Slate let out a low whistle as he peered over my shoulder. Mary clutched my arm, squeezing tightly as we all stood in awe. Seeing the network of interconnected portals from this vantage point made me realize how amazing they were. I didn’t count them, but there were far more than the two hundred or so cataloged symbols in the tables.
“Are there…?” Karo started, his jaw dropping as I zoomed out, spreading fingers on the tablet screen.
“There are thousands,” I said breathlessly. “More than we ever imagined.”
I became light-headed, and I placed a palm on the portal table to steady myself. Sarlun and the others had no idea these existed. How many worlds and civilizations were out there that we didn’t know about? Apparently, a lot. Some of the lines led to distant dots, telling us the source stones were millions, if not billions, of light years away. It was all hard to comprehend as we remained there, blankly staring at the tablet in silence.
I zoomed in now, choosing a distant world. Its symbol appeared, a combination of a backwards check mark and a star. Light pulsed from it, stretching out in all directions, and the closer I moved to the image, the more distinct each line traveling to and from it became.
“This is amazing,” Karo said.
They were each powered by the sacrifice of his people, and I glanced at Ableen, who stood solid as a statue, a sole tear falling onto her gray cheek.
I noticed a blinking icon on the bottom right of the screen, and I tapped it. A series of pathways illuminated, moving the center focus to a particular world. When I clicked it, I saw the symbol for Bazarn.
“This must be telling us the last trips from Bazarn,” Mary said.
“Papa.” Jules tugged on my pants, and I picked her up. She stared at the tablet with interest, her green eyes glowing in the reflection of the screen.
I lifted my arm, activating my arm console, and brought up the missing Gatekeeper profiles. “Two of our missing team members were last seen on Bazarn. Guards!” I turned to call them, and saw they were right behind me already. I jumped, causing Jules to squeal in delight. “You two are sneaky for giants… did you see these two Gatekeepers leave here a couple months ago?”
One of them nodded. “They were the last to travel through. Word came from Alnod to lock the doors shortly after. No one was allowed access to the portals, and no one tried to come through until you arrived yesterday.”
I found the brightest pathway from Bazarn on the tablet. “This has to be it.” I traced the line, seeing it end at a distant world. I clicked the icon, seeing an unfamiliar symbol.
Mary let go of my arm and began sifting through the portal table’s symbols, trying to match it. “I wish Suma was here. She’s memorized all of the symbols.”
Something was off as she scrolled through pages of them on the portal’s screen. “Wait. What’s that?” Some of the symbols were faded blue. “I don’t recognize any of these.”
“Dean, I think the table is grabbing the details from the Crystal Map you’ve attached to it. We’ve unlocked the hidden symbols with this,” Karo said, and Ableen nodded along, confirming his claim.
“You’re right.” I swallowed hard. We had access to thousands of worlds at our fingertips, most of them places no human, or Gatekeeper for that matter, had ever been. But what would we uncover? “Mary, we can’t bring Jules along.”
She crossed her arms. “I’m not staying behind again, Dean. She tapped my arm console screen, and I glanced at the two faces of the missing Gatekeepers. One of them was a tall, lanky alien classified as a Nix. His name was listed as Weemsa. The other Keeper was from the Udoon system, from the same planet as Cee-eight. She was listed as female and had the same short arms and deep-set eyes as the pilot we’d met a couple of years ago. Green skin was pulled tight over her face, but she had a happy expression, a look I wasn’t sure existed after spending time with Cee-eight. This woman’s name was Loo-six.
“Mary, we can’t bring her to these dangerous worlds. We have no idea what’s out there,” I said.
She pulled me aside, dragging me away from the rest of the prying eyes. “Seriously? You can’t ask me to stay behind, and you can’t ask me to separate us. We’re staying together, so either you leave this mission to these other capable people and come home with me or we all go. Understood?” Her teeth were clenched, and I could see there was no winning this argument.
“We need to help. We promised Sarlun, and then Ableen, that we’d free her suffering people,” I told her.
