables are turned and no man can escape his fate.” He gestured at Trumak, who plunged the knife into the girl’s chest.
Lucy gasped, Alex cried out, and Jake unleashed a blast of energy at the men. They froze, with bows and firearms still drawn, like waxed figures in a museum. The desperate movements of their eyes were the only signs of life.
Ten seconds.
They weren’t going to make it in time. But Jake and Alex were of one mind and they moved accordingly—Alex to the console, Jake to catch Lucy as her body folded to the floor. He fell to his knees and cradled her. Her face was scrunched in anguish, and blood gurgled from her mouth. He pulled the knife from her torso and tossed it aside. The wound gushed, and Lucy’s blue eyes pleaded for the pain to stop.
“Now, Alex!”
The surge of power from the dome hit Jake instantly. His skin prickled as the energy entwined itself around Lucy’s body. She stiffened in his arms, and a gasp slipped from her.
Zero.
The ground rumbled, the air filled with static, and the entire space vibrated with an intensity so severe that Trumak’s fallen knife skittered across the floor. One of the mercenaries toppled over, his eyes wild, but his body remained as stiff as a statue.
The spacecraft that had become a mountain was lifting off.
“W-what’s happening?” Lucy asked, her voice startling Jake. Her face was flushed, and the wound had vanished. Jake lowered her feet to the floor and steadied her when she wobbled. “The floor is moving!”
“Afraid so.”
She turned and saw Trumak still motionless. The shaking didn’t stop her from running over and punching him across his jaw. His eyes burned with hatred. She cocked her arm to strike again but stopped herself. Jake guessed the warrior in her took no satisfaction from pummeling a helpless man, murdering savage or not.
Alex rushed forward and took her hand. “We’ve got to go. It may already be too late.”
“Probably so,” Jake said. “But there’s still one last thing I’ve got to do.” The launch had commenced, and if being disconnected from Earth compromised their escape plans, there was nothing to be done. Either way, he figured another few seconds’ delay wouldn’t hurt one way or the other.
He moved over and stood nose to nose with Frank. Frank’s eyes glared. “Hey, Frank, remember what you said about not escaping one’s fate? Well, let me tell you, Fate’s a fickle lass and she’s come for you.”
Gualu had said the dome could do anything you willed it to do. Jake tapped into its power. With a casual wave of his hand, a spigot appeared in the floor in front of them. He turned back to Frank. “You’re going to be here a while. So I figured I’d give you plenty of water to keep you alive. As for food, you’ll have to trust good ol’ Trumak’s hunter instincts for that.”
Frank’s eyes showed confusion.
Lucy turned to Trumak. She gestured toward Frank and uttered something in Trumak’s native tongue. Trumak’s eyes narrowed and Frank’s eyes went wide.
Jake wasn’t certain Frank got the message, but sooner or later it would become clear to the man, and that satisfied him. “Okay, Alex. It’s time to go. Do you want to do the honors, or should I?”
“It’s all you, Dad. You’re the pilot.” Alex rushed Lucy up the stairs to the platform.
Jake put the mini away and moved to the console. He hovered his hands over the dome and duplicated the command sequences Gualu had performed. He thought of Francesca and the others, and willed the device to open a gate to their location. But the scene that appeared between the pillars was an overhead view of the forested area just outside the tunnel entrance. The bodies of the fallen men were still there, but they grew smaller as the pyramidal spacecraft separated itself from its parking spot, taking twenty-five thousand years of earthen growth with it.
“Try again,” Alex said.
Jake felt his son’s mind merge with his own, and the two of them refocused all their energy. Images of Sarafina, Ahmed, Lacey, Marshall, Tony, and Francesca swirled in their consciousness, but still the view on the platform didn’t change. The vibration increased in intensity, and Jake threw everything he had into the effort of opening a gate to his family. It was only then that he noticed movement among the paralyzed men. Frank and the others were coming out of their trance.
Alex shouted, “Get up here. Hurry!”
Jake leaped up the steps two at a time, as an arrow buzzed past his ear like an angry wasp. It narrowly missed his son and vanished behind him. Jake kept running. He grabbed Alex’s and Lucy’s hands along the way and rushed headlong through the gate.
