Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1

by Doug Dandridge

  A couple of kilometer wide canyons opened between two peaks, and Taylor wondered if that might give access to the valley. Then his attention was riveted by the trio of two hundred meter tall step pyramids sticking above the forest, black stone seeming to soak up the daylight. Reports from the cavalry indicated bases of more than a kilometer, the weathering of the basaltic stone indicating great age. That made him wonder again why the valley was deserted on a clearly inhabited world.

  The General swung his glasses to the right, adjusting for the bumping of the moving vehicle. The plateau was more to the right of the valley than the left, about five kilometers width of cliff surrounding uplands on a long ridge coming up from the valley floor. He could make out the buildings and fortifications of the abandoned city that sat on those uplands, on top of a hundred meters of sheer cliffs, wondering again what had caused the original inhabitants of the valley to leave, and no one else to move into such prime real estate. Must have been something, he thought, and I hope it’s not still here.

  Finally he swung the glasses to the near wall of the valley, about ten kilometers from the partially buried road the convoy traversed. The peaks seemed to be slightly higher on that side of the valley, and there were numerous canyons breaking the steep walls of the ridgeline.

  “Sir,” came a voice over the com circuit, through the earphones built into the cavalry head gear the General was wearing. Taylor recognized it as Division Sergeant Major Cliff Jackson.

  “Go ahead,” said Taylor into his throat mike over the sound of the motor convoy.

  “The patrol we’ve sent up to the high fort has reported in,” said the Sergeant Major.

  Taylor looked back to the rear of the convoy and picked out the fortress that sat high on a knob on the right entrance of the valley. He supposed the patrol had found a path up to the heights, and had called back in their find.

  “What did they see?” asked the General, scanning the near ridge again with his glasses.

  “Well sir,” said the NCO, “first off they reported a large plateau, about twenty by twelve kilometers, of good grassland.”

  The General whistled to himself. In the near future they would need to depend on livestock, after they ran out of fuel for the vehicles. Two hundred and fifty square kilometers of easily defended grazing land was a find.

  “What about the fortress?” asked the General, remembering how impressive it looked at the top of the hundred and fifty to two hundred meter cliff it perched on.

  “Large fortification, said the Lieutenant that went up there with the squad,” said the Top Sergeant. “Hundred meter tower at the top of the keep, with large engine emplacements looking out over the valley. And the louey was impressed that you would have to storm successive layers of walls and dry moats to get to the main keep.”

  And Sergeant Major the Doctor Cliff Jackson, PhD, was probably drooling on himself to go up and check those fortifications out himself, thought the General with a laugh. Cliff held a doctorate in military history, specialty subject medieval/Renaissance siege warfare. The General was never really sure why the Sergeant Major had turned down a commission earlier in his career, but he was glad to have this particular NCO in this new environment, and might have to give him a promotion he couldn’t refuse in the near future.

  “The stone work of the fortress is of a piece with the bridges we have found, sir,” continued the NCO. “All hard granite that looks to be of one piece, almost like it was growing out of the mountain. So they either quarried it out of the mountain or moved huge blocks into place.”

  “Or they somehow fused the stone into large solid pieces,” said Taylor. “Hell, Sergeant Major, we don’t know what these people here are capable of, but it’s damned impressive however they did it. Any idea why the fortress was abandoned? I’m assuming it was abandoned, since the squad didn’t have to fight its way in.”

  “Skeletal remains everywhere,” said the NCO, “presumed to be humans of some kind. Most of them were in full armor.”

  “And how were they killed, in your opinion?” asked the General. “Based on what the scouts told you?”

  “Fire,” said the NCO. “They said there were scorch marks everywhere. Wood was incinerated, what remained from time and weather is blackened. Even the interior rooms of the castle were totally burned out, like someone had taken a flame thrower to them.”

