Humanity Unlimited 1: Liberty Station

by Terry Mixon

  She dropped her pack and sat on a fallen log after making sure nothing was waiting to bite her.

  They had the tents up before the light faded. The guy named Rex built a very small fire and cooked some of the food from the dig. It tasted good after a long, terrible day. She turned in early and fell asleep before her head touched the sleeping bag.

  * * * * *

  Harry took the last watch of the night while Sandra cooked breakfast. Frankly, he wished he could just declare Rex as the sole cook because he had the touch. Sandra made a much better sniper than a homemaker.

  He let Jess sleep in. She’d insisted on him using her first name. Apparently, she thought saving her life entitled him to stop being so formal. That was fine with him.

  Once the food was ready, he tapped her foot through the flap of the tent. She sat up abruptly and blinked at him. Her hair was poking out in every direction and she looked disoriented.

  “What?” she asked. “Are we under attack?”

  “Only if you consider Sandra’s cooking a war crime. Breakfast is ready. We have a latrine set up to the south. Leann will provide overwatch while you take care of business.”

  He returned to the fire and did what he could to salvage breakfast. He handed Jess a plate when she came back. She’d brushed her hair and actually looked awake.

  “Sorry I overslept. That’s two days in a row.” She took a bite of the food and made a face.

  He almost smiled. Everyone did that. “Sorry about breakfast. It was Sandra’s turn. She’s says it builds character.”

  “That’s okay. I’m happy to have it. How long do you figure it will take us to get to the site?”

  Harry shrugged. “No telling. We’ll be in the general area by lunchtime. Finding whatever is there might take days. Or never happen. Look around. There could be a city a hundred feet away and we’d never know.”

  She glanced around at the almost impenetrable jungle. “True. That would be very disappointing.”

  “If we don’t find anything, I imagine my father will send someone else to look. So, all things being equal, I’d rather find it first.”

  “Competitive much?”

  He took a few bites of something that might once have been eggs. “I make it a habit to never let my family get one over on me. Nathan almost captured you, so I have to make up for it by screwing things up for my father. It’s complicated. Even if it takes a few days, I want to know what that site is before he does.”

  They broke camp half an hour later and resumed their trek. In the end, they didn’t have to do a lot of searching. There was a big hill overlooking the general area. Sandra climbed a tree at the top to get a look.

  “I have something to the northeast. A gap in the trees. It might indicate ruins.”

  All Harry could see was undergrowth. He waited for Sandra to climb back down and sent Rex off in the indicated direction. Odds were that he wouldn’t find anything.

  And, in fact, Rex didn’t find any ruins. He did find something strange about the clearing. The gap was a perfectly circular clearing about a hundred feet across.

  Even the undergrowth was missing. The limbs from the surrounding trees hid the spooky symmetry from the air, breaking up the curve. Bare ground was all that greeted them. Only a few dead limbs lay in the open.

  Harry stopped at the edge, his finely honed subconscious screaming at him to back up. It thought he was about to be ambushed. He wasn’t entirely certain it was wrong.

  He glanced over at Jess. Her expression told him this wasn’t what she’d expected, either.

  “Can you tell me why there aren’t any plants in there?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I’ve never heard of anything like this.” She stepped out into the open before he could grab her and ran her hand over the ground. “It feels like regular dirt.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be out there. What if it’s some kind of poison?”

  “One that works in a perfect circle? Doubtful. And even in poisoned areas, some plants are hardier than others. There’s no natural reason for a clearing like this.”

  Harry couldn’t think of one, either. “Spread out, everyone. If there’s a group of people cleaning this spot, I don’t want to be surprised if they come calling.”

  He stepped out beside Jess. “Why would someone clear a random spot in the jungle?”

  “Because it isn’t random. It means something to them. Let’s give the ground in the middle a better look.”

  She marched to the center of the clearing resolutely while he followed behind her, his weapon up and scanning for threats. It felt like the trees were staring at him.

  Jess squatted and ran her hand across the ground. “This feels different. More compacted.” She opened her pack and dug inside, producing a small hand pick. “I grabbed this from the camp in case we needed to dig.”

  Within a few minutes, she had a section of the dirt dug up. It didn’t go down far. Maybe six inches under the surface, she found stone.

  “This isn’t natural,” she said. “See the tool marks? Someone put this here.”

  That made him shake his head. “Why cover something with stone and then bury it?”

  “Because you want to protect whatever is under it. We might not be able to find out why the man marked this area by his book. We’re not set up to dig up anything like this.”

  “How far out does it go?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  She moved a few feet over and dug into the ground. “More stone here. And this looks like a seam. Maybe there’s a buried trapdoor.”

  Rex came out of the jungle as she started digging again. “I found a trail off to the east. There were some bare footprints. That might mean locals. It doesn’t appear to have been used in the last week or so.”

  Harry stared off in that direction. “Post a watch. Tripwire protocol.”

  “Copy that. I’ll put people out in the other directions, too. If we see anything, I’ll warn you trouble is coming.”

  “Hey,” Jess said. “I found a handle.”

