Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “I was starting to enjoy the silence,” Rivera said drily. “So, what are we looking for?”

  “That over there.” Sarpanit directed her across the crater to a damaged statue. Rivera stood ahead of it, scanning it with her HNI’s built-in EAD. Sarpanit read the data that displayed over Rivera’s eyes, namely the ancient hieroglyphics.

  “Do you know what they mean?” she asked.

  “This place used to belong to Tiamat until Marduk conquered it and turned it into a trophy lock up,” Sarpanit said. “There should be an altar close by with a valuable item on it.”

  “The bunker maybe?”

  “Hmm, yes it might be there,” Sarpanit said. “Everything you see here was originally used to decorate the outside of the shrine.”

  Rivera walked to the entrance of the bunker. Feelings of guilt started to wrap around her thoughts. She was, after all, assisting a force that murdered people she cared for, a force that brought pain, tears, and negative vibes. She told herself repeatedly that she was only doing this to prevent further loss of life, starting with hers.

  Cracked stairs led them inside, holo lights flashed on illuminating the pitch-black paths of the forgotten catacombs. The altar was found at the end, too bad there was nothing on it.

  “It’s gone,” Rivera said out loud.

  “It’s gone,” Eicelea called out to her from behind. “Because I had it removed for further study if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  Rivera’s holo flashlight found Eicelea and Vynei standing near the entrance to the altar’s room.

  Sarpanit groaned. “Ask her where exactly.”

  “Sarpanit, what are we looking for?—”

  “Do as I say!” the AI Goddess snapped with rage.

  “Where exactly did you have it moved to?” she reluctantly asked Eicelea.

  “It’s being studied in a temporary outpost in one of your cities. Baghdad, I believe it’s called,” Eicelea said. “Do not worry, human, it will not leave this planet, your government won’t allow that, much to my disappointment.”

  “Baghdad . . .” Rivera whispered to herself. She felt her HNI conduct a number of internet searches without her consent, all of them bringing up webpages about the city of Baghdad, its location and history.

  “Of all the places . . . why there?” Sarpanit moaned. “This could be catastrophic to this planet should the Draconians return.”

  Sarpanit, as devious as she was, was no ally of the Draconians, and obviously wasn’t a member of the wipe-out-all-humans club either. In some way, she was there to help, though her aid would come at a cost, devotion to Marduk, quite possibly undoing all the work Rivera and the Carl Sagan’s crew performed in Sirius.

  “If you want me to be loyal and help you,” Rivera asked the AI in her head. “Can you at least tell me everything I need to know?”

  “Tiamat’s breastplate was stored in this bunker,” Sarpanit said. “It was the only thing of value inside, now this Vorcambreum took it.”

  “She’s most likely trying to study it; she’s an archaeologist after all.”

  “Or could be secretly an agent for the dragons. It would make sense as to why she had it brought to Baghdad.”

  “What’s the big deal about Baghdad?”

  A satellite map of Baghdad appeared over Rivera’s eyes. “Baghdad is where the city of Babylon used to be a great many years ago.”

  “And?”

  “There’s an artifact buried there, one of many the Draconians are searching for,” Sarpanit explained. “Gathering them in one location will only make the Draconians job easier should they return. That Vorcambreum, she could study it anywhere, yet she chose to have it flown over there to study it? She’s making an offering to the Draconians. You and I will need to put an end to it.”

  Rivera began to make her way out. Eicelea and Vynei were still there, probably wondering why she was standing there having an internal conversation with herself.

  “If what you say is true, then let’s tell the UNE,” Rivera said.

  “What will you tell them?” Sarpanit laughed. “That the AI in your head told you so?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Fabricate what story you wish,” Sarpanit said. “But they won’t believe you without proof. I’m that proof, and I still wish to remain in the shadows.”

  Rivera’s body partially froze. Sarpanit’s control was at it again. The AI Goddess forced her to look at Eicelea and Vynei.

  “On second thought, befriend them,” Sarpanit said deviously. “Convince her to take you to Baghdad, and this outpost she speaks of.”

