The Kursas

by George Willson

  The Kursas

  Book 2 of The Maze

  by

  George Willson

  Text copyright 2017, 2019 by George Willson

  Published by George Willson

  Cover Art by London Willson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.

  First edition, August 2017

  Second edition, June 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Tasha and the girls

  for whom I continue to do

  what I do.

  Also in The Maze:

  City Of Phase

  The Off-Worlders

  False Invasion

  Ancient Visitors

  The Terraformers

  Also by George Willson:

  Vengeance

  Atari Speaks

  The Fempiror Chronicles series:

  The Awakening

  Mutation Genesis

  Razer Hunt

  The Elixir

  What You Need To Know…

  The Maze is a series about people who travel through time. While it has a release order for the sake of the main characters, the individual stories are self-contained and can be read in any order. It assumes the reader is aware of the following.

  The Maze describes both the place where the travelers live as well as the machine that performs the time travel.

  The travelers enter an elevator which opens at its destination, and once the travelers exit the elevators, the doors close and disappear only reappearing when it is time to depart. The travelers do not know when it will be time to leave; the doors simply appear and open.

  It is unknown where or when the physical location of the Maze exists. The most they know is that it can only travel to its own past.

  Travelers in the Maze tend to be at a low point in their lives at home when the elevator doors appear before them welcoming them to walk through. While this is intended to be a choice, most feel that it was their only option at the time. It is believed that the Maze is some kind of redemptive tool and once they are “ready,” the Maze will take them back home.

  The Guide is a consciousness carried in the mind of one of the travelers. It provides a consistent set of memories of every adventure it has taken as well as a wealth of information that the carrier can access. The Guide also translates languages foreign to the travelers via a mental link.

  Blake Williams is from Earth in the year 2521. He is the current carrier of The Guide. He was on the run from the law after escaping a debtors camp when the doors appeared to him.

  Perry Newman is from Earth in the year 1983. He had been beaten after attempting to sell illegally acquired weapons to pay back drug money when the doors appeared to him.

  Michelle Palmer is from Earth in the year 2004. She was depressed and had had too much to drink in her apartment when the doors appeared to her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A yellow sun shined across an endless landscape of plush, green grass that seemed to go on for miles. The flatness of the ground was only interrupted very briefly by a small, mossy hill beside a large hole. The tranquility of the scene was disturbed by a soft ding that came out of nowhere, for no technology was anywhere to be seen.

  A pair of sliding elevator doors materialized alone in the empty field and then opened to reveal the faux wood interior of an elevator car containing Blake Williams, Perry Newman, and Michelle Palmer. The trio stepped out of the elevator and looked around as the doors closed and disappeared behind them. They were all travelers in a machine called the Maze which deposited its inhabitants on seemingly random worlds at some point in time, which they only knew existed sometime in the Maze’s past.

  Blake was dressed in khaki trousers with a navy polo shirt and a long, dark wool overcoat. He was the designated Guide for the Maze whose responsibility it was to lead the other two in their mission on this world and gather information for the Maze while there. He pulled a device the size of a smartphone out of his pocket to see what might be nearby.

  Perry was dressed in jeans and a dark red t-shirt with the picture of the statue of an angel covering its face on it, and in the warm air, he appeared perfectly comfortable. He stood with Michelle, who was also in jeans and a purple blouse as they watched Blake stare at his scanner. On the upper left chest of their shirts and blouse was the image of a spiral clock in white.

  Bored in waiting for Blake to say something, Michelle continued a discussion they had been having before the doors opened, “I’m just wondering if it would have come up if we had waited longer.”

  “I really have no idea,” Perry replied. “Sometimes, it’s there, and sometimes it’s not.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Michelle said. “It knows where we’re going, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “And it knows when.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why would it give us the place and not the date?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Most of the time, before their departure into the elevator transport, the Maze would give them some information about the planet they were visiting, although it never told them what they would do there. The information usually included the name of the world as well as the weather and temperature so they could dress accordingly, and while it also often provided the date according to what they referred to as Earth Standard Time, which gives them a year based on the B.C./A.D. calendar, this time, it left that field blank, which seemed to bother Michelle considerably.

  “Date aside, the weather is every bit as beautiful as the screen indicated, I’d say,” Blake commented as he put his scanner away and walked toward the hole in the ground nearby.

  “I still would have liked to know when it is,” Michelle said crossing her arms.

  “Can’t see why that would matter,” Blake said.

  “Why not?” Michelle asked.

  “This isn’t Earth,” Blake noted. “The evolutionary and technological development of this planet won’t likely be related to the state of our home world.”

  “The last one was,” Michelle said.

  “Only sort of,” Blake conceded.

  “Wonder what our big surprise will be this time,” Perry said, eager to change the subject.

  “What do you mean, Perry?” Blake asked.

