Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within

by Jasper T. Scott

  “We should boost up there,” Addy suggested. “I doubt it will take more than a few minutes to get there like that.”

  “I agree,” Lucien said, and powered his grav boosters at a modest five percent to send himself floating up above the field.

  The others joined him, hovering up one by one.

  “Let’s not fly too high,” Lucien said. “Keep to an altitude of fifty meters just in case the direction of gravity doesn’t hold constant all the way up.”

  “Roger that,” Addy said, and Garek and Brak clicked their comms to confirm.

  Lucien powered the boosters in his palms and used them to rotate on the spot, orienting his body for horizontal flight toward the nearest of the two black towers. He waited for the others to get into position, and then boosted off at ten percent thrust.

  The ground swept up quickly with the curvature of the sphere, making it hard to maintain straight and level flight, but by angling his body upward, he was able to keep a constant altitude of fifty meters.

  His forward velocity hit one hundred kilometers per hour, and he backed off the power to his boosters to maintain that speed. He didn’t want to miss something important on the ground. The gateway they were looking for could technically be anywhere—not to mention the so-called magical key they needed to open it.

  “Wow...” Addy breathed. “Take a look at that!”

  Lucien cast about, looking for whatever had caught her eye. He didn’t have to look for long.

  A giant two-legged creature roamed the plains below, leaving a trampled path through the multicolored shrubs and flowers. It had a row of wicked-looking spikes down its hunched spine, and two massive arms that it used like extra legs to pick its way through the field. The creature’s hide was dark brown and wrinkly, and probably very thick.

  Lucien slowed down as they reached the monster, and its size relative to their altitude of fifty meters gave a sense of scale. It reached more than halfway up from the ground, making it at least thirty meters tall.

  They could actually hear its footsteps booming as they approached. Lucien matched his speed with that of the creature at twenty klicks per hour. He hovered along behind it, watching it walk through the field.

  Suddenly it stopped, and its head perked up, its attention fixed on a herd of bright green blobs rolling through a field of blue grass up ahead.

  The monster suddenly leapt forward, bounding toward the herd of blobs at incredible speed. The air shivered with its footfalls, and the green blobs rolled away as it drew near, schooling like fish. The monster was too fast for them. It scooped up a pair of them in one giant palm.

  But it wasn’t a palm; it was a gaping mouth lined with rings of sharp white thorns. The blobs were impaled on those thorns.

  Lucien slowed his flight and circled down for a better look. The monster’s arms were like snakes, and the one that had impaled the two blob creatures was waving bonelessly in the air. Two large bulges inched down along its length with the help of gravity. It had swallowed the blob-creatures whole.

  “Be careful...” Addy warned as he strayed within reach of the snake-armed monster.

  It must have felt the pressure from Lucien’s grav boosters, because it looked up as he passed overhead. Its entire head was a giant, blinking black eye on a flexible stalk, rimmed with long red thorns. The eye narrowed as it tracked him, and then both of the monster’s arms shot up, swiping at Lucien’s ankles with giant, sucking mouths. They barely missed him, and hot rancid breath whistled out of those orifices as the arms sank back to the ground. Lucien’s stomach clenched with the smell and suddenly he wished he hadn’t turned on his suit’s sensory suite. He boosted up out of reach, trying to calm his heaving stomach. He did not want to throw up in his helmet.

  “Are you okay?” Addy asked.

  Lucien nodded slowly. “What is this place?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some kind of zoo,” Garek said.

  “So why aren’t the animals in cages?” Lucien asked, staring at the two-legged, snake-armed monster as it bounded after the schooling herd of green blobs.

  “Maybe the Grays don’t like keeping animals in cages,” Addy said.

  “Or else they found a way to break out in the long years of the Grays’ absence,” Garek added.

  “Good thing we decided to fly to the tower,” Lucien said. “There’s no telling what we might have run into down there.”

  “Yeah, good thing...” Addy agreed.

