The Final Reality (Alex Pella, #3)

by Stephen Martino

  “Must I do it myself then?” Jules cursed. “I need not hear your excuses. This ship must be landed.”

  “I can surely get us down there,” the pilot replied, “but I can assure you it will be with a bang. There is zero percent chance of survivability. The grid line fluctuations are off the chart.” He then looked solemnly at Jules. “Mr. Windsor, I will do as you say, but exiting orbit over this area will be suicide.”

  “He’s correct,” Drew agreed.“I don’t see a window of opportunity to land at the moment.”

  “Well, when will that window arise?” asked Jules impatiently.

  “Could be minutes, hours, or even days,” Drew replied. “It’s impossible to predict. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you anything more precise than that.”

  “Plus,” the pilot added, “the entire area is crumbling into the sea as we speak. Even if we could land, I would advise against it under these circumstances.”

  Not one to be thwarted even by Mother Nature, Jules unbuckled his seat belt and stood in disgust. There must be another way!

  “Don’t’ worry, Mr. Windsor,” the pilot assured. “If I see an opportunity, I will land this ship immediately.”

  Jules kicked the chair in disgust. Patience was certainly not one of his strongest points. Pacing around the confined cockpit for a few irritable moments, he then stopped moving and looked at Drew.

  “How about the gravity-wing?” Jules asked. “Those contraptions are built to fly in the most inauspicious of circumstances.”

  “It would be too risky,” Drew said.

  “The wings are designed to fly in the most extreme flying conditions,” the pilot chimed in. As a former high-altitude Special Forces jumper, he was aware of its capabilities. “But under these circumstances, I certainly could not vouch for their safety. Even so, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Jules responded with some gusto. Holding his finger in the air, he said, “Give the order to suit up. We deploy immediately!”

  Jules, along with WOGs from both orbiting striker crafts, quickly donned their gear and were ready for immediate departure. With guns strapped to their sides, all were prepared for the plunge.

  “I’ve set a laser guidance beacon over the target,” Drew announced in Jules’ helmet. “Descend directly on that spot.”

  “On my signal, we jump,” Jules announced to the WOGs in both ships. “Set destination for the beacon.” He waited a few seconds and then shouted, “Go!”

  Turning towards the blackness of space, Jules propelled himself out of the ship using his wing’s gravity accelerator. Once at a safe distance, he locked onto the signal and faced directly towards it. Again activating the accelerator, he jettisoned himself directly towards Earth. One by one, the rest of the WOGs in both ships followed.

  “Right on course,” the pilot said into everyone’s helmet. “Make sure you keep the gravity dampeners on full the entire time you land, and I’d recommend you depolarize them well ahead of time to ensure your safety.”

  Like meteors hitting the atmosphere, the air around Jules and the rest of the WOGs began to glow red from the friction in the atmosphere as they plummeted to Earth. Despite the intense heat, the suits protected them all from the harsh environmental conditions.

  As Jules descended, he and his fellow soldiers entered a soot-filled layer of the atmosphere that obscured their vision. Dark smoke and dust clouded their visors. Other than the red glow radiating around their suits, all was dark. It felt like descending into the belly of an active volcano.

  The thrill of the experience gave Jules a massive adrenalin rush. “Yes!” he muttered to himself.

  The further they descended, the more visible the ground became. After passing through the thickest layer of volcanic debris, the rapidly approaching land seemed to advance quicker than anticipated.

  “Start decoupling the wings,” one of the WOGs ordered over the helmets.

  With a jolt, Jules activated the gravity dampeners, deploying the wings to each of his sides. Though they were in place, his decent continued without hesitation. It was as if the wings proved more cosmetic than functional.

  Jules flattened himself horizontally to the ground and kept his back arched and head held high in order to increase drag and decelerate his fall. With his albeit limited experience of two prior space jumps, he was aware of how to handle such a precarious situation. With the control to the wings embedded in the glove of his right hand, he continued to activate the gravity dampeners, hoping for them to depolarize in time.