“Then Jules comes. She’s safer with us than anywhere else. Don’t you agree?” Mary asked.
I glanced at our girl, who was playing with Slate beside the portal. She was so wonderful, so full of curiosity and joy. I nodded hesitantly, and Mary’s stiff posture loosened. “Let’s make this quick, then. We go, we track them, we head home.”
“Deal,” I said, and we made our way to the waiting group.
“Everything good, boss?” Slate asked without a hint of his usual jest.
“You bet. Are we ready?” I asked.
Karo glanced from Ableen to Slate; his gaze then settled on Jules, and moved to me. “We’re ready.”
“Then let’s suit up. We have no idea what we’re going to arrive into,” I said.
Minutes later, Rivo had left us alone, returning to her father, and the guards moved to the edge of the portal room, standing by the doorway across the space. There was a definitive line etched in the marble floors, giving a visual on the portal’s boundary. Anything within that line would transport with the stone; anything beyond wouldn’t.
I raised a hand to the guards and received a grunt in return. They didn’t like me much, and I couldn’t really blame them. We were all wearing our EVAs, and part of me wished we’d opted for the armor suits instead of the exploratory, but they were too heavy to lug around with our supplies. I missed having Dubs with us, or one of the powerful Keppe warriors to help carry some of the burden. I briefly let my thoughts drift to Rulo and hoped she was doing well.
“Ready?” I asked, and no one said otherwise. Jules was beside Mary, eyes wide as the portal crystal shone bright. I tapped the symbol the missing Gatekeepers had traveled to, and we left Bazarn.
Seven
It was dark when we arrived. Ableen let out a groan beside me. “They are weakening,” she said.
It felt different this time, almost as if we’d taken longer to travel between worlds. I had no memory of the journey, but my body clock had been thrown for a loop. I didn’t know if it was due to the sheer distance, the Theos growing weaker, or a combination of the two.
“Jules, honey, are you okay?” Mary asked. Our daughter was walking away from the table, venturing into the unknown. She turned her head, flashing a smile only a kid under three is capable of.
“This is strange,” Karo said, motioning to the copse of trees around us. Symbols were carved into giant tree trunks that, in the dim light, reminded me of California redwoods. They rose higher than my eyes could make out in the night sky.
“There’s no hidden portal room,” Slate said. “Which probably means there isn’t an intelligent race around.”
“Why do you say that?” Ableen asked. Her grasp of our language was impressive.
“Because if someone knew about the stones, they’d build walls to hide it, or at least have markings to worship it.” Slate ran a gloved hand over the etchings in the trees.
“Then how do you explain these?” Karo asked, pointing to the carvings.
Slate shrugged. “Every portal room has them in some form or another. I guess I hadn’t really thought about how they got there.”
“Hmmmm. Neither have I,” I told him. “But I think you’re right about the intelligent life. That being said, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing here that wants to harm us. Be on the lookout.” I flicked my EVA suit’s light features on, and went over to Jules, activating her beams too. She laughed at them, chasing the light, not understanding she wouldn’t be able to catch the end.
Sla
te lifted his arm, keying something into his suit’s console. “Scanning for any Gatekeeper IDs.”
“Anything?” Mary asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet, but it can take a while.”
“How about the air? Breathable?” Mary asked.
Slate checked his readouts. “It appears so.” He unclasped his helmet, and for a brief moment, I expected him to drop from toxic air. He grinned and set it on the ground beside him. The rest of us followed suit.
“Should we investigate?” my wife asked.
“It’s dark. I say we wait to see if this world has daylight, and see what the ID scan tells us first. I don’t like the idea of walking around an alien forest in the dark.” I pictured huge stalking animals, their glowing eyes watching us from above, nestled in thick tree limbs.
“I agree with Dean. Ableen, are you doing all right?” Karo asked her.
She nodded. “This is all… so new.” Ableen had led a simple life among the Theos before she was taken by the Collector. And now, so many years later, she’d been rescued, and her whole existence had been thrown a curve ball. Today she was exploring a new world with us on a rescue mission. I couldn’t imagine what must be going on in her mind.
