Survival Aptitude Test: Fury (The Extinction Odyssey Book 2)

by Mike Sheriff

  He removed his ear plugs, elated. Heqet and Cordelia squealed and hugged each other. Daoren inched toward the windows, his demeanor stiff and subdued.

  Laoshi stepped forward. “What is it?”

  Daoren’s outstretched hand traced the immense sand-curtain streaking the sky. “We’ve sent up a homing beacon for anyone still searching for us.”

  A tinge of alarm pricked Laoshi’s spine. The boy was right.

  It wasn’t a good portent.

  PYROS GAZED THROUGH the bridge’s tinted windows, taking in the stark, sweeping vista five thousand feet below.

  From this height, his line of sight extended one hundred miles. The Great Saharan Desert extended thousands of miles farther to the southern tip of the continent, to the part of the world from whence his ancestors originated. Hundreds of generations ago, his forebears had roamed the city-states that once dotted the landscape. Sand had since expunged their existence. It was a sobering vision.

  The aeroshrike had crossed the coastline ten minutes earlier. So far, its electro-optical sensors had found no signs of the geology aerostat. Given the size of the search area, they might never reacquire the vessel.

  Narses joined him at the window, his brow as scored as the underlying dunes. “Well, Pyros? Where are they?”

  Pyros sighed. “I’m the Primae Jiren, not a psychic.”

  “We have to find them! My father expects a successful mission!”

  “Then why don’t you ask your father if he knows where they’re going—unless he already told you.”

  The accusation caught Narses off-guard. He stammered, red-faced.

  While the Unum Potentate searched for a suitable response, a Jiren interrupted. “Excuse me, sire. You have a secure call on the tactical air-link from Commander Cang.”

  Pyros masked his relief and marched aft to the communications console. Julinian was already leaning on it—her cryptic conversations had resumed shortly after the repairs to the air-link transceivers were completed. She terminated the call before he reached her and strode forward without so much as a sideways glance.

  Pyros inserted a wireless earpiece despite her retreat; this conversation would be best left to his ears alone. “Go ahead, Cang.”

  “Sire, thank Sha,” Cang said, voice crackling with static. “I was beginning to think the aeroshrike had gone down.”

  “What news do you have on the Unum’s summons?”

  “He called in the district commanders to issue a cull order.”

  “Against whom?”

  “Every Librarian affiliated with Laoshi and every denizen under their tutelage.”

  A chill raced up Pyros’ spine. “How many are dead?”

  “Thousands,” Cang said. “It’s provoked widespread insurrection in the southern and eastern districts. The people are arming themselves and fighting back.”

  Pyros gauged the proximity of the bridge crew. He lowered his voice until it was no more than a whisper. “Listen to me, Cang. Tell those commanders who support us to engage the dissenters. We need to bring the people to our side.”

  “I’ve already done so. We’ve made some notable gains here in Zhongguo Cheng, but trust is scarce in other districts.”

  “Keep at it. Where’s the Unum now?”

  “At the Assembly. He hasn’t left his chamber since the operation began. I think he fears venturing outside.”

  “Try to keep him there,” Pyros said. “Isolating him will minimize his influence with his loyal commanders. Exaggerate the danger to his life if you have to. I’ll contact you when I’m on my way back.”

  “Survival through sapience, sire.”

  Pyros removed the earpiece and flung it onto the console. Survival through sapience? Their only hope for survival rested in removing the Unum from power. Left unchecked, his actions would tear the city-state apart. The mongrel colonies would scoop up whatever scraps remained, then they’d join humanity’s inevitable slide into extinction.

  Pyros leaned on the console. The Unum’s cull order made as much sense as pursuing the aerostat to the Great Saharan Desert. What information did Laoshi possess to warrant culling those he may have come in contact with? What was the old Librarian searching for in this desiccated wasteland to justify this mission?

  At the forward windows, Narses and Julinian conversed, rasplaughing like they hadn’t a care in the sterile world. Hearing their levity when Daqin Guojin’s denizens were dying by the thousands was too much to bear. Pyros stormed forward.