  “These people don’t have flame throwers,” said the General, looking to the sky, then flipping his glasses to his eyes to focus in on some high dots overhead. Breathing a sigh of relief he brought the glasses down, having verified that those were only birds up there, and not something else. “They seem to have other ways of bringing intense heat and flame into the picture though,” he continued. “I still wonder why these lands and fortifications have been abandoned so long. What’s keeping people out of here? Keep the people alert, Top. I want this whole valley explored top to bottom. When the engineers get to work I want them to know where they need to fortify to make this place impregnable.”

  “No such thing, sir,” said Jackson with a laugh. “But we’ll make it expensive for the bastards if they do come.”

  “That’s your primary project, Sergeant Major,” said the General. “You use your expertise to make this place a ball buster. We’ll have a lot of civilians in here soon, and we need to hold it until we’re organized enough to fight in the open. Taylor out.”

  That’ll keep him busy, thought the General, glancing around the peaceful seeming valley. It’s good to keep everyone busy. That way they can’t think too much about how scared they are. It’s good for me as well, or else I’ll become a shivering denizen again.

  It was a mantra he had learned early on in his sobriety, when his drinking had almost ruined an otherwise stellar career. His sponsor was a retired officer who lived, had lived, in Washington State. It was a cinch that he wouldn’t be talking with Colonel Stanford any time in the near future. And he couldn’t afford to fall off the wagon at this time. Too many people depended on him.

  Maybe I’ll just have to start the fellowship going on this world, he thought with a chuckle. I wonder what Bill and Doctor Bob would have thought about their program moving to another Universe. He was sure they would have loved the idea.

  * * *

  Captain Marcus Jordan crouched down by the pile of stones that had fallen from the nearby house, watching his point man move a hundred meters down the straight lane. He reflected that it would take a company an entire day to look through every one of the dwellings, which were built to slightly larger than medieval standards to cram the largest number of people in this space as possible. All he had were two platoons of scouts and maybe a couple of squads of division HQ personnel.

  The way up to the plateau was a gently sloping track that had run for four kilometers along the cliff. While not a hard trudge, he had to respect the designers who had developed that long death trap, exposed to objects thrown from above along its entire length. The fortification at the top was also frightening, with twenty meter high walls of solid stone that had somehow been made into a single two kilometer long section welded to the mountain. The gate house included multiple doors of steel and a switchback track. Fifty defenders would have taken a toll of five hundred or more trying to take that gate.

  Then the fortifications, the square kilometer of fort, had debouched into farmland that stretched fifteen kilometers or so from the town wall. The town wall was much the same construction as the ramparts of the fort, though only four meters in height, while the rest of the cliff was topped with a mere two meters of crenulated fortification. The gate to the town was also made of bronze panels, knocked over by some powerful force that had warped the hinges. Skeletal remains had been everywhere, along with the rusted armor and weapons, and some that looked as new as if they had been forged yesterday. Those warped panels on the forts and walls still really bothered him. He could see knocking them in with modern weapons. With what these people had here? He just couldn’t see it being done, unless
they had something he didn’t know about.

  Most of the town was made up of two story buildings, constructed of mortared stone, though there were the remains of some wood frame buildings as well. The wondrous fused stone only appeared on some superlative large buildings that might have been temples or mansions. Some of the houses had cracked and spilled stones because of the centuries of weathering. Others had been blown apart by some explosive force, walls and roofs of rock shattered and thrown. After crossing a several kilometer squared park of overgrown bushes and weeds, with a small lake in the center, the lead platoon entered another section of town, before yet another entrance fortress, and they saw one of that which had visited destruction to the town.

  “It looks like a fucking dinosaur,” said one of the scouts, a Sergeant, staring up at the skeleton that had fallen into a row of houses, collapsing them at some point in the past. “Look at that damned skull. Has to be four meters if anything.”