His skin chilled, and a beat later they tumbled into the forest a hundred yards from where the mountain had stood. He spun around and caught a shimmering view of the interior of the chamber. Frank, Trumak, and the others were fighting to be the first to reach the top of the platform. Their faces were etched with terror. Trumak was the first up, and he leaped into the air. But his body collided with an invisible barrier and he slid to the floor. A moment later the view vanished. Alex had issued the command to close the gate. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.
The first hints of dawn colored the sky, and Jake realized far more time had passed in the cavern than he’d thought. Gualu had said time moved differently within the alien craft, and Jake had a fleeting recollection of the formulaic relationship between time and the power used by the gate. But it vanished like smoke in the wind, and he remembered Gualu’s comment that there were certain memories he wouldn’t be permitted to retain.
The mountain was fifty feet in the air, rising steadily as it deposited a cascade of rocks, plants, and dirt from its surfaces to pummel the ground like a massive earthen waterfall. It kicked up a cloud of particulate matter that expanded toward them.
Jake helped the kids to their feet. “We’re too close.” They rushed back until they were well clear of the onslaught. By then the pyramid was a few thousand feet above them, backlit by the lightening sky. They watched, transfixed by the sight, until the pyramid finally vanished. The rain of debris had ended, but the dust cloud clung to the moist air like a heavy fog. It was deathly quiet, as if Mother Nature was holding her breath in the aftermath of the mountain’s departure. It was eerie, but far less so, Jake imagined, than what the men aboard the spacecraft were experiencing.
“I’ll bet Frank’s not very happy right now,” Alex said.
“Or Trumak,” Jake mused. He turned to Lucy. “By the way, what was it you whispered to Trumak in there?”
Lucy’s grin was predatory. “That I suspected Frank’s belly was going to taste like monkey meat.”
Jake nodded. “And that’s why Trumak eyed him like”—he finished the sentence in Frank’s cockney accent—“a fifty-quid steak from a Covent Garden restaurant.”
“Yuck,” Alex said.
Jake looked away. It wasn’t one of his proudest teaching moments, but there was no arguing Frank deserved what was coming to him. Jake had no regrets about serving him up. He smiled at his internal play on words, but his chuckle got stuck in his throat when Lucy sagged to the ground and pressed her face into her hands.
Alex was at her side immediately. “Your mom?”
She nodded between sobs. Jake felt horrible for having overlooked his earlier concerns about Mandu’s fate. Worse yet, he’d discounted Lucy’s sadness by joking around. But just as quickly as she had descended into grief, she shook her head and wiped her face. Rising to her feet, she drew a deep breath.
“She and her friends had taken Frank prisoner, but Trumak’s tribe found them before they disappeared into the forest. They rescued him and gave him the antidote to the drugged darts. I overhead one of Trumak’s warriors speak of it. There was much bloodshed. Many women died, he’d said, and I know my mother would have been at the front of such a battle.” Wiping away a final tear, she added, “My mother is dead.” She clenched her jaw and stood tall. “We must go.”
Before Jake had a chance to offer comforting words, he spotted a flicker of lights from the ridgeline to their right. He pulled the binoculars from Alex’s pack and clocked a troop of seven or eight figures. It was still too dark in the trees to see much, but the silhouettes created by flashlights at the back of the pack showed outlines of rifles. Follow-on mercenaries, he thought. They were skirting the far end of the lake he’d landed on earlier.
“It’s mercs,” Jake said, stepping off in the opposite direction. “Let’s go.”
“Not that way,” Lucy said.
“Why not?”
“Quiet. Listen.”
There was nothing at first, but when Jake slowed his breathing, he heard the faint rustle of movement.
“Not animals,” Lucy said. “People. But too noisy to be native to the jungle.”
“More mercenaries,” Alex said.
Jake didn’t like their options. The two groups were converging on them from both sides of the lake. They couldn’t flee into the dust cloud behind them. Even if they could find a way past the massive embankment of debris that had been shed by the mountain, they’d still have to traverse the huge crater left behind and there’d be absolutely no cover. “We’ve got to beeline it to the lake. The seaplane is our only shot.”