“It’s new to us, Ableen.” She knew some of our story, but I thought now was as good a time as any to tell her everything about humans and what we’d been through.
We set up camp, and Jules quickly grew tired of chasing her lights. She settled onto my lap as we unfolded small chairs, forming a circle around a lantern. I hoped the lights wouldn’t draw any local predators, and I knew Slate was thinking the same thing. His pulse rifle sat across his lap, and every few minutes, he stood up to circle our small camp, keeping a lookout.
Mary and I took turns telling Ableen about the Event and our experiences with it, and she listened with interest as we discussed the Kraski, the hybrids, and the Deltra betrayal.
“But Leslie and Terrance are your friends,” Ableen said in the middle of the story.
“They are. Not everyone can be thrown into one category. The sins of our people aren’t necessarily our own sins,” I explained.
She nodded, as if understanding the meaning behind this. The world began to lighten around us as our tale expired.
“Thank you for sharing your lives with me,” Ableen said. “It inspires me to hear that you were so oppressed and have since risen above, making things better for others unselfishly.” I had to assume she was implying the Alliance of Worlds and the Gatekeepers’ function to act as mediators for intergalactic disputes moving forward.
“If the portals become unresponsive, it will make everything much more difficult,” Mary said.
Ableen appeared to consider this before adding, “Or much simpler. Perhaps everyone sticking to their own planets will stop the everlasting strife between worlds.”
“That’s been going on for thousands of years, and they don’t need portal stones to fight each other. Fleets of war vessels do fine,” I said, knowing war would always remain a constant. It was the one thing that would stand the test of time… and space.
“Dean.” Mary was looking around, spinning her head from side to side. “Where’s Jules?”
I scanned the group and stood, running behind Slate and Karo. She was nowhere in sight. Then I spotted the lights from her tiny EVA, and ran for her as she neared the portal table. It glowed brightly at her approach, and I stopped a few yards from her, wondering what she was doing.
Her hand lifted, one pointer finger raised, aiming at the blue crystal beneath the clear surface of the table. She was speaking, but I was too far away to hear the words; her voice was unable to carry over to me.
“Jules?” I spoke softly, and she turned her head to look at me, and I saw her face in an impassive look.
Her green eyes glimmered, and she lowered her hand. “Help,” she said.
I stepped over to her, dropping to a knee. “What is it, honey?”
“Papa.” She clenched her little fists at her sides in frustration. “Help.”
“Help you with what?”
“Not me. Theos.” Jules turned around, and the hair on the back of my neck rose like a startled cat.
I heard footsteps coming up behind me, but I didn’t turn, as if acknowledging them would break the spell Jules was under. “How can we help the Theos?” I asked her.
She shook her head, her gaze focused at the glowing crystal cluster. “Not Papa. Jules,” she said.
Not Papa. Jules. The words were confusing. She was telling me she needed to help the Theos. Not me, but her.
“Come on, honey. Let’s go see Mommy,” I said, and she let me pick her up. Finally, I saw Mary there, and I passed Jules to her.
Mary spoke softly to our daughter as she led her away. Jules met my gaze, then glanced at the crystal, which slowly dimmed until it was nothing more than a sleeping stone.
When I returned, the sky was light enough to see our surroundings with ease, and Slate had stowed all our supplies away again.
“Did you track the Gatekeepers’ IDs?” I asked him.
“Not quite, but I did see a flash of recognition on the map, and we have a set of coordinates to work with. Not far, which we expected,” Slate said. “We leave anything not pertinent to their rescue. I’d suggest packing our EVAs and only bringing two days’ rations. We’re only going a couple of miles.” He took the lead, and we followed him after removing our suits. We added an extra thermo layer under our jumpsuits for a precaution.
The region’s temperature was mild, but since we couldn’t predict the planet’s ecosystem, it was better to be prepared. The Gatekeepers were trained to stay near the stones should they run into trouble like this. If a rescue mission was sent out, it made the recovery much simpler.
