by Ken Lozito
Connor glanced over at Noah, who was off to the side speaking with Sean.
“I’m glad he could help,” Connor said.
“Emmerson, Craig, sir,” said a man who looked barely eighteen years of age. “Brennan and I would like to join your platoon,” Emmerson said and looked away. “If we make it out of here.”
“We’ll talk about it when we get out of here. Just stay focused and be smart, and we’ll all get out of here.” Connor glanced at Lenora and she looked away. “Give me a moment. Go check in with Compton.”
The two Field Ops agents nodded and went toward the door, where Compton leaned against the wall.
Connor stepped closer to Lenora. “Team here looks kind of young.”
Lenora shook her head and sighed. “I’m sorry about before. It’s just that we’ve been running around here for over a day and those two won’t listen to me,” she said, nodding toward the two Field Ops guys. “The ryklars showed up and they just fired their weapons at them. Then the ryklars attacked and two of us were down almost before we had a chance to react. We lost Ellena this morning.” There was a catch in her throat. “She was—damn it—” Lenora looked away, her shoulders shaking. Connor reached out and rubbed her shoulders soothingly.
“Sounds like you’ve been through a lot. It’s okay to take a moment,” Connor said.
Lenora jerked away and her blue-eyed gaze became stormy. “Don’t you try that psychological crap with me, Gates.”
“Okay, I won’t,” Connor said and held up his hands in front of his chest. He then reached inside his pack and pulled out a container of water, offering it to her.
Lenora’s gaze softened. “Thanks,” she said and drank from the container.
“The ryklars have attacked the research base. Hundreds of them. They even attacked my team back at our camp a few days ago, which is hundreds of kilometers away. I can assure you it was unprovoked.”
“The base? Is it . . . Is everyone okay?” Lenora asked.
“There are a lot of people hurt. Mills and his team were defending the base until we showed up. Most of my team is back there helping. They’ve called for an evacuation by now,” Connor said.
“We can’t leave here now.”
Connor frowned. “It’s too dangerous to stay. We’ve got to focus on getting out of here and figure out why communications are blocked. It’s going to be dangerous out there. The ryklars were moments from attacking us, and I won’t fault Jackson for defending himself.”
Lenora sighed. “How would we even know what provokes them? Our presence here could be enough of a provocation. You react with violence and you’ll receive the same in kind. Before the attack they seemed agitated, but I’m not sure by what,” Lenora said.
“You want to make friends with them?” Connor said and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Lenora thrust the container back at him. “What is it with you? Not everything is black and white, friend or foe. We need to figure out why they’re attacking in the first place.”
“We need to get out of here, alive. That’s my first priority, not doing a study on a creature that wants to kill us,” Connor said.
“You don’t realize what we’ve found here. An alien civilization built this place,” Lenora said.
“Where did they all go then?” Connor asked.
“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Lenora said.
Connor glanced toward the door, his gaze taking in the octagonal shape. “You’re not going to say the ryklars built all this?”
Lenora shook her head and laughed. “No. De-evolution is the most absurd theory there is. An intelligent species will not suddenly become stupid because of evolution. Cultures and societal practices lead to the downfall of intelligent species, not evolution.”
“Okay, so not the ryklars,” Connor said.
“Also, we found several statue fragments and none of them look like a ryklar,” Lenora said.
Connor pressed his lips together. “So that whole speech about evolution . . .”
“Was just so I could impress you, and it helps me calm down,” Lenora said.
Connor felt the edges of his lips pulling upward. “How much of this place have you explored?”
He took a quick glance at the others in the room and tried to gauge their chances of going out the way they’d come in—navigating the cavern and climbing the ropes with the ryklars dogging their every step. Their chances weren’t very good.
“We were in here quite a long time before the ryklars showed up. We first discovered this place about a week ago, came across some technology here, and sent for Noah to come help with the analysis,” Lenora said.
Connor looked at the sparse room. While it served their purposes, he couldn’t figure out what it was originally meant for. “What kind of technology are we talking about here? Advanced tech like what we have? Better? Worse? The same?”
Lenora’s brows drew up together in thought. “Not more advanced than us, at least not that I can tell. We didn’t find any spaceships or anything like that. We need more time to study this place. Take the material this building is made of—some type of alloy. We need a chemical analysis of its composition, but there are things we can learn from this place that will help with the colony.”
“Like a new element. Could be useful.”
“Not my area. We’ve been making new alloys from the elements on Earth for thousands of years. Perhaps this species has a new compound or way of mixing things together. Stuff like that,” Lenora said.
Connor nodded. “I understand that this find is important, but my first priority is to get everyone here to safety. I can’t do that if we stay in this building. Do you know of another way out?”
Lenora regarded him for a moment. “There’s the main entrance.”
“Good, let’s go there and get out of here. We can make a path and keep the ryklars at bay while we escape. We have an armored ATV that we can squeeze everyone into,” Connor said.
Lenora shook her head. “The ryklars are at the main entrance.”
“How do you know?”
