“Did it do that?” I nodded to his arm.
“Yes. We fight. Never win.”
“Do you know where it took our friend?” Mary asked, the complex noises echoing from her translator.
“Yes. Nest. Volcano.”
“The volcano is the nest?” I asked. “What if he lives there, causing the eruptions, creating the ash cloud, constantly putting the world, or at least their region, under a dark cover?”
I’d been talking to Mary, but they heard me and chittered away. “Yes. Yes. Once radiant. Now death. Only dark.”
“Is that why you live down here?” Mary and I stood, looking up at the slightly taller creatures.
“Hide. It kill. Drawn to light. If light, it find. Kill.”
Their language, even translated, seemed fairly stunted, but their point was easy to get across.
“So it creates a dark world, and if anyone here uses light, it finds them and kills them.” A plan was starting to formulate in my mind.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Mary asked me.
“There can only be one way. But we need their help.” I turned to the Raanna before us, confident that if Slate was still alive, we could save him. “Will you show us where the nest is?”
It took a moment, and they turned into a circle, their conversation a hushed football huddle. When they stepped back in front of us, Scar spoke for them. “We help.”
____________
Their tunnels were intricate. Raanna were down there by the thousands, and they looked sad and cramped in the small rooms they occupied. They’d made a life for themselves, and Scar showed us a massive space where they grew rows upon rows of mushroom-like fungi, amongst other bland-looking food sources. It was hard to get a lot out of them, but I saw the wistfulness as he remembered life above the surface. The radiant, as he put it, glowing down on them, crops growing heartily in the lush landscape.
Now it was dead, ash-covered, and poisoned. We were there to help them. What had the Theos said as we were about to jump? “Bring them light. End the dark. Only then will you move on.”
“Bring them light. End the dark,” I whispered as we walked in the pitch-black halls.
“Bring them light,” Mary repeated.
Scar – as I had taken to calling him, since they’d given us no names – was leading us, and we came to a small room set apart from the rest of the residences. Something covered the entrance with thin lines, and it was sticky when I reached out to touch it. My goggles showed it a dim green. Scar moved past me, lifting one of his front legs. With a sharp protrusion on his foot, he cut an opening into the barrier.
“It’s a web,” Mary said, and it was obvious she was right. The wall of web shook as he sliced through it, and he held the flap open with his thin hairy front leg, motioning for us to go inside.
I took a hesitant step into the dark room, covered by a humanoid spider web. It was like all my nightmares were coming true. I still felt a detachment from them, like the whole Theos journey was nothing but a game. I had to remind myself it was real. If I died here or, God forbid, Mary or Slate died, we’d be finished. Game over. No respawning, no returning to a saved spot, just gone.
Once Mary and I were inside, Scar came along, leaving a few Raanna outside in the hall to guard the door. I had the feeling what we were about to see was for certain eyes only.
“Raan,” his chirp translated. He crossed the space and tapped the wall. “Eyes off.”
“Eyes off?” Mary asked, unsure of what he meant. He said it again and took something off his face with his human-like hands, revealing his natural eyes. In his palm sat a mask that accommodated his multiple eyes. They couldn’t see in the dark either.
“Goggles. He wants us to take our goggles off.” I did so, feeling slight panic rise in my gut, and couldn’t even see my own hand in front of my face.
“Done,” Mary said to Scar, and he tapped the wall again, using his right front foot. A screen lit up dimly at first, and even that limited amount of light was enough to cause me to squint.
“They have this kind of tech?” I stepped toward it, now seeing a desk built into the wall; keys, controls, and screens all along it. The one screen he turned on showed an icon, much in the shape of a spider’s web before sliding to a green screen with black writing on it. The language was images and symbols, and Scar typed quickly on the console, script flowing onto the screens in commands.
