Earth Eternal (Earthrise Book 9)

by Daniel Arenson

  And amazingly—impossibly—it seemed like the president, this legendary general, was almost about to cry. But no. She must have imagined it. His eyes remained dry. His face hardened again.

  "Yet all these things might be lost if the grays return," he said. "They are planning another assault. An invasion to make the last one seem like a mere sortie. We have no fleet. We have barely an army. We have barely any hope. We must know their plans. We must know more about their world. We must know their weakness. If there is hope, we must destroy them before they can destroy us. We must know how." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "And you must find out."

  She tilted her head. "Me, sir? I'm just a technician in the reserves."

  Petty straightened. "You are Captain Lailani de la Rosa, the soldier who led the famous Spearhead Platoon to the scum emperor, who faced Lord Malphas in battle, who retrieved a time machine at our hour of need. You have greater power than any human on Earth. For you are not fully human. You have inside you the might of an ancient alien civilization. When you turn on that power, you are stronger, faster, deadlier than any soldier in my army. But you can do even more." He leaned closer to her. His eyes lit up. "You can read minds."

  Lailani took a step back. She hit the wall. "Read minds, sir? No. No! I . . . I can detect some brain waves. Patterns. Visions. But I'm no mind reader."

  "Today you must be," Petty said. "Or humanity falls."

  He opened the third and final blast door. He gestured for her to step through.

  Lailani entered a chamber.

  The blast door slammed shut behind her.

  She stared ahead.

  Oh hell no.

  Lailani spun around and banged on the door.

  "Let me out of here, damn it! Petty! Let me out!"

  The door remained closed. From behind her, in the chamber, she heard the creature cackle.

  Sneering, Lailani spun back toward him. The gray sat on a chair, bound in chains. Blood trickled from his mouth. He grinned at her and licked his bloody teeth.

  "Hello, Lailani," the gray hissed, voice like footsteps on shattered glass. "I know you. I have seen your future. I have seen your . . . deformation."

  She stared at the creature, her fists clenched. The army had stripped him naked, had roughed him up, but still the gray's oval eyes glimmered with amusement. Large eyes, the size of her fists. Pure black—no white to them, no irises, just pure darkness that gazed into Lailani's soul, that stripped back her uniform and skin, that carved her insides. She knew nothing about this gray, not even his name, but she could tell he was high ranking. Ritualistic scarring covered his torso and ropy limbs, depicting ankhs, eyes, and coiling hieroglyphs. Three iron disks were nailed into his skull, perhaps denoting his rank.

  His eyes were cutting her. But Lailani refused to look away. She stared right back.

  "I see your future too," she said softly. "In about ten seconds, unless you play nice, I'm about to gouge out those freakish eyes of yours."

  Fury exploded in those black eyes.

  The gray leaped forth.

  Lailani stood her ground, refusing to even flinch.

  The chains tightened, pulling the gray to a halt mere centimeters away from Lailani. The creature howled, snapping his teeth at her, spraying her with saliva. His voice emerged, high-pitched, raspy, and demonic.

  "You fucking little whore!" The gray yanked at his chains, desperate to reach her. "I'm going to fuck you raw before I rip out your heart! I'm going to feed you your own entrails! I am Orobas, General of Sanctified!" He cackled madly, screaming, twisting. "You will beg me to die!"

  Lailani stood still, staring at him. "Are you done?"

  Orobas sneered at her, eyes narrowed. Slowly a grin spread across his face, and he eased back into his chair. The cuts had widened on his mouth. His blood dripped onto his chest.

  "I will tell you nothing," he said.

  "Oh, you already told me a few things during your tantrum," Lailani said. "Your name and rank were a good start. You're going to tell me more. Much more. You're going to tell me everything."

  Orobas sneered. "And why is that? Do you think you can torture me?" He laughed. "Upon joining our holy hosts, every Sanctified Son is tortured beyond what any human can envision. You cannot hurt me. I know no pain."

  Lailani stared at him.

  "I do," she said softly. "I know pain. I know the pain of loss. I know the pain of despair. I know the pain of love, perhaps the most painful emotion of all. I hurt and I hurt because I am human. I fought and I fought because this is my home. I fought the centipedes and I fought the spiders. I fought the demon inside me. I fought all my life for this world. And I will not let you have it. I will not let my pain have been in vain."

