Europa Journal

by Jack Castle

  His sickness continued well into the next morning; and by morning, he had resolved two things: first, to get revenge on Hu-Nan, recalling that he had a ration of laxative in his first aid kit, and second, to rescue the SongBird Goddess. He was a rescue pilot, after all.

  Chapter 14

  The City

  Relaxing in the afternoon sun, Mac sat on a pack and rested her back against a crumbling stone block that had probably tumbled off the massive wall at some point in its past. She took a break from Captain Reed’s journal and put it back in her coat pocket.

  Thinking about the Awumpai, Mac felt that, in a way, Brett and Stein were like her own Awumpai protectors. It was funny, she thought, that she already seemed to know the aliens in Captain Reed’s book so well. She was sorry she wouldn’t ever get the chance to meet them; they were probably dead and gone centuries ago.

  Mac decided to check on Stein’s progress. Despite his earlier comment, he was still a member of her crew. It had been nearly an hour since he had begun his climb.

  Borrowing Brett’s binoculars, she saw that Stein was a mere fifty feet from the top of the wall. Moving her gaze upward, she focused on the sentry tower and noticed that a sentry had taken up a position at the post. He appeared at the window and, to Mac’s surprise, resembled one of the Mooks Captain Reed had described in his journal. The sentry seemed to be looking out at the distant ocean and had not seen Stein climbing below.

  “What the hell is that?” Tae asked, looking through his own set of binoculars.

  “I think it’s a Mook,” Mac said. She suddenly liked the idea of playing the role of tour guide and pointing out indigenous life forms. Reading the journal had paid off, after all.

  “A what?” Leo asked.

  “A Mook,” Mac repeated.

  “How would you even know that?” Tae asked.

  Mac removed the Europa journal from her pocket. “I read it in Captain Reed’s journal. He even drew pictures of them. See?” She flipped to several small sketches in the book.

  “That’s it all right.” Tae passed his binoculars to Leo. “Can I read that when you’re done?”

  “Where did you even get that?” Leo asked.

  “Joan gave it to me just before she died,” Mac said. She swallowed the memory of her departed friend.

  Brett stood nearby and heard their conversation. “Does it say if they are dangerous?” he asked.

  “Captain Reed says they’re harmless enough and are usually servants. It’s the Awumpai you have to worry about.”

  “A-wump-ah-what?” Leo asked as Brett got on the radio and warned Stein about the Mook sentry.

  “Awumpai — sort of like a cross between a yeti and a samurai,” Mac explained.

  “Sounds delightful,” Tae said.

  Mac didn’t reply. She saw through her binoculars that Stein was just below the sentry house, and she watched intently. He had stopped his ascent to listen to the radio that he had mounted on his shoulder. Unable to free his hands and aware that they would be watching him, he nodded in response to Brett’s message.

  “Did the sentry spot him?” Tae asked Leo, who was still holding his binoculars.

  “Nope,” Brett replied for him. “Looks like the little guy is still looking out at the ocean.”

  “I hope he doesn’t hurt him,” Mac said.

  “Are you kidding? Stein is an elite-class commando; those guys put Navy Seals to shame.”

  “I was talking about the Mook,” Mac said dryly. “Captain Reed wrote in the journal that they’re fairly docile creatures.”

  “Well, the little guy is armed with a spear,” Brett countered.

  Mac watched as Stein pulled himself up and slipped stealthily over the side wall of the sentry post. Stein towered over the little sentry, but the Mook didn’t even notice the big commando behind him. A second later, Stein cupped his hand over the Mook’s mouth, and both vanished from the sentry window, apparently falling to the floor of the watchtower.

  The few seconds that passed felt like an eternity.

  “Does anybody see him?” Mac asked.

  “No. Do you think maybe one of us should go after him?” Leo asked.

  Her shoulders tired, Mac dropped the binoculars and turned to look at him. “No, let’s give him a few more minutes.” She heard Brett already gearing up for the climb.