Pictures appeared, one after another, of a lush and gorgeous world. The Raanna were dark-skinned, as opposed to the much more pallid tone they had now. They looked happy as they did things you could see our colony world inhabitants on New Spero doing: till the farmland, socialize, swim in a lake. It was strange to see the spider people in water, but they played, swinging from vines near a waterfall in some of the shots. If I wasn’t already on edge from seeing Scar with this advanced technology, next was a video taken as the volcano began to spew its venom on their world. A series of videos streamed together as more ash fell. Soon the sun was blocked from view, and we saw countless Raanna bodies strewn about the now ash-covered ground. Families wailed in the darkness, the video taken in night vision.
“Dear God,” Mary said, clutching my arm.
When I thought it was going to be over, there was one last video. Multiple fires lined the countryside in the shot. The Raanna filming the scene walked around, capturing the sadness and terror. Sound carried to us from the screen’s built-in speakers, and it was a howl, the same terrifying one from the creature that took Slate. We watched in horror as the pandemonium began.
The camera shots were shaky and panicked, but we got the point. Hundreds of Raanna were ripped apart by something, never more than a black shadow on the screen.
Scar tapped the screen as the screaming of the Raanna mixed with the dark beast’s howl in the universe’s worst orchestral union. It went silent, and I walked toward the still frame. Mary stepped to my side, holding on tight.
“There.” I pointed at the large screen. In the corner of the shot, the black being hovered above a victim, wings spread wide. It could fly.
“A bat?” Mary asked.
“Could be. They are nocturnal. Maybe a moth? Drawn to the flame like a moth,” I said, remembering the old adage. Whatever it was, it sent a shiver down my spine. That screech, those wide black wings. It was a thing from a horror movie, brought to life for us to confront, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Is our friend alive?” Mary asked, straight-faced.
“Only kill in frenzy. Hunt bring to nest,” Scar’s string of noises translated.
“When they hunt, picking off the Raanna, it brings them back to its nest. Good to know. Slate might be alive. We have to hurry this up.” I turned my attention to Scar. “We’re going to need your help.”
I saw a glimmer of emotion pass through his multiple eyes as the screen’s frozen frame cast a dull glow against his flat face. “We help.”
“What do you have to make fire?” Mary asked him. Our plan was contingent on a couple of things, and that was one of them.
Scar looked scared but stood firm. “Fire.” The word came out quickly, and even in the robotic tone, I could pick up his hesitation. He turned and spit out a flurry of commands to his people. They started running down halls in preparation. It seemed they’d been in hiding so long, some of them were anxiously ready to help us end their plight. It wasn’t just a rescue mission for our friend, it was the salvation of a race of oppressed beings.
The Atrron flickered to my mind, being forced to stand guard for centuries as they waited for someone worthy of the Theos quest. They’d also been oppressed, just not directly. They’d been manipulated by the ancient race to do their bidding.
Aquleen’s people, the Apop, were forced to land by the Picas the Theos had planted there as part two of the path to their homeland. Now the Raanna were required to live underground, with the constant threat of death if they used any light at all. It was getting worse with each challenge, and even th
ough I was cognizant of the current task at hand, I was trying not to think about the next step.
“Come on, Dean. Let’s get Slate back.”
Seventeen
The Raanna with us were battle-worn, some missing limbs, others with marks on their bodies like Scar. I wanted to end this monster even more after seeing the video of it tormenting their people, and now meeting those who’d stood up to it and lived to tell the tale.
Mary touched the bow she’d been given. “I know it didn’t do much when I tested it earlier, but why else would they give it to us? It has to be our tool to kill the moth.”
We’d gotten to calling it “the moth” instead of another name. The name the Raanna had for it didn’t translate, though I suspected it would be something along the lines of “the devil,” or another variant of the word. We decided to give it less power by naming it after a harmless flittering night insect.
“When the time comes, we’ll kill it. We just need Slate first.” She wanted to separate from me, staying with the distraction we were using to lure it away from its nest. “It’ll be angry when it realizes our trap, and I don’t want you there when it goes ballistic.”
