by Ballan, Greg
It was at this point that he heard the explosion and the distant growl of the Seelak. Even at this distance, his hearing enhanced the sounds of the battle. He was torn inside: part of him wanted to seek them out, hunt them down, and kill them; while his human half wanted only to free his daughter, take her from the hell she was in, and protect her. He knew he would do both, but doing so would cost more soldiers their lives.
Erik moved further up the mountainside, further than he had ever been before in his travels. This part of Hopedale Mountain rarely, if ever, had human visitors. It was the perfect place for the Espers’ ship to crash land, as far away from anything as possible.
He leapt back up into a nearby tree, then catapulted ten meters to another tree limb. He moved further and further into the elevations until, at last after endless minutes, he arrived at his goal. He landed outside the campsite and slowly made his way through the vacated area.
He paused as he looked over the small tent city. “What in the hell was going on up here?” he asked himself as he slowly approached the encampment.
This was conservation land; there should be no signs of human activity anywhere for miles. He was amazed to see the various crates and packaging for large equipment, and what appeared to be a makeshift helipad. Something very big was happening here, something that shouldn't be happening at all.
He activated his staff, expecting his rivals to appear at any moment to challenge him and warn him off their territory. Like a silver ghost, he moved soundlessly through the groups of tents and equipment. He paused at one particular table. Insects were busy feasting on the remains of someone's dinner. Half empty coffee cups were scattered throughout the area, as well as a variety of assorted gear. He entered a large tent and carefully studied the radio equipment that was still activated, as if waiting for someone to use it. He carefully studied other objects and personal paraphernalia that littered the tent. It was at that moment when his eyes spotted the large coffee mug. He picked it up in his metallic hand, studying it carefully and noting the Pendelcorp logo proudly emblazoned upon the mug's face.
Rage shot through Erik's mind as he crushed the mug into powder. Richard, you son of a bitch, you're at the root of all of this. Bits of the coffee mug fell from his now clenched fist. Erik picked up a large note pad and studied the contents. They appeared to be some sort of mineral and geological reports. Again, he noted the Pendelcorp logo proudly emblazoned upon each page. He took the book and tucked it into his satchel.
He quietly stepped out of the tent and began to check other areas of the large campsite. He found several crates with the Pendelcorp logo scattered haphazardly throughout the grounds and followed the trail of open crates for several yards. This led to a well-used footpath.
As soon as Erik stepped onto the footpath, his senses lit up; he could feel his daughter and the other children. He put his hand to the ground and listened with his Esper abilities as the earth told him in what direction his daughter was being held. Erik followed the path quickly and came to a massive opening that tunneled into the mountain. The smell of the felenoid and the Seelak warrior was overpowering, but he could also make out the distinct fragrance of his own flesh and blood, his daughter. He caught the scattered scent of other children, though one of the scents was not as strong as the others. There were also faint odors from several other spoors, but they were even slighter.
He stepped into the darkness, his eyes adjusting to the absence of light, seeming to shift to a different spectrum, allowing him to see near daylight quality. He moved quickly, deeper into the tunnel. Erik paused and touched the walls of the tunnel. He could tell by the texture that this tunnel had been dug by man-made equipment and was not a natural occurrence.
Erik had covered almost 400 feet when he began to catch a hint of death. The smell grew more and more pronounced as he moved deeper into the tunnel. He soon began to smell the fetid stench of individual corpses as he came to the tunnel's end. He spotted five bodies, mutilated, and some sort of mining equipment.
As he studied the chamber opening, he had a vision of Jakor and the other Espers leading those creatures and their captives into the giant eternal prison. Then, another flashback of the explosion that buried this chamber; he studied the melted slag of metal that was once the alloy door that was sealed eons ago, keeping the captives permanently entombed. He looked back at the huge piece of equipment and assumed it was some type of beam used for drilling.