  “Oh, crap!” Leo said.

  Mac looked up in time to see the little Mook’s body fall the last hundred feet. It hit the ground in front of them with a loud THUMP, which sounded like a big bag of water hitting the ground.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Leo said, running over to the body.

  “Brett, grab the first aid kit,” Mac ordered. She looked at Stein, who now appeared in the tower window. His hands rested on the balcony, and he looked oddly pleased with himself. He had apparently hit some kind of release switch for the elevator; the flimsy-looking platform began to descend slowly on a thick rope.

  Mac joined the others around the Mook, or the pulpy mess that was left of him. Even in his present state, the dead alien resembled the Mooks about which Captain Reed had written. He was small and thin, and his sickly purple skin appeared rubbery, like that of a seal. He also had big yellow eyes, one of which hung out of its socket, and two-fingered hands.

  Leo touched the rubbery skin. “It’s like touching a dolphin.”

  Tae frowned. “When did you ever touch a dolphin?”

  “Didn’t you ever go to Water World? They let you swim with dolphins and everything now.”

  Mac didn’t hear the two men squabbling. She was certain of only one thing: she should have sent Brett.

  #

  The rickety elevator reached the ground. Mac decided they would ascend two at a time. She and Brett would go first. She was furious with the German commando and couldn’t wait to get up there so she could give him a verbal thrashing. Two first contacts in as many days and Stein kills them both. Nice.

  As they stepped into the elevator Tae asked, “What do you want us to do with the body? Hide it?”

  “Might not be a bad idea,” Brett said. “The locals might not be too happy when they find out we killed one of their sentries.”

  Against Mac’s better judgment, she told Tae and Leo to hide the body in the woods for the time being. Maybe after they made some headway with the locals, they could explain the death as a misunderstanding. Damn Stein for putting me on the spot like this!

  Above them Stein began operating the crank and the elevator ascended in jerky movements. The wooden platform creaked and groaned. The rope didn’t sound much better.

  When they were about thirty feet off the ground, Mac looked over at Brett and knew that he hadn’t been kidding when he said he wasn’t exactly comfortable with heights. He gripped the thin wooden railing so tightly that he caused the wood to creak even more.

  “You okay over there, soldier boy?” she asked.

  “Me? Uh, sure.” He tried desperately to sound calm.

  “Try not to look down.” She smiled. “Look, you can see our camp from here.” She pointed in the direction of the beachhead where they had left the soil-mover and cargo containers.

  As they ascended higher than the treetops, they had a great view of not only the base camp but also the distant ocean and the river on which they had traveled.

  Mac heard Stein cranking madly away as the elevator approached the tower. It had taken him nearly an hour to crank them up. He had rested in ten-minute intervals, but she knew he had to be exhausted.

  After they reached the tower and Stein locked the lift in place, Mac headed right for him. He rested against the wall, his muscles swollen and his body drenched in sweat. Despite his weakened condition, she delivered a strong right cross to his jaw. He didn’t flinch, but his lower lip bled a little.

  “Stein, what seems to be your major malfunction?” she sai
d. Before she could lash into him further, she glimpsed a magnificent city out the window behind him.

  Mac moved past him and out the sentry tower onto the open rampart, which was as wide as any two-lane highway back home. The city was so vast that her eyes couldn’t take it all in at once. It was medieval in design and its stone walls, cobblestone streets, and thatched roofs reminded her of the thirteenth-century towns she had visited when traveling in Europe. This definitely wasn’t Europe; the majestic city’s size exceeded anything she had ever seen in Europe, or on Earth for that matter. Even more strange and wondrous, she also saw numerous floating castles, which were anchored to the wall with heavy chains, and a variety of floating ships.

  “She’s beautiful, yes?” Stein asked, sidling up next to her.

  Mac ignored him. Despite the view, she was still too furious to grace him with words.

  After a time, Brett asked, “What do you want to do next?”

  “We need to get Tae and Leo up here first, and then I want to take a look around.”