  They reached the end of the plains and flew over a rocky field of glowing blue crystals. Lucien couldn’t see any animals walking between them, but the crystals periodically discharged bright bolts of electricity from one to another. Each time one of them did so, it grew momentarily dark and opaque, only to light up again as another crystal zapped it.

  “I wonder if those are alive?” Addy asked.

  “Silicon lifeforms?” Lucien suggested.

  “Why not? We found a few of those immediately after we crossed the Red Line.”

  “Living rocks,” Brak grumbled. “What good it is to be alive if you are a rock? You cannot move. You cannot eat...”

  “But you can think,” Lucien said. “For all we know, they’re more intelligent than we are.”

  Brak snorted. “What does a rock have to think about?”

  “They might not be alive,” Garek said. “Might just be part of the power grid that feeds this place.”

  Lucien nodded at that. The field of glowing crystals came to an end, and they arrived at the forest they’d seen from a distance. The trees were incredibly tall, their boles silver and leaves opalescent white. They were far enough apart they they could fly easily through the forest. As they did so, Lucien noted that each branch had just one or two giant opalescent leaves. Those leaves sparkled brightly in the sun, casting deep pools of shadow on the ground below. Lucien thought he spotted small creatures moving through the underbrush, but it was too dark to be sure.

  Mountains soared up to the right, their steep white slopes clearly visible through the trees. Again Lucien noted the purple veins snaking down from their peaks. Definitely rivers, he decided.

  “There’s the tower,” Addy said, as she zagged under a looming branch and over another one.

  “I see it,” Lucien said. The curvature of the underworld made for an odd horizon, where they could never see very far in any given direction. A moment ago, looking straight ahead, they’d only been able to see more silver tree trunks and glittering leaves, but now they saw the smooth black sides of the tower soaring to block their view. The closer they got to the tower, the more their perspective shifted so that the tower appeared less like a bridge traversing the sky, and more like a skyscraper, rising up to blot out the sun.

  The trees fell away abruptly and then the tower was all they could see. Lucien banked sharply to avoid colliding with it. The others followed him through that maneuver, and they circled back, spiraling to the ground.

  They landed in almost perfect unison on a castcrete pad surrounding the base of the tower. Beyond that, overgrown black and red shrubs rose in a tangled wall. The shrubbery flowed gradually up along the curvature of the ground to greet the silver trees just over a hundred meters from where they stood.

  Lucien turned and looked up at the black tower. It was shaped like an obelisk, and tapered to a slender point almost ten kilometers up—according to the rangefinder on his HUD. At that point it reached the artificial sun and disappeared in the blinding light. Assuming a perfect sphere, that put the size of the underworld at around three hundred and fourteen kilometers in circumference—tiny as far as planets went, and even small when compared with the vast scale of Astralis.

  “I’m detecting a lot of lifeforms down here with us,” Garek said. “Medium to large. Most of them in the forest.”

  “The hunt beginsss...” Brak hissed, and drew the razor sword from his back. The blade shimmered, blurring with a faint blue glow as Brak activated it.

  Lucien’s scanned the wall of blac
k and red shrubs running around the tower, his integrated lasers up and tracking.

  “Form on me,” Lucien said after a moment, and started walking around the tower. “Keep eyes on our flank.”

  The others fell in behind him, walking fast, their footsteps thunking against the castcrete foundation. The tower walls looked seamless, with no windows or doors. They walked around the tower for several minutes before they returned to their starting point.

  “That was a nice stroll,” Garek said. “Didn’t find my tail, though.”

  Lucien turned to peer up at the tower again, squinting against the light pouring from the top.

  “I don’t get it,” Addy said. She walked up and rapped a fist on the side of the tower, eliciting a hollow bang from it. “There has to be a way in.”

  “Brak?” Lucien asked, turning to find the Gor half-crouching by the shrubs at the edge of the pad around the tower, as if he were hunting something.

  “Yess?” the Gor answered belatedly.

  “Get over here and see if you can cut a hole with your sword.”