  “I mean every time we step out somewhere, we get greeted by something weird,” Perry said. “An epic battle, a city that wants us to disappear, a confused family eating dinner.”

  “Confused family?” Michelle asked in disbelief.

  “We can’t pick where we let out,” Blake said. “We’re just lucky that family was so confused by our appearance that we were able to leave before they killed us.”

  “Killed you for trespassing?” Michelle asked.

  “No,” Blake said hesitantly. He was not fond of that particular memory. “They were a family of Gatharians feasting on…” He paused before just saying it. He decided to rephrase slightly. “Well, let’s say that in their world, humans aren’t the top of the food chain.”

  Michelle groaned in disgust.

  “Not all of us escaped with our lunch intact,” Perry commented.

  “Surely, one of you didn’t throw up,” Michelle said.

  “No, that was Sarina, bless her heart,” Blake said with a smile. “She didn’t deal well with sights like that. She got much better as time went on, though.”

  “How long ago was she with you?” Michelle asked.

  “She went home right before you joined,” Blake said.

  “Joined?” Michelle asked, her tone indicating the i
nvoluntary nature of her entry point.

  “Recruited?” Blake asked.

  “Drafted,” Michelle said.

  “No one forced you to pass through the doors,” Blake noted. “Are you having regrets?”

  “Of course not,” Michelle shook her head. Michelle, like Blake and Perry, had become a part of the Maze when she had unwittingly dragged herself through the elevator doors at a low point in her life when they appeared suddenly in front of her. That action took her from her time stream and dropped her into the Maze where she had to join the other two as they explored the universe. Since then, she had realized that her life was not as bad as she thought, but she could not honestly say she regretted crawling through those doors since it allowed her the life she presently led.

  While they had been talking, they had followed Blake to the hole in the ground beside the large, moss-covered rock nearby. Perry casually placed his hand on the rock as he passed it and then paused. He knocked on it which produced a hollow, metallic sound.

  “Couldn’t help but notice that this rock isn’t made of rock,” Perry said.

  “It’s probably attached to the rest of the structure underground here,” Blake said rubbing off some of the dirt and grass to reveal the gray surface beneath. “Interesting. The scanner indicated something metallic over here.”

  They looked down into the hole and found that someone had excavated a large amount of dirt to reveal more of the structure for at least a couple dozen yards, and at one point, the hole had a pathway of dirt that led to a door.

  “Is it a building of some kind?” Michelle asked as they climbed down into the hole.

  “Its design looks more like a spacecraft,” Blake said. “Its exterior is more streamlined than an underground structure would be. Landed – or more likely, crashed – here quite some time ago based on how buried it is and the state of the exterior. I would bet it came in at an angle, hit the ground and then ended up reburied from the debris. If there was no one around, and the ship had no survivors, nature took its course and just kept it.”

  “Someone’s digging it out then, finally,” Perry said.

  “Yes and no,” Blake said. He pointed back to the sides of the hole which had been worn smooth by a significant amount of traffic in and out. “This was excavated by someone, yes, but it has been awhile since then. They probably started digging after finding that fin sticking out like we did. They eventually found the hatch here, and then what appears to be a cargo door down there.”

  Blake drew their attention to a larger door further down the ship near where the excavation stopped. It was not as well traveled at that end, but the disturbance of the dirt around that door showed that they opened it at some point.

  “They probably removed whatever they thought was valuable from inside and left it,” Blake said.

  “Can we go inside?” Perry asked, excitement dripping from his voice.

  “I always believe the Maze drops us where it does for a reason,” Blake said with the same level of enthusiasm. “This time, it dropped us on the doorstep of this old relic, and there’s no reason to believe we shouldn’t go ahead and check it out. The scanner showed no signs of life for a couple of miles, so it would appear that no one is stopping us this time, are they?”

  Michelle glanced back up to ground level and wished she had taken a better look around. Blake had said that there was no one nearby, and the area around them had been completely still. She thought there might have been movement in the far distance, so someone obviously inhabited the area, but no one was anywhere near their position to interfere.

  “We’ll check out the rest of our surroundings later,” Blake said. “I want to have a look at this.”

  “Professional or personal curiosity?” Michelle asked.

  “My dear Michelle,” Blake smiled, “if you have to make a distinction between the two, you are doing it for the wrong reasons.”

  She grimaced and glanced over to Perry. “I just like spaceships,” Perry said.

  They made their way around the excavation to the path that led to the hatch they had spotted, and as they got closer to the ship, they could see that those who tried digging it out stopped well before finding the bottom. One particular hole near the hatch stretched down at least ten feet below the rest of the dirt level and there was no sign of the ship curving inward. There was no knowing how deep it went.

  When they reached the hatch, Blake looked it over for only a moment before he found the handle and turned it. There was a brief hiss of air as the inside and outside met, but no significant pressure change since the ship had not moved in some time.