  She inhaled deeply.

  She raised her chin and closed her eyes.

  Nightwish.

  As she shut off her chip, the cosmos expanded.

  She was aware of the entire bunker, tunnels and shafts and chambers spreading below Jerusalem. She could sense the ruins above, the crumbling temples and domes and archways. She could see ancient prophets shuffling above, hear clerics blow ram horns, witness the rise of Rome and the fall of antiquity. She could see her friends, the people she loved most in the world.

  And she could see the gray ahead of her.

  Not just the bruised, bleeding wretch. She could see a great lord in armor. A charred skeleton enveloped in reeking flesh. Crowns of glory and rust. Thoughts. Fear. His mind—black and coiled up like serpents inside his skull.

  She reached into his mind.

  And Orobas fought her.

  He thrashed in his chair, shrieking. He built walls around his mind. Walls of hatred. Of fury. Of bloodlust.

  Lailani leaned forward, staring into his eyes, forcing her mind against his, carving, digging, trying to shatter his defenses.

  The gray general laughed, head tossed back, jaws snapping, saliva dripping. His claws dug into his seat. He spoke in her mind.

  You cannot break through.

  She thrust her consciousness with all her strength. She hit his dark walls of malice.

  I will break through!

  You cannot. You are weak. You are frail. You are human.

  My humanity makes me strong.

  You are barely even human. You are a hybrid. Diseased. Impure.

  I am more human that you will ever be.

  She thrust again, trying to enter his mind. She caught glimpses of what lurked within—of twisting, scuttling thoughts. His walls thickened. With all his cruelty, he blocked her access. The gray general cackled.

  You . . . are . . . alien.

  I am human!

  You are weak. You know nothing of true strength. Of true glory. Of ambition, desire, strength. You seek to break me, yet I am so much stronger. You seek to fight us, yet you are so meek. You cannot comprehend our cruelty.

  And Lailani saw it. She saw this cruelty. She saw the bodies nailed into the ankhs, their organs removed yet still living, lives extended for centuries. She saw Nefitis and her lieutenants tear open the wombs of pregnant women, feast upon the living fetuses as the mothers screamed. She saw world after world enslaved, mere stepping-stones to the true prize. To Earth. To humanity broken and reformed into wretches.

  Yes. She saw cruelty. Distilled. Pure. Evil at its truest form.

  But she did not see strength.

  "You are weak," she whispered.

  Orobas sneered. "After all that I showed you, you call us weak?"

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. "You are so sad. So broken."

  He laughed. "You will learn what it means to be broken."

  "I have already learned," Lailani whispered. "I lost Sofia, a woman I love. I lost so many friends. I lost my mother. I forgot how many miles there are to Babylon. I lost my candle in the darkness. But I've always known love. I've always known kindness. I've always known joy, even at my darkest hours. That is what makes me strong, Orobas. That is what makes humanity strong. Stronger than you'll ever know.
You are us, Orobas. You are what we would become if we abandoned our kindness. And you are so broken." She smiled through her tears. "You lie at the end of a dark path. You are a warning about what we might become. You are a failed branch of evolution. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what we created. We made you. And I pity you so much."

  And there—Lailani saw it.

  A chink in his armor.

  A glimpse inside.

  A child. Inside his memories, a cowering child, begging as his father struck him. A child forced to slay his younger brother, to consume his flesh, even as he wept. A young man, broken, shattered, rebuilt again and again, turned into a demon, but inside still so afraid. Still cowering.

  "You're still human," she whispered. "Somewhere deep inside you, you're still afraid."

  Orobas screamed in fury. And in fear.

  Lailani pushed harder and shattered the armor around his mind.

  She drove in.

  The chasm of Orobas's mind spread around her, rife with rot. She saw that cowering child in the corner, begging as his father beat him again and again, shattering his bones. She moved deeper. She saw a youth, forced to become a soldier, fly from world to world, destroy civilization after civilization, but always dreaming of Earth, of the promised land.