  19 Karklosea

  Large Hut

  Old Aryile Tree City, Aervounis, Luminous System

  November 1, 2118, 15:33 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  “Lord Commander, I was not informed you would be here.”

  Karklosea grunted softly at the sound of Jainuzei’s voice and his unexpected arrival. She kept the blade of her redeemer close to the neck of her captured target, Dienei. She tracked his HNI communication coordinates to the ancient Aryile tree city, infiltrating the group’s secret hideout within the now-burning jungles.

  She secured a data crystal from a small portable computer station Dienei had stood at after she forced him to his knees. She felt Jainuzei’s eyes on her when she slipped the crystal in her armor’s storage compartment.

  Various computers, weapons, and supplies had been hastily packed up in the large hut they all stood, in preparation for evacuation she figured. The forest fires were set to turn the tree city into ashes soon. Given the disorganized state of the hut with its cargo crates still open, and unpacked weapons scattered across the floor, she guessed the group’s evacuation had been a last-minute decision. That was until someone from elsewhere stormed the city and started shooting. Looking at Jainuzei lowering his rifle, Karklosea was able to put together exactly who that someone was.

  “Stand down, Jainuzei,” she bellowed to him. “I have this under control.”

  Jainuzei didn’t stand down. He moved forward, eying Dienei’s surrendering body up and down. There was anger burning in Jainuzei’s eyes. Dienei was long overdue for an age rollback gene therapy having spent Gods knows how many months living in the jungles. His graying beard and rough appearance was proof of that.

  The previously shut door to the hut exploded, sending tiny fragments of splinters past Jainuzei and Karklosea. Neither flinched, Dienei wanted to, but Karklosea’s glowing psionic blade had ways of making men stay put.

  Three humans entered the hut armed with various types of rifles. One was a psionic if Karklosea were to guess by her skintight armor and a web of wires and cybernetics meshed into it and her body. The others, a human male, wore a UNE military uniform, oddly enough, no combat armor, as with the human woman with him. She held a rifle that didn’t look like it was made by human, Hashmedai, or Radiance hands. On that note of hands, parts of her hands glowed blue due to strange glyphs etched onto them—

  It was Rebecca Foster.

  It took Karklosea a few seconds, but she recognized the face from the human newsfeeds that were broadcast into the knowledge network. This was the woman that was placed in command of the Kepler, the woman Karklosea prayed day and night that would come and rid the galaxy of the dragons.

  What was she, these two other humans, and Jainuzei doing here? It wasn’t safe for them, Foster especially. They walked into the main hideout of the Soldiers of Marduk, a fanatic cult of revolutionaries that viewed Foster as something to be sacrificed to their God Marduk. Foster needed to leave at once before they realized who she was. And Karklosea? She needed to leave with Dienei and the intel he had in his HNI, assuming Jainuzei would let her do that.

  The human male spoke, Karklosea wasn’t sure which of the many human languages it was. But the tone of his voice sounded urgent enough to make Foster, he and her psionic crew member leave the hut. There must have been another wave of the Marduk cultists about to enter the fray.

  “Dienei . . .” Jain
uzei said. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” Jainuzei saw right through Dienei’s vastly different appearance.

  Dienei’s eyes shifted beyond Karklosea’s glowing redeemer blade. “That’s a question I should be asking you, Jainuzei.”

  Jainuzei moved closer to the two. Karklosea held her hand out to him and prepared to swing her redeemer at Jainuzei if worst came to. “Jainuzei,” she said. “Stand down, he’s—”

  “A dishonorable man!” Jainuzei’s furious voice yelled, before throwing a magnetic pistol at Dienei. “Do the right thing and bring what little honor you can to your pitiful existence.”

  The pistol fell at Dienei’s knees. Karklosea’s redeemer blade remained near his neck. Jainuzei’s rifle rose up, who he was aiming at, she couldn’t see. She was more concerned about what Dienei’s next move was. If he was quick, he could arm himself and aim the gun at her. And if Jainuzei was secretly working with the Marduk cultists, which could very well be possible, then Karklosea would be faced with two enemies with guns pointed at her.

