The Cor Chronicles: Volume 04 - Gods and Steel Read online

  The man’s eyes moved constantly behind his closed eyelids, as if in REM sleep. He had done this when we first found him, and apparently it was a constant state for him. We knew he was aware of us, just as he was aware of everything that occurred on Arcturus V, no matter where it occurred. We didn’t know how it worked, why it worked or what kept it all from breaking. Simply put, the technology was beyond anything we had ever seen, and we’d had no success duplicating it.

  “So what’s the plan?” Hightower asked without pulling his eyes from the living mummy before us.

  “Orders were plain, Doctor,” I replied. “We disconnect him. Make sure he passes peacefully. I will lead a squad down to deactivate the reactors.”

  “If the reactors are down, how will we get out?”

  “The airlocks have manual overrides. It takes some muscle, but that’s no problem,” I replied with a nod towards the marines. “Once outside, we just swim up to the boats.”

  “And get the bends…” Hightower mumbled, kneeling next to the man he was ordered to euthanize.

  I laughed and waived my breather mask. “Not only thirty some meters down using these.”

  Hightower took his time mentally cataloguing and double checking every connection between the computer and the ancient form. The mission briefing had thoroughly explained every single one to the degree that even I could have unplugged the man, and the briefing was written from Hightower’s own examination notes. That wasn’t good enough for the good doctor, and I knew he was stalling. That was fine; a few more minutes wouldn’t change anything.

  “Sir, we have a proximity alert,” announced Private Hiroshi. He was a young man, fresh out of Aldebaran Gateway. Hiroshi’s father was an African American who died before he could marry the Japanese woman who carried his child.

  “What is it?” I asked, striding over to the displays.

  “It looks like a mini-sub, sir. Docking at airlock seven.”

  He brought up a three dimensional display of the entire installation, stripping away the tripod supports that extended to the ocean floor. I rotated the holographic station and zoomed in on the red, blinking light, and sure enough, a small submarine was locking onto the airlock’s docking collar. It might have been big enough for eight men. I zoomed out to calculate the quickest path to that point. It would take two or three minutes to reach it, which was more than enough time for the EMCs aboard to breach the facility.

  “Can you lock it down?” I asked.

  “Negative, sir. There are no locking mechanisms,” Hiroshi answered.

  Damn scientists. “Henner! You, Hiroshi and Johns stay here and protect Doctor Hightower. Stay on the display. Let me know when they breach and where they go. Defend yourselves if necessary.

  “The rest of you with me. Fire only on my orders.”

  Nine marines fell in quickly behind me as I double timed it noisily down the east corridor. Visualizing the schematic, I knew it was only about twenty meters to the first service ladder that could take us down to airlock seven’s level. I immediately started down, sliding fast down the rails and using the rungs to control the drop. I always found it interesting that with all of our accumulated knowledge and technology, basic metal ladders of the kind found on twentieth century naval vessels were still one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to move between decks.

  I was almost at the second level with one more to go when Corporal Henner’s voice came through my receiver. “Sir, they’ve breached and are heading out.”

  “How many?”

  “Six, sir, all armed,” answered Henner. Then he said something that made by blood run cold. “Two are transporting a black case on a lifter.”

  That meant whatever was in it was too heavy for them to carry easily without help. Oh God, it is a warhead.

  “Any indication of what’s inside?” I asked, but I knew the answer.

  “Negative. The station’s internal grid can’t penetrate the case. It must be lead lined.”

  I paused my descent as I considered this information, causing the marines above me to stop suddenly with a few curses. “Understood,” I said quietly. “Where are they headed?”

  “They have accessed a service lift twenty meters from the airlock and have started heading down.”

  I started resuming my slide. There’s nothing down there but the reactors. “What is the Chronicler’s status?” I asked.

  There was a long pause before Hightower came over the link. “The Chronicler has passed,” he said solemnly. “Paul, our mission is complete now. Why don’t we get the hell out of here and let them do whatever they’re going to do?”

  “Because Doctor,” I said, timing my words between my breaths in and out, “this facility, this planet, belongs to SACA, and the EMC has no claim to it. If they mean to destroy it, we have to stop them. Besides, another act of terrorism could ignite the war again.

  “Corporal Henner, pack up and be ready to evac. The Chronicler’s body goes with us. Stay on the monitor, and let me know if they go anywhere other than the reactors.”

  “Affirmative.”

  The reactors were near the very base of the facility, and I knew that the service ladder would end on the level just above them. From there, it was easy to access the next level down. There were ten of these reactors in all, smaller than anything our engineers and scientists had ever seen. They were nuclear certainly, but fusion or fission we couldn’t be sure. They seemed to run indefinitely with a limitless supply of fuel, as they had been in operation for thousands of Arcturian years, and we had been completely unable to penetrate them in any way, even with the station’s own computers. We continued sending teams, but it was as if something blocked us, that is, until Admiral Zheng quarantined the entire facility.

  “Sir,” came Henner’s voice through my receiver, “two have stayed in the level you’re approaching, while the other four have moved into the reactor chamber. The case is with them.”