  And she saw a world. A black, charred planet, ash covering the ground, smoke hiding the sky. A wasteland of howling winds and scattered fires, a desolation where mutated animals shrieked and hunted and perished of hunger. It was a world where no life should exist. And yet an empire rose there.

  Their city spread across the wasteland. Gehenna. She saw its name. A city where millions fought and hungered and dreamed of old Green Earth. A city of obelisks and vicious gods, of bodies tortured on ankhs, a city hidden beneath a sky of saucers. A city prepared for war.

  Orobas struggled against her. With all his willpower, he tried to banish her from his mind. Lailani gritted her teeth and dug deeper. How he fought her! He thrashed at her. He hurt her. He hurled all his rage and hatred against her, and as she explored his mind, she fell to her knees, and her ears bled, and her chest felt ready to crack, and the centipedes laughed inside her, and still she dug deeper. To see.

  In the center of the city—a pyramid. Black. Towering. Taller than any building on Earth. She knew its name. She whispered it with a mouth full of blood.

  "Golgoloth."

  Orobas screamed and lashed at her. The pain was terrifying. Claws ripped at her insides. With her chip deactivated, the centipedes were rising inside her, feeding. She kept going, peering deeper. Peering at that pyramid. At the center of their power.

  A platform stretched out from the top of the pyramid. There, upon her throne, she sat. Nefitis. Goddess of the Sanctified Sons. Watching over her realm.

  "Who are you?" Lailani shouted. "What do you want?"

  Nefitis sat hunched over. Her head was bowed. She did not reply.

  A deep laughter grumbled.

  A voice. A presence. Deeper. Inside the pyramid.

  A creature.

  Laughing. Mocking. Calling her.

  Every bone seemed to shatter in Lailani's body. Her teeth seemed to crumble. But Lailani pushed deeper, thrusting her consciousness into the pyramid.

  There, inside, in a dark chasm—a ring of crystals.

  In the middle—his jaws. Grinning. Biting.

  He had no eyes, but he saw her. He gazed into her soul. He licked his jaws, and with a hundred arms, he reached to her.

  She wept. She wept blood.

  She knew him.

  "The Oracle," she whispered, blood flowing from her eyes to her mouth. "The Crystal Seer. The Tick-Tock King." She trembled. "Nefitis's father."

  His body was small and deformed, but his jaws were so large. They opened, and he hissed her name.

  Lailani screamed.

  She fell.

  She fell from the dark world.

  She fell from the sky.

  She slammed onto the floor in the bunker, thrashing, screaming.

  Orobas sat in his chair, laughing. He had ripped off his own hands to flee the chains. He still sat, stumps bleeding, cackling madly.

  "Now you see!" Orobas laughed as his stumps spurted. "Now you see, now you see!"

  Lailani lay on the floor, bleeding from her mouth, from her ears, fading away.

  Serenity. Serenity. Serenity.

  Yet there could be no more peace. No more hope. She wept.

  The door burst open. Petty raced in, along with guards. The soldiers leaped onto Orobas and began kicking and punching, knocking the alien down. Petty lifted Lailani in his arms. He carried her out from the room.

  "I saw," Lailani whispered. "I saw!"

  "What?" Petty said, staring into her eyes. "What did you see?"

  "Death," she whispered. "Terror. Evil." She smiled, blood in her mouth. "And a way to win."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They stood on a hilltop in Jerusalem, a small group of survivors, gazing at the dusty ruins. President Petty today wore a leather bomber's jacket instead of a suit. Marco, Addy, and Lailani wore their military fatigues once more, sand clinging to the olive drab, insignia of captains on their shoulders. Elvis—still only eighteen, promoted that morning to corporal—stood with them, looking so young, so confused, a mere child. All had helmets on heads. All held rifles. All waited for war.

  Marco stared across a valley. Upon a hillside sprawled an ancient necropolis, its tombstones clustered together, no space for grass between them. The dead there were thousands of years old, ancient prophets and kings. Beyond them rose the Western Wall, the last relic of the biblical Temple, weeds growing between its craggy bricks. All around spread the devastation—archways and fallen temples, palm trees growing between chipped columns, piles of rubble, biblical gateways, and abandoned souks.