  “It’s not depolarizing!” shouted one of the WOGs over the static-ridden communication line. “I can’t slow my fall!”

  Other screams and shouts of terror filled Jules’ helmet as they all continued to plummet unabated towards the ground.

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  The entire shield began to glow, making the engraved scene on its outermost layer seem to come to life. As its radiance increased, the ancient artifact began to rotate counterclockwise without making a single sound.

  “It still works,” Alex said in amazement. “After all these millennia.”

  “They sure don’t make things like they used to,” William commented.

  “They sure don’t,” Alex agreed while watching huge, foot thick clumps of crust around the shield crumble to the ground.

  The entire mound began to vibrate as cracks spread like lightning bolts across its façade. As it shook, the entire image of Eve emerged from underneath the crusty debris that had long entombed her. Her beauty and splendor were just as Christine remembered. For a second, she felt as if she found herself again in the bountiful land of Eden, surrounded by the best that nature had to offer.

  The shield continued to pick up velocity as it spun. A huge crack on the dome formed as massive chunks of crust slid down along its side and fell to the ground, crumbling in the process.

  “Get back,” Alex cautioned as they all took a few steps in the opposite direction.

  As more of the crust collapsed to the Earth, the beauty of white stone covering the cradle became evident.

  “So, you say that’s what the pyramids of Egypt used to look like?” William asked.

  “Would have been an amazing site,” Alex responded.

  A sudden thud from behind them broke their concentration.

  “Get down!” Alex yelled. “Take cover. Hide behind a chunk of the crust!”

  Four more loud thuds surrounded their position.

  Alex ran to the mound while the others hid behind one of the largest pieces of crust. Grabbing four thin sticks that looked like miniature versions of dynamite from his pants pocket, he twisted each of their tops until they turned red and threw them in a semicircular area about fifty feet in distance from their position.

  It was not until a WOG wearing a fully-deployed gravity-wing struck the ground in front of him that Alex realized the source of the commotion. He surmised that the electromagnetic distortion around this area must have made the WOG’s gravity dampeners fail to properly depolarize. In his vedere lens, Alex could discern a few more WOGs strewn out along the landscape in positions that the human body should never make.

  The shield stopped spinning as its glow faded. A door along the side of the mound then opened, revealing a hallway behind it. Light emanated out of the opening. Without time to appreciate its beauty, Alex pulled the shield off the door and looked over to a large pile of crust next to him.

  “Get out of here!” Alex yelled to his friends. “Take the stratoskimmer and fly as far away from here as possible. “Tom!” he yelled into his auricular chip. “Try to depolarize the engines and ignite the jets. Immediate take off. Do you read me? Immediate take off!”

  The roar of the jet engine was all Alex needed to hear. He then pointed his friends to the stratoskimmer. “Get out of here, now!”

  From behind the piece of crust, William burst out shooting wildly in the air. Whether he was shooting at birds, WOGs, or fi
gments of his imagination, it was uncertain. As he ran, the shots burst out into the sky in a chaotic formation.

  “You’re not going at it alone buddy,” the big man then yelled. “I’m not leaving you again. We’re in this together.”

  “Save yourself,” Alex implored. Before he continued to say another world, he noticed two WOGs safely land on top of his stratoskimmer. Before he could fire his pulse gun, the WOGs placed detonation charges alongside the ship.

  A shot zipped out from Alex’s gun, sending one of them head first to the ground. With his neck broken and heart stopped, the man was dead within seconds.

  A few wild shots pulsed around the remaining WOG. A direct hit from Samantha’s gun killed the man on impact.

  “Get out of there!” Alex yelled, attempting to warn Tom.

  The ignition charges on the side of the ship detonated before his good friend and pilot had a chance to react. The stratoskimmer burst into flames sending out black smoke bellowing up and into the atmosphere.

