Armageddon

by Jasper T. Scott

  The drop ships began leveling out and slowing down, applying reverse thrust from maneuvering jets, and using their air brakes for increased wind resistance—not that they needed much help there.

  “Coming up on the drop site,” Ethan announced. “Prepare to switch to grav lifts and hover down.”

  Click. Click. Click-click.

  The green diamond that marked the drop site lay close on the horizon, all but disappearing against the darker green mass of jungle blurring by below them. The jungle looked endless, dark, impenetrable… As they dropped altitude to skim the treetops, Ethan noticed just how tall some of those trees were. One of them was pushing a hundred meters, but it had no branches, no leaves—just an obsidian black trunk. Wondering what it was, Ethan set optical zoom to 10 times—

  And saw that it wasn’t a tree. It was some type of obelisk. Were those the ruins Therius had referred to?

  Ethan marked it on the grid and called it in, “Mission control, this is Rictan One, I’m seeing something down here on the surface, near drop site alpha. Transmitting visual now…”

  “Rictan One, this is Control. Those ruins are all over the planet. It’s nothing to worry about. They’ve been investigated a thousand times already.”

  “What are they?”

  “Stay focused on the mission, Commander.”

  “Roger that. Rictan One out.”

  Moments later they raced out over a grassy clearing where the green diamond of drop site alpha was located. Ethan killed thrust and glided the rest of the way in. The deafening roar of the Nova’s engines disappeared and now the only sound was the wind buffeting against his wings and fuselage. When he drew near, Ethan powered up the grav lifts and applied full reverse thrust and braking. Forward velocity ran quickly backward to zero and then Ethan deployed landing struts and eased back on the grav lifts until his Nova settled gently into a field of shoulder-length grass.

  He and the rest of the Rictans hurried out of their cockpits and found their Zephyrs aboard Drop Ship One. From there they ran down the boarding ramp to help the First Battalion secure imaginary objectives in the jungles.

  Ethan was surprised and picked off by a squad of Gors in just the first few minutes. As he lay there, staring up at the blue sky and pretending to be dead, his thoughts turned to the obelisk he’d seen—one of many, apparently.

  He wondered who had built it, and why. He also wondered why no one else seemed to be as curious as he was about Origin.

  Ethan supposed that most of them had already spent years training here, so they wouldn’t find Origin’s mysteries as mysterious as he did. But he couldn’t help feeling like humanity’s past might reveal something critical about its future. There probably wasn’t enough time left to figure it out, but he had to try. Just the fact that Origin was so familiar, as if he’d been here before, was enough reason to investigate. Those obelisks couldn’t just be meaningless ruins. If they were all over the planet, and they were still standing here after millions of years, then they’d been built to last, and that meant they had to have served an important purpose. The question was—

  What?

  Chapter 32

  Ethan only ate half his dinner, a vat-grown protein slurry the servers called soup. He passed his bowl down to Carnage, who lapped it up with a grin, and then he left the table and went looking for Atta. He found her at a table full of Gors, all of them busy slurping up the last drops of their own slurry. The Gors watched him with slitted reptilian eyes as he approached. Ethan smiled, but his smile faded when the Gors started hissing at him like a pit full of snakes. He decided it was safer not to look at them.

  “You seem to be enjoying the food,” he said, his eyes on Atta.

  “You get used to it,” she replied.

  More hissing. Ethan glanced sideways to find the nearest Gor glaring at him and slowly rising to confront him. Ethan looked away quickly.

  “You’re dishonoring them by averting your eyes,” she explained.

  “They don’t seem to be happy with me whether I look at them or not,” Ethan replied as the Gor beside him left the table.

  “They consider me one of their matriarchs. They’re just being protective.”

  “I see…” Ethan looked away from the Gors again, and the hissing grew louder. “Maybe we should go talk somewhere else before they eat me,” he suggested.

  Atta rose from the table, her eyes dancing with amusement. “Follow me.”