  Barely any monks and clerics still lived there; only a handful tended to what remained. Thousands of soldiers, however, moved among the ruins. Jets streaked overhead. Jeeps and tanks rumbled. This city had known many wars, perhaps more than any city in history. Now it prepared for the final war.

  Marco turned back toward his companions. A gust of wind rustled their uniforms and scattered sand.

  "So we have to travel a million years into the future," he said, "find this forbidden city, enter this pyramid, and kill the creature inside."

  Addy yawned. "Piece of cake. We'll be back by lunch."

  Marco was not so sure. He turned toward Lailani. She looked up at him, eyes haunted. Strands of her dark hair hung out from her helmet, fluttering in the wind. She looked so small, so frail, like a child in her father's uniform. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to protect her. Instead he merely stood facing her, and he spoke softly.

  "Lailani, can you tell us more? About that creature you saw in the pyramid?" He held her hand. "I know it's hard. I know it hurts. But you must tell us everything. Every last detail."

  Lailani nodded. After interrogating the captive gray general, she had passed out, had lain unconscious for a day. She was still pale.

  "We don't have long," she said softly. "I saw a sky full of saucers. A million gray soldiers. They can't invade so close to their last assault. They can't risk rupturing spacetime so near their last invasion. But soon. Maybe in a few weeks. Maybe in just days. They will attack again with all their might." She trembled. "He will send them. He commands them." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The one in the pyramid!"

  She was shaking so violently Marco was worried she would fall. But her Doberman rushed up toward her, ever loyal, and Lailani patted him until she calmed.

  "Who is he?" Marco said. "Can you tell me?"

  The others were all watching. Marco knew that President Petty had already tried getting more details from Lailani, but that she had been too terrified to speak.

  But she'll speak to you, Petty had told Marco that morning. And we need answers.

  "I don't know his name," Lailani whispered, keeping her hand on her dog's head. "There are some who call him the Oracle, ot
hers the Time Seer. He calls himself the Tick-Tock King." She shivered, struggling to whisper the words. "He rules them all."

  Marco frowned. "I thought Nefitis rules the grays."

  "No." Lailani shook her head. "She is powerful. She rules the city. She rules the armies. But she pales in power to the Tick-Tock King. He is her father. He is the eyes, the claws, the vision of the Sanctified. That is what the grays call themselves. He sends them through time."

  "So he controls time travel?" Marco said.

  Lailani nodded. "Within the pyramid I saw many azoth crystals. Each was huge, the size of my head, larger than any azoth crystal humans have ever found. The crystals form a vertical ring like a Ferris wheel. The Tick-Tock King hangs among them, held up by cables and hooks that pierce his skin. His head and jaws are large, but his body is small, deformed, wrinkled. He has no legs, but he has seventy-three arms, spreading out around like a Hindu god. He has no eyes on his head. The skin has been stitched over the empty sockets. But on each hand, he has an eye, and he gazes into the crystals. In the crystals, he sees time. With his claws, he can grab, twist, manipulate, and bend time around him."

  Marco shuddered to imagine such a creature. "So using those crystals, he can open and close time portals for the saucer? Like your hourglass?"

  "He can do more," Lailani said. "Much more. He is more powerful than the hourglass by far. Any azoth crystal can tear a portal through time. But the Tick-Tock King understands time. He can predict paradoxes. And he can fix them."

  "Paradoxes?" Addy said, stepping toward them. "Like how Marco landed a beautiful babe like me?"

  "More like how somebody with a head so big can have absolutely no brain," Marco muttered.

  "Aww, your head isn't that big!" Addy said. "Let me check for brains." She began knuckling his head.

  "Enough!" Petty barked. "Linden, go take a walk. Emery, keep speaking to de la Rosa."

  As Addy wandered off, Marco looked back at Lailani. "We were talking about paradoxes."

  Lailani nodded. "Yes. HOBBS taught me about them. If you change the past, you can create a paradox in the present. That could have devastating effects, ripping holes through spacetime. A small paradox can destroy a planet. A big one can destroy a galaxy. When I went back to save Elvis, I had to fake his death. I couldn't tamper too much with the timeline."