by Richard Fox
The rest of the menials looked at their dead comrade for a moment, then scrambled back to work.
“Remember that the next time you think I’m being too hard on you,” Cortaro said.
A pair of menials pulled the drill bit back. The cone-shaped depression morphed, then returned to its original state.
“Not sure how we’re going to get in there, sir,” Cortaro said.
“They’re making progress, I think. Let’s wait and see if they can ….” Hale cocked an ear up as he heard the sound of claws against metal. A light appeared at the end of walkway. The menial carrying it ran down the walkway straight at Hale.
Hale reached up for his rifle, then reconsidered. He extended the combat knife from his gauntlet and pulled his arm back.
“Bad eyesight, right?” Hale asked. He hoped the menial’s reflexes were just as poor.
“Hale, you must—” Steuben’s warning was lost as the menial sprinted toward Hale. It saw the armored Marine and tried to slow down, but its momentum carried it forward like a dog sliding over a waxed floor.
Hale slammed his blade beneath the menial’s jaw, the tip exiting the back of its skull. Any creature on Earth would have been killed instantly from the blow. The menial, yellow blood gushing from the entry and exit wounds, started squealing.
It reared up on its back feet, yanking Hale to his feet. The squealing grew louder, then the Toth went limp.
Hale looked to the side. Every single Toth was staring right at him and the dead menial impaled on his blade.
One of the warriors pointed at Hale and bellowed an ululating war cry.
“Light ’em up!” Cortaro shouted. He stood up and blasted his rifle at the Toth, his rounds ripping through the unarmored menials. The rest of their Marines added to the fusillade moments later.
Hale struggled to remove his blade from the menial’s skull. He slammed the corpse to the ground, braced his foot against the body and finally got the blade free with a sickening crunch. He reached for his rifle and saw one of the warriors fire its weapon.
A blue laser blast cut through the walkway between Hale and Torni. The walkway heaved, then collapsed, sending Marines and chunks of rock and metal falling to the ground. Hale landed on his feet, but stumbled when a rock struck the back of his shoulder.
A menial tackled him, its claws scraping and prying at his visor. Hale tried to shove it away, but its bottom legs were wrapped against his waist tighter than a vice. The menial bit at his helmet, shaking its jaws like a hunting dog with a rat in its teeth.
Hale grabbed the menial’s upper and lower jaws, the teeth useless against his armor, and used the augmented muscles to rip its head apart. It finally fell off him and he grabbed his gauss rifle from the rubble.
He switched the rifle to LOW POWER and aimed at a warrior at the edge of the melee between the Marines and the menials. He squeezed the trigger and sent a burst of rounds into the warrior. One round severed the warrior’s arm holding its weapon. It snarled in pain, then used one of its clawed feet to pick up the weapon and aim it toward Hale.
The bam bam bam of Orozco’s Gustav tore the warrior to shreds. One of the heavy gauss cannon’s rounds blew through the warrior’s forearm and smacked into the silver wall. The round, stained yellow with viscera and blood, stopped a finger’s breadth from the door, then fell to the ground.
“Ghul’Thul’Ghul!” Steuben ripped a menial off him then launched himself at the remaining warrior, leaping into the air. The Karigole unsheathed the blade carried on the small of his back and slashed it across the warrior’s chest as he landed. Blood spurted from the cut and Steuben brought the blade across its stomach with his reverse strike.
The warrior collapsed against itself and Steuben hacked at the dead Toth’s head. Again. And again. Steuben shouted in his own language as he hacked the Toth into pieces.
The Marines had finished off the menials and watched as Steuben beat at the Toth with a berserk fury.
“Steuben!” Hale yelled to get the alien’s attention. “Steuben, stop!”
The Karigole, his chest heaving, let his blade fall to his side. He turned to Hale, his face, chest and arms covered in yellow blood. His forked tongue whipped out and licked blood from his face.
“What?” Steuben asked.
“You … you OK?” Hale asked.
“Fine. That felt good. Let’s go find more.” Steuben knocked the flat of his blade against his thigh to rid it of Toth blood and slid it back into its scabbard.
