“Wait a minute,” said Calvin, “I never called them pseudo-sharks.”
“You never called them that out loud,” replied Dolph, “but that is what you think of them as. You broadcast your thoughts in a loud ‘voice.’ If you don’t want me to listen, you shouldn’t broadcast like the rest of your people.”
“So you can hear what I’m thinking?” asked Calvin. “What am I thinking right now?”
“Yes, I can,” agreed Dolph. “You’re wondering if I can really do it, or if I’m just pulling your leg. I could probably have guessed that without being able to read your thoughts.” He paused and then added, “That’s better. 42.”
“42 what?” asked Calvin.
“You were going to ask me what six times seven was,” said Dolph.
“Is that true?” asked Ryan, who had been uncharacteristically silent for most of the trip.
“Yeah, that is what I was going to ask,” confirmed Calvin.
“Sir, you’re just damned creepy to be around sometimes, you know that?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah,” said Calvin. “I’m creeping myself out this time.”
“The pseudo-sharks are here,” said Dolph as they materialized from the shadows. The sharks in this group were, if anything, even larger than the ones they had ridden to the Starfish Palace. The one that approached Dolph was at least 40 feet in length with serrated teeth over a foot long.
The soldiers fought down their fears, took hold of fins and were on their way.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
The pseudo-sharks dropped the soldiers off where a large river emptied into the ocean. Dolph made a face looking up toward the river, and Calvin could tell why. All manner of filth and foulness was washing down with the river water, polluting the ocean. Calvin was glad he wasn’t breathing it; the water looked truly disgusting.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Calvin said to Dolph. “You don’t need to go any further. Judging by the amount of filth coming down the river, I’m sure we can find it from here.”
“Despite how repulsive this area has become, I promised my father that I would take you to the culvert,” said Dolph, “and I shall.” He shook his head and shuddered. “But please hurry, I don’t know how long I can breathe this before I throw up.”
The soldiers followed Dolph as he led them upstream. He stayed in the middle of the river, as close to the bottom as he could. Calvin hoped the water smelled less offensive there. They turned their jets on to full power and followed Dolph upstream. They were just able to keep up with him and made good time although they were forced to stop several times as canoes of the Nahuatl passed above them. The soldiers used their suits to blend in while Dolph and his men simply stopped moving and blended in naturally.
After 30 minutes, the soldiers reached the culvert and could see the source of all of the effluvium entering the water. Dolph went upstream a little from it into clearer water. Calvin could see all manner of human waste pouring out of the pipe, including what looked to be a large bloodstain. From the size of it, there was no way the previous owner, if human, was still alive.
“I would like to come with you,” began Dolph.
“No,” Calvin said, cutting him off. “I will not endanger your life. We will take care of this. We have the tools and the training. I thank you for bringing us this far, but this is as far as we go with you. Meet us in three days on the beach where we first met you; we will talk with you there.”
Reluctantly, Dolph turned to go. Once he reached where the culvert dumped into the river, his speed accelerated noticeably. His men went with him.
Calvin looked at Master Chief and commed simply, “Lead on.”
The soldiers went up the culvert single file. That gave them more room to avoid...things... floating downstream past them. Body parts and feces were two of the most easily identifiable things to be avoided.
“Whoever is in the lead, please watch for a pipe coming down from above,” commed Steropes. “There should be a ladder in it. We will climb up it.”
“Got it,” commed Wraith. “Headed up.”
“Everybody show the next person where it is before going up,” commed Master Chief.
Calvin was behind the Master Chief in order and within a few more seconds came to where he was waiting, holding onto the bottom rail of the ladder. Calvin gave him the thumbs up, and Ryan started up the ladder. Calvin waited for Steropes, who was after him. When he was sure Steropes could see the ladder, he started up.
The climb was a long one, over 100 feet up, using rungs that were meant for small, nearly naked men, not large soldiers in 100 pound suits. Calvin saw two of the rungs that hadn’t been up to the challenge and had torn off. Happily, the men or women that they had snapped on had kept their balance and not fallen into the group climbing up behind them.
Calvin made it to the top and was helped over the edge by Master Chief. He stood up and found himself in a small 15’ square room that was already getting crowded. As he caught his breath, he heard:
“OW!”
“FUCK!”
“DAMN IT!”
Along with a variety of other crashing and splashing noises. “What happened?” he asked.
“One of the damn rungs came out on me,” replied Petty Officer Second Class Ivan Sherkov, who was one of the biggest men in the squad. “The one I was standing on couldn’t take the load, and it pulled out. I landed on Jet, tore his out, then landed on Witch who was just starting to climb.”
“And it’s a big bloody brute, you are,” added Sergeant ‘Witch’ Andrews in her Jamaican accent.
“Too big,” said Private First Class ‘Jet’ Li in a strained voice. “My left leg is broken.”
“Damn it,” said Calvin and Master Chief simultaneously. Calvin looked at Steropes. “What do you think?” he asked. “Should we try to carry him along or send him back?”
“We’re going to have to do a lot of climbing in the pyramid,” Steropes answered, “but to go back would be even more difficult. Why don’t we pull him up to this room and leave him here. The suit will immobilize his leg, and we can get him when we come back by.”