  Brak straightened and strode up to the tower. Addy knocked on the side of it a few more times to sound out the bounds of the hollow area.

  “There—” Addy pointed to the center of the area she’d identified.

  Taking his sword in a two-handed grip, Brak reared back and delivered an impaling thrust.

  Lucien expected to see the sword sink in up to its hilt. Few materials were strong enough to resist molecular-edged razor shields. But as soon as the tip of the weapon touched the side of the tower, there came a bang, and an intense flash of light, and Brak went flying backward. He skimmed over the castcrete and crashed into the dense tangle of vegetation running around the tower. The shrubs parted for Brak, only to spring back a moment later, seeming to swallow him whole.

  “Guess we should have scanned it first,” Garek said.

  Lucien gaped at the spot where Brak had disappeared. “Are you okay?” he called over the comms.

  No reply.

  Then came a flash of crimson light from within, accompanied by the tell-tale shriek of lasers discharging. Black smoke curled from the vegetation, and the field of shrubs seemed to explode as Brak blasted straight up into the air. The plants lunged after him, unfurling like coiled snakes and waving at his departure, as if beckoning for him to come back.

  Brak landed with a grunt and cast about for his sword. He found it lying at the edge of the shrubbery, the dead-man’s switch having turned off the blade as soon as it had left his hand. He walked over to collect the weapon.

  “Any other bright ideas?” Garek asked, turning to Lucien and Addy.

  “I think this might be the gateway that the Mokari were talking about,” Addy said.

  “That’s a bit of a leap,” Lucien replied.

  “Not really. Think about it. This tower is the only unnatural structure we’ve found besides the concourse where we entered the underworld.”

  “The whole place is an unnatural structure,” Garek pointed out.

  “True,” Addy agreed. “Anyway, from the look of it, there’s no way into the tower, which is where I think that magical key comes in.”

  “So where do you suppose we should start looking for that key?” Garek asked. “We could spend a lifetime searching for it if we have to turn over every stone, and uproot every bush.”

  “Well...” Addy trailed off. “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

  Lucien was distracted, gazing at the artificial sun shining overhead. He could have sworn it was dimmer now than it had been a moment ago.

  Sure enough, as he watched the brightness faded to the point that it was no longer painful to look at. Now he could see the second tower, as well as a ball of clouds forming around the fading sun. Behind and around those clouds, Lucien saw a patchwork quilt of alien vegetation on the other side of the sphere.

  “I think night’s about to fall,” he said.

  Garek snorted. “That should make searching for this key easier.”

  A shrill cry sounded from the direction of the trees, followed by growling and snarling sounds, and then more cries—frantic, and growing softer by the second.

  A chilling silence fell, broken by the soft trilling of nocturnal creatures waking with the night.

  Darkness gathered swiftly, and a thick white mist descended on them. Lucien glanced up once more and saw that the artificial sun was now a faint blue-white orb, shining through the mist—an artificial moon? Lucien wondered. Smaller white orbs detached from that one, floating down from the light source like balloons.

  Lucien pointed to them. “What are those?”

  “Looks like the Polypuses,” Garek said.

  They came flowing down the sides of the tower in rivers of light.

  “They’re headed this way...” Garek said slowly.

  “An extra-dimensional party and we’re the guests of honor,” Lucien mused.

  A whistling shriek split the air, and the ground shook, followed by a sound like dry palm leaves rattling.

  Boom. More leaves rattled.

  Lucien froze and turned toward the sound. Sensors marked a large lifeform approaching from the direction of the forest.

  “Is that...” Addy trailed off in a whisper.

  “We’ve got incoming,” Garek warned as he brought his arms and integrated laser cannons up, aiming between the trees.

  “We should get on the other side of the tower,” Lucien said.

  Boom. Boom. Boom. The footsteps were falling faster now, as if whatever beast was headed their way knew its cover was blown.

  “No time to run... it’s almost here,” Garek said. “Take aim!”