Erik peered into the opening, but found his way blocked by some sort of stone obstacle placed in front of the chamber entrance. Erik focused his senses, felt into the chamber, and heard the sound of faint breathing. He focused harder, and was able to discern heartbeats; there were five distinct signatures, though one was very shallow. He placed both his hands against the obstruction and pushed. Slowly, the stone barrier gave way against his strength.
After he had pushed the obstruction about a foot, the sounds and the presence of the children were clearer. He heard gasps of fright and panic. The children had assumed that their tormentors had returned. He opened his mouth and shouted his daughter's name, yet no intelligible sound came out. Frustrated, he tried again; his throat was unable to create the words that his mind wanted to speak. Then he knew. He was now an Esper, think the words.
Brianna! his mind screamed. Brianna! His mind cried in anguish, longing to hear the voice that would tell him he was not too late.
“Daddy?” an unsure silent voice whispered in the darkness, as if addressing a dream.
I'm here, Baby; I've come for you. Daddy's here!
The feeling of joy was so powerful that it almost drove him to tears. Without thinking, he drew his fist back and smashed a blow into the obstruction that blocked his path. His hand smashed through the barrier, placing a gaping hole through the solid structure. He struck again and again, roaring in rage while pummeling the thick stone, reducing it to rubble. Erik held up his metallic hands to his face and looked at them, bewildered; there were no cuts, not even a scratch upon his silver flesh. He walked into the chambers, closing in on the source of his daughter's voice.
As he got closer, he heard the children shriek in unison. Erik spun, bringing his staff to the ready, preparing to strike out with the force of a hundred suns at the creatures that took his child.
“Daddy,” Brianna screamed. “Something's here, something big with huge blue eyes.”
Erik's heart sunk, his daughter had seen his eyes. To her, he was one of them. Honey, you must listen to me. He's here to help you. He will not hurt you; don't be afraid. Let him approach you, he will not hurt you! Do you believe me?
“Okay,” she whispered hesitantly.
Erik slowly approached the children. He felt their fear, heard their racing heartbeats as he came closer. Finally, he saw his daughter, clearly standing there in the darkness with the three other children. She looked up into his fiery blue eyes, struggling to control her fear.
Don't be afraid.
Her eyes bulged as she looked up at him, his luminous eyes reflecting beams of blue light off his silver skin. She reached out and he gently took her small hand in his metallic one. He felt her warmth, and then her acceptance.
“Daddy, what happened to your eyes?” she asked innocently. “Your skin, it looks and feels like metal. What happened to you?”
Later, he replied. There is another child here, Bri. I'm going to get her. Don't move, I'll be right back.
Erik carefully moved through the darkness; utilizing his enhanced senses like a bloodhound he was able to track the other faint heartbeat. He approached the tiny body and picked the child up gently. Lisa Reynolds was alive, barely, but alive. He noted the bowl of water next to her and some dried foodstuffs from the camp. He studied the ground around her carefully; it was littered with her waste and vomit, and the child's clothes stank of it.
Erik then kicked the bowl and food away angrily. They had used her to feed upon, to gather strength. Erik shuddered at the thought. He remembered that the creatures fed up
on fear, which was how they were designed: to feed upon the fear of the common Esper. But the Espers were gone now and nothing was as palpable as the fear of a young child, afraid of monsters dwelling in the dark. Somehow, they figured that out and were using the fear of children to feed themselves. That's why they took his daughter and the others, as food. Erik headed back to his daughter, she too had been covered with the scent of her own body excrement, and he vowed to make these things pay dearly for what they had done to his child and the other children.
It all clicked into place: Pendelcorp was tunneling here. That explained the reports he found. The miners were looking for mineral deposits in this isolated location. They stumbled upon the Worldship, buried for all these eons, and broke into it. That awoke the hibernating creatures. The corpses he saw at the chamber opening were obviously what was left of the original mining team.
He would figure it out later; he had to get the children out of here. He carried Lisa Reynolds back to the other children, and began leading them out of the darkness.