  They took turns cranking Leo and Tae up. Then, after gathering their gear, they made their way down to the cobblestone streets below via one hundred and twelve flights of stairs.

  #

  When they reached the city, Mac and her crew moved about unchallenged and largely ignored by the local residents. It didn’t take the new arrivals long to discover the city’s basic social structure.

  The little Mook servants, who wore rags, seemed to be lowest on the social scale. They served as the labor force and were seen doing a variety of menial tasks, including carting wagons, sweeping streets, and picking up dung. They didn’t seem threatened or alarmed by the humans at all.

  The city’s middle class, which included shop owners and business people, was comprised of more human-looking creatures. In fact, upon first spotting these creatures, they looked human. However, a closer look revealed that they had several decidedly alien characteristics: bulbous heads; hairless, gray skin; long fingers; and black eyes.

  Mac speculated that these creatures were some sort of a cross between humans and the gray aliens mentioned in Captain Reed’s book. “Captain Reed writes about little gray aliens, who abducted humans during his century,” she said. She whipped out the journal and flipped to one of the pages. “See? He even drew pictures of them. Maybe the gray aliens abducted humans in order to breed them and populate this world and who knows how many others.”

  “What are you saying?” Leo asked. “These creatures are some sort of hybrid species, like the guys from Roswell?”

  “She’s right,” Tae answered for her. “I mean, just look at them. They look like they’re half-human and half-alien.”

  “They don’t look human to me,” Leo said disgustedly.

  “I said ‘half-human’.”

  Leo ignored Tae and soon spied a new type of creature. “What’s that thing?” he asked.

  Mac turned. A tall, well-dressed, beautiful woman, who resembled a blue skinned elf, appeared amongst the Mooks and human/alien hybrids. She had striking black eyes that seemed to encompass nearly a quarter of her small head, and she towered above the other creatures. She had a large entourage about her and was obviously someone of great wealth and importance. Some of the human hybrids removed their head coverings and bowed as she passed, while the Mooks prostrated themselves before her.

  “She kind of looks like an elf,” Brett said.

  “An elf?” Tae exclaimed. “I didn’t see any pointy ears. And did you see those enormous black eyes?”

  A sly grin spread across Leo’s face. “I’m gonna go talk to her.” He crossed the street and walked toward her.

  Mac was about to stop the young co-pilot, but up to this point, despite the crowded streets, the townspeople had paid little attention to Mac and her crew. They had to make contact with someone at some point. Why not the elf?

  Mac watched her future son-in-law approach the tall blue creature who was in deep conversation with members of her entourage. He attempted to get the female’s attention, but she just looked down her nose at him. If anything, she looked annoyed. She glanced through a window and resumed shopping, and three hybrid creatures in her entourage blocked Leo from following.

  Obviously shocked by the alien’s behavior, Leo wore a frown as he started across the street toward Mac and the rest of the crew. Mac winced as he was nearly run over by a floating oxcart that was drawn by a flat-backed oxen with six legs and oversized buckteeth.

  “No luck, huh?” Tae asked once Leo had managed to rejoin them safely.

  Leo shook his head. “Nope. And she doesn’t look like an elf up close. For one thing, she’s got totally black eyes like the hybrids. Maybe she’s a higher species of them, or something.”

  “Maybe will have better luck at one of the castles,” Brett said.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Leo said. “It looks like the author of Chariots of the Gods had it right after all. Now we just have to find Bigfoot, and we’ve solved just about every last unexplained mystery.”

  As if on cue, a tall, scary-looking creature clip-clopped around the corner and startled them. It wasn’t Bigfoot but something far stranger.

  The creature reminded Mac of a centaur because its body seemed to be a combination of two separate creatures. The lean upper half had a trapezoid shaped head and two long, sinewy arms that ended in pincher-like fingers. One ‘hand’ carried a twelve-foot pike. A large diamond-like gem protruded from the center of the creature’s face, and Mac guessed it served as some sort of eye. Two oval-shaped holes on the side of its head seemed to serve as ears.