  Narses saw him coming. “Ill tidings from home, Pyros?”

  He halted before the pair. “The only ill tidings I’ve received were when your father placed this mission under the command of an incompetent fid!”

  “Tread carefully, Jiren,” Julinian said. “Do you realize who you’re speaking to?”

  Narses sneered. “Insults can’t disguise your failure to find these dissenters! My father expects you to—”

  “Your father is busy creating the very insurrection he most fears!” Pyros said. “Did you know he issued a cull order the morning of our departure? Did you know he’s—

  “Sand plume off the port bow!” a crewman called out.

  Pyros spun to the port windows.

  At least ninety miles distant, a yellow-white arc stained the blue sky, far too high and well-defined to be a natural phenomenon. That meant it came from one of two sources; mongrels, or Daoren and the others.

  “Hard to port!” Narses said. “Full speed ahead!”

  The Unum Potentate leveled a triumphant smirk. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

  Pyros ignored the remark. It wasn’t like the fid had lifted a finger to locate their quarry.

  13

  The Cruelest Fiction

  DAOREN SET A freshly charged sonic hammer into the tripod’s cradle. He wiped sweat from his forehead and checked the alignment with the limestone seam surrounding the silver access door. After a small lateral adjustment, he activated the headstock and depressed the pulse generator’s twin buttons.

  Sound pulses streaked across the fifteen-foot gap and pulverized the beige stones. Clouds of dust bloomed from the impact points, obscuring the target and filling his nostrils. The tripod allowed for precise elevation and depression despite the poor visibility. It also spared him from bearing the hammer’s full weight. He’d already spent ten minutes creating the vertical channel, draining the previous hammer’s power.

  After a minute, he deactivated the pulse generator and let the dust settle. Stifling a sneeze, he paced forward and inspected the seam.

  The continuous channel penetrated two feet into the limestone, exposing a narrow vein of brighter material. Another three inches in depth should be enough to breach the entire seam, freeing the access door.

  Daoren walked back to the hammer and scooped a glass bottle from the satchel hanging off the tripod. He tilted his head back and drained its cool water in one continuous gulp.

  Above him, the Great Pyramid’s northern face jutted from a bowl-shaped well of compacted sand. Sunlight dappled its limestone blocks for the first time in millennia. Pieces of reflective material glinted among the blocks—the remnants of the twenty-five screw mines that had carved out the crater.

  He lowered the bottle and shivered at the sight. The northern face ascended in discrete levels, climbing like a stairway to the apex five hundred feet above. A single limestone block had to weigh close to thirty tons. Sha knows how many the pyramid comprised; the bulk of the structure still lay buried.

  Laoshi had mentioned earlier that, except for five or six small interior chambers, the structure was continuous rather than hollow. Each level featured thousands of nested blocks laid in a square pattern. Their total area decreased with height in a precise ratio, forming a perfect-square pyramid. He’d also said that the structure was built as a tomb for an ancient ruler. That seemed fitting. The contents of the seed vault that lay beneath this tomb would spell the end of a modern ruler.

  Laoshi kneeled ten feet from the
tripod, rummaging through satchels of equipment. They contained oxygen rebreathers, sonic chisels, water bottles, and other items that might be needed inside the pyramid. He glanced over. “How’s it coming?”

  “I’m almost through. It should be easy to pry the door open once the seam’s breached.”

  “Excellent!” Laoshi lifted his gaze to the limestone mountain. “Did I mention that the pyramid was constructed by hand?”

  Daoren craned his neck to take in the northern face again. “What . . . this?”

  “By thousands of slaves over a period of decades, according to the cultural records.”

  “How could they have raised stones of this size to such heights?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Laoshi said, chucklebucking. “It makes me wonder what other technological marvels the ancients possessed.”

  Daoren leaned against the tripod. “I’ve always wondered if they used levitrans and levidecks as personal transportation.”

  “Possibly. They may have used aerostats as well. The ancients understood hydrogen technology.”

  “Did they develop any laws of aerodynamics?”