Seeing Jules acting so oddly around the stone and hearing Ableen’s fears that the Theos were leaving quickly had me wanting to start jogging forward. We weren’t going to be stuck on this planet. I wouldn’t let something like that happen to us again. I couldn’t.
“I feel so small,” Mary told me as we continued through the immense forest. Everything was oversized; I saw that now. The rocks were all boulders; the shrubbery at the base of the twenty-foot-wide tree trunks was taller than Karo.
“It’s old,” I said. “Thousands of years without humans or aliens to spoil the terrain. Parts of Earth would look like this if we hadn’t ever existed.”
“That’s a good sign, boss. Means we’re less likely to run across any trouble,” Slate said, and I hoped he was right.
“Then why didn’t Weemsa and Loo-six stay put?” Karo asked in his ever-logical way.
I didn’t answer, because there was no point.
“Dean hates speculation,” Mary said with a laugh. Jules was resting in her arms, and I knew our growing girl was becoming bigger all the time. She’d only be able to haul her around for so long.
“Two miles?” I asked Slate, and he nodded.
“Little less,” he replied.
There was no end in sight for the forest. From here, it appeared to go on for miles in every direction, but it was hard to know how far we were seeing in between the massive trunks. The sun was higher now, but it felt like dawn inside the thick cover. I doubted it would ever be lighter than it was now.
We walked in silence for another ten minutes before we heard it. It was so quiet, I didn’t notice it at first. Ableen was the first one to sense something was wrong. She stopped suddenly, and Karo stumbled into her, nearly knocking her over.
She raised a finger to her lips and lifted a hand. We all kept still, and I turned my ear up, trying to catch what she’d heard. It was like wind, a soft breeze that kept increasing in power, gaining traction as it careened through the forest above the canopy before breaking below, soaring around the trunks, bouncing off shrubbery. By the time it reached us, the noise was a screech, a terrifying, deadly sound that turned my blood to ice.
Jules started crying, and Mary’s face was pale, mirroring my own.
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“Only another half mile,” Slate whispered, pointing deeper into the trees.
“Are you kidding me?” Mary said. “Did you hear that? We can’t go toward the source.”
“We don’t know where the cause is,” I admitted. “Let’s keep moving.”
Slate and I held our pulse rifles up, taking the lead. Karo held a pulse pistol, taking the rear of the convoy, with Mary and Jules next, followed by Ableen. Mary passed a gun to the Theos woman, but she shook her head, refusing to accept it. Mary passed Ableen Jules instead, and when I was confident Jules was happy enough to cry in Ableen’s arms, I kept walking. Slate led us to the spot the ID imprint had shown on his screen, and I knelt beside a damp section beside a tree. Heavy footprints were evident all around the area.
“The tent was here,” Slate said, motioning to a rectangle pressed into the leafy forest bed.
“They went this way.” I pointed deeper into the forest. It was darker here, colder, but we had no choice but to keep moving.
“As long as that sound doesn’t…” Slate started to say as the exact same noise carried through the trees to pass over us again. “I give up. Turn around?” he asked.
“It’s only a noise. A lot of animals have sounds they use to scare off predators. It could be a type of plant, for all we know,” I told him, and he shook his head.
“There’s no plant in the universe that’s making that sound, boss,” he said.
“Slate’s right. Whatever it is, it made the Gatekeepers hightail it away from their camp,” Karo said from the end of the line. He was watching behind us, and I was glad someone had our backs.
“The prints are traceable. We follow them,” I said, moving past Slate. It didn’t take him long to catch up to me and jog in front.
Jules had stopped crying, but her face was buried deep into Ableen’s neck. The Theos woman didn’t even appear to notice the added burden of carrying my daughter. She looked comfortable with the girl, and I noticed how Karo took in the sight before focusing on his task at hand.
The Gatekeepers (The Survivors Book Eight) Page 6
