Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
Calvin turned around. Although the room had initially appeared to be empty, a group of humanoids could now be seen at the other end of the room. In their midst, Calvin got his first look at one of the flying snakes. Although hard to see at this distance, he dialed up his visual augmentation to its maximum and could see that the coatl appeared to be a six feet long snake, covered in feathers. It also had two wings which flapped slowly. Calvin couldn’t see how the wings held it aloft as it hovered about four feet above the ground.
“Is that Quetzalcoatl?” he asked.
“No,” replied Steropes. “That is one of the coatl, but it is not Quetzalcoatl. I do not believe that we will see him before we get to his temple. I expect something nasty, though; I could hear him laughing before we walked into this room. Now, I do not hear anything.”
“Um, that might have been good info to have had prior to coming in,” said Calvin. “Now we’re pretty much stuck here.”
“He has been laughing at me periodically since we arrived here,” Steropes noted. “I didn’t think that this time was any different than any of the previous ones. Besides, there was no other way to go except through here, so we had no choice.”
“Still,” replied Calvin, “it might have been good to know that ahead of time. This seems like it is becoming less of a mission to rescue people and more of a personal vendetta. Please let me know next time if something changes.”
“I will,” answered Steropes.
Calvin looked around the room. Unlike the rest of the pyramid, the walls and the ceiling of the room were covered in some sort of gray metal. In addition to the group at the other end of the room, the only other things in the room were the devices that were producing its light. Spaced every 20 yards along the wall were eight devices that looked like barrels that were about a yard in diameter. The barrels were about four feet high, with a cylinder that was about six inches in diameter sticking up another three feet from the center of the barrels. At the top of the cylinder was some sort of illumination device. It was too bright to look directly at it, so Calvin couldn’t see if it was a light bulb or some other means of producing light. They all hummed with a low electronic vibration. Between them, they produced an audible noise that raised the hair on the back of the Terrans’ necks.
“Any idea what those things are?” asked Calvin, indicating the barrels.
“No,” replied Steropes. “I have never seen anything like them before. They were not in the coatls’ previous pyramid. I would urge caution.”
“You think?” asked Calvin. “I’m not sure how much more cautious I could be, except for sitting down and not moving.”
“Umm, sir, do you want me to do something about the natives?” interjected Ryan.
Calvin looked back to the group at the other end of the room. The humanoids that he had noticed before were obviously priests, complete with big headdresses. He could see that there were six of them as they arrayed themselves in front of the Terrans with the coatl flying slowly back and forth behind them. The priests each had large spears like the group the Terrans had fought previously.
“They don’t appear to have any long range weapons,” replied Calvin. “Let’s get a little closer and see if they would rather talk than die.” The Terrans formed into an arrowhead formation and began advancing across the open room.
“We would rather that you died, instead,” a voice said suddenly in their heads. “But that will be taken care of shortly.”
“Who are you?” asked Calvin.
“I am Talectelcoatl,” the voice replied. “I have a surprise for you.”
“I’m not a real big fan of my enemies having surprises for me,” announced Ryan. “Can I please shoot them now?”
“I think that would be a good idea,” Calvin said. “Platoon, fire!”
Before anyone could shoot, the coatl reached up with its tail and threw a switch which the Terrans hadn’t noticed before. The noise from the barrels immediately grew both louder and started rising in pitch. As the first lasers fired, all of the barrels detonated simultaneously. There was a strobe of light and then everything went black.
TSS Vella Gulf, In Orbit Around Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“I am having a problem tracking the main part of the Space Force on the planet,” said Sarah Sommers from the science station.
“What do you mean, ‘you’re having a problem tracking them?” asked Captain Griffin.
“I mean that I can’t track them,” replied Sara. “I had a strong signal from the group that Cal...that Lieutenant Commander Hobbs was leading, and then, one by one, their transponders all became very weak, and now I can just barely see them. I still have the two other groups that got separated, but I don’t have the main force on my scope anymore.”
“What do you suppose happened to them, Arges?” Captain Griffin asked the Psiclops standing next to Sarah.
“The nature of the signal cessation is unknown,” replied Arges. “It is possible that their signal is being blocked or that something happened to their suits. The fact that their signal strengths decreased one by one is indicative to me that they went somewhere that their signal is being blocked or jammed. The reason for this, however, is unknown. There is an area of the pyramid where our sensors cannot scan; it is possible they entered this area.”
He looked at the scope and then took a sharp breath of his own. “Captain Griffin!” he exclaimed, “My sensors just recorded an electromagnetic event from the surface of the planet!”
“What kind of electromagnetic event?” asked Captain Griffin.
“I am trying to ascertain the nature of the event,” replied Arges. “I do not have any indications of a nuclear detonation, but it was a definite electromagnetic pulse (EMP). It is possible that it was a weapon-generated EMP.”
“A what?” asked Griffin.