“All right,” agreed Calvin, “that makes sense, I guess.” He switched to the platoon network so that everyone could hear. “Someone get a line down to him. We’ll pull him up here and leave him in this room as rear guard.”
Lines went down to pull up Jet and assist with the others so that they didn’t have any more failures. Within a few minutes, everyone was up into the room, packed in like sardines around the entrance to the pipe. Jet’s suit had locked to protect the broken leg, but he wasn’t going anywhere. His eyes were already slightly glazed from the painkillers that he had taken from his suit’s pharmacopeia. Corporal Jimmy ‘Colonel’ Sanders was left behind with Jet to form the rear guard.
“All right, Steropes,” said Calvin, “Where the hell are we?”
“I imagine we’re on the ground floor of the pyramid, probably in one of the corners,” Steropes replied. “I’m looking for the secret door latch release so we can get out.”
Calvin slapped himself in the forehead...or where his forehead would have been if he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He activated his suit map and saw that they were in the southeast corner of the pyramid. “Yeah, we’re in the southeast corner of the pyramid,” Calvin agreed. “The main entrance to the pyramid is to the west of here.”
“Found it,” announced Steropes. There was a small ‘click’ that the suit’s receivers amplified, and then a small crack of light entered the room. Master Chief pushed Steropes to the side so that he could check the door with a small, “Excuse me.”
Master Chief looked both ways and then threw the door open. They were indeed in the corner of the pyramid, with a passageway leading off to the west and the north.
“Holy fuck!” he said quietly. “How big is this place?” Although the passageway had torches in wall sconces, t
he light wasn’t enough to see all the way to the ends of the pyramid. Judging by a small amount of daylight that could be seen to the left, the main entrance to the pyramid was to the west. Two shadows were visible; obviously it was guarded. Steropes put a finger to his lips, indicating silence.
“If this is a replica of the Great Pyramid of Cholula,” Steropes commed as he looked into a mirror to apply a stripe of black paint across his face, “which I think it is, then it is going to be very large. The one in Mexico was 400 meters on a side and 55 meters high. It was so big that it was known as Tlachihualtepetl, which meant ‘artificial mountain.’” He paused, looking in the mirror, and then added, “The name cholula means ‘place of refuge,’ which it was supposed to be for the snakes. This one may be bigger.”
“Umm, what’s the deal with the war paint, Steropes?” Calvin asked.
“The Nahuatl know me as Tezcatlipoca, the ‘enemy of both sides,” Steropes replied, adding a line of yellow paint next to the black. “I’d hate to disappoint them.”
Having gotten his bearings, Steropes started walking down the passageway to the right. Calvin was left shaking his head, not understanding what the Psiclops meant. Deciding that it must be a holdover from the last time Steropes dealt with the coatls, Calvin wondered if the Psiclops suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He was certainly exhibiting a lot of the signs.
Seeing which way Steropes was headed, Petty Officer Sherkov, who was supposed to be the point man, sprinted past him and took the lead. “Careful,” Steropes advised. “They know we’re here. I feel it.” The group made it to the next corner and turned left, walking down the back wall of the pyramid. It was hot inside the pyramid, and the suits’ air conditioning units kicked on.
“Contact,” Petty Officer Sherkov commed as he rounded the next corner. “I’ve got five very nervous looking men with spears at the end of the next passageway.” Calvin, Steropes and Master Chief moved forward. Turning the corner, they could see four men, armed with long leaf-bladed spears at the end of the corridor. “Sorry, sir,” Sherkov reported, “the other one took off running before I could stop him.”
In a bigger area, the local men would probably have run when faced with the Terran squad. In the narrow passage, they hoped to hold off the opposing force until reinforcements arrived. Running meant disappointing the coatls and having your still-beating heart pulled from your body. Better to face the unknown foreigners than the known consequences.
“Should I shoot them?” Master Chief asked.
“No,” Steropes said. “I’ve got this.” He started taking off his combat suit.
“You’ve got this?” Master Chief asked over his external speaker, disbelief heavy in his voice as he looked down the passageway at the four men nervously presenting their spears. “How exactly have you ‘got this?’ You see that they’re armed, right?”
Steropes nodded. “We don’t want to kill them. Look at them, they’re more afraid of running back to their masters than they are of us.” He paused, balancing to get his legs out. “There’s no need to kill them,” Steropes repeated. “I’ve got this.”
Alone, he walked down the passageway without his suit, moving with a slight limp. Calvin hadn’t ever noticed the limp before. In thinking about it, he couldn’t really ever remember any of the Psiclopes walking around much. Usually, they were just there...and then they were not. Steropes continued down the hallway and stopped 10 feet in front of the men. They were arranged in ranks of two although the back row men could reach over the front row with their spears. The brown men were similar in appearance. Each was about four and a half feet tall, dark brown in complexion with hooked noses. All wore headdresses of feathers and had necklaces of animal claws. They would probably be fierce warriors on the battlefield against other Mayans, but were outclassed by the Terrans’ technology.
