Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “I doubt they’ll be risking their psionics to teleport down,” Karklosea said. “We just need to stay out of sight of any transports they send.”

  “And orbital scans,” Chloe muttered as she stepped toward the rear of the craft. “Grab a copy of the logs of the transport if we don’t make it, let’s at least make sure whoever finds it learns the truth of what happened.”

  “Agreed,” Karklosea said as she reached for the transport’s data crystals.

  Chloe took a long look at all who came aboard the transport: herself, the pilot, two other crew members, along with Karklosea and Stolanei. Not enough, she thought. A transport this size could have carried so many more people. People who were probably gunned down during the chaos.

  All six of them utilized the environment suits from the storage compartment, while rifles were handed out from the overhead weapons storage. Regrouping with the survivors was the top priority, and there was probably a chance that the order would send its ground forces over to ensure that nobody lived through the crash.

  Karklosea’s was wobbling back and forth and at one point, it looked as if she was going to faint. “You okay?” Chloe said.

  “Just a little dizzy,” she said. “That psionic interface, it’s grown stronger.”

  The transport doors opened and the yellow, hostile environment of the rocky, sandy terrain came into view. The dim light from Barnard’s Star hung above them, never moving across the skies of the tidally locked planet. The six began to walk through the sands, six sets of footprints were left behind, footprints Chloe hoped nobody would follow.

  Stolanei stopped suddenly, he too showed visual signs through his helmets visor that he was dizzy. He took a knee in the sand and used his rifle to keep his balance as its barrel was pressed down into the sand like a pole.

  “She’s right,” he said “I started to feel dizzy the instant we stepped out.”

  “Let’s keep going,” Karklosea said. “I think we’ll be fine, just not our normal selves.”

  “Nothing is normal these days,” Chloe said.

  “There’s a small settlement to the east,” one of the crew members said, studying a data pad in their hands. “And the transport landed to the north, the escape pods fell beyond that.”

  “Let’s get to the transport first,” Stolanei said, rising to his feet. “There should be more people aboard it and we could use their help in assisting those that from the escape pods.”

  An hour had passed and the six stood at the top of a tall sand dune overlooking a narrow valley, it being their chosen path toward the transport. Should they run into an ambush, the walls of the valley and large boulders should provide them with some cover from weapons fire. It also helped keep them below sensor scans across the surface. ESP on the other hand? Luck was the only thing that was going to save from that.

  “So Stolanei, what was so important earlier?” Chloe asked him, during their trek into the valley.

  “Well . . .” he said then paused. “About your DNA and the blockers within your body.”

  “How did you know about all that?”

  “I used to be a member of the Whisper.”

  Chloe stopped moving instantly, while the other five continued to venture into the valley. “What?”

  Stolanei turned back to address her. “Remember when we first met? And you asked if I was part of the CIA?”

  “I guess I wasn’t that far off . . . the Whisper is the CIA equivalent for Radiance.”

  She sprinted briefly to catch back up with the rest of them. They climbed over several large rocks, before leaping down a small slope. The rock faces that surrounded them reminded Chloe of some of the landscape she and her team had to cross during her tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who would have thought, years later, she’d be conducting operations on planets far away from Earth, in an alien body that wasn’t hers?

  “Before I resigned from the Whisper,” Stolanei said. “There was talk about establishing a presence on Rasi, Courelia city to be exact. They might be able to restore your true memories while transferring Chloe’s memories back into her body.”

  And if the current theory was correct, Vaishea was the real Chloe. Wherever the hell she was. Chloe grimaced and remained silent, there were enough problems to deal with as it was. Being reminded that her memories were ripped away from her body and placed inside a lookalike was not something she needed to think about.

  Thirty minutes later they came up out of the valley and toward a sand covered clearing where the transport lay. They had to come up with a new game plan. There were several dead bodies lay around the transport, and a lone person in an environment suit standing watch. All six of them switched their communication channels to a different one, on the off chance that an order member was lurking around, eavesdropping on their communication chatter.