  The creature’s lower half moved on thick, powerful legs the size of a Clydesdale’s; however, unlike a horse, this creature moved on three legs that ended in heavy three-toed hooves. As the ‘Tripod’, as Mac came to think of it, moved toward them, she noticed that it moved both awkwardly, like two people in a three-legged race, and efficiently: it could immediately move in any direction, like a spider, and its top portion seemed to float about the lower legs as they moved.

  “Kind of looks like a centaur,” Leo whispered beside her.

  Mac was about to concur, but the Tripod beat the base of its long pike against the stony street and spoke to them for the first time. Where the hell is its mouth? Mac wondered. She soon realized that it wasn’t the Tripod speaking to them but rather a hologram. The hologram appeared to be projected from a disc that had been spot-welded onto the Tripod’s left shoulder. The disc glowed brightly as it projected a hologram of a human/alien hybrid.

  “Yo-ten-Nay, Hock!” the hologram bellowed at them. Simultaneously, the Tripod creature gestured for them to halt and pointed its long pike at them.

  Brett and Stein racked the slides on their weapons and took aim.

  “No,” Mac said, stepping in the line of fire, “no more killing.”

  “You’re in the line,” Stein said through clenched teeth without averting his gaze from his rifle sight.

  “You might want to tell him that, Commander,” Brett said. He, too, refused to lower his weapon. The beam of his laser scope and Stein’s centered on the Tripod’s forehead, just above its gemstone eye.

  “Hock!” the Tripod’s hologram said again. Not receiving the appropriate response, the projected face then turned toward the Tripod’s head and began speaking to it in the form of clicks and whistles, as though issuing a new set of orders in the beast’s native tongue. As it did so, three additional Tripods clip-clopped out of the alleyways behind them, cutting off any hope of escape.

  They were trapped.

  Chapter 15

  Millwood Junction

  Day 20

  As the floating island continued to drift lazily toward the South Pole on magnetic, core-induced winds, the crisp arctic air grew warmer with each passing day. This day was the warmest one yet.

  As the Awumpai rode their ostrich mounts a
longside the caravan, Harry saw that the woolly giants’ tongues hung low out of their gaping maws and their fur glistened with sweat. Hu-Nan, in particular, was shedding enough hair from his winter coat to make an entirely new Awumpai.

  Asha and Harry rode in the lead ore cart, which had poked along a bumpy dirt road that spanned a barren sea of tundra wasteland for the last three days.

  Lifting his tired gaze, Harry finally saw the end of the road. Up ahead, just visible on the horizon, he saw a little frontier town.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing on instinct with his right hand and feeling silly for waving a stump around.

  “That? That is the town of Millwood,” Princess Asha said. “It means ‘city between many crossroads.’ According to my studies with Ba-Tu, it was once home to an immense forest, thick with many trees, which extended as far as the eye could see.”

  Harry looked at the barren wasteland around them. “What happened?”

  “About one hundred years ago, the gods came and took all the trees with them. Now it is just a crossroads in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Well, then why are we going there?” Harry asked grumpily.

  “We need to obtain passage to Joppa-Cal,” Asha explained. Her eyes were wide with wonder, and she was clearly delighted by the imminent change of scenery.

  “Passage?” Harry asked. “Isn’t this Joppa-Cal?”

  The princess giggled. “No, Harry. This is only Millwood Junction.”

  #

  The caravan stopped just outside the tundra town near the intersection of five roads that pointed in as many directions. Captain Reed examined the signs that accompanied each road. While he guessed that the inscription on the sign pointing toward town read ‘Millwood’, he was unable to read the wedge-shaped writing on the other signs.

  Harry was surprised that only Ode, the Mook master, exited the ore wagon. Generally, all the Mooks scrambled out at once when the caravan stopped. Harry saw Fu-Mar give Ode a brown sack of currency.

  “The Mooks, aren’t they coming with us?” Harry asked.