  Ethan followed her through the mess hall and out onto an adjoining balcony. The doors automatically opened and shut for them, sealing out the raucous noise of thousands of soldiers busy slurping soup.

  Ethan sighed, his ears thankful for the relative silence of the wind. The air was cool and fresh, rich with the smell of green growing things from the surrounding jungle.

  “How do you feed them all?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder to the table full of hulking gray-skinned monsters where Atta had been sitting a moment ago.

  “The Gors?” Atta asked. “Most of them have to eat aboard the Sythians’ command ships. Omnius created their fleet to be self-sufficient and to grow all of their own food aboard the behemoths.”

  “Interesting… so all of you have been here training for eight years?”

  “Give or take,” Atta replied.

  Ethan nodded to the horizon where he could just barely see the skinny black stalk of an obelisk limned and gilded with light by the setting sun. “And in all that time, you’ve never figured out what those ruins are for?”

  Atta’s brow furrowed. “What ruins?”

  “The obelisks.”

  “Oh, those.”

  Ethan frowned. “You don’t sound very curious.”

  “They’re not very interesting.”

  “Are you sure about that? They’ve survived here for millions of years. Don’t you think that means they’re important?”

  Atta shrugged. “Maybe they were to the people who built them.”

  “And what about those people? What did they look like? Who were they? Therius says they’re our ancestors, so there must be some sign of them here that links them to us.”

  “There is.”

  Ethan waited for Atta to elaborate, watching the sun set over the tangled tree tops. “Such as…” he prompted.

  “The obelisks are tombstones.”

  “Tombstones?”

  “Under each and every one of them are a whole lot of bones. Humanoid, but not exactly human. Based on the few expert opinions we have around here, the bones are closely related to human ones, meaning that we could have evolved from them.”

  Ethan shook his head. “So they’re all dead?”

  “I haven’t seen any walking around, if that’s what you’re asking. The ruins of their civilization are all over the Getties, but the jungle has swallowed most of the ones we might have found here. Noctune is the easiest place to see ruins, because they’re all pretty well preserved below the ice.”

  “How do you know that?” Ethan asked.

  “Because before I came to Origin I was stranded on Noctune.”

  “All alone?”

  “No, with my mother, the surviving Gors, and the Rictans.”

  “So that’s why you have such a bond with all of them,” Ethan said.

  “Yes.” Atta looked away from the setting sun. “Ethan, all of this talk about ancient history is interesting, but we have a more immediate problem.”

  Ethan cast another glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was about to come out onto the balcony with them. “Did you find the bombs?”

  “I did. All of the ground teams have an identical capsule to carry down and defend. The generals all assumed those capsules have something to do with the Eclipser, because they weren’t told where the Eclipser is going to be, but I know where it is, because my battalion is the one that’s taking it down.”

  Ethan looked out to the horizon. “Then Therius really is planning to kill everyone.”

  “We’re not going to let that happe
n. I can’t stop those bombs from getting to the surface without finding a way to oust Therius, and there’s not enough time to organize a coup before we jump to Avilon, but we might be able to sabotage the bombs and somehow vaporize them before they’re detonated.

  “Won’t that just let the nanites out anyway?”

  Atta shook her head. “Nanites are micro-machines that feed on everything and use the materials to multiply. Apply enough heat and they’ll melt, just like any other machine.”

  Ethan blew out a breath and looked out to the horizon. The sun had sunk below the trees, and now all that remained was a faint glow fighting feebly to compete with the stars. The jungle was a carpet of shadows below them. Ethan imagined the lost cities of a highly advanced race lying buried far below those jungles. What had happened to them? An entire galaxy full of people gone.

  “Can I see the bones?” Ethan asked.

  Atta shrugged. “I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I’d like to go now if you don’t mind.”

  Atta pursed her lips. “There are predators out at night.”

  “So we suit up and take a few Gors with us. Should make for good training, don’t you think?”