  Reassessing the situation, Alex knew there was only one option left. “Everyone into the cradle!” he shouted. Now was not the time to mourn the loss of his friend.

  WOGs began to descend around their position. A few more thuds let them know not all made it down alive. Unfortunately, more were successful than not. Now on one knee, Alex and William fired their pulse guns nonstop, picking off WOGs before they landed and a few as they attempting to grab their weapons.

  Pellets from the rail guns fired by the WOGs ricocheted all around them. Fortunately, the quantum distorters Alex threw around their position disrupted the functioning of most electromagnetic equipment within a 200 foot perimeter of their location. As a result, the rail guns utilized by the WOGs were far less accurate and failed to fire on most occasions. Only such equipment as his pulse guns and stratoskimmer had been set to the correct frequency in order to negate the distorters’ effects.

  “Into the dome!” Alex yelled as Marissa, Terzin, Christine, and Samantha ran through the door.

  Samantha proved an accurate shot. With years of practice skeet shooting with her father as a child, she was no novice with a firearm. As each WOG at the wrong end of her pistol discovered, Samantha could shoot just as accurately on the run as she could while standing still.

  Alex thrust the shield into William’s hands. “Get in there and find out what this does!” he yelled.

  “You coming with us?” William asked, crouching his way through the door.

  “I’ll be right behind,” he responded, pushing his friend forward. “I have a few presents to leave out here for Julius and the rest of the WOGs. Now, go!”

  William scurried through the door and into the mound.

  A metal pellet tore through Alex’s jacket shredding the shoulder area. With all the adrenaline flowing, Alex didn’t even flinch. Instead, he continued firing until his pulse gun became too hot to even handle and his trigger finger began to cramp from such intense overuse.

  As he threw himself into the doorway, Alex could hear more pellets whiz by his head. Despite the quantum disruptors, he realized that with the amount of WOGs now surrounding the area and firing, it was only a matter of time before there would be too many for him to stop.

  Once inside the dome, Alex grabbed a handful of red sphere-shaped detonation charges known as motion induced explosives (MAIs) from his pants and threw them out the door in order to booby-trap the dome’s entrance.

  He then took the remaining few MAIs and attempted to slap them against the wall. However, they failed to activate and fell to the ground without sticking. Alex slowly backed up further into the mound as he continued to hear shots from the rail guns ricochet off the dome’s thick façade.

  Alex then took another quantum disruptor stick from his pocket and twisted its top. Again, there was no response. Realizing that there must be an electromagnetic neutralizing effect within the dome, Alex understood why the MAIs had failed to activate or stick to the walls.

  Undeterred, he took the quantum disruptor stick and two others and threw them out of the dome. Alex hoped that outside they would all successfully activate without further interference.

  As he peered his head near the door’s opening, an ominous face greeted him in the far distance next to his burning stratoskimmer.

  Julius Windsor.

  Instinctively, Alex raised his gun and fired. The shot never deployed. He attempted a few more times with the same response.

  “Alexander!” Jules yelled out. “You can run but you certainly can’t hide!”

  The man is insane! Alex thought. The ground was crumbling and new volcanoes were springing up by the minute, ready to engulf their position at any moment. He won’t stop!

  With his friends behind him, Alex knew that there was only one thing he could do. He would have to remain and fight.

  Bring it on! Alex thought, ready for battle.

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  “That way,” William insisted, pointing forward. “Get going.”

  As Christine, Terzin, and Samantha continued to run down the slight decline in the hallway, Marissa kept turning back, looking for Alex. Her pace had slowed almost to a stop in the process.

  She watched William barrel towards her. With the shield in hand, he grabbed under her arm and nudged her forward. He understood what she was feeling. But he knew they couldn’t afford the time to lament. As the hallway shook and bits of shimmering stone fell on them from the ceiling, William recognized that if they didn’t determine what was causing the instability in the Earth’s crust, the planet was doomed.

