by Linda Mooney
Fullgrath checked the connecting tunnel to make sure the coast was clear before the rest of them filed out to join him. Although they believed most of Hoov’s people were coming from the other direction, they couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t encounter one of the creatures on its way to the cavern. Kelen drew her blaster, as did her fellow shipmates. Kyber and his men prepared themselves.
This time Fullgrath didn’t announce their nearing the cavern. They all noticed the gradual brightening, especially the fact that the light was a distinctive reddish color. As they drew closer, Kelen became aware of a strange odor that had to be coming from the chamber. A furtive look at Kyber confirmed he could smell it, too, and it was as unpleasant to him as it was to her.
They remained silent as they continued forward, making as little noise as possible to keep from being detected in the event one of Hoov’s people was near. When they were within a few meters of the opening, Fullgrath signaled again to stop, and Kyber moved ahead to join him. The two men exchanged whispers and Fullgrath nodded. Kyber gestured and the other three Seneecians went to stand beside him.
Kelen realized what was about to go down. He and his men were going in first to see if they could find their missing crew member. They wanted to be as quiet and stealthy as possible in order not to attract the aliens’ attention. Only if there was no other choice would Fullgrath and the rest of them go in with weapons blazing.
She felt her heart thud heavily with fear as she stared at Kyber. His back was turned to her, his focus on what they must do. These next few seconds would either be Tojun’s death or salvation. And it could also be theirs as well.
Good luck, my love. God be with you. And may your gods also be watching over you. If this does not go as planned, if this is the last time I see you, know I love you. I love you, Kyber.
Kyber stepped through the doorway, with Kleesod, Massapa, and Gaveer right behind him.
A nerve-shattering scream came from the distance. It was answered with a roar that reverberated down the tunnel, sending icy dread through her with the force of an avalanche. She knew the roar came from Kyber the same time two more bone-rattling roars echoed him.
Fullgrath wasted no time and jumped through the doorway, into the cavern. Mellori bolted after him with Kelen at his heels.
It took her a handful of seconds to take in what she was seeing, but her mind refused to accept it. Survival training automatically kicked in, and she started firing into the crowd of creatures gathered on the floor of the cavern. She continued to mow down the aliens, providing cover for Kyber and the others who were rushing down the stone steps to reach their fallen comrade. She tried not to stare at the disjointed skeletal remains that were draped like gruesome trophies around the perimeter of the huge room, while a little voice in the back of her mind cruelly reminded her that there were two more red caverns. Two more massive grottos where Hoov’s people gathered to consume their kill. To feast on their still-living prey as it writhed and fought for its life, the way that furry creature had in the temple after Hoov had taken it down.
The way Tojun continued to claw and kick and shriek as he was overcome, and the aliens tore into him.
She tried not to break down in tears, knowing the Seneecian was suffering. Kyber and the others shredded Hoov’s people as they advanced toward the rock slab where Tojun was pinned. While Fullgrath and Mellori focused on the creatures which tried to go after the Seneecians, she, Sandow, and Jules took aim at the ones who attempted to reach them.
The smell of rotting death permeated the cavern. Twice she gagged, finally pinching her nose and breathing through her mouth to keep from vomiting.
For what seemed like forever, Kelen thought the firefight would not be successful. That Hoov’s people would overwhelm them. Their numbers were infinitely greater. She managed to catch a glimpse of Kyber as he fought his way through the thickening crowd, when a crackling sound came from the other side of the chamber and the familiar whine of a pulse rifle poured over their heads.
Hoov’s people suddenly turned and bolted for the one remaining exit that wasn’t blocked. Cooter continued to bombard the creatures with a steady stream of firepower, while she, Fullgrath, and the others worked at protecting the Seneecians who’d managed to reach Tojun.
But it was too late to save him.
Lifting their crew mate between them, Massapa and Gaveer hurried to climb back up where the others waited. Kyber and Kleesod provided backup, but the remaining creatures no longer appeared interested in pursuing them.