“I had a small surveillance drone mapping the cavern. The last video feed I saw from it showed the entrance with a lot of ryklars already there,” Lenora said.
“What were they doing?”
“I’m not sure. Looked like they were guarding it. They’d go to the interior and then return to the entrance.”
“Is it still online? I scanned the area and didn’t detect any drones,” Connor said.
Lenora shook her head. “No, we lost contact when we entered a chamber deeper inside the cavern.”
Noah walked over. “We didn’t touch anything. Things just sorta turned on by themselves when we came inside this place.”
“What was inside?” Connor asked.
Noah glanced at Lenora for a moment. “It was like a double pyramid. You know, like someone stuck the bottoms of two pyramids together. The middle of it started glowing. That’s when the comms went out.”
“By the next day, the ryklars started showing up,” Lenora said.
“When did this happen?”
“Two days ago,” Lenora answered.
“Did anything else start coming on when you guys started poking around down here?”
“Several places had power to them, which I thought was interesting. Why do you ask?”
“Because during a training exercise, my team was attacked by three packs of ryklars that seemed to be coordinating with each other. Then they suddenly ran off and we detected an ultra-high-frequency transmission. The source of it wasn’t far from where we’re standing,” Connor said.
Lenora glanced at the others excitedly. “Some of us thought that perhaps the ryklars were some kind of guard dog for this place. If what you say is true, a lot more of them are heading this way.”
Connor’s mind raced but kept coming back to the same thing. “We need to get out of here. We can’t wait for them to calm down.”
“The main entrance is guarded, but there m
ight be a back door if we go deeper into the ruins,” Lenora said.
Compton turned around. “Did someone say go deeper into the ruins?”
Connor nodded. “It might be our only way out of here.”
“Great,” Compton said dejectedly.
“That’s why you have the biggest gun,” Connor said and then ran his hands over his face. “Okay, we can’t stay here. I need to know who’s armed and any supplies or equipment you have with you—anything we can use to help us stay alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
For the next twenty minutes, Connor spoke with Lenora’s team about the layout of the ruins here. The one thing they had going for them was that the alien race that built this place planned it out like a large grid and used all the space. All the buildings were square, and even the walkways between them had a consistency in measurement that was equal to any of the planned cities back on Earth. If the ryklars hadn’t been out there waiting to kill them, Connor could have appreciated that. As it was, he had to pull the useful information he needed from them while asking that they keep their conjecture to a minimum. But these were scientists, a breed of humans that was conditioned to being long-winded.
Connor went to the door. He would be taking point. There weren’t enough guns for everyone. Sean had handed Lenora his SMG and she assured Connor that she knew how to use it. Lenora was standing behind him, and at first, Connor had been worried she’d shoot him in the back. Accidentally, of course. But whenever he looked back, she was holding the SMG as if she’d been handling firearms her whole life.
Noah came over to his side. “I just wanted to let you know that I’ve made some progress with that other project.”
“You were finally able to decode it?” Connor asked.
Noah shrugged. “I had some help. I stored my findings so far on my personal data storage device. You’re gonna wanna see it. There’s been a lot more going on back home than anyone realizes.”
“Some people already know,” Connor said.
Noah bobbed his head. “Yeah, some people.”
Connor had been extremely curious about Noah’s side project decoding the data burst from the deep space buoys that bolstered data communication signals from Earth, but he needed to push all that aside.
The two teams were clustered near the door. Connor had assigned them their places and interspersed his squad among them while having Compton cover their six.
“Once we’re outside this room, we need to be as quiet as possible. If you spot something, don’t shout or scream. Instead, inform the nearest member of my squad or Field Ops security. No one will fire their weapon without my say so unless a ryklar is bearing down on you. We want to avoid a confrontation with them. Is that understood?”
Everyone acknowledged their understanding.
“Lenora and Noah, you’re with me at the front,” Connor said.
They opened the octagonal door. While the door was heavier than it looked, it made hardly any noise. Connor took a quick look outside and there were no ryklars in sight, so he stepped out and stayed near the wall of the building. He glanced above and didn’t see any creatures. Connor frowned, not trusting that the ryklars had just given up on them.
He waved over to the others and they quietly left the building. Connor peeked around the corner of the building and saw that the way was clear. Lightning Platoon’s helmets enabled them to see well in the low-light conditions, but the archaeological team didn’t have that luxury and had to stick close to the people who could see.
They made steady progress deeper into the cavern. Several ryklars screeched a call that sounded as if they were on the other side of the cavern, but because of the echoes Connor couldn’t be sure. They reached the end of the cavern and there was a clear path that went off in either direction. Connor glanced at Lenora, who gestured toward the right. There were rows of squat buildings and the cavern ceiling was lower there.
Noah whispered Connor’s name and he looked back. Down the line of people, Compton gestured with his rifle up toward one of the buildings. Connor nodded and held his finger up to the face of his helmet. He brought his rifle up and waited.
Don’t be there.