  The sound of ricocheting pellets from the rail guns faded the further they moved down the hallway. Marissa could not but help think of Alex alone, standing against an entire battalion of WOGs led by a man bent on killing him.

  With Marissa in tow, William saw both Terzin and Samantha come to a stop about ten feet ahead of him. He prompted, “Keep moving! They could be right behind us.”

  Once he finally reached them, he understood why they stopped their retreat. His legs began to falter at the majestic site before him.

  “What is this?” William asked, standing side by side with his friends in awe. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know.” Christine uttered, equally amazed. “None of this was in the vision.”

  “Any ideas, Terzin?” Samantha inquired.

  She was at a loss, too. “I just don’t know. My ancestors never spoke of such a place. Whether the knowledge was lost over these long years or simply never provided to us, I cannot answer.”

  William took a deep breath; the run had winded him. Upon inhaling deeply, he noted the air was surprisingly crisp and clean, as if filtered by the most modern system. In fact, it seemed to clear his mind and rejuvenate his body at the same time.

  With a little extra energy, he asked, “Where to now?”

  Though they all wanted to continue moving, no one knew where to go. The immensity of the area in front of them was daunting. The dome visible above the Earth was just a small preview of this massive room under it.

  They stood at the edge of a colossal three-story staircase overlooking a circular area twice the size of an American football field. Bookcases spanned the entirety of the walls along each of the three stories. Filled with countless scrolls, boxes, and figurines, it marveled the greatest libraries ever erected. The floor in the center of the room was composed of innumerable tiles creating equally magnificent yet different mosaics. Statues, glass tables, and ornately-carved shelves from the finest marble were strategically placed on it so as to not ruin the magnificent artwork it displayed. There were also crystals levitating above pedestals, each carved with ancient symbols or depictions of animals.

  At a loss of what to do next, William asked in an exasperated tone, “Christine, any hints?”

  The room shook slightly as a few scrolls fell from a bookcase next to them. Upon hitting the floor, one rolled up next to Terzin and struck her foot.

  “Amazing,”
she uttered. “Over 10,000 years old and the paper, or whatever it’s written on, is still intact.” Removing the brown tie around it, the two-foot-long scroll opened to reveal a picture of an animal unknown to her. Looking like a combination between a fox and a leopard, she could not identify it nor could she read the beautifully printed cuneiform-like print below it.

  “There must be something in the air that can preserve such antiquities,” Terzin concluded.

  “I bet this is a massive depository of ancient knowledge,” Christine said. “Just imagine what we could learn from it. The cave in Philadelphia pales in comparison.”

  “Unless one of these scrolls tells us how to get out of here or stop all this madness,” William uttered, “I’m not in the mood to do some casual reading.”

  “I agree,” Samantha chimed in. “Now’s not the time for sightseeing.” Feeling as if they had paused long enough, she insisted, “Let’s start searching this place for any clues.”

  Two staircases leading in opposite directions away from the main banister overlooking the room descended to the second level. Leading the way, Samantha grabbed the marble railing and scurried down the steps. In her haste, she failed to appreciate the ornately-carved stone she touched on her descent. With different scenes, it told of an ancient story long lost to the grains of time.

  William quickly followed her. Staring at the shield for some clue or inspiration, he was unsure of where to head next. The enormity of the room overwhelmed him, and he realized that it could take a lifetime to fully appreciate it. However, time was not a luxury he possessed. The clock was rapidly running out, and he also knew he had mere minutes to discover an answer.

  “Terzin and Christine,” Samantha looked back and said, “you look around the third floor while William and I head down to the first.”

  Christine pointed Terzin in one direction while she took off in the other direction around the massive perimeter surrounding the room. Inspired by Samantha’s words, they both ran, hoping to find any clue. More glass tables, bookshelves, and carved depictions of extinct animals greeted them along the way.