The cavern reeked from the carnage.
“Retreat! Retreat!” Fullgrath motioned for them to head back inside the tunnel. “Let’s get the fuck out of here before they reassemble and decide to attack en masse again!”
“Cooter!” Jules yelled at the man at the other side of the tunnel. “The dark tunnels go topside! The lit tunnels don’t! Find a dark tunnel that ascends and we’ll meet you at the temple!”
Cooter tossed them a salute and vanished into the corridor behind him.
“What about the transportation panel?” Sandow asked.
Fullgrath gave him a scathing look. “Do you really want to go down there right now and look for it?”
The physician shook his head and followed the Seneecians into the tunnel. Kelen turned to trail behind him, but couldn’t stop herself from taking one last glance at the butchery left on the cavern floor. And realized she felt no pity for the lifeless aliens piled around the blood-stained altar.
It was a memory she knew would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Chapter 23
Flight
At the first interconnecting tunnel, they carried Tojun inside and laid him on the ground. Kelen watched with tears streaming down her face as the Seneecian fought for breath. Blood bubbled from his nose and mouth, and his eyes were almost an icy white color as his life continued to flow out of him. Sandow hovered over the dying man, a hypo gun in his hand.
The physician looked to Kyber. “I don’t know your protocol, but this will remove his pain and he can die in peace. It’s your decision.”
Kyber gave a nod. The other Seneecians didn’t object, and Sandow pressed the hypo to Tojun’s neck.
The shot’s effect was instantaneous. Tojun appeared to relax, no longer in distress or suffering. His hands slipped from where they had been clutching his stomach, revealing the extent of his injuries. Revealing the fact that Hoov’s people had shredded his leather-like uniform, tearing chunks from his body as they ate him alive, the same way Hoov had been consuming the creature it killed when they first met him.
Kyber and his men surrounded the dying Seneecian. They each laid a hand on Tojun, bowed their heads, and softly began crooning in a low, sing-song voice. At one point they paused and Kyber lowered his head, placing an ear to Tojun’s mouth. Kelen saw her husband nod, then they resumed their chanting. When they finally stopped, she knew Tojun was dead, and she covered her mouth with her hand to muffle her sobs.
Sandow withdrew a fresh uniform from his blanket, handing it to Gaveer. “Here. I know you’ll want to keep the body intact until you can send it to your gods.”
Gaveer thanked him and took the uniform. They fit Tojun’s body into the one-piece, which acted like a body bag. When they were done, Kleesod started to mark it with a symbol of respect, but Kyber stopped him.
“We need to hurry away from here. We will give him his honor once we reach the temple.”
Kleesod acquiesced. “We will take turns carrying him. I will go first.” Hoisting the body over his shoulder, the Seneecian waited for the others to join him and together they trudged down the tunnel, searching for the next corridor.
It wasn’t long before they found the end of the tunnel and the holographic wall that made it appear they’d reached a dead end. Fullgrath signaled for silence when they halted. Hefting his blaster, he cautiously stuck his head through the visual membrane to check the other corridor. Suddenly, he yelled in surprise, jerking backwards. At the same time,
an appendage swung downward in a chopping motion, cutting through the opening. Fullgrath yelled again, flailing his arms to keep from falling.
“They’re out there!”
One of the creatures charged through the opening. Mellori got off a shot, which neatly decapitated the thing. Another alien burst through the doorway, but Fullgrath managed to recover enough to take it down.
Kyber gave Kelen a hard shove. “Go back!”
She stumbled into Sandow and Dox as they turned to retreat down the tunnel in the other direction. Kleesod hurried to keep up with them, along with Massapa. Gaveer took the lead, fangs and claws bared.
They’d barely gone ten meters when the Seneecian abruptly halted and let out a growl. Massapa screamed a warning, moving ahead of the others to stand with his fellow crew member. Kyber grabbed Kelen and Sandow, throwing them against the wall. She whipped her head from side to side. “They’re coming at us from both ends!”