  Marcus wiped the sweat from his dark face while he looked at the remains of the creature. He had studied biology at Florida State, and had an interest in paleontology. And it didn’t look like any dinosaur he had ever heard of. While big enough, he hadn’t heard of anything in the fossil record that had big straight horns rising from the head. And the shattered bones that looked like wings had never graced so large a beast on Earth.

  “That’s a dragon,” exclaimed the officer, kicking at one of the wing bones that were lying in the street. “Probably as big as a small theropod.”

  “A what sir?” asked the Sergeant, staring at the officer, then glancing up into the sky.

  “Like an apatosaur,” said the officer. Seeing the blank look on the face of the NCO he shook his head in exasperation. “Like a brontosaur.”

  “Oh,” said the Sergeant with a meek smile. “Sorry sir. But I never got past high school, and the only dinosaurs I ever seen were in that movie.”

  “It’s OK, Sergeant,” said Jordan, looking again at the creature and wondering how something so big could actually fly, which of course was a physical impossibility. Could the wings have been for show? But that made no sense, as did the supposition that the creature could have walked up here to the top of this plateau.

  “Move your men out and let’s head for that pair of towers by the next wall.” He pointed ahead to a ten meter high wall that had twelve meter towers set into it at regular intervals, and a matched pair that should have indicated a gate.

  That gate proved to still be closed and locked, from the other side. The scouts were equipped for this, firing grapples over the walls with blanks in their rifles, then moving over to secure the gatehouse and open the large bronze portals that slid on their balanced hinges as if they had been opened the day before yesterday. Posting a fire team of HQ personnel to watch the gate, he couldn’t think of a better task for them, the scout platoons moved through while the remaining squads of HQ people stayed in the lower town to continue their search.

  The upper town was in much the same condition as the lower, with a number of damaged buildings and some that were not so damaged. Again human remains were everywhere, as well as two more fallen dragons. Jordan swore under his breath as he noted that one had a large spear through its chest, probably thrown by an engine. He knew that those engines were not that accurate over distance, and attributed the kill of a moving target to plain good luck. Still they killed at least three of them, thought the officer. So they must have had something going for them.

  The Captain noticed that there were large rodents running around the city, about twice the size of the common Norwegian rat on Earth. At one point he watched a shaggy cat that had to weigh thirty pounds pounce on one of the rats, dropping it dead with a swipe of a paw. The other rats scattered into various holes in the buildings and ruins. Jordan thought that the smaller domestic cat from Earth would have a field day, as the large wild cat was not able to follow the rats into their hidey holes. He hoped that some had come across from Earth, or he believed the native rats would give them a whole bunch of trouble. Rats had been bad news back before modern medicine and exterminators, and could still be trouble. They were sure to be trouble on this world as well.

  A kilometer and a half into the upper city they came across a large, fused stone building that looked like a temple of some sort. The Captain led a squad into the building as the rest of the platoon kept watch outside, one squad detailed as reaction force if anything happened in the building.

  The wooden doors of the building had been torched and shattered, and the outer chamber was completely burned. But the bronze inner doors were intact and would not budge. Jordan authorized the use of explosives, and soon plastique was set on the center of the bronze portals. The men retreated outside for a second and the doors were blasted. Jordan was happy to note that the doors were still on their hinges, though the central locking mechanism was smashed and the portals swung easily inward.

  Igniting their large flashlights as well as helmet lights that had been brought along for exploration, the squad moved slowly into the large inner chamber, watching closely for threats, both living and structural. The interior seemed to be in good shape, if one discounted the number of skeletons on the floor. But the walls, supports, floor and ceiling seemed to be in terrific shape, all across the more than fifty meter wide room. Lights shown on the huge domed ceiling, and the fifty meter expanse of that structure, larger than the Pantheon in Rome. They were quite the architects and engineers, thought the officer, looking over at the skeletons. Wonder what they were like as a people?

  “Over here sir,” called out one of the scouts, and Jordan rushed over, trying to avoid disturbing the remains on the floor, which he considered sacrilegious. The man was shining his flash on a wall fresco that showed a number of men and women engaging in what must have been a ceremony in this temple.