  Harry examined it as Rex headed back out to set the perimeter watch. Sure enough, the stone slab had an area carved out so that someone could lift it. That wasn’t to say that the two of them would be able to do so by themselves.

  “Let’s see how big the door is,” he said.

  It took them working in turns for half an hour to uncover the slab. It was a dozen feet across. That meant it was far too heavy for the two of them to budge. It must weigh tons. Still, it only had the one handhold.

  He grasped the stone and pulled upward. The rock groaned and rose on his end. “It must have a counterbalance. That’s pretty advanced. Did the Mayans know how to do something like that? And should it still be working?”

  “Damned if I know.” A flight of stairs descended into the darkness. They also looked like worked stone, but were carved and fitted together. It was obvious from the undisturbed dirt that no one had been down there in a long, long time.

  He pondered their options and decided he wanted to know more. “Let’s go take a look. Watch out for hidden death traps, Doctor Jones.”

  “Call me Indiana,” Jess said with a grin. She pulled an appropriated flashlight from her pack and started carefully down the steps.

  Chapter Eight

  Jess proceeded down the steps with caution. Just because Harry had been joking when he mentioned Indiana Jones didn’t mean there weren’t traps for the unwary. She slid over to the right as far as possible. That way she wouldn’t trigger something under the center of a step. Unless she was supposed to be on the left.

  The stairs went a lot further down than she’d expected, spiraling gently to the right. Was that a Mayan feature? She wasn’t sure. By the time she reached the bottom, she guessed they were at least fifty feet below ground level.

  She expected a corridor, but found herself standing on the edge of a vaulted chamber. The walls looked like closely fitted stone. Heavier blocks made up the floor just in front of her,
but that wasn’t the most interesting thing in view.

  “Holy crap!” Harry said as he stepped up beside her. “Is that a spaceship?”

  Jess had to admit that it certainly looked like one. Its high tech lines were completely out of place in the ancient hiding place. As if the tablet she’d recovered weren’t enough, this proved that the man in the burial chamber had come from space.

  It stretched out about the length of a commuter bus, with wings that looked extendable. Much of its bulk was lost in the darkness. Her flashlight was totally inadequate to see the ship as a whole.

  Something had mangled the front of the vehicle. The very lines of the frame seemed skewed. This ship had crash-landed.

  Jess took a deep breath and turned off her wonder. It was time to be a space construction engineer. “Okay. We need to take some pictures of this thing and, if possible, get inside.”

  Harry seemed unconvinced. “We might have unhappy visitors before very long. My team is good, but we don’t have enough people to stop a howling mob. We need to get a real security team to cover this area before we go all gaga over the spaceship.” His expression soured. “Even if they are my father’s people.”

  Jess shook her head. “Harry, this thing has been buried for a long, long time. I’m safe here. Go up and use your sat phone to call for help. Your people, his people, I don’t care. This site must be protected.”

  He tugged a small box off his belt. It had an earpiece with a long cord, so it must’ve been a radio. “Put this on. I’ll try to stay in range so you can yell if you run into trouble. And so that you can get word if we have guests.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he continued. “Have you ever shot a pistol?”

  Deadly weapons weren’t really her thing. “I’ve been to the range with friends a few times.”

  He shucked his pack and dug a holstered pistol out of it. “This belonged to one of the bad guys. Hang it on your belt. You probably won’t need it, but if the crap hits the fan, I want you to be able to defend yourself.”

  She wasn’t comfortable with the idea, but didn’t turn him down. Yes, she’d been to the range, but it hadn’t been the most comfortable experience. Guns were loud and scared her more than a little. She believed they caused more problems than they solved. He obviously had a different worldview.

  Still, she was in the middle of the Guatemalan jungle with people trying to kill or kidnap her. It seemed like an appropriate precaution.

  Jess listened to his short safety lecture carefully. If circumstances forced her to use the damned thing, she wanted to do it correctly. And, his warning to be certain what she was shooting at was only common sense. With her luck, she’d shoot at a bad guy and it would be him. No doubt, that was exactly what he was afraid of.

  She slid the holstered weapon onto her belt and pocketed the spare magazine.

  Once Harry was gone, she turned her full attention to the ship. She doubted it had made such a neat hole in the ground. That meant the Mayans had dug this area out, lowered the ship into it, and built the roof and stairs to conceal it.

  That was a lot of work.

  A rough estimate of the ship’s weight convinced her they hadn’t lowered it in. No primitive ropes would’ve been able to support it. Perhaps they’d dug out the hole, created a gentle slope, and used logs to ease it into place.

  Jess dismissed that line of thought. Someone would figure it out. She needed to examine the vessel.

  She circled the ship, taking pictures to document it. Once she had the ground level exterior covered, she made a closer pass. She didn’t want to spend too much time on any one thing, but she couldn’t stop examining the external fixtures.

  Time had damaged so much. Metal left out in the air for long periods often decayed in ways many people didn’t consider. Rust was only the most common kind of damage. It was a testament to its builders that this thing still existed at all.

  The ship, of course, would never move under its own power again. The stresses would tear it apart. Yet the technology it contained could hurl them into the future with a number of leaps and bounds. Some of the exterior equipment was recognizable, most was not.