“There are ways of creating an EMP without a nuclear explosion,” replied Arges. “For example, an explosively pumped flux compression generator, or EPFCG, can be used to generate a high-power EMP by compressing magnetic flux via a high explosive detonation. During your Cold War period, the United States developed EPFCG technology that could produce a pulse in the millions of amperes and tens of terawatts, and still be man-portable. The event I just witnessed, however, developed over 200 terajoules of power.”
“What’s a terror jewel?” asked the helmsman.
“A joule is a unit of work or energy,” said Captain Griffin, who was becoming an expert at downloading information through her implant to keep up with Arges. “A terajoule is equal to one trillion joules. About 63 terajoules were released by the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, so whatever just happened down there released the same energy as more than three nuclear weapons.”
“Correct,” said Arges. “I also noted a peak magnetic field strength of about 1.3 giga teslas.”
As he stood up to make his announcement, Sarah leaned in to the monitor. She looked up, her face as white as if she had seen a ghost. “They’re gone,” she said. “They’re all gone.”
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Five
Under the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“Salope,” swore Remy Martin as his suit died. Remy was a strong man and was able to carry the extra weight of the hundred-pound suit if he had to, but the additional load was inconvenient. He took off his helmet to find that the other three members of his group were doing the same. “My suit just died,” he said. “Yours, too?”
All three nodded. The underground passageway seemed more narrow and claustrophobic without the extra light of the suits. The torch hanging on the wall did not illuminate much more than the alcove and the entrance to the maze. All four of the suits beeped, nearly simultaneously. “Anyone know what happened?” Remy asked.
Irina stood looking at the back of Wazir’s suit. “I’m guessing we just took some sort of electromagnetic pulse
that fried the electronics of our suit.”
“Why do you think that?” asked Sigvar Borsheim.
“Because Wazir’s emergency backup has been activated,” Irina said. “We have two hours before we blow up.”
Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“Oww,” Calvin moaned. He awoke on his stomach, and it felt like someone was sitting on his back. His head felt woozy, and everything seemed strangely quiet. “What hit me?” he asked. He felt his head, and there was a large lump on the back of it. Wait, he wondered. How could he feel his head? Where was his helmet?
A female voice came from next to him. “There was a big explosion,” the voice said, “and everyone got knocked out. I just woke up to find the coatl gone, and everyone lying here.”
Ryan pushed himself up next to Calvin and looked the other way to see Sella’s concerned face looking at him. “Are you all right?” she asked. He saw that she was holding his helmet. There was a dim light from two torches that were burning near the doorway where the coatl had been. Although the priests were lying there, the coatl was gone.
“I think so,” Ryan replied. He pushed himself up. “Crap,” he said, realizing his suit was turned off. He stood up awkwardly and saw that most of the others were doing the same. His suit beeped at about the same time as everyone else’s suits. “Fuck,” he swore, “my suit is fried.” He walked over to Calvin and said, “Sir, we’re in some real shit.”
“What do you mean?” Calvin asked, still a little stunned.
“Whatever that explosion was, it must have set off a massive electromagnetic pulse,” Master Chief said. “All of our suits have been fried.”
“Yeah, mine too,” Calvin agreed, not understanding where he was going.
“What powers the suits?” Master Chief asked.
“About two and a half kilograms of antimatter,” Calvin answered automatically. “Why?”
“Because the containment system is fried on all of our suits,” Master Chief replied. “They are all operating on their backup systems, which are providing emergency stabilization to the antimatter containment vessels. In a little less than two hours, the emergency systems are going to fail, and each suit is going to detonate in a 107 megaton explosion. It will be less than that since the batteries aren’t at full power, but I doubt that it will really matter much to us. If we don’t get these suits repaired, we’re going to wipe out this island at a minimum, and maybe even the whole planet. I don’t know; I’m no scientist. What I do know is that we won’t care. No matter how fast you run, you won’t escape the blasts.”
“All right,” Calvin said. “We need to get somewhere that we can call down support. I can’t reach the Vella Gulf on my implant.”
“Sir, you can’t reach anyone,” Master Chief replied. “Whatever fried our suits also fried our implants.”
“That’s why it’s so quiet,” Calvin remarked. “Sorry, I hit my head and am a little out of it,” he confessed. “Well, I expect that they’ll send someone down once they realize that our suits are not responding,” he continued. “We just need to be where they can reach us when they get here. We’ve got to get out of here, and we’ve got to do it now.”
Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“Damn, that hurts,” Private First Class John ‘Jet’ Li said. “My suit just died.”
“Yeah, mine too,” Corporal Jimmy ‘Colonel’ Sanders replied. He had been in the act of sitting down when the suit suddenly died, causing him to lose his balance. He almost fell into the hole, but was just able to roll out of harm’s way.
Both suits beeped.
“That’s not what I think it is,” Jet asked. “Is it?”
“Ah’m afraid it is,” Colonel answered in his Southern drawl. “Ah’d call fo help, but mah implants ain’t workin’ either.”
“My implants aren’t working, either,” Jet replied. “And now that the suit isn’t working, it’s not holding my leg in place, and that hurts like shit. If I hadn’t been leaning back against the wall, the suit would have flipped me over.” He paused and looked at the senior man. “What are we going to do?”