  “Bodies . . .” Chloe said as she and the rest hunker down behind boulders. “Looks like not everyone survived the crash.”

  “Or they were ambushed . . .” Karklosea said, then fell over. This time she was unresponsive when her body crashed to the sand covered ground.

  “Karklosea,” Chloe said, while she and two members from the crew assisted Karklosea.

  “I’ll go on ahead,” Stolanei said, rising from their cover.

  “Understood,” Chloe said to him, then addressed the remaining personnel. “Pull back into the valley. Make sure it’s safe just in case there was an ambush.”

  They nodded left and dragged Karklosea’s body with them. Chloe peered over the side of the boulder while Stolanei walked toward the transport, past the bodies and gained the attention of the lone man standing watch. Neither of the two drew their rifles. That’s a good sign.

  Stolanei spoke, asking the man what happened. There was no reply. Of course not, Stolanei along with everyone else switched the communication channels. Stolanei switched his back to the default one, Chloe did the same to listen in, but kept silent.

  “What happened?” Stolanei asked.

  “They didn’t make it,” Doctor Wyuei said.

  Stolanei hadn’t been told that Wyuei was with the order. And saying something now would result in Wyuei hearing her voice, knowing she escaped and knowing that the others including an unresponsive Karklosea were hiding in the valley. It was up to Stolanei now, Chloe hoped he’d clue in, and leave and not drop any hints the rest of them were nearby.

  Stolanei gazed down at the bodies and said. “I can see that, what happened?”

  “It was the heretics they were hunting us,” Wyuei said. “They came out of nowhere gunned us down.”

  Bull-fucking-shit.

  “Just you survived?” Wyuei asked him.

  Stolanei don’t say it, don’t say it! Words Chloe wished she could bellow, but keeping her cover was critical, now more than ever. She held onto her rifle, in anticipation of what would happen next. Given all the bodies that were on the ground, Wyuei had to have had help. Help that could have been hiding inside the transport.

  Stolanei gave his answer. “Yeah, just me. That’s why I’m glad to see you, was starting to wonder if anyone else from the Explorer made it out alive.”

  “I see,” Wyuei said, turning his back to Stolanei. “I presume you are alone then?”

  “Yes, you’re the first person I’ve seen alive since my escape.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  Wyuei rapidly spun back around, this time his rifle was drawn. One bullet entered and exited through Stolanei’s head and helmet. His body flew backward and landed face up as air from his suit escaped into the hostile environment. His blood spewed out from his exit wound and mixed into the sand below him, his lifeless body added to the body count around him.

  Chloe turned away from the sight. Fury. Absolute fury burned inside her. She maintained her firm grip on her rifle and held back the desire to run in, screaming and shooting.

  “The rest of the escape pods should be this way,” Wyuei said as two armored rangers stepped out of the transport, the
y were clearly members of the Celestial Order. “You stand watch,” he said to one of them. “And you come with me.”

  Chloe heard enough and switched channels, she couldn’t hold back any longer and yelled loudly, raging and cursing. Stolanei was dead. All that work on staying silent to keep him alive was for nothing. And what of the intel he had about the Whisper in the system? It was gone forever now. Courelia city on Rasi, that’s all she had to work with. Three minutes and god knows how many deep breathes later, Chloe was calm and focused. She kept the anger inside her bottled up, saving it for the moment when she found Wyuei and his partners.

  She brought the rest of the team hiding out in the valley up to speed, she didn’t have much of a choice, as her yelling had made them all extremely concerned. Chloe forced herself to look at the transport, but she avoided looking at Stolanei’s body. Two sets of footprints moved away from the transport over a sand dune, Wyuei and one of the rangers. The ranger that was ordered to stand watch remained, and circled around the transport with his rifle ready for action.