“We’re trapped!” Sandow cried.
Kyber pressed her against the rock, ready to protect her. Kelen dug into her pocket for her blaster, when Kyber shifted his feet. She slid sideways a few centimeters, nearly tripping over him as their legs entangled. She threw out her hands to brace herself for the fall, wincing in anticipation of the collision, and landed on her arms. Chaos erupted in the tunnel as everyone fought the aliens attacking from both sides. Kyber leaped forward, forcing her to jerk her hand away to keep it from being stepped on.
Her hand and blaster vanished.
She gasped, blinked, and moved her arm. The hand and blaster reappeared.
Reaching out with her other hand, she grabbed his ankle and pulled. “In here!” she yelled. “In here! This way!”
He twisted sideways to look for her and she scrambled on hands and knees into the little tunnel, showing him the location of the entrance. Behind her she heard Kyber calling out, yelling for everyone to take the escape route. Shoving her blaster down the front of her pants, she began crawling as fast as she could through the darkness.
Keeping her head low, she continued onward as she kept her ears open for the sound of anything appearing ahead. She could tell someone was following her. By the heavy wheezing, it sounded like Sandow. The poor man had dust allergies, and he hadn’t had an injection to protect him from it since their crash landing on this world.
The tunnel serpentined, curving and abruptly angling at different directions, causing her and the others to slam their arms or shoulders into the walls. But the one thing it didn’t do was ascend or descend. She wish she’d had the foresight to pull out her tube light. She could have held it in her teeth to help light the way. Kelen kept crawling, never slowing or checking to see if anyone else was behind her and the doctor, until Sandow gave a weak holler.
“Hold up, Kel.”
She paused and crouched down to give herself a little respite. Further down the corridor she heard Kyber call up to her.
“How far are we from the other tunnel?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Did everyone make it?”
“Yeah,” Fullgrath acknowledged, his response so muffled she almost didn’t catch it.
“This place is tight,” Massapa remarked. “If we remain here for too long, our muscles will start cramping.”
“Don’t worry. We should be coming up to the adjoining tunnel soon.” She pulled out her tube light, turned it on, and shone the beam underneath and behind her, between her legs, but it was impossible to see anything other than some arms and legs. Gripping the light in her teeth, she continued forward.
She lost track of how far they crawled. At one point she stopped again to wipe her palms on her pants. Her arms and hands were scraped and bleeding from the roughly cut stone, and she knew her knees and shins were in the same condition.
“How much fa-farther?” Sandow gasped and coughed.
“I don’t know.”
A hand patted her ankle. Peering back at him, she saw him pointing past her. “Is that a widening? That looks like a widening in the tunnel.”
Kelen whirled around and shone her light to the left. Instead of the tunnel wall, there appeared to be a darkness. “I think you’re right.”
“Oh, good. We can stop there to get our bearings.”
She hurried ahead to discover a depression had been carved into the side of the tunnel. In fact, a depression had been dug into both sides, facing each other. At the same time, the corridor’s roof sloped upward. The bubble-shaped area was big enough to allow her to sit upright, and she gratefully pulled her knees up to her chest to make room for the bigger Seneecians. Kyber squeezed in next to her and crossed his legs. She leaned against him, thankful for his warmth and nearness, and relishing in the sense of security he gave her, regardless of their circumstances.
Somehow they all managed to fit within the two carved sections. Tojun’s body remained lying in the main corridor. Across the way, she saw Mellori turn on his tube light and play it over them. Beside him, Jules checked his tablet.
“Well?” Fullgrath grunted.
The ex-navigator pointed down the way they’d come. “Hoov’s in that direction.”
“What about where we’re heading?”
The young man shook his head. “I can’t tell if there are any of those aliens waiting for us when we get to the other side.” A grin split his face. “But I can tell you this. If we keep going, we should end up in an orange room.”