  In the background, explosions and weapons fire crackled through the air outside. Foster and her team had met heavy resistance. There were too many ways the standoff could go wrong and not enough ways it could go right.

  The first wrong thing happened, Dienei armed himself with the pistol. No, Jainuzei armed Dienei with the pistol. This was intentional. She was close to the truth. And Jainuzei couldn’t let that happen.

  She hesitated to slash Dienei’s neck. In the end, she needed to take him alive. It was that hesitation that gave him the chance to escape and lean backward, creating a wider gap between her. She rose her left arm up, ensuring her shimmering psionic shield protected her body from the spray of bullets that came next. The shield flashed purple six times in rapid succession.

  Jainuzei’s rifle fired next. There was no need for Karklosea to block his bullets with her shield.

  “Why did you do that?!” Karklosea screamed at Jainuzei, after rising up and away from Dienei’s unmoving body painting the wooden floors red. There was no point in trying to recover his HNI. His head was gone, turned into dark red pieces of flesh spread out all over the floor.

  “He was going to shoot you,” Jainuzei said, lowering his smoking weapon.

  “Yes, with the weapon you armed him with!”

  “I was merely giving him a way out. Take his own life to repent his actions against the Gods.”

  “That’s for me to decide! This was my investigation!”

  “This?” Jainuzei’s hand waved about at the half packed up secret base which was quickly filling with smoke from the flames outside. “This was my mission, not a Templar’s. Your duty is to defend and enforce the law, my duty is to attack.”

  “I am defending,” she spat. “I’m defending the council from future attacks by Marduk cultists!”

  Jainuzei grimaced at her comment. “Marduk cultists?”

  “Don’t be coy; you know what’s going on here.”

  The three humans returned inside the hut once the sounds of the gunfight outside came to an end. The smoke from the fires obscured the ceiling of the hut, and Karklosea could see a lot more red and orange colors from behind the blasted open door than she did minutes ago. The flames were moving fast, the Gods were angry and had little intention of sparing anyone tonight.

  “Captain Foster has a transport beyond the jungles waiting,” Jainuzei said, translating Foster’s human words for her. “Please gather with us, this psionic will teleport us back to it.”

  Karklosea’s mission was over. The hideout was minutes away from being turned into ash, most, if not all the cultists, fled the flames or were dead, including one of their supposed leaders, Dienei. Karklosea reluctantly stepped forward and watched the human psionic’s body glow brightly with psionic energy while her eyes shut to focus. Karklosea used to be able to perform long-range teleports. Sometimes she missed those days and teaching her apprentice psionics under her how to master their powers.

  The mystifying blue waves of psionic teleportation light surrounded them and began the process of taking them apart and putting them back together at wherever the humans parked their transport.

  That was until a falling burning tree crashed into the hut. Karklosea knew from past experience that the moment a psionic user lost focus, say from the loud thud of a falling tree and a collapsing and burning hut, they’d be unable to perform their abilities correctly, or at all. In the case of the human psionic part of Foster’s team, the crashing tree prevented her from teleporting everyone away.

  At least, that’s what she assumed after awakening on the jungle’s warm ground.

  Karklosea rose to her feet and coughed several times as the smell of burning wood entered her lungs. She was surrounded by the orange-red blaze that worked hard to turn the jungles into smoldering ash. Looking up, she saw what remained of the large hut, half of it broken apart when the tree fell, and if she didn’t move out of the way, the rest of it would crush her.

  She found her redeemer in the mess of burning debris from the now-dead tree city and then activated her armor’s helmet. State of the art nanomachines went to work, creating her helmet seemingly out of thin air. Once activated, it linked with her HNI, feeding her warnings of the growing temperatures around her, the presence of the fire, and that she had less than an hour of air left. She never did refill her oxygen tank within her armor as she wasn’t planning on going into space . . . or walking through a burning jungle.