  “The records give no indication,” Laoshi said, “but it’s possible. Humans have always been an inventive species.”

  Daoren snorted. “So as advanced as we think we are, we may be reinventing technologies our ancestors had already created.”

  Laoshi rasplaughed. “Wouldn’t that be funny?”

  Daoren appreciated the irony, but this was no time for idle chatterwailing. A seed vault was tarrying for them somewhere in the depths of the pyramid. He stowed the water bottle and activated the sonic hammer’s pulse generator.

  The rock seam crumbled within thirty seconds under the fresh assault. The access door canted open with a throaty gasp, like the pyramid was drawing the first breath of its rebirth.

  Daoren strode forward and gripped the edge of the door. After a few vigorous tugs, it opened far enough to permit entry.

  The blackness beyond the door echoed his first encounter with the Void. No sounds ebbed from the opening.

  He shivered and turned to Laoshi. “It’s dark inside.”

  Beyond Laoshi, a thirty-degree slope led up to the desert’s surface. The blast direction of each screw mine had been precisely calculated to create the gradient. It was steeper than he would have preferred, but a twenty degree slope would have required an extra ten large screw mines. Only five remained in the geology aerostat.

  Heqet and Cordelia trundled down the slope, returning from the aerostat. Bulging satchels hung from their shoulders. They set them among the other equipment, looking relieved to be free of the burdens.

  Laoshi did a quick inventory of the satchels’ contents. “Heqet, could you go back up and retrieve four light cylinders from the cargo hold?”

  Heqet heaved a weary sigh and wiped her forehead.

  “Sorry, dear. I should have foreseen the need for them.”

  “It’s okay.” She plodded back up the slope, sand sucking at her sandals. A few feet below its upper lip, she froze and crouched. “Daoren! Come up here!”

  Daoren darted up the slope, urged on by the alarm in her voice. She pointed north. It took a moment to resolve the target.

  Thirty miles distant, a black airborne object fouled the otherwise pristine sky.

  Heqet clutched his arm. “Is it . . . ?”

  “Yes.” Daoren cupped his mouth and called down the slope. “The Jireni are coming!”

  Laoshi and Cordelia raced up and join them. They regarded the approaching aeroshrike like a portent of doom. “How long until they arrive?” Cordelia asked.

  “Ten minutes,” Laoshi said. “Twenty at most.”

  “What can we do?” Heqet asked.

  “We must hurry,” Laoshi said. “We need to find the seed vault before they overtake us.”

  “That won’t give us enough time to escape,” Heqet said.

  “No,” Laoshi said, “but it will give something with which to bargain for our lives. No Jireni would turn his back on an alternate food source. But we need to have the seeds in our possession first.”

  Daoren turned back to the sand slope.

  It dropped to the entrance five-hundred vertical feet below. High, steeply angled berms bracketed the twenty-foot-wide incline, forming a natural draw.

  “Maybe we can slow them down,” he said.

  “How?” Laoshi asked.

  “Come with me.”

  He led Laoshi to the aerostat and climbed its ramp. Inside the cargo hold, he opened a rack on the starboard bulkhead.

  Its shelves held stacks of glass disks, one-inch thick and no bigger than his palm.

  Laoshi grinned. “Acoustic squibs.”

  Daoren raked the squibs into two satchels, filling them. He handed a satchel to Laoshi. “These should slow them down.”

  Laoshi shouldered the satchel and snatched four light cylinders from a work bench. “No time to tarry!”

  They rushed back to the crater’s lip. Heqet and Cordelia descended to the pyramid’s entrance. Daoren and Laoshi picked their way down the slope, burying squibs an inch below the surface every few feet and smoothing the sand to conceal their location. They frittered away five precious minutes, but the effort was worthwhile. Except for a scattering of footprints, their activity left no obvious signs.

  Daoren manipulated his quantum tile. “You’d best get inside. I’m selecting the most sensitive proximity setting for the squibs.”

  The others gathered up the satchels of equipment and squeezed through the access door. Daoren tapped the tile’s screen as he backed inside.