“You’re kidding.” Mellori snorted. “That should be interesting. Wonder what we’ll find when we get there.”
Gaveer spoke up. “One thing is certain. Hoov’s people are meat eaters. More than likely, the food we found in those purple rooms was not meant for them.”
Sandow nodded as Kelen stared at the Seneecian in surprise. “I agree with you,” the doctor admitted. “That is a very astute observation. It would also explain why there is no green cavern here. It’s too cold to sustain plant life. Those creatures had no choice but to resort to being meat eaters.”
“Or cannibals,” Fullgrath added.
“It also explains that red room,” Massapa murmured. “They must think of their kills as trophies.”
“So who used those purple rooms? The little guys from the first temple?”
“There’s no way to know,” Mellori commented. “The size of the rooms suggest they were for Hoov’s people, but the food dispensers… I don’t see those insect aliens eating porridge.”
“They could have,” Gaveer added. “Until they discovered they preferred the taste of flesh.”
“No.” Kleesod shook his head. “I disagree. There were too many partially-eaten, decayed, and withered corpses in that red room. I say Hoov’s people were always meat eaters, and the food dispensers were for the species that eventually migrated to the other temples.”
“Which brings us back to species number three,” Fullgrath brought up. “Who or what were they?”
“Speaking of threes…” Jules uncrossed and re-crossed his legs. “Why have we only seen two species here? Hoov and the hairy thing it killed, that makes two. Where’s the third one? Why haven’t we seen any actual evidence of it?”
“They probably ate it,” Fullgrath grumped.
A moment of silence enveloped the group as they mulled over the question. After a while, they chose not to delve any further into the question of the unknown beings, and Kelen brought up another thought. “Guys, all that stuff we found in that cavern. I don’t think Hoov’s people just happened to come across it. I think they may have confiscated it after they killed the crash survivors.”
“It’s very possible,” Mellori answered her. “In fact, I think it’s highly probable.”
“Here is another possibility,” Gaveer mentioned. “If other space crafts crashed here, where are those ships? Did Hoov’s people loot them for what they contained, and leave the rest of the ship undisturbed?”
Kyber lifted his head, a look of intense concentration on his face. “The chances of more ships landing here suggests th
ey were not swallowed by a wormhole, as we have always suspected, but were victims of a space anomaly. A tegis.”
“A what?” Jules asked. “A tegis? What’s a tegis?”
Kleesod explained, “A tegis is a rip in space. A ship that inadvertently goes through one may end up in a solar system or galaxy billions of light years away from their own world.”
“How does that differ from going through a wormhole?” Kelen inquired.
“We believe a wormhole has the ability to bend time, as well as space. You could end up anywhere in the universe, at any time of the universe’s existence. This is all conjecture, of course, since no one has ever returned from going through a wormhole. But going through a tegis is different in that, if you can find your way back to the original rip, you can slip through it and return to your original location where you initially encountered it.”
“So, I take it from your explanation that your people have managed to go through a tegis and return?” Sandow remarked.
Kelen caught Kleesod and her husband exchanging looks before the Seneecian replied.
“It has been documented, but not in recent history.”
“When was the last time it was confirmed?” Mellori queried.
“I am not certain of the exact date, but perhaps five hundred years ago.”
Fullgrath let out a bark of laughter. “Are you telling me your race has been space worthy for the past five hundred years?”
“We have been voyagers for over a thousand years,” Kyber solemnly told him.
Kelen gasped. She knew the Seneecians were an old race, but she had no idea they’d been traversing the galaxies for that length of time. No one did. At least, no one on Earth did.
She cleared her throat, but she couldn’t produce enough saliva to remove the grit in her mouth. Dox dug inside his bundle and handed her his water bag. Thanking him, she took a long swallow and handed it back to him.
“Who else besides Dox managed to keep their bundles?”
Mellori held up his, as did Sandow. Counting hers, that made it four out of twelve. Well, it was better than nothing.