Lucy frowned. “I’m not sure we can make it there before they cut us off.” She cast a sidelong glance at Alex.
“Speed’s not a problem,” Jake said. For the first time since he’d found the mini eight years ago, he was fully aware of its capabilities and how to wield them. “And if either of those groups of mercs catch up to us, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”
As usual, Alex was a step ahead of him. He reached a hand up. “Let’s fly.”
Jake adjusted the slung shotgun and hoisted his son onto his shoulders. “Ready for takeoff, Lucy.”
The little warrior took off like a rabbit being chased. Jake took a deep breath, patted his cargo pocket—and froze.
The mini was gone.
“Dad, come on. We’re going to lose her.”
Jake checked his other pocket but it was empty, too. He remembered stuffing the device in his pocket before they’d gone through the gate. He’d even buttoned the pocket and it was still closed now.
“Dad…”
He spun and looked toward the spot where they’d tumbled from the gate.
“Dad…”
“We’ve gotta go back,” he whispered to himself.
“Dad, please. It’s no use. It’s gone.”
“I will find it.” He took a step toward the dust cloud.
“No, Dad!” Alex said forcefully.
The truth hit him before Alex spoke it.
“It vanished when we went through the gate,” Alex said. “It was one of the mandates Gualu operated under, remember? To never leave hints to their advanced technology behind?”
Jake remembered all too well. When he reached his senses outward in an attempt to confirm what he already knew, he wasn’t surprised to discover there was not even a trickle of the mini’s energy to be found. He stared up at the sky. In the years since he’d discovered the alien device, it had fueled him and saved him and his family and friends countless times. It had even killed him once. Now he and Alex were on their own, with only their courage and wits to get them out of the mess they were in. And standing flat-footed while two groups of mercs closed in on them was only making an impossible situation worse.
He spun on his heels and raced after Lucy.
“We can make it, Dad.”
Jake wasn’t so sure. He glanced left and right, wondering how much his delay would cost them, and whether or not he could find the strength and endurance necessary to get to the plane in time. And the aircraft had been running on fumes. It would be a wonder to get the engine to turn over, much less last long enough for them to fly somewhere else. And where would they go? Back to Frank’s, where the mercs had likely set up base?
T
hey caught up to Lucy. She’d waited for them, and her expression left little doubt as to her frustration at the delay. She was moving again now, fast, and Jake had to pour all his focus onto the path to keep up with her.
When they broke into the clearing at the lake’s edge, Jake was starving for oxygen. He lowered Alex to the ground, bent over with his hands on his thighs, and sucked in lungfuls of air. He looked up to see Alex and Lucy untying the ropes securing the plane. The mist that had hidden the lake had vanished, and he guessed it had been created by Gualu’s technology. In any case, he was glad to see the lake was much longer than he’d thought, and the turbulence generated by the nearby waterfall had eased to a gentle ripple across the surface. “Hop in the plane. I’ll push off.” He grabbed one of the pontoons while Alex hurried into the front passenger seat and Lucy jumped in the back.
“Over there,” a voice shouted from the distance.
Jake shoved the pontoon to one side, and jumped on it as it began to point the nose of the aircraft out toward the lake. Alex kicked open the pilot’s door from the inside, and Jake leaped in just as the first shot echoed behind him.
“Heads down!” he shouted as his fingers flew over the controls, and engaged the starter. “Come on, come on,” he muttered. After the third propeller turn, the engine ignited, the rpms wound up, and the plane moved out onto the lake. A bullet punctured the cabin from behind, whizzed past Jake’s ear, and spiderwebbed the windshield, obliterating any hopes that the mercs still wanted to take him alive. Additional rounds impacted the fuselage. He firewalled the throttle. The Cessna picked up speed. He trimmed the elevators and adjusted the flaps for takeoff.
“Yes!” he said when they reached takeoff speed. He pulled back on the stick, and the plane skipped into the air as more slugs pummeled the airframe. Banking hard in a climbing turn, he spotted the mercs huddled on the shoreline, muzzle flashes flying from their rifles. But none of the shots struck home, and a moment later the towering trees of the rainforest were between him and the attackers.