  Michelle wrinkled her nose as the air from the inside of the ship wafted past them, and Perry waved the air.

  “Too easy,” Blake smiled.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Michelle replied skeptically.

  “Well, why lock the outside door of a spaceship?” Perry asked. “It’s not like anyone can just walk in.”

  “You mean like we just did?” Michelle asked.

  “I mean in space,” Perry said.

  “The lock was deactivated,” Blake explained, “either by the ship on its landing – possibly because of its landing – or by the people who came before us. Either way, we’re in.”

  They all passed into the ship leaving the exterior door open behind them. The ship appeared to be generating just enough power to provide some lighting, but Blake still pulled a light out of his pocket for some more direct illumination. The wall and walkways were all unadorned gray and very basic in construction indicating the ship makers valued function over appearance, and any instrumentation they came across as well as the overall design showed the ship’s users were within the five to six-foot range in height.

  As they walked, Michelle became aware of a pungent smell around them that she had first noticed when the door opened. “Is that smell what I think it is?” she asked.

  “What do you think it is?” Blake asked.

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” Perry said.

  “Probably just as well,” Blake said.

  “It isn’t…” Michelle started but did not wish to finish the thought.

  “The ship crashed some time ago,” Blake said, “then it was buried. What do you think happened to the crew?”

  “They were hopefully removed by whoever dug the hole,” Michelle said.

  “Agreed,” Blake said. “But we all know there’s no guarantee that happened.”

  As they moved through the ship, they walked into a few rooms that were almost empty except for furniture that was bolted to the floor. Most of the chairs in the ship had no seat backs on them, and those that did have a seat back had a conspicuous split from the top all the way down to the seat itself. Doors to the rooms opened inward on hinges instead of disappearing into the walls like Michelle and Perry both expected to find.

  “I can’t imagine that chair is very comfortable,” Michelle commented regarding one of the chairs with the split back.

  “I know,” Perry agreed. “To have it open at the top and run it all the way down like that is odd.”

  “Unless they have tails,” Blake suggested. Perry and Michelle both looked at the seat that all of a sudden now looked very obviously constructed to accommodate a being with a tail and felt mutually silly for missing that.

  “Well, some of us aren’t used to intelligent beings with tails,” Michelle said.

  “Why is it that no one thinks of the dolphins when they say that?” Blake pondered out loud. Michelle rolled her eyes.

  “Where do you think the power is coming from?” Perry asked.

  “A lot of vessels built by space-faring races derive power from their environments instead of using an energy source that requires storage and can deplete,” Blake said. “You’re more likely to have the power distribution cables corrode than actually lose power.”

  “But if its environment is space,” Michelle said, “then how is this buried ship working?”

  “We can speculate all day, a
nd it won’t make any difference,” Blake said. “Obviously, it still functions, so however it gets its power, it works well, and that’s good enough for me for now. Let’s see if we can find anything interesting like the flight deck or bridge.”

  After several rooms, Michelle paused to point out some symbols in the shadows next to one of the doors. “Hey, do you think this is writing?” she asked.

  Blake swung his light to shine directly on the symbols. They appeared to be written in a distinct pattern in a raised plaque like a sign for the room where they had just looked. Blake furrowed his eyebrows in concern.

  “I believe you’re right,” Blake said. “Usually, the Maze translates writing for us. Perhaps this is a language it doesn’t know.”

  “Is that bad?” Perry asked.

  “New is never bad,” Blake said, “but it could mean we’ll have trouble understanding them if the spoken word is also unknown to the Maze and not in our translation matrix.”

  “Can it learn?” Michelle asked.

  “If the Guide gets enough of it,” Blake said. “It can work out the meanings eventually based on the spoken word, context, and the patterns and symbology of the writing. Obviously, each of these doors has a label to them relevant to the room’s contents, and your average ship only has so many types of rooms.”

  Blake walked to the signs next to several of the doors, observing the patterns of the symbols around each of them.

  “I can see the doors are labeled differently,” Blake said, “so I’ll just make sure I look over each of them as we go so the Maze can have a record of it. Of course, deciphering this will depend on whether the symbols represent sounds as in the western alphabet or ideas such as Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

  “The Maze is recording what you see?” Michelle asked.

  “Not just me,” Blake explained as they moved further through the ship. He continued to pause at each door to have a look at the writing. “I am the Guide, and as such, I am tied into the Maze. What I see, it sees. What I know, it knows. What I learn, it learns. It makes a very light, mental connection with you two to let you communicate with the races we encounter, but with me, it is linked into my very being. The logos on our shirts that serve as communicators, biometrics readers, and locators also record everything to be downloaded once we return. That way, in case we get separated, we have a complete record of everything that happens between us. It can also serve as a translator should you get too far separated from the Guide.”