  Chloe waited for the ranger to patrol and walk behind the transport. Once he was out of visual range, she got up and ran quickly toward the side of the transport while the pilot stood watch over her and waited for the right time to strike. She reached down to pick up a small rock then hurled it into the distance. The sound of it falling back down and crashing to the ground put the ranger on edge, and he moved toward the sound.

  As he moved away from the transport Chloe crept up behind him from the opposite side. His head scanned the horizon, nothing out of the ordinary, until he turned back to the transport and saw her footprints coming down from the entrance to the valley. It was too late for him, multiple point-blank rifle rounds from Chloe’s weapon shattered his shields, when he turned around to address her. Two harpoon shaped rounds fired by the pilot entered his head afterward. One down, three to go.

  Chloe moved over to check on Stolanei, while the remaining four moved out from the valley and toward their newly captured transport ship. Chloe hoped that Stolanei had some psionic trickery planned that saved his life, and that he was faking being dead the entire time.

  She looked down and saw the painful truth. There weren’t any cunning tricks, he was gone.

  Chapter Two

  Mountain range, Rasi, Barnard’s Star System

  Jazz’s one free hand held on to the ledge of the cliff. Bulky white feathery snowflakes from the blizzard continued to mar his visibility and obscure where Jainuzei had gone. He moved his free hand upward in an attempt to pull himself back up. As it touched the fragile surface of the cliff a chunk of it gave away and tumbled slowly down into the dark abyss below while forcing his hand back down. Once again Jazz found himself hanging on with one hand, then felt the surface crack. What little support he had was going to break apart.

  Jazz looked down to get a better view of what was below him, he hoped that the impending fall would be survivable. It wasn’t, not even with Rasi’s low gravity. The cliff cracked some more, and he felt his arm lower slightly then felt firmer vibrations from the environment around him. He looked to the side and saw the source of the tremors, an avalanche.

  Great, because I need more problems right now, he thought.

  The snow from the avalanche fell down another slope close to him, it piled down into the dip below and filled its once dark abyss with its cold frozen grace. His fall would now turn into a fall directly into the snow from the avalanche. A hand from above moved down, gripped his, and slowly pulled him back up. He used his free hand to quickly dust away the layer of snow that had fallen onto his visor. It was Vaishea. She was alive, and doing everything in her power to ensure he would be too. There was just one problem. The ledge began to give away at a faster rate thanks to Vaishea’s body kneeling on top of it as she continued to pull Jazz back up. Nevertheless, she continued to pull him up, if the ledge held long enough for Jazz to regain his footing, the two could leap backward quickly before it fell.

  Almost there.

  Jazz got back to his feet. He saw Vaishea smile at him through her visor, the lights from inside her helmet highlighted her delight that he was alive. A distraction, Jazz briefly forgot about the unstable ledge the two of them stood on, and the importance of running at that point.

  It crumbled into rocks and the two fell slowly, holding on to each other as they vanished from sight into the darkness and snow blanked slope below. Their fall was broken by the snow that fell from the avalanche below. They rolled and spilled down the newly formed snow hill for several minutes. Jazz felt his body stop moving as their rolling came to an end. He saw and felt nothing but snow as he began to dig his way upward to the surface. He saw Vaishea’s head pop out from the snow seconds after he did.

  “What took ya so long?” he asked her.

  “I was left hanging at the other side,” she said. “That kick he gave me was unexpected.”

  “He’s got power I’ll give him that,” Jazz said and began to drag himself through the chest high snow. He came toward the start of a long incline that went down toward lower-lying land and away from the mountains. Or so he hoped. The blizzard was still making it hard to see far. “So . . . are you familiar with human sports?” he asked her while looking down at the slope.

  “Not particularly.”

  “There’s this one interesting one called skiing,” he said. “I’mma give you some bad lessons in it right now.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well for starters we ain’t got no skiing gear, which is kinda important for skiing. But by the looks of things, skiing down this hill might just be our way out.”