  “How am I supposed to clear that with the base commander?”

  “Night ops. Tell him I need the extra training.”

  “What if you get eaten Zephyr and all?”

  Ethan’s brow furrowed. “Just what kind of predators are we talking about?”

  “We call them Nightstalkers.”

  “I didn’t see anything while we were training on the ground today.”

  “That’s because they only come out at night. During the day they’re hiding in warrens underground. They don’t seem to like daylight.”

  The breeze felt suddenly cold, and Ethan shivered. “Nightstalkers… they sound friendly.”

  “Even the Gors are afraid of them.”

  “And you?”

  Atta grinned. “I like a challenge. Gets the blood pumpin’ as Magnum would say. Speaking of which, we’d better take the Rictans with us. The Gors are great to have in a fight, but they’re superstitious as krak. They think the Nightstalkers are the ghosts of their ancestors come to get them and drag them down to the Netherworld.”

  Ethan snorted. “Hard to picture Gors being scared of anything.”

  “That’s because you haven’t seen a Nightstalker yet. Come on, let’s go get suited up. We don’t want to waste all of our rack time hunting Nightstalkers and digging up ancient fossils.”

  “Lead the way…” he said.

  Chapter 33

  Ethan stood with Rictan Squadron and Atta at the edge of the parade grounds, scanning the shadowy jungle with infrared and light amplification overlays. With those overlays activated, the ground and trees turned varying shades of blue, while living creatures popped out as bright smears of red, orange, and yellow. Ethan counted dozens of small blurry heat signatures hiding out in the trees and a handful of even smaller ones scuttling along the ground. Looking down he noticed that he could even see dozens of creeping, crawling insects, highlighted bright blue against the dark blue ground.

  “I thought insects are cold-blooded. Why are they showing up on infrared?” Ethan asked, turning to Atta. Their Zephyrs radiated plenty of heat, too, but the overlays highlighted them green to distinguish them from everything else.

  “They’re showing up because they’re moving,” Atta explained. “Your infrared overlay is called IAMS for short, which means Infrared and Motion Scanners. Not everything dangerous radiates heat, so IAMS helps us to identify all possible threats in our environment.”

  Ethan smiled. “So bugs are threats.”

  “Not usually.”

  “What about Nightcrawlers? What should I be looking for?”

  Magnum answered this time, “Stalkers, not crawlers. They’re warm-blooded, and big, about three meters at the shoulder when standin’ on their hind legs. You can’t miss ‘em.”

  Ethan didn’t see anything that large in the jungle. He kept half an eye on the top third of his HUD where his rear view screen was located, but behind them was nothing but the parade grounds and human-shaped heat signatures. Ethan toggled his peripheral view screens as an extra measure of security.

  “Are they a threat to us in our armor?” he asked.

  “That depends,” Magnum replied while checking the charges on a pair of hefty plasma pistols.

  “On what?”

  Magnum shrugged. “How many are huntin’ you, how hungry they are, and whether or not you still have enough ripper rounds to keep ‘em from gettin’ close.”

  “In other words, yes,” Atta clarified.

  “Good to know,” Ethan said, while performing a quick weapons check of his own.

  “The squad is ready, General,” Magnum said.

  “I think maybe the commander better take the lead on this one. He can use all the practice he can get. Shrapnel… Shrapnel?”

  Ethan realized with a start that they were talking to him. He looked up to see both Magnum and Atta looking at him expectantly.

  “You needed a call sign,” Magnum explained. “That way I don’t have to go around calling you sir and SC all the time. How ya like it? The squad came up with it after they heard about your unconventional tactics in the simulators—getting yourself blown up all the time.”

  The call sign wasn’t all he was wondering about. Suddenly he didn’t understand why he’d been put in charge of an elite commando unit. He’d logged only a handful of hours in a Zephyr, while most of the Rictans had spent decades fighting and training with them. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered about Therius’s decision. The Rictans didn’t need him. “Actually, I think you should take the lead when we’re on the ground, Magnum.”