  “What an unusual people,” said the Captain, staring at the ebony skinned, hawk nosed, straight haired people portrayed. “Very handsome.”

  “I wonder how they died in here,” said the scout, looking nervously around at the remains.

  “Probably asphyxiation,” said the officer, following the man’s gaze, then returning his attention to the fresco, noting the armored men fighting on another section of the painting. “I would guess that they took refuge here from the dragon fire outside. But all of their oxygen was probably pulled from the building by the fires, and they starved for air.”

  A clattering of bones sounded from the large dais area at the front of the room, and Jordan turned that way, seeing several of the soldiers who were pushing a couple of skeletons from an altar and touching objects that lay thereon. Objects that glinted with the polish of precious metals.

  “I told you men to be careful,” growled the Captain, walking toward the altar.

  “Just some old bones, sir,” said one of the men, a specialist four, his hand grasping a golden bowl that he was holding up in his helmet light. “They’re not gonna care.”

  “That’s desecration of the dead,” said Jordan in a serious voice. “That is something I will not countenance.”

  “But sir,” said the specialist, “we wuz ordered to scout out this city. I thought that included anything that might be of use. I…”

  The lights flickered all at once for a moment, cutting off the specialist in his argument. A low moaning arose in the room, centered at the top of the dome, spreading to all corners of the chamber and rising in pitch. Vaporous forms were glimpsed, a few at first, quickly becoming over a dozen, moving about the fringes of the room where the shadows were deepest. A mantel of fear lay over the room, and the men were all shivering as if exposed to an arctic blast of cold. The Captain felt as if his limbs were weighted with lead, his feet imprisoned in hardening concrete. He knew this wasn’t a natural fear, like fear of snakes or spiders, or even death. This was something supernatural, and all the deadlier because of it.

  “What the hell?” gasped the Sergeant in command of the squad, sweat beading from his freckled face.


  Jordan looked around the room, the stories of ghosts and ghouls and creatures of the night; stories told him by his old granny in Louisiana, rose up in his mind. Several of the skeletons shook for a moment, then shook again. As he heard the crying out of some of the men, the Captain turned in time to see a pair of the piles of bones come to their feet, their eyeless faces scanning the room. One bent to pick up a sword, the other a spear that had been lying on the floor.

  “Destroy them,” cried out Marcus Jordan, his instincts overcoming the mind that wanted him to stand and cower and die. He forced his arms to raise his rifle, his thumb flipping the weapon off of safe to semi auto.

  “How,” yelled the specialist who had disturbed the bones on the altar, picking up his own rifle where he had placed it on the altar. “They’re already dead. How do you kill the dead?”

  The crack of shots echoed from the dome as the cavalrymen fired at the two skeletons. Bullets tore through the ragged clothes they wore, the bones shook from impact, and the undead creatures continued on. Another pair of skeletons then rose from the floor by the altar, these two in rusted armor. And a half dozen more started to move in other parts of the large room.

  “Shoot them in the head,” yelled Jordan, remembering a movie he had seen about zombies, and that being the way to kill the undead. He aimed his own rifle at the nearest of the armor clad skeletons and squeezed off two shots. The high velocity rounds hit the skeleton in its leering face, shattering bones and turning the grinning face into a large hole. The walking bones continued on as if nothing had happened.

  A skeleton with a rusty sword thrust the weapon at the specialist by the altar. The sword pushed into the clothing and stopped, arrested by the Kevlar body armor and its ballistic plate. The other skeleton, grasping the spear, of which the head glowed in the darkened room, shoved it into the specialist from the back. The spear point ripped through the body of the man and through the front, ceramic ballistic plate and all, to stand out dripping blood from the chest of the soldier. The man gasped out his life, rifle falling from his hands to clatter on the floor, and sank to his knees.