  He moved over toward several large and long icicles hanging off the rock face, they were almost as tall as Jazz, and extremely thick. Low gravity caused them to form the way they did. The icicles would serve as perfect makeshift skiing poles. He handed two of them to Vaishea who looked at them, confused as to what she was expected to do with them.

  They approached the slope while he gave her a quick rundown on how skiing works to be exact skiing without skis, booting. Jazz leaped down first and hoped that the boots of his environment suit would keep his footing steady as he slid down the hill, using his icicle poles to guide and stabilize him. Vaishea followed behind and tried her best to mimic Jazz’s actions. The tasked turned out to be a lot easier than he thought it would be, the low gravity once again saved their asses and provided a means of escape. On Earth such an act would have resulted in them wiping out several times as they went down the hill, but they did still come close a few times.

  Several minutes later, and so far, so good. They were moving further away from the mountains and toward the surface of Rasi. Jazz looked back and saw Vaishea was still keeping up and even possibly enjoying herself judging by the random chuckles. The ground began to rumble once again, another avalanche was triggered, this time it was posed to swallow them.

  “Aw fuck!” Jazz yelled in response.

  A fierce race against the nature of Rasi ensued as tons of snow and ice fell from the mountaintops, came crashing down, and plowed toward Vaishea and Jazz. Periodically Jazz looked back to see how far away the raging snow field was, and if Vaishea was still safe, she was, after all, behind him and therefore the closest to it. The slope they slid across leveled off and became flat, there was no more sliding down. From this point, they’d need to rely on their feet

  They made a hard turn to the right and ran. Some of the snow from the avalanche raged high above them in the skies, creating a mesmerizing sight for the two of them. Wave upon wave of snow were slowly moving and falling. It was thick enough to block out the snowfall from the blizzard, and thick enough to bury them forever unless they could run out of its range. Clumps of snow the size of basketballs gradually fell between the two as they ran. Jazz saw a clearing where snowfall was still coming down, and he hoped a safe zone, where the avalanche’s snow above them was not going to land.

  The huge pillows of snow started to fall rapidly, the avalanc
he was less than a kilometer above, and seconds away from touching down. They made it at last. The blizzard snowfall surrounded them, the dark clouds above and the foot of the mountain behind them, as the first waves from the avalanche finally crashed down in a maelstrom. Huffing and puffing was the only sounds the two made as they stopped to take a breather having done their fair share of exercise for the day.

  Vaishea looked back at the chaos asked Jazz. “Humans do that for sport?”

  “Well with better equipment, gravity, and mountains that ain’t trying to swallow you.” He sat in the snow, and his sore legs thanked him for the act. “But . . . let’s not do that again.”

  Lyonria structure, Oyuri, Barnard’s Star System

  Hannah was still upset over Torval’s failure.

  Had he taken the proper gem all three of the goddess could have broken the seal on the wormhole generator that rested in front of her. Emelia may have taken refuge inside Jazz’s body, but she was still partly linked to the gem that once held her essence. That link, as small as it was, would have been enough to control Jazz’s mind and force him to find a way to come here like the rest.

  Failure. Failure. Failure. It was the only words that flowed through Hannah’s mind. She was born for this moment, born to be the key that would unlock a gateway into aether space, and pave the path for the goddesses’ return. They trusted her. She failed them, her visions of what to come, failed her. She couldn’t see the future, not clearly.

  Why?

  “Our missing sister can’t utilize this orb,” Aviuheart said.

  Nivrui and Aviuheart stood next to Hannah, side by side. Their bright white gowns emitted light across Hannah’s black Lolita gothic attire.

  “Her human host must bring her here,” Nivrui said.

  “Jazz is still in the system,” Hannah said. “But I don’t know if he’ll be here!”

  “The Hannah’s visions are clouded,” Nivrui said.

  “The interference has grown strong,” Aviuheart said.