Stay close; keep holding my hand. The children all formed a human chain, relying on Erik's sight to guide them out of the pitch-blackness of the chamber and tunnel. As he guided them, Erik spotted more human bodies. He carefully kept the children from stumbling over them as they headed out of the chamber and into the mining tunnel. He silently wondered what they were doing inside the chamber. Later, he told the PI that lived in his mind. His responsibility was to get his daughter and the others to safety.
It took nearly twenty minutes for them to traverse the tunnel that he had covered in less than five minutes earlier. He had to keep reminding himself that the children were weak from lack of food, and that it was pitch black and disorienting for them. Also, they were climbing up, and that made it all the more difficult for them. They frequently needed to rest. Erik saw, in the distance, the opening and the daylight; he knew there were things that he had to say, and say them quickly. His appearance would scare the children further unless they were prepared.
Brianna, children, when you see me, I'm going to look very different than I used to. Don't be afraid; I'm still Mr. Knight. I would never do anything to harm you. You must believe me.
The children mumbled as they slowly approached the tunnel entrance. Erik looked down at his hand and could see the sunlight already refracting off of his silver skin. He heard several muted gasps as they slowly stepped out into the light. The children looked up at him in wonder as the light and the forest were reflected in his mirror-like silver skin. He looked down sadly at his daughter as she stared up at him.
Am I a monster to you, Bri? he asked her sadly.
Brianna studied him very carefully, touching the cold metallic flesh and tracing the outlines of his enhanced musculature with a tiny fingertip. She looked back up at him, and Erik smiled slightly. She grinned back as she took his hand again. “No,” she answered with a compassion that belied her years. “You're my dad, and you came for me, for all of us, when nobody else did. You weren't afraid.” She threw her small arms around his silvery body and pressed her head against his metal-coated torso. “I love you, Daddy, no matter what color you are,” she whispered. “You do need to find some bigger clothes though,” she remarked, studying his shredded jeans.
Thanks, Munchkin. Erik gently held his daughter in one arm while balancing the unconscious form of Lisa Reynolds on his other shoulder. He was thankful that she had accepted him.
As he adjusted his grip on the Reynolds child, he heard the sound of rotors. He knew that something was closing fast. The whine of this helicopter was different, it sounded bigger, more powerful, and potentially dangerous.
* * * *
Major Ross was stunned to learn that another group of twenty men was now missing and presumed to be dead. He had given the order for his men to withdraw and regroup into one big offensive line. He gave them specific orders to fire on anything they deemed to be hostile. He had no idea how he would explain the loss of twenty percent of his forces to his commanding officers; he still couldn't believe it himself.
“Major!” a voice shouted excitedly, “we have an unknown bogey entering our mission space, the signature is that of an Apache gunship. Our sensors are picking up active radar, sir, that bird is sweeping the area.”
Ross let out a litany of swears as he ran to the radar screen. The blip was heading directly toward the mountaintop. “Warn that bird off, Eyes One and Two, close and intercept,” he ordered. “What the fuck else can go wrong today?”
* * * *
The Apache gunship activated its twin turbines and began a power ascent up Hopedale Mountain. The ship was following its preset coordinates. The pilot quickly noted that two other helicopters had left their positions and were attempting to intercept. The Apache pilot disengaged the autopilot and banked the craft savagely, pulling nearly two Gs as he quickly turned the ship toward the first oncoming Bell Striker.
His radio blared with the calls from both approaching helicopters. The pilot flipped a red toggle on his weapons panel, and heard the whine of a sequential autoloader feeding the ships main cannon. He painted the Striker with a laser sight, and the ship's onboard computer placed a targeting diamond superimposed on the cockpit glass around the closing Bell helicopter.
“Goodbye,” the pilot whispered as his finger gently depressed the cannon trigger.
The Apache shuddered as hundreds of depleted uranium rounds and phosphorous tracers erupted from the six spinning cannon muzzles. The super hard rounds tore through the Striker's aluminum skin like a scalding knife through warm butter. One burst found the Striker's main fuel line, engulfing the ship in a ball of fire. The Striker fell to earth like a blazing comet then exploded upon impact with the ground.