  “You okay down there?”

  Jess jumped at Harry’s voice in her ear. She ordered her racing heart to slow down and searched for the button to transmit.

  “I’m fine. Just taking pictures and looking at the equipment on the hull. Any sign of visitors?”

  “Not yet, but I have Rex putting out some tripwires. We have some that will warn us silently if anyone is coming. I need to call my father, too. I really can’t justify keeping you in a dangerous situation like this any longer. Dammit.”

  She could hear the frustration in his voice. She didn’t understand the circumstances behind their relationship, but she sympathized. Her brothers occasionally sounded like that when complaining about her.

  “Someone else was always going to take over this site,” she said reasonably. “He’ll guard it, but the Guatemalan government will find out soon enough. We’re only temporary caretakers.”

  “Maybe I should’ve called them directly. Probably not. The corruption is so endemic down here that we wouldn’t have any idea who’d take possession. How long will you be down there?”

  “How long until the new protective force arrives and kicks us out?”

  He laughed. “I should’ve guessed. Call me if you find anything dangerous or if you need any help.”

  “Will do.”

  Jess returned her attention to the ship. How could she get in?

  * * * * *

  Nathan watched Harry from the safety of the hill. He couldn’t see him directly, but the micro-drone he’d sent in transmitted the visual in maximum HD.

  His brother’s strange actions convinced him that he’d been right to take a risk and follow them.

  What was he up to? Why come all the way out here to this hidden site? And how had they known it was even here?

  Harry had left the workers to the police and came out to the middle of nowhere. They’d dug up some kind of stone slab and now the woman was underground. It was a mystery, and he hated mysteries. Someone always died, and it was rarely the self-righteous prick that deserved it.

  With the forces opposing him, Nathan couldn’t do anything but watch, but that was interesting enough. Something in the pyramid must’ve led them here. Or something the archaeologist had discovered. There was no telling.

  Actually, he might be able to get an idea, but only if his idiot brother moved away from the hole in the ground. That meant Nathan needed to exercise patience. How boring.

  He settled in to wait and watch. If the opportunity presented itself, he’d send the drone down the hole.

  * * * * *

  Harry mulled over what Jess had said and called his father with a sigh. Best to get this over with.

  “Harry. Are you ready to tell me what this is all about?” his father asked when he answered.

  “Not over an unsecure line, no. We’re ready for a pickup, though. We’ll also need a security force. There’s something here that needs guarding.”

  “So call the police. That’s not my problem.”

  Harry smiled humorlessly. “Oh, I think you’ll want to send some people. You know how you’re always raving about how good your word is? Well, this is the time to trust what I’m saying. You want a strong security force at the coordinates I’m sending you as soon as possible. You have an interest. You just don’t know it yet.”

  His father was silent for a moment. “Very well. I can have a small team to your general area in about an hour. It will take at least two more to get a larger group of guards in place. Which is better?”

  “Both. We’re not in immediate danger, but that could change on very short notice. I’ll send you the coordinates. There’s a clearing large enough for landing a small helicopter, but rappelling in would be faster and safer. I’ll talk with you again once I get Miss Cook in your hands.”

  He hung up before his father co
uld respond.

  Things could still go to hell in an hour, but they were making strides toward getting Jess to safety. He’d best go check up on her. Make sure she wasn’t doing something dangerous. Of course, with strange technology, how would he know?

  * * * * *

  Clayton considered the phone in his hand for a moment. This kind of behavior wasn’t typical for his oldest son. If Harry had something to say, he’d say it and damn the consequences. Whatever he was hiding, it must be important.

  He’d already relocated to the Yucatan Spaceport, so he’d pick them up personally. He wouldn’t go to this kind of trouble for just anyone, but this hinted at fast moving and important events. Events that he needed to know about as soon as possible.

  His personal assistant looked up from his computer as Clayton came out of his makeshift office. “Yes, sir?”

  “Hold all my calls and notify my pilot that I’m on the way. I want to be in the air as soon as I buckle in.”

  He didn’t wait for a response. His man was more than capable of handling simple instructions.

  * * * * *

  It only took Jess a minute to find the way into the ship. Of course, that didn’t mean she had a clue on how to open it. Or even the assurance that it was possible after all this time. It might be corroded shut. Or need power to function.

  The hatch itself was about the size of a double doorway. More than big enough for a person, but small for cargo. The hatch failed to budge when she tugged on the handle, so she was pessimistic about her chances of getting inside.

  “Coming down,” Harry said over the radio. “Don’t shoot me.”

  She glanced over at the stairway and saw his light. “You’re good. This time.”

  “Thanks,” he said dryly. “How’s it going?”

  “I’m trying to open a hatch with no success. Maybe you have a crowbar?”

  “I have a wrecking tool, but let’s hope you’re not seriously thinking of destroying things.”

  Jess waited for him to arrive and gestured at the hatch. “This doesn’t seem to have an exterior unlocking mechanism. The handle doesn’t turn. It looks as though I should just have to slide it open, but it won’t budge.”