  She went to make her escape, hoping the path back to her transport was still clear. A holographic map of the jungles flashed inside of her helmet, red flashing blobs were the flames, and they had consumed the small clearing she had landed in. She followed the map to a section of the jungles that remained free of fires, for now.

  When she was five minutes out from the clearing, a voice called out to her, she couldn’t understand them. It had to have been someone speaking a human language. She faced the source of the voice, and a soot-covered Foster ran to her, waving her hands with her strange alien made rifle slung over her shoulders.

  The wildlife of the forest ran past the two, seeking the non-burning jungle patch she was in. The number of creatures fleeing had increased in size, meanwhile, Foster’s human words continued. She was speaking loud, using various hand gestures to communicate. She was doing it at the worst possible time.

  Three Dokadens quickly moved their heads from left to right, scanning with their predatory eyes for the sounds Foster was making. Dokadens were at the top of the food chain in the jungles, and the source of horror stories the Aryile told their children for as long as the Aryile had learned how to speak. They stood on two legs, had no arms, not that it mattered, their speed, agility, and vicious hunting ability more than made up for it. Then there were their large jaws and teeth that could end the life of anything that found its way inside it.

  Karklosea drew her redeemer imbuing it with psionic power, as with her wrist mounted psionic shield and took up a position between Foster and the three beasts. She figured Foster understood the danger they were in, because her rifle came to rise up, and she began to scream ‘fuck’ repeatedly. Fuck was the only word in English Karklosea knew. Like most people, the curse words were the first ones learned. The second word Foster yelled as she pointed at the charging Dokadens was, ‘raptors,’ whatever that meant.

  The Dokadens leaped for Karklosea first, her psionic shield rose to the task of deflecting its biting jaws. Foster’s rifle fired, it launched energy beams that looked exactly like the ones Draconian soldiers used, none of them hit, however, the Dokadens were too fast for her. It was impossible though, nobody in the Union had been able to use captured Draconian weapons. Biometric lockouts prevented it. How was Foster able to? Did she have dragon blood in her body?

  Karklosea stood her ground, swinging her redeemer when the chance came, vaporizing gashes across the leathery flesh of the Dokadens when a slash connected or retreating behind her shield when their jaws lunged forward. Whenev
er one looked to Foster, Karklosea roared loudly with her blade in the air, goading them to focus on her. Karklosea had the armor, psionic shield, and telekinetic thrusts and pulls, the Dokadens needed to attack her. Foster needed to shoot them when their backs were to her.

  After two minutes, the duo was down to one Dokaden as Foster managed to vaporize one that ignored Karklosea, despite her best efforts. Dokadens however always hunted in groups, the lone one fled back into the darkened clearing of trees, the clearing the two needed to venture to. It wasn’t safe to push forward, and it wasn’t safe to return back to the orange and red glowing devastation from behind.

  Karklosea and Foster took their chance in the clearing and used long-dormant animal instincts to keep watch as they moved through the thick tropical trees and vines that had yet to be burned by the incoming flames. Karklosea hoped that human natural instincts were similar to Linl, given the nearly identical physical features both Linl and humans had.

  Foster came to a sudden stop. Karklosea pushed on her back to keep her moving. They couldn’t afford to stand still. It’d make them a perfect target for more Dokadens, plus the flames from behind were bound to catch up sooner or later.

  Karklosea heard exactly why Foster came to a stop. Looking to her left and right were six Dokadens, and one of them bore the deep psionic burns her redeemer had made. The Dokadens hunted in groups, and they kindly reminded Karklosea of that as all six leaped at her, throwing her violently to the ground. Some had been launched away with telekinetic pushes, but not enough. They all took turns biting at her armor, and eventually crushed her helmet.

  The galaxy turned red and black.

  20 Rivera

  Eicelea’s Camp

  Baghdad, Earth, Sol System

  November 1, 2118, 17:13 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  As much as Rivera hated to say it, but Eicelea was a bitch, plain and simple. She was also very easy to sway when you promised her information nobody else had pertaining to archeology.