The pilot noted that the second Striker had pulled away, and was now fleeing at 150 miles per hour in the opposite direction. The Apache pilot switched from guns to rockets and activated the ship's boosters. The attack copter accelerated rapidly, boring down on the unarmed Striker like a bloodhound chasing a rabbit. The Apache was closing, traveling at almost 300 miles per hour. The pilot bathed the hapless helicopter with active radar. The attack computer chirped, confirming a target lock.
“Splash two,” the Apache pilot whispered as he freed two rockets from one of the ship's weapon pylons. He watched with satisfaction as the rockets streamed toward their target and impacted, blowing the Striker into hundreds of fragments of scrap metal. The Apache banked 180 degrees and resumed its preprogrammed course.
The Apache quickly closed on its preprogrammed coordinates. The pilot toggled his controls to the Typhoon missile console. The attack computer fed the missiles the proper instructions, and each missile gave an electronic hum to assure the pilot that everything was green for launch. The pilot looked at his flight computer and was now within striking distance. He tapped the brilliant orange button on his control yoke and sent the first Typhoon missile speeding along its way.
* * * *
Erik and the children heard the sounds of gunfire and several explosions. Erik knew that there was some arial combat occurring in the skies overhead. He leapt up into the nearest tree and climbed to the top. He had an unobstructed view of the Hopedale skyline from this altitude and his current vantage point atop the tree canopy. He watched with revulsion as the Apache gunship literally blew another helicopter from the sky. He watched as the attack helicopter banked leisurely and began to head up the mountainside toward them.
This can't be good! Damn you, Richard, I know you're behind this, all of this. If we get out of this alive, so help me. Erik leapt from the treetop and landed gently in the leaf-covered ground. He quickly ran toward the children.
He had found a container of water and some boxes of granola bars abandoned in the campsite, and the children were eating and drinking hungrily. He had managed to get some fresh water into Lisa Reynolds, but the girl was unresponsive, probably in shock from her ordeal.
Erik deliberately kept a respectful distance from the children
. They were still somewhat afraid of him. They wouldn't come right out and say it, but he could read their feelings and emotions. At least his daughter accepted him, and that was one thing he had to be thankful for. He bent over and gently scooped up the Reynolds girl; he had wrapped her in a blanket Brianna had scavenged from one of the tents.
The sound of the helicopter began to grow louder. Erik heard it long before the children did. His Esper senses warned him of the oncoming threat. He didn't have to see the approaching ship to know that they were all in danger. He shouted a telepathic warning to the children even as he ran toward them. Somehow, through all the noise, he heard it, the sound of a missile being fired. A missile was being fired at them. Erik drew his staff and summoned the image of a massive shield. The staff flattened out into a thin disk four feet in diameter.
Get down, he broadcast telepathically to all of them.
Each child obeyed, and Erik quickly placed the makeshift shield over himself and the huddled children. Cover your ears, he ordered as the telltale whine of the missile grew louder.
The Typhoon missile streaked over their heads and headed directly for the mouth of the tunnel. The impact and detonation shook the entire mountainside. Erik pressed himself down further into the children as a massive plume of expanding fire and debris spread out from the point of impact. It took nearly all of Erik's strength to keep the force of the concussion from squishing him and the children into the ground. Erik heard the shield murmur and whine almost as in protest to the force it was made to withstand.
He heard the roar of the gunship as it passed overhead. He lifted the shield and quickly checked the children. They were all huddled together in a tight mass. He scooped up Lisa Reynolds and guided the other children out of the now ruined campsite. Again, he heard the thrum of a missile being fired, again he covered the children and himself with the shield. The missile impacted closer this time. It was targeted for the campsite itself. The concussion plowed into Erik's protective shield, this time overwhelming him with its irresistible force. Erik groaned in agony as he forced his enhanced body to endure the force of the lethal explosion. The shield seemed to protest as it deflected the hailstorm of fire and debris caused by the missile's impact. Both Erik and the children were carried back several meters by the force of the impact, but the shield still held and nobody was hurt.