She nodded, her face a light green, maybe paler than it had been before we arrived on this ash-covered world. I wondered how far the cloud of ash spread. Was the entire world under ash? If we traveled to another continent, would we find another group of Raanna being hunted by a different giant moth?
We were moving quietly, the volcano visible now in the distance, even through the thick ash falling from the sky. The ten Raanna with us were keeping pace with us, even though they could move much more quickly than us on our two legs. If they had a hard time escaping the moth, then what chance would humans have?
It was getting hotter as each long minute passed. My jumpsuit was sticking to my chest and back, sweat pouring down my brow. I was thankful for the goggles, as they kept the perspiration from leaking into my eyes.
“What I wouldn’t give for a nice cold beer and a hot shower right now,” I said to Mary.
“I’d even take a hot beer and a cold shower.” Her smile cut through some of my tension, and I grinned back at her.
“At least we’re together. Not quite the first year of marriage I expected. If this is the honeymoon phase, what’s the rest of it going to be like?” I asked.
“Hopefully, much quieter. We can go back to the Shimmali…remember the falls?”
I remembered vividly. It had been the best, most romantic and relaxing time of my life. “I more than remember. When this is over, we’re going back. That’s a promise.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
Scar held an arm up and pointed to the left. It would take us around the clearing we’d initially walked through, away from the lava pit. Seeing it now, knowing the moth was nearby, I couldn’t believe we’d emerged there and walked in the open with our lights on. How did it not see us? It must have been sleeping, or maybe it was off looking for other prey.
We cut hard left, walking for what felt like eternity in that direction before gradually heading back toward the far side of the volcano. They knew where they were going, but the longer we waited, the less chance Slate was going to make it.
Zeke Campbell was like a little brother to me. Where Magnus was a tough as nails, boisterous best friend, Slate was a quiet, more contemplative soldier, who had more loyalty than anyone I’d ever met. I wasn’t sure I was owed that loyalty from him, but he still gave it.
I’d forgiven him for killing Mae, and even though that had happened almost two years ago, I still saw the image far too often when I closed my eyes. It wasn’t Slate that I faulted for it now; it was Mae…or Janine. I knew he was riddled with guilt for killing her, especially when he found out her real connection to me. I needed to get to him and assure him once again that he wasn’t to blame.
The ground was slick with ash now, and the smell of sulfur and molten lava was heavy as the air thickened. Scar led us to the side of the volcano, and he stopped at a fissure in the sidewall of the black stone that carried upwards for a hundred feet at a steep incline. He pointed into it. “Here. Nest.”
The crack was just wide enough for one of the Raanna to get through, but they didn’t look in a hurry to do so.
“Are they going to be ready?” Mary’s question translated.
“Yes. Fire soon,” Scar replied, and they turned around, gun-like weapons in hand. They were an advanced race, but they didn’t have space travel or pulse rifles yet. The guns looked like something from the Civil War, just on a larger scale. They didn’t move, which told me they were on guard duty.
“Guess it’s just us, babe,” I said, taking the first step into the crack in the wall. We were on the opposite end of the volcano from where we’d emerged from the one-way Theos transport, and it wasn’t going to be easy winding our way through, trying to find the nest. We’d been shown a crude hand-drawn map by Scar, but it didn’t show elevation changes, or much at all, other than lines with directions for the pathways leading to the open spot near the lava where the moth lived.
“Turn here,” Mary said, her hand pressing lightly on my left shoulder as we walked the tight halls. The good news was that the moth was far too large to fit into these tunnels, so at least we wouldn’t encounter it.
“They should be starting the fire any time.” I waited patiently as we walked, expecting to hear the moth’s screech any moment as it saw the large flames in the distance. We kept moving, but it didn’t sound the alarms. By the time we were almost out of the tunnels, according to our memory of the map we’d seen, we still hadn’t heard a peep coming from the moth.