  “Well, well, where did that sudden burst of insight come from?”

  “I was picked off today after just a few minutes on the ground, but besides that, you have far more experience than I do with ground ops.”

  Magnum grunted. “You heard the commander. Move out, Rictans! Keep eyes on those peripherals. Shrapnel, Princess—you two have the rear.”

  Ethan turned to Atta and whispered, “Princess?”

  “Don’t start,” she warned.

  “She ain’t fond of her call sign.” Magnum said.

  “No, I like it just fine, Maggy,” Atta replied.

  “See? She’s gotta go imasculatin’ me just to make herself feel better.”

  Atta laughed.

  Magnum turned and led the way, setting out at a light jog. They crashed through the tree line with all the subtlety of a stampede. Twigs and branches snapped underfoot; the ground shook with heavy, armored footfalls; and underbrush slapped their armor.

  Ethan winced at all the noise they were making. “Shouldn’t we try to keep it down?” he asked.

  “No point,” Magnum replied. “Nightstalkers will find us either way. Better they know we’re out here. We’ve tangled before, so maybe this time they’ll be smart and stay away.”

  A rush of static roared over the comms as Rictan Five, Streak, snorted. “If they were that smart, they’d be the ones wearing armor and shooting guns. They’re just a bunch of dumb beasts.”

  “Dumb beasts with big teeth,” Rictan Six, Blades, put in.

  “Stow that chatter, Rictans!” Magnum said.

  They ran through the jungle for almost half an hour in perfect synchrony and perfect silence. In all that time Ethan didn’t see any animals large enough to match the description of a Nightstalker. He wondered if the Rictans were messing with him and this was some type of elaborate hazing.

  Then suddenly Magnum held up an armored fist, indicating that they stop.

  Ethan couldn’t see anything on infrared. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Thought I saw somethin’.”

  “You sure? My scopes are clear,” Rictan Three replied.

  “I’m sure…” Magnum said, raising both his gauntlets and activating
his weapons.

  Ethan stepped out of line to get a closer look. Meanwhile, he armed his own ripper cannons. Weapon barrels slid out of his gauntlets and he clenched both fists to take off the safeties.

  His heart thudded in his chest. Time crawled. Sweat trickled in an icy line down his back.

  Suddenly a twig snapped behind them. Ethan whirled, his eyes scanning all his screens at once. On his rear screen he caught a glimpse of a big orange blur, dancing between the cold blue boles of trees and coming up fast. “I’ve got contact! Permission to open fire!”

  “Multiple contacts at six, three, and nine o’clock!” another Rictan reported. “They’re flanking us!”

  Ethan saw two more heat signatures melt out of the trees in front of him, and no less than a dozen coming up on his peripheral screens.

  “Close it up, Rictans! Testudo formation!” Magnum roared.

  Testudo? Ethan glanced at his rear view screen see the Rictans forming up in a square, with three on each side, their backs facing each other. They’d left a gap in the rear of the formation for him, and he hurriedly backpedaled into it.

  They stood there, arms raised and ripper cannons tracking. The Nightstalkers circled, their heat signatures flickering through the trees. No clear lines of fire yet, but Ethan bet that if they opened fire now they’d graze a few and maybe scare off the rest before they got too close.

  “Permission to—”

  “Hold!” Magnum said. “No sense stirrin’ ‘em up if we don’t have to.”

  Ethan wondered about that. Were the Rictans afraid of Nightstalkers?

  The heat signatures circling them faded one by one into the trees until all of them were gone. They kept their weapons raised and tracking just in case, but after several minutes of jumping at their own shadows, it became obvious that the Stalkers weren’t coming back.

  Atta was first to break the silence, “They’re gone, Maggy. We should get moving.”

  “Sure thing, Princess,” Magnum said. “All right, let’s—”

  Something cracked overhead, and a large branch fell into the middle of their formation.