  The service ladder ended in the middle of an open corridor, and I suddenly threw myself over to one side, hoping to reduce my target profile. I pulled my weapon and looked this way and that, but found no one. Marines started dropping to the deck behind me, for down here it was in fact solid sheet metal decking. Light was minimal, as I suppose the station had never really needed much in its depths, and the corridor itself was both cramped and short in length.

  “Where to, Henner?” I asked.

  “Not far, Commander. Take the corridor thirty meters west, turn left, and they’re in the room at the end.”

  “No alternative route?”

  “Negative,” Henner answered. “Only one way in or out.”

  “Corporal, get out of here. Leave us one boat.”

  “Paul,” came Hightower’s voice, “one boat won’t carry all of you back.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said. “Evac now. That’s an order.” I deactivated my receiver so I wouldn’t have to hear any further argument from Hightower.

  As we moved to secure the intersection ahead, shouts erupted from the small room that was our destination. “Allahu akbar!” Automatic gunfire accompanied the shouts, and we took cover in the intersection as rounds ricocheted up and down corridor.

  “Cease fire!” I shouted when the gunfire quieted for just a moment. “This is SACA territory. Lay down your weapons and lay down on the floor!”

  My recommendation was met with more weapons fire and some shouting in Arabic that I could not make out. The war these men were fighting had been over for a century, but not for them. Add on top of that, they’d been waiting years from their point of view to act on whatever religious fervor they held onto, and I didn’t have time to discuss it all with them rationally before whatever was in the case did whatever it was meant to do.

  “Fine. Obscure and subdue. We charge through and shoot to kill if they so much as twitch.”

  Two marines unclipped small metal canisters from their belts, shook them and punctured the sides. They lightly skipped them across the metal floor towa
rd our assailants, but only hard enough as to make sure they stayed in the corridor. A chemical issued forth from the canisters, mixing with the oxygen in the air to create a thick gray smoke. It was only a matter of a few seconds before the corridor was completely blocked off by a wall of gray fume. The gunfire started again, firing wildly through the smoke in all directions, and we had to keep under cover. Two of my men pulled pins on grenades and whipped them sidearm around the corner, easily hard enough to traverse the fifteen or twenty meters of corridor we had to cross. Everyone huddled and covered their ears. The flash was so bright as to be seen even through the thick smoke, and my inner ears still rang from the concussion of the grenades.

  We charged through single file, as the narrow corridor would allow nothing else. I was toward the middle of the line, and before I passed through the smoke filled hallway, I heard a pair of gunshots. I held my breath and closed my eyes as I emerged on the other side. One of the targets lay propped up against a wall with a bloody hole in his head and a rifle lying in his lap. His brains had come out the back of his skull in a red, gray mess at the center of which was a bullet hole. The other man lay on his stomach, blinking wildly, and his ears bled from the concussion. His hands had been secured together behind his back. The dead man clearly hailed from Earth’s Middle East, while the other was Caucasian and perhaps from Eastern Europe.

  Turning, I saw that a wide metal stair led down to the next level, which I knew to be the reactor room. The steps were wide enough to permit us to go down two at a time, but due to the slope of the ceiling, I could not see the bottom. I certainly was not ready to head down and have my entire team riddled with bullets. I figured, worst case scenario, I could resort to the same tactics if I needed to.

  “Hello down there,” I called, hearing my voice echo off the metal. “I am Commander Paul Chen, commanding officer of the Herbert Walker and the SACA fleet you passed in orbit. Surrender now, and we can end this peacefully.”

  It was a long moment before a man’s voice yelled back at me in heavily accented English, “There is no peace infidel. You will die in our rightful jihad.”

  “There is no jihad anymore,” I replied. “SACA and the EMC have ended the war. We live in peace together now, rebuilding Earth.”

  “Yet you have set yourselves up as false gods!”

  This caught me by surprise. “I don’t understand. Why don’t we put our weapons away and talk about it. What’s your name?”

  “Talk? You can talk all you want. You can talk for another two minutes and fifty one seconds.”

  “I could just come down there and kill you,” I said, and then I added, “if I need to.”

  “You could, but you still won’t escape Allah’s judgment. None of us can now,” he replied.

  I heard some type of chanting, perhaps in Arabic, from multiple voices. I was running out of time, and I knew it. “I promise you that we’ve settled our differences. It was your people who came to SACA for peace. Most of us never even saw the war, but we wanted to live. We can live through this too.”

  “No we cannot. Not together,” he replied. “Allah would never accept what your people have done here. You made yourselves gods and ruled over the weak. Your acts are an abomination.”

  I sighed as I rubbed my forehead with my left palm, his words bouncing around confusedly in my brain. It was under cover of smoke and flashbang grenades we made our assault. There were four of them, and they were further back into the reactor room than we estimated, limiting the effects of our grenades. We passed into the room to find two of them kneeling on prayer rugs, while the other two held defensive positions. Three of my first four marines went down fast, as our targets were not subdued as we expected. I caught one of the men in the hand with a round from my pistol, and followed it up with shots to his shoulder, chest and head. The two men in prayer did not move, and one my marines gunned down one in cold blood. I planned to make an issue of that later, but at the time, the remaining armed man had backed himself into a well covered corner. He laid down blankets of fire with a fully automatic rifle, and we had no way of reaching him. He stopped his fire long enough to shout, “You’re down to a minute, Commander!”