  Lucien brought his cannons up and targeted the incoming lifeform. It was huge, at least as big as the snake-armed monster they’d seen hunting in the field around the concourse. Lucien’s heart jumped against his sternum as the red-shaded outline of his target appeared, descending the curve of the underworld. The creature was bipedal... and it used two long arms for added balance as it walked.

  The monster burst from the trees and into the surrounding field of shrubs. Both arms snapped up and waved through the air, giant pink mouths snorting and whistling as they sampled the air. A giant eye swiveled on the end of a fat neck stalk, gleaming in the moonlit night.

  It was the same monster they’d seen hunting the blobs in the field.

  They all stood frozen in shock, afraid to move for fear of setting off whatever hunting instincts the creature might have. The monster’s arms gradually undulated to the ground, until the gaping mouths were at eye-level with them. Those arms drifted closer, sniffing the air around them in phlegmy snorts

  “Fire!” Garek said as one of the mouths came within a few feet of him. He fired into the mouth with both cannons. Crimson beams of light flashed down the monster’s throat, illuminating it from within and revealing spidery networks of red and blue veins.

  The monster let out a piercing scream as the lasers struck inside its throat, and it thrashed the castcrete, shaking the ground and crumbling the foundation where they stood.

  Lucien dove out of the way as it slapped the ground where he’d been standing. He rolled back to his feet just in time to see the monster’s other arm come sweeping in, its mouth gaping for the kill.

  Chapter 33

  Mokar: Underworld

  Before Lucien could react, he was tossed high into the air and then falling straight into the gaping maw of the beast. It sucked him into its rancid depths, and everything went dark. Haptic sensors relayed sharp pricks to Lucien’s skin as the monster’s thorn-shaped teeth ground against his armor.

  Then he felt those rings of teeth sweeping him back, deeper into a smooth-muscled throat, and soon he was cocooned by clenching bands of muscle.

  He was trapped.

  Waves of noxious alien breath assaulted his nose. Feeling his stomach clench up, Lucien mentally turned off his sensory suite and sucked in a deep breath of mercifully odorless air.


  “A little help here!” he called out over the comms as he felt iron bands of muscle contracting above his head and squeezing him down the length of the monster’s throat.

  “Hang on!” Garek commed back.

  Lucien heard the muffled screeches of laser fire and saw the accompanying flashes of light periodically illuminate the inside of the throat. The arm thrashed and bucked in time to each shot, but the creature’s reaction wasn’t as strong as it had been when Garek had fired directly down its throat. It’s hide was probably tough enough to buffer the effects of their lasers.

  That gave Lucien an idea. He strained against the bands of muscle contracting around him, trying to get his arms into a position that would enable him to fire without shooting off his own feet.

  He managed to get one arm angled slightly away from his body, and fired three times in quick succession. The monster bucked violently, and a muffled shriek sounded from the monster’s other mouth.

  The muscles inside the beast’s throat spasmed so tightly that his suit’s shields overloaded with a loud pop.

  Now he couldn’t move at all, not even with his suit’s power-assist boosted to the max. Damage alerts began streaming across his HUD, accompanied by a computerized voice: “Warning, armor integrity dropping to sixty-two percent.”

  “Guys?” Lucien called in a gasping voice as he began to feel the pressure constrict his chest. It was like being squeezed by a boa. His armor groaned ominously in time to each muscle contraction. With his lungs burning for air, Lucien was forced to exhale, but he was unable to suck in another breath. Dark spots swarmed his vision, and he knew he was going to pass out soon.

  “Brak’s going to try to cut you out!” Addy said, her voice sounding dim, even though it came from speakers right beside his ears.

  “What the frek?” Garek exclaimed.

  The sounds of laser fire stopped, and then there was nothing... just a ringing silence and an angry roar of hypoxic blood.

  “Armor integrity at twenty-seven percent.”

  Lucien fought impotently against a wave of dizziness. Everything faded, and the raging concerns of the present were gone, sinking fast into the utter dark of oblivion. Lucien felt himself falling into that abyss.