“Lowenn? Anyone seen Lowenn?” Orozco kicked over a dead menial and looked around.
The sound of muffled cries came from beneath a pile of rubble. Orozco set his Gustav down and shoved lumps of rock off a pile. The rest of the squad rushed to help. Torni lifted a section of a grate, revealing Lowenn’s helmet.
“Help!” Lowenn squeaked. Torni and Orozco knocked rubble away and hauled her out by her shoulders.
“Are you alright?” Orozco asked her, wiping dust off her visor.
“Some giant alien lizard just shot at me with a blue lightning bolt and if you hadn’t dug me out I would be some future archaeologist’s amazing discovery. No. I am not alright!” Lowenn shook free from Torni and brushed herself off.
“She’s fine,” Torni said. “Still, let’s get the medic to check you over. Yarrow?”
Yarrow wasn’t with the rest of the Marines. He was standing next to the silver wall, his head cocked up, his body swaying from side to side.
“Yarrow!” Cortaro shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”
Yarrow’s head shook, like he’d just been woken from a nap.
“Huh? What’re you all doing over there?” the medic asked.
“Yarrow. Come here,” Hale said. The medic stood between the wall and his commanding officer.
“Don’t you want me to open it?” Yarrow asked.
“Son, you don’t know how to do that,” Cortaro said.
“Sure I do.” The medic turned around and tapped the symbols embossed on the wall. The symbols lit up as he touched them, glowing with a pale green light. A black line ran up from the floor and traced out a doorway. The wall slid down without a sound.
Yarrow waved to the squad and went inside.
“Not this shit again,” Standish said and the squad ran after him.
Beyond the doorway was a wide metal boulevard leading deep into a cavern. The pathway stopped at a dark hole in the cavern, an open circle so wide three Mule drop ships could have flown into it with room to spare.
In the middle of the opening hung a sphere, its surface undulating with fractals and swirls like the body of a Xaros drone. A stone platform hung beneath the sphere, Shanishol writing glowing from computer screens around the platform.
Yarrow walked toward the sphere, dropping his weapon and stumbling forward like a toddler that was just learning how to walk. He looked determined to walk right off the edge and into the dark abyss beneath the sphere.
Hale ran up to Yarrow and grabbed him by the carry handle on the back of his armor.
“Yarrow! Snap out of it!” Hale jerked Yarrow back and put himself between the medic and the sphere. Yarrow stopped, then looked at Hale like he’d never seen him before.
“Sir? What’s going on?”
“You’re acting like a damn weirdo, that’s what’s happening,” Cortaro said as he picked up Yarrow’s weapon and sat the Marine down. “Don’t move. You’ll get your weapon back when this is over.”
“Finally, some electronics.” Lowenn stopped at the edge of the open pit and looked down. There was nothing but darkness below. Hale and Standish joined her, both craning their necks over the side.
“Well, none of us can fly,” Hale said. The gap between the sphere and the edge of the pit was at least twenty-five feet.
Standish lifted his visor and spat over the side. The drop fell flush with the edge of the pit and spattered to a stop midair, looking like it had hit an invisible floor.
“That’s funny,” Standish said. He
knelt slightly and jabbed at the air around where his spit had stopped. The muzzle thumped against something solid, and a ring of coherent matter rippled away from the contact like waves over a still pond. The first two steps of a stairway leading to the sphere appeared, then faded away.
“No. No way.” Standish backed away from the pit.
“Yes, you’re the lowest-ranking Marine,” Cortaro said. “You go first, just like when we test for chemical warfare.”
“New guy! What about new guy? I outrank him and I bet he’d love to do this,” Standish said.
“Yarrow’s down. You’re it. Go.” Cortaro pointed a hand toward the pit.
“This is horseshit, Gunney. I’ll write my congressman … when we have those again,” Standish said.
“I’ll do it.” Lowenn grabbed Hale’s hand and stepped over the edge. A stairway appeared as she pressed her foot down, and more steps came into being as she set more and more weight on the staircase. “There. See?”