  The reactor room was exactly as I remembered it. Ten reactors – cylinders of a copper-like metal that ran floor to ceiling – created a wide circle thirty meters across, and a small computer bank stood to one side. I spied a black case on the far side of the room. Open, it was over a meter long and a meter wide and contained some sort of device. It certainly looked like a nuclear weapon. In the quiet, just under the ringing in my ears caused by gunfire in a confined space, I could just barely make out a low electronic beeping coming from the device. It seemed to beep once per second.

  “Take him out! Now!” I shouted to my men, and I jumped from behind cover.

  The man, who had skin so dark as to only be from Africa, raised his weapon to fire at me. I knew I wouldn’t survive it, but I hoped the marines would get him. As he squeezed the trigger to his rifle, nothing happened. I expected muzzle flashes and some form of pain as his bullets pierced me, but neither occurred. I raised my own pistol for a well aimed shot at his confused face, and my weapon only clicked as the hammer came down. The safety was off, and a round was in the chamber. I looked around to see my marines all had the same problem. The African looked around and grinned, showing bright white teeth that were a shock against his black skin, and he pulled a large bowie knife from somewhere.

  I then realized that the bomb no longer beeped.

  As the man slowly came forward, a voice louder than anything I’ve ever heard boomed, “Enough!” I grabbed my head with both hands in pain, dropping the pistol to the floor with a clang. The voice was in my head, our heads. We didn’t hear it with our ears, but we all heard it. “We will no longer allow this!” the voice again boomed in my brain and rattled through my bones.

  I cannot fully describe what happened next, except to say that, somehow, the reactors themselves opened. All of us were suddenly blinded by light that was terrible and beautiful at once, and the light seemed to somehow fill my entire existence as it burned my eyes to look at it. There was nothing but light. I then knew what the African meant by gods for, as I grew accustomed to the light, I knew that I looked upon them.

  “Your fighting ends now,” said the voice again. It was no quieter, but somehow less painful. It was a deep, powerful voice of a man used to being obeyed, as if there were no other choice but to obey him.

  “None of you are welcome here,” said another man’s voice. This one was calmer, more reasonable, but no less powerful.

  “They would burn us,” hissed a third. “Let me burn them instead.”

  “No,” said a woman, “I shall drown them in water so cold, so lonely.”

  “Garod, let them go,” said the second voice. “They are nothing, just human. Let them go in peace, so long as they leave their weapons behind.”

  “I agree,” said the deepest voice I had ever heard, and I had the distinct impression that a bear had just growled at me. “Just as they would not bother to step on an ant, we shall not bother with them.”

  “It is decided then,” said the first god, the one called Garod, “but there is one problem. Our Chronicler is gone at their hands. I demand a replacement from among them.”

  “You, Paul Chen,” said the second male god, and I suddenly tasted blood in the back of my mouth. “You have spent your entire life looking for God, the God your mother believed in so much – yes, I can see the beautiful crucifix around her neck – and the God that your father denied so vehemently. Know now, you have found Gods. Know now, you are our new Chronicler.”

  1.

  Marya very nearly turned back a dozen times the first day, but she somehow resisted the urge. She had found a horse outside of the city and rode away to the southwest. As she continued to ride, the desire to turn back slowly receded, though she thought of those she left behind often. Thinking of Cor angered her, and thoughts of Keth saddened her. She felt t
winges of guilt as she thought of the Dahken children, but all of this she pushed away. She left to seek adventure and her own destiny, not Cor’s.

  She found cold, hunger and death. The lands around Byrverus were empty of course, which she found convenient at first. She found shelter and preserved food easily enough, but these disappeared the further away she rode. Food became scarce as winter took hold, and it wasn’t long before she found herself more hungry than not. Eventually, she severed the horse’s throat, for what little flesh he had was more useful to her stomach than his bones.

  She wandered aimlessly toward the southwest for weeks, eventually turning northwest for no particular reason that she could discern. It was well into winter before Marya saw the first snowflakes, and she reveled in the beauty of the sparkling white flakes as they fell upon her. This continued for the better part of a day before the snow began to fall harder, and the wind whipped about her wickedly, cutting through her armor like the sharpest of blades. Into the third day, she found herself slogging through nearly a foot of snow. At first, it melted and seeped into her boots, causing her feet to chafe uncomfortably. Eventually, her waterlogged boots grew cold and froze to her feet. She shivered in her armor, soaked with sweat and the snowflakes that melted to drip through the chain mail, but on she plodded. She had no idea if she still followed any sort of road or had simply struck out across empty countryside. The snow began to drop in the thickest flurry she had yet seen, as flakes the size of large coins rained from the stark gray clouds overhead. Marya could barely see for the silver white that surrounded her, but she pushed forward, with no idea why or where she headed. As quickly as the sudden, thick snowfall began, it thinned and almost stopped completely.