We needed this plan to work, or we’d have to face it here and now, and going off the cuff wasn’t ideal. The walls were black and smooth, like the worn lava tubes I’d seen in Hawaii on vacation there years ago. They curved more than bent as we meandered through them, coming to an opening eventually. Still no sign of the moth leaving.
“Maybe it went silently,” Mary said in hushed tones, her lips touching my right ear. I stood still, feeling the weight of her body lean against mine. The touch of her hand on my shoulder and her close proximity felt intimate, in juxtaposition to our current predicament. I knew she wasn’t intending it to stir feelings in me, but I suddenly felt overprotective of her and wanted to ask her to hand me the bow. I’d risk myself to leave her unharmed. “What is it? Did you see something?”
“No. Nothing.” My green night vision showed an open room with bright green at the right edge.
“You went rigid for a second,” she said.
“Just worried, that’s all. Look over there,” I said and flipped off the night vision to get a better look. Most of the room was covered in a dense layer of darkness, but on the right, we could make out the orange glow of flowing lava. Breathing was getting harder, and I wished we had our EVAs on, or at least some masks like the ones Slate, Suma, and I had found on that abandoned planet.
“We’re close. Let’s hug the wall.” Mary went ahead of me as we exited the tunnels and moved along into the darkness. I left my goggles turned off as my eyes acclimated to the dim lava glow nearby.
The room we were in acted as a foyer to a couple of other rooms, and as soon as we found the entrance to the next space, this one alongside the molten lava, we instantly knew we were in the nest. Steam rose from the pits, exiting above to the open maw of the volcano. Gurgling noises emanated from the pit of orange, and gases hissed as lava shot forth, turning to ash as it rained down on the land beyond.
As if on cue, we heard something rustle from within. A horrible howl erupted alongside the volcano, and the moth peeled off from its nesting spot on the wall, where we hadn’t even been able to see it. We were lucky it hadn’t seen us, or we could have been attacked before we knew it. The open area beside the lava pit was wide and allowed enough room for the moth to spread its expansive wings and flap. It took off, roaring the whole time, and flew up and out of the volcano’s mouth.
The sight of the creature turned my blood to ice, even in the hot room. Sweat poured off me now, every inch feeling wet. I wiped my palms on my jumpsuit, trying to get my grip on the pulse rifle dry. Mary looked warm as well, but much more composed than I was. She was focused.
“Slate!” she called, but we saw no sign of him. I ran into the moth’s nest, aware there might be more than one moth creature. Scar had sworn there was just one, but after the tricks we’d seen with the Picas, I needed to be sure.
“Slate!” I yelled, searching the room. There were chunks of something on the floor, and after a quick sniff, it had to be rotting meat. I turned my gaze from it, trying to not identify just where the meat had come from. In the far corner, I spotted some white objects hanging from the wall.
As I ran to them, I swore they were cocoons. Were they the moth’s family? Insects ready to emerge as deadly winged beasts?
“Slate!” Mary continued to call. “Dean, Scar swore he’d still be in this nest.”
I glanced back at the carcass on the floor, not ready to admit that part of our friend might be in that pile. Ten yards from me, one of the white hanging cocoons was starting to sway.
“Mary!” I pointed to the swinging, white woven sack. “I think that’s Slate!” I called. The air was getting harder to breathe, each intake burning my lungs more.
She ran to it, and I was right behind her. “Slate!” she called once again, and something pressed against the cocoon from the inside. “We’re going to get you out!” I had Aquleen’s knife strapped to my leg, and I yanked my pants up, slipping it from the restraint.
“Stand back!” I yelled and jabbed the knife into the wall of the webbing. It was sticky and smelled musty as the gunk covered my arm up to the elbow. One of the Raanna scurried into the room, panic evident in its choppy movements. It made a series of noises, and Mary’s translator picked up the meaning. The moth was coming back.
The Survivors Box Set Page 76