  A chorus of muted chirps vented from the slope.

  Inside the pyramid, Laoshi’s light cylinder illuminated a silver corridor. It sloped downhill at a gentle grade as far as the beam carried. Droplets of condensation clung to its walls.

  Daoren activated his light cylinder and panned it back and forth. The corridor’s width and height matched the Temple’s antechamber . . . and seemed to be shrinking by the second.

  His saliva evaporated. He gripped the light cylinder with both hands to steady its beam. Were it not for the squibs littering the sand slope, he might have rushed back up to the relative comfort of the aerostat. He directed his focus onto the tip of his nose—to the cool inhalations and warm exhalations of his breath—to squelch the anxiety.

  Laoshi inhaled through his nose, mimicking Daoren. “Yes, it’s surprisingly well-oxygenated considering how long it’s been buried. I don’t think we’ll need the rebreathers.”

  “Could there be an oxygen generator below?” Daoren asked, content to accept Laoshi’s misinterpretation of his breathing technique.

  “Let’s find out.”

  They shouldered the satchels and descended the corridor.

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Pyros, Julinian, Narses, and twenty armed Jireni halted at the crest of the sloping crater.

  The aeroshrike bobbed in the background, moored behind the geology aerostat. More Jireni milled around the vessels; the rear-guard tasked to keep watch for Daoren and the others . . . and for mongrel patrols. The rest of the crew occupied their duty stations onboard the aeroshrike, ready to resume flight operations on one minute’s notice.

  Pyros locked his gaze onto the mind-boggling mass of stone blocks rising from the crater. Footprints led to a tripod-mounted sonic hammer at the slope’s base. Signs of sonic-pulse impacts were evident on the rocky seam abutting an open silver door. Daoren and the others had clearly fled Daqin Guojin to find the buried structure, but what on Earth was it?

  “Sapient Sha,” he whispered, breaking the stillness. “How old is this structure?”

  “This isn’t an artifact expedition,” Narses said. “Order your men inside!”

  “Did the other aeroshrike’s destruction teach you nothing? We need to plan our attack first.”

  “Go inside. Find them. Cull them. That’s your plan!”

  “Some prudence is in order, Narses,” Julinian said, tone
dripping with condescension. “Or is that another quality you lack?”

  Narses’ face reddened at the insult. “I’m growing tired of your lack of respect for my position.”

  “Is it my fault you lack the qualities I respect?”

  “Watch your tongue!” Narses said. “And address me as Unum Potentate.”

  Julinian sneered at her cousin. “You say that as if you earned the title.”

  “Earned or not,” Narses said, “I have the title. Not you.”

  “Only because I was born to the wrong father.”

  Pyros eyed the pair, content to remain silent and see where the acrimony led.

  “So you think you’d make a better Unum than me?”

  “Not think,” Julinian said. “Know.”

  Narses motioned to the sand slope. “Then you lead the Jireni inside—unless your boasts are so much hot air!”

  The challenge earned a grumble of disdain from Julinian. She puffed her chest. “I’ll show you what I’m made of.” She waved to the Jireni lining the crest. “Follow me, men! Survival through sapience!”

  “Tarry!” Pyros said.

  His command came too late. Half the Jireni—the young and the dumb—followed her down the slope. She took a half-dozen loping strides at most before a dull crump discharged. Sand geysered beneath her feet.

  Julinian sailed twenty feet into the air, tumbling head over feet, and thudded onto the steep berm lining the crater’s edge. She rolled down the berm and came to rest at its base. She didn’t move.

  Another crump rang out from the slope . . . and another.

  Two Jireni flew into the air, shrieking. One of their severed legs landed farther down the slope. It set off another charge and arced skyward again.

  “Stand fast!” Pyros shouted.

  The Jireni on the slope froze in place.

  Pyros glared at Narses. “We need to clear the draw before we proceed—unless you want to lead them the rest of the way.”

  Narses trembled, wide-eyed. He declined the challenge with a shake of his head.

  FOUR MUFFLED THUDS ebbed through the walls, more felt than heard.