Connor gestured to the others to stay where they were and pointed at Noah to follow him. They crossed the narrow pathway and circled around one of the buildings, then Connor stopped and listened for a moment. He heard the sounds of a clawed foot scuffling nearby, then a blast of the breath sounds the ryklars made. Connor craned his neck around the corner of the building and saw a group of ryklars in the distance, heading toward them. He stepped back into cover and he and Noah went back to the others. Connor gestured to his team that the ryklars were closing in on them. Compton bobbed his head that he understood and focused his attention behind them.
Connor motioned for the others to follow and he set off at a quicker pace than before. The cavern floor became uneven and sloped toward the wall, but the wall curved around to a passageway that led them away from the cavern. He glanced back at Lenora and she gave him an encouraging nod. There was a light toward the end of the tunnel, and as they got closer, Connor realized it came from outside. They jogged the rest of the way to the end of the tunnel and stopped. To the right, the sounds of rushing water came from a nearby waterfall. They left the tunnel and emerged into a forested valley that was surrounded by mountains. Amidst the trees were alien ruins that closely resembled what they’d seen inside. The pathways were carved from a pale stone, which was also used to form the base of the buildings. In the middle of the valley was a tall spire.
“They’re in the tunnel,” Compton said, trying to keep his voice down.
Connor looked at Lenora. “Have you been here before?”
“Only briefly.”
“We need higher ground so we can see where we are,” Connor said.
He tried to open a comlink back the research base, but there was no response. That would have been too easy.
The tallest thing in the valley was the spire, and Connor led them toward it.
Lenora grabbed his arm. “Not directly toward it. The ryklars like to occupy the middle. We should circle around and then go inwards.”
Connor changed direction and they skirted the edges of the ruins. The forest had swallowed up some areas of the city. A loud screech pierced the air, echoing off the mountains, and more ryklars responded from inside the valley. Connor quickened the pace, taking the group along the edge. He caught a few glimpses of the interior of the ruins and the spotted backs of the ryklars. They were hunting for them, and Connor quickly started looking for a place they could use to hide.
There were several more screeches, followed by snarling. Connor looked back toward where he’d seen the ryklars and saw two groups of them fighting. They’d charge each other, attacking with their claws, and then they’d break apart.
“Commander,” Noah said in a low voice. “I’ve detected the source of the ultra-high-frequency waves coming from that tower. If we—”
Noah was cut off as gunfire erupted from the end of the line, and Connor’s attention snapped toward the sound. There were three ryklars charging toward them. Compton and Jackson fired their weapons with precision. Sean Quinn aimed his M-Viper and took out the third ryklar with a shot to the chest. Connor called for them to follow him. Abandoning all pretense of sneaking around, Connor led them from the trees into the ruins.
They ran near the remnant buildings and Connor looked at Noah. “If I can get you into that spire, do you think you can shut down the signal?” Connor asked.
Noah’s eyes widened. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
Lenora’s mouth slackened. “The two of you can’t go off by yourselves.”
Connor gestured for the others to come closer. The ryklars were searching the forest but hadn’t detected them in the ruins yet.
“We’re going to split up,” Connor said. “Compton, I want you, Jackson, and Quinn to take these people and hide in that building over there. Noah and I are going to take out the s
ignal coming from that spire. Once it’s down, call for backup.”
“Sir, you need more than just the two of you if you’re going up to the spire,” Sean said.
“I’m going with you,” Lenora said. “I’m the most familiar with the ruins.”
“Bling is right, sir,” Compton said. “Take him with you.”
Connor didn’t like it, but he knew they were right. Their odds of success were higher if they had a few more people with them.
“I hope you guys can run fast,” Connor said. “We’ll draw the ryklars away.”
Connor sprinted away, with Noah, Sean, and Lenora following close behind. He screamed and fired a few shots into the air. The ryklars responded almost immediately, as howling and snarling sounded nearby. Connor weaved his way through the ruins, pushing toward the spire. He glanced behind him and saw a ryklar galloping on all fours, closing in on Sean Quinn. Connor raised his weapon and Sean darted to the side. Connor squeezed the trigger and an incendiary round shot out, hitting the creature in the chest. The ryklar roared and kept coming. Connor shot several more times before it stumbled and fell.
Noah and Lenora passed him, and Sean thanked him when he caught up.
They had reached the bottom of the bronze-colored spire, and Connor saw glowing lights on the inside. He glanced behind him and saw more ryklars running toward them in a frenzy.
“Go on. We’ll hold them off,” Connor said.
An octagonal entrance lay open before them, and Noah and Lenora ran inside while he and Sean positioned themselves on either side of the entrance. Connor squatted down, using the wall for cover, and Sean did the same thing. A horde of ryklars came toward them down the main thoroughfare. Connor applied the high-density nano-robotic ammunition to his grenade launcher and fired grenades one after another into the horde. As the grenade timers expired, he and Sean took cover. Several loud explosions shook the ground at his feet. Connor came out from cover and ryklar corpses littered the road. Some ryklars crawled away, their roars becoming whimpers. Ryklars beyond the blast radius shifted their clawed feet, rocking from side to side. Some of the ryklars started shoving others, and a vicious battle broke out among them.