Calvin watched as Steropes bowed to the men and then dropped into some sort of martial arts stance where he began an almost hypnotic pattern of rolling his hands back and forth over each other. Calvin watched the smooth spiraling movement, perplexed. “What is he doing?” he finally asked.
“It is the Chen family style of tai chi movement called silk reeling,” Wraith said, who had come up behind him. “It was originally designed to be like the motion of pulling silk from a silkworm’s cocoon. The practitioner must be smooth and consistent.” She watched with a critical eye. “He is very good. Although he moves slowly now, he is channeling his energy. Watch for the burst of power when he needs it.”
The spearmen, seeing that the only man that had advanced was even shorter than they were, and unarmed, moved forward in a group. “Go back where you came from,” the leader said in a quaking voice, looking at the tiny man in front of him, “or we will be forced to kill you.”
“You cannot kill me,” Steropes said quietly. Although facing four armed men, Calvin thought the certainty in his voice was amazing. “If you will put down your weapons, we will allow you to pass. You do not need to fear what your masters will do; we are here to kill them.”
“You can’t kill them!” one of the men in the back row cried out. “They are gods!”
“They are not gods,” Steropes replied calmly, “just far more powerful than you. Put down your weapons and let us by.”
“We can’t,” the leader said. “They will certainly kill us and eat the hearts of our wives and children.” With a quick jab, he tried to impale Steropes. The Psiclops was faster, though, and swept the spear to the side with force that Calvin would not have believed if he hadn’t seen it. The local man had a good grip on the spear, and the entire spear point snapped off as the obsidian head hit the wall, leaving the Mayan holding a staff rather than a spear. He looked at the point in disbelief for a fraction of a second, which was all Steropes needed.
Spinning forward, he took hold of the staff and chopped the man across the wrists. The staff fell from his suddenly numb hands, and Steropes continued his spin, bringing the end of the staff crashing down onto his right temple as it came around. Unconscious, the man began to fall as Steropes reversed his stroke, taking the other front row man in his left temple. Spinning back to his left, Steropes used the staff to slap the spear of one of the second row men out of the way. He brought the other end of the staff back up in an uppercut that terminated on the man’s chin. As the man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, the staff was in motion again, sweeping around behind the last man to strike him low in the legs. With an explosive breath, Steropes channeled all of his energy into the stroke and swept the man’s legs out from under him. He hit the stone of the passageway hard on his shoulders and the back of his head. Momentarily stunned, he watched the staff sweep down on his head, only to stop one centimeter from his temple. Steropes paused and then moved the staff to his throat, not crushing him, but effectively pinning him to the floor like a mounted butterfly. It had taken 1.3 seconds to put the four men out of action.
Steropes turned his head slightly to look back at the rest of the squad. “Do you have any questions you want to ask him?” he asked. All of the Terrans stood staring, mouths agape, except for Wraith. She bowed and said, “Master.”
Calvin closed his mouth with an audible snap and walked down the hall to where Steropes kept the man under control. Any time the warrior started to look like he was going to try something, Steropes just increased the pressure on his throat until he ceased struggling again. After a brief hesitation, the rest of the squad started moving again.
“What are you all looking at?” Master Chief asked, the first to regain his composure. “You’ve seen martial arts before. We’re in enemy territory! Be on your fucking guard! Scouts out, front and back. Let’s go! Get a perimeter set up so the skipper can interrogate the prisoner!”
The soldiers came back to their senses and went back to doing their jobs.
“Their leader may be a bit more damaged than I intended,” Steropes commented as Calvin and Master Chief approached. “Whoever fashioned this spear did a poor job of it. It
is not well balanced, even when the spear head was on it. I hit him a little harder than intended.” He sighed. “I miss the Ruyi Jingu Bang. Now that was a fine weapon.” He shook his head. “I also must confess to being out of practice.”
“If that is out of practice, Master, then I would much like to see you when you were in practice,” Wraith said. Interesting, thought Calvin. He had never seen her intimidated by anyone or anything; Steropes must be even better than Calvin realized. “You really saw the Ruyi Jingu Bang?” she asked.
“What is a Ruby Jujube Bean?” Calvin asked.
“Please do not joke about the Ruyi Jingu Bang,” Wraith warned. “It was thought to be a mythical weapon of Sun Wukong, from the undersea palace of the Dragon King of the East Sea,” she continued in awe, “not a real weapon. It was said to be able to change its color, size or shape at its master’s will. The stories say that it could even fight by itself, according to the will of its master.”
“That last one was just a story told by the less able,” Steropes replied. “It couldn’t fight by itself any more than this staff can. It was only as good as the person wielding it.” He smiled in memory. “Being able to shrink it to the size of a toothpick was very handy, because then I could carry it behind my ear.”
Calvin shook his head at the strange talk as he looked down at the man, whose face was bright red from lack of breath. “I think you can let him go, Steropes,” commented Calvin, looking back up at the Psiclops, “I don’t think he’s going to give us any more difficulty.” He looked back down at the man and asked, “Are you?” The man shook his head as vigorously as he could with the staff pushing down on his throat.
When the Gods Aren't Gods: Book Two of The Theogony Page 17