She took two cautious steps up, looked around, and took two more. The step attached to the edge of the pit faded away, but Lowenn’s staircase remained steady. Her hands went out to steady herself, and she quickly moved up the stairway as it appeared for her. She got to the platform and turned around. She mimicked a courtesy for the Marines and ran her hand over the computer banks.
Hale swallowed hard and followed Lowenn up the on-demand stairwell.
The sphere glowed from an internal light, the striated lines shifting without rhyme or reason, like a time lapse of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Hale’s weak reflection on the sphere roiled with the surface. He pulled back from the sphere just as he saw the reflection blink of its own accord. Hale adjusted his visor, his stress and nerves getting to him.
“Well?” he asked Lowenn.
“It’s Omnium, that’s for sure. Not in the form the Xaros keep it but it’s the real deal. The controls ….” She walked around to the other side of the platform. “This platform is mobile. Yeah, right here,” she said, pointing to a pair of knobs. She looked up. The cavern grew into an apex far above them. “I think we’re beneath the main pyramid.”
“Makes sense. The star of the show would have the biggest stage,” Hale said. “How does this interface with the sphere? We need to bring back more than pictures and a crazy story.”
“You’re asking me to figure out an alien computer operating system in two minutes. Give me a little time,” she said.
A Toth war cry echoed through the cavern.
“You’re asking the wrong person for time. Make it fast,” Hale said. He looked around for another exit, but the door through the silver wall was the only way in and out.
Torni aimed her rifle through the doorway and let off a burst of shots. The sound of a squealing menial joined the war cry. A last bolt sizzled over Torni’s shoulder and impacted against the stairway, sending ripples racing around the platform. With the hit, Hale could see the entire stairway, a series of stepped disks, one atop another.
“I think … yeah! I can get us to the top of the pyramid,” Lowenn said.
A warrior tried to squeeze through the doorway, his armor caught against the entrance, pinning him in place. Steuben and Standish pounded the warrior with gauss shots before it went slack.
“Everyone! Get up here!” Hale shouted.
Marines kept firing as they backed to the pit, threading rounds over the dead warrior’s bulk and into Toth that Hale couldn’t see from the platform. Cortaro, one hand on Yarrow’s carry handle, struggled to keep the eager Marine from running up the stairway while firing into the doorway.
The Toth yanked the body of the warrior away and a dozen menials boiled through the doorway.
Hale fired as fast as he could, tearing through the charging menials with each shot. The Toth menials kept coming, heedless of casualties and the force of fire the Marines sent to meet them.
Orozco and Bailey were the last two Marines to make it up to the platform, their carbines firing on full auto as they backed up the stairs.
The tide of menials ceased, and a warrior burst through the doorway, charging forward on all six arms and legs, far faster than anything that size should have been able to move. It crushed wounded menials underfoot and let loose a war cry that rattled Hale’s visor.
Hale connected with a burst of gauss rounds, but the warrior didn’t seem to notice or care about the hunk of flesh blown away from its tail.
“Lowenn!” Hale reloaded as the rest of his Marines kept firing at the charging warrior.
“Maybe … this one?” Lowenn hit a button then twisted a knob as hard as she could. The platform bobbled, then raised into the air far too slowly for Hale’s liking.
Menials ran forward and leapt after the platform. They fell short, and instead of a staircase materializing for them, they plummeted into the abyss below. Menials behind them struggled to stop, some tumbling over the edge while others were pushed in as they fought against their momentum.
The warrior sprang from the pit edge and reached for the platform, claws glinting in the light from the sphere. One hand caught the edge. The claws tore paths through the rock as the hand slipped back, and then vanished over the side.
“It’s beautiful,” Yarrow reached out to touch the sphere.
“No you don’t, Marine.” Cortaro yanked him back to the edge of the platform. “You’re not going to—” A warrior's claw arced over the edge of the platform and stabbed through Cortaro's calf, pinning him to the stone. Cortaro stifled a cry of pain and pushed Yarrow away.
“Gunney!” Hale shouted. The Toth warrior's head rose over the edge of the platform, hissing at the Marines. Cortaro looked down at his stricken leg, then back at Hale in disbelief.
The warrior's other six clawed hand slammed into the platform and its thick arms came over the edge.