“Well,” Colonel said, “Ah don’ think you’re gonna be able ta outrun the blast. Truth be told, Ah don’ think Ah could, either. Ah think we jus’ sit tight right here and wait for help. If our suits are out, everyone else’s are, too. They’ll come for us.” I hope, he added to himself.
* * * * *
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bridge, TSS Vella Gulf, In Orbit Around Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“We don’t know that they are dead,” Arges said, “but we do know that neither their implants nor their suits are functioning. It is quite possible that they were destroyed by the EMP; that would be consistent with the data.”
Captain Griffin looked at Bullseye, sitting in the squadron commander’s chair. “So if they are without their suits or implants,” she asked, “how do we contact them?”
“We can’t,” Bullseye answered. “They had a backup radio, but that would be fried as well. The only way we’re going to contact them is to go down there and do it face-to-face.”
“Is there any way to do it without causing the same confrontation with the locals that we were trying to avoid?” Captain Griffin asked.
“No, ma’am,” Bullseye replied. “We’ll have to land in front of the temple. Everyone is going to see us.”
“I’m sorry, Captain Griffin, but I do not think you are seeing the big picture,” Arges said. “You must go down there, and you must do it right now.”
“And why’s that?” Captain Griffin asked.
“Because if their suits have shut down,” Arges replied, “then their antimatter containment systems are operating in backup mode. In a little less than two hours, they are going to detonate with the force of over two gigatons. It may very well be an extinction level event for the whole planet.”
“Damn it,” Captain Griffin said. “We’ve got to get those suits off the planet.” She turned to Bullseye. “Get a shuttle down there with Night and all of his available personnel ASAP. Get them into that pyramid and get those damn suits. No fooling around; kill anyone you need to. I don’t care. Get those damn suits off the planet!”
SF-1 Ready Room, TSS Vella Gulf, Orbit Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“We need both shuttles manned ASAP,” Bullseye said. “One will carry the second squad to the surface and bring back both of the squads afterwards. The other shuttle will take the suits into space. Once there, they will dump the suits and run.”
The operations officer, Lieutenant Imagawa ‘Samurai’ Sadayo, looked at his clipboard. “Since you and I know the mission parameters, and time is of the essence, LT Simpson will pilot the first shuttle that takes the platoon to the planet, with you as his WSO,” Samurai replied. “Lieutenant Boudreau and I will fly the other shuttle to take off the suits.”
“Sounds good,” Bullseye said. “I’ll go talk to Night; you set up the shuttle launches.”
Squad Bay, TSS Vella Gulf, Orbit Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“OK,” Night said. “It looks like the CO has gotten his ass into trouble, and it’s up to us to go and save him. Something down there generated an electromagnetic pulse of huge proportions, which fried the other squad’s suits and implants. In about an hour and a half, 18 suits are going to explode with a detonation that is going to end life on this planet. We have got to get them off.”
He looked at the squad assembled in front of him. “No delay will be tolerated. Kill anyone that gets in your way. They’re dead anyway if we don’t get those suits off of the planet. If you see a flying snake, kill it immediately, no questions asked.”
“Anything else?” Night asked. “All right, let’s go. Grab your weapons and gear; we leave in 10 minutes.”
Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020
“Move out,” Calvin ordered.
/> “You heard the man,” Master Chief said. “Let’s get a move on.”
Mr. Jones and Petty Officer Sherkov went through the door. The strongest men, they were able to carry their suits and still brandish the spears that they had liberated from the Mayan priests. The Terrans had disarmed the men and sent them out the way the Terrans had come in, as the blast had opened the door. Sergeant Tagliabue followed behind Jones and Sherkov, holding one of the torches.
Following the Italian, Father Zuhlsdorf walked along in a black cassock, with his sword in one hand and his suit thrown over the opposite shoulder.
Looking at the priest’s strange choice of clothing, Calvin asked, “Is that what you wore under your suit?”
“I do like wearing a black cassock whenever possible,” Father Zuhlsdorf replied, “but no, that is not what I had on. It clumps up in all of the wrong places inside of a suit and chafes something fierce on a long march. Besides,” he added, “it would ruin the creases on it if I did.”
“So, you put it in your pack and brought it along, just in case we took off the suits?” asked Calvin.
“Yes,” Father Zuhlsdorf said. “It’s good to be prepared. To me, it is part of the armor of my faith.” He smiled. “It’s also pretty comfortable to wear in a stuffy pyramid.”
Calvin was left to shake his head as the line of soldiers continued past him and further into the pyramid. Since everyone now had to carry their hundred pound suits, they had left most of their gear, including their non-functional rifles, in the EMP room. Most of the special forces troopers were able to carry their suits with no problem, but it was all that Bob and Doug could do to wrestle theirs down the corridor. Not only were the suits heavy, the therapods just weren’t built for carrying things. When they started to drag on the floor, the two women went to help them. With one of the women helping each of them, the therapods were able to manage, barely, although it looked like the frail women were carrying more of the load than Bob or Doug.
When the Gods Aren't Gods: Book Two of The Theogony Page 20