Steuben swung his rifle around...and aimed it at Cortaro. Steuben fired a single shot and blew the Marine's leg off. The warrior's grip on the platform slipped as its hand disintegrated along with Cortaro's leg. Steuben blasted the lip of the platform, shooting away the Toth’s remaining handhold. The Toth fell away, its scream of rage fading.
Cortaro fell to the ground, his hands pawing at the bloody mess just beneath his knee. Hale ran to Cortaro, the Marine's teeth grit in agony.
"Medic!" Hale called out. He pushed Cortaro's hands away and found a knot for the bodysuit's integrated tourniquet. Blood pulsed from the ruined meat of the leg, spreading over Hale's armor with each of Cortaro's weakening heartbeats.
"Do it, sir," Cortaro said.
Hale grabbed the knot in his fist and yanked it. A ring of pseudo-muscles just beneath Cortaro's knee tightened mercilessly, earning a sharp scream from Cortaro and cutting the loss of blood to a trickle.
Golden light poured over them as the platform slowed to a stop and the Marines found themselves at the apex of the white pyramid. Anthalas stretched out before them, haze filling jungles and worn mountains.
“Yarrow? Gunney needs you,” Hale said. Cortaro rolled to his back and raised what remained of his leg into the air, rags of flesh and a jagged chunk of bone dripped blood down his thigh.
"Yarrow! Get your ass over here," Hale glanced over his shoulder to the rest of the Marines and saw the medic. He had a glove off and touched his bare fingertips to the sphere. The sphere darkened at the touch, its entire surface blackening like burnt flesh. Red cracks ran over the surface and the sphere jerked from side to side, like something inside was trying to punch its way out.
The medic backed away from the sphere, confusion writ on his face.
The sphere shrank inward, then formed into a javelin shape, pointed straight at Yarrow.
“Sir?” Yarrow sidestepped, but the tip followed him. “Help!”
Hale grabbed Yarrow and spun the medic behind him. A hum filled the air and the javelin sprung from the platform. It shot straight into Hale’s chest … and passed through without sensation. Hale looked down and saw nothing amiss. He whirled around.
Y
arrow, his mouth agape, choked on something, then golden light rose from his eyes and mouth. The medic collapsed to the ground. Hale knelt next to him, hesitant to touch him. Yarrow’s chest rose and fell, breathing hard.
“Yarrow?” Hale shook him, but there was no reaction.
“Sir? What do we do?” Torni asked.
“Check Gunney, make sure he's stable. Steuben," the Karigole knelt next to Cortaro, wrapping the Marine's injuries with bandages taken from the field packs attached to Cortaro's belt. Cortaro had a rosary in his hand and mumbled prayers in Spanish as the alien tended to the wounds he inflected. "Steuben what were you thinking?"
"I didn't have a straight shot on the Toth. Freeing Cortaro from the Toth was the only way I could save him," Steuben said.
"You couldn't have aimed a little higher?" Cortaro asked, his words tinged with pain.
"Toth claws are poisoned, you would have lost the leg anyway. Do you require pain killers?"
"Yes, you asshole, I need pain killers!" Cortaro draped his forearm over his eyes, not wanting to look at the bloody bandages covering his leg.
"I've got something," Orozco pawed through Yarrow's medic bag, spilling compresses and rolls of tubing as he found a hypo spray. Orozco thumbed through the drug settings. "What's the difference between an opioid and an analgesic?"
"You think I give a shit right now?" Cortaro asked.
"Opioid it is," Orozco pulled Cortaro's collar down and pressed the hypo spray against his bare flesh. Cortaro groaned for several more seconds, then the tension in his face soothed as the drugs took hold.
"Where’s Lowenn?” Hale asked.
“Here,” she said from behind the control panels. Hale found her half in, half out of the control panels. She grunted and the screens went blank. She wormed her way out and held up a silver box, severed wires dangling from it. “I figured there was a computer core somewhere. This should teach us something.”
“That’s … something. Sure. Put it away and—”
“Sir! We’ve got company,” Bailey said. She pointed to the boulevard leading away from the silver pyramid. Toth menials scurried from one of the step pyramids like ants out of a disturbed nest.
