Thirty

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come along with us, captain?” Enya asked. “It’s a truly beautiful place.”

Looking up from the paperwork Zevon had forced upon him, Reza shook his head. “No thank you,” he told her, smiling. “I appreciate your offer, but I have much to do here.” He knew quite well that she fervently hoped he would say no, for purely personal reasons of her own. “Perhaps another time.”

“Are you sure, captain?” Eustus asked valiantly, also hoping against hope that Reza would say no, but he felt honor-bound to ask. “Zevon always has you doing too much paperwork crap, you know.”

Reza fought to keep from smiling. Sometimes, he thought, being able to sense the emotions of others must be more interesting than actually reading their thoughts. Eustus was helplessly, hopelessly in love with the young woman standing close beside him, and Enya felt the same about Eustus. The Marines had only been planetside for two weeks, but the changes had been little short of miraculous, especially after Counselor Savitch had arrived to oversee things. Sensing something malignant in Belisle’s mind, Reza had assigned two of his best Marines to be her bodyguards, despite Savitch’s vehement protests. They went with her everywhere, including the bathroom (both Marines were female). He had since gotten the sense from Belisle that whatever he had been plotting would not be put to the test, but there was something else about him that Reza was missing, something the man knew that fueled an inner fire of arrogance and patient vengeance. But what?

“That crap, as you’re so fond of saying, First Sergeant,” Zevon said tiredly, interrupting Reza’s chain of thought, “is what keeps all of us paid, fed, and loaded with ammo. If you want me to cut your paycard loose–”

“No, no! Not that!” Eustus cried with mock horror, raising his hands to his face as if to ward off some nightmarish creature.

“First Sergeant,” Reza said formally.

“Sir?” Eustus asked, suddenly confused by Reza’s tone of voice.

“Dismissed.”

Smiling, relieved, Eustus saluted. “Aye, sir,” he replied.

“Captain,” Enya said, bowing her head.

Watching the two of them leave together, Reza felt a sudden weight upon his heart. Where was Esah-Zhurah now? What was she doing? Was she thinking of him? Was she even still alive?

But there were no answers to his questions. He pushed her beautiful face from his mind and forcibly immersed himself in the jumble of paperwork that Zevon pushed at him to sign.

Outside, Eustus and Enya mounted the horses that waited patiently near the command post. Riding through the company compound, Enya smiled at the Marines who went about their daily routine. Some exercised or practiced hand-to-hand combat, others washed or shaved, several groups were clustered around the gigantic tanks that now lay in great pits dug into the ridge, working noisily on some mysterious mechanism inside the huge vehicles. Yet others, those who were off-duty and on free time, simply lay in the sun, getting tanned and doing what soldiers often loved above all else when granted the time: sleeping. Still others, whom she did not see here, had passes to go into Mallory City and take advantage of whatever hospitality offered itself.

Eustus had chosen to spend his two-day pass entirely with her.

Once outside the perimeter, Enya took them to an easy trot, leading Eustus into the woodlands that had once provided all the needs of her people. They rode on, paying no attention to time, but taking in the sights, smells, and sounds of what had to be one of the most beautiful worlds in the Confederation, if not in all the galaxy. They spoke in the language of those who knew they were in love, but had not yet confessed it to one another. Idle banter, mostly, that avoided hinting directly at what they felt inside. The day was warm, the air clear as it always had been for as long as any human had known, and both were having some of the happiest days of their lives.

At last, they came to Enya’s favorite place, a small crystal lake, surrounded by majestic conifer-like trees that lay next to a sheer rock face that rose hundreds – perhaps thousands – of feet above them, its top hidden in a wreath of clouds.

“My father used to bring me here all the time,” she explained as they dismounted and left the horses to graze in the hardy grass. Brought by Therese Ranier’s settlers as pets, the horse had been their single greatest positive contribution to the lives of the Mallorys, who kept stock of their own in the forests beyond the Raniers’ reach.

“Enya, this is absolutely fantastic,” Eustus said in awe as he looked up at the rocky face. It soared up… and up… and up. Finally looking down into the water, he only saw the rock face again, this time reflected from the water’s smooth surface, for there was no wind, not even the slightest breeze. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

Enya smiled, taking his hand and leading him along the shore of the lake. “We were told as children that this is a magic place,” she said as she plucked off her shoes so she could walk barefoot in the cool, wet sand along the water’s edge. “Sometimes you can hear voices, my father used to tell me. I’ve heard them, too, singing in the rock. They always sound so sad.”

Eustus looked at her skeptically. “Voices in the rock?” he said.

Enya smiled, tossing her head playfully, her silken hair brushing Eustus’s shoulder. “I know it’s only the wind moving through some kind of tunnels or something. But when you hear them… it… it doesn’t sound like the wind at all. They sound like sirens in mourning, or maybe lamenting a lover’s loss.”

Eustus stopped, conscious of the warmth of her hand in his. “Sounds romantic,” he said as she stepped close to him, her breasts brushing his tunic.

“Yes,” she breathed, “it does, doesn’t it?”

The kiss, when it came, was all that Eustus had anticipated, and more. They held each other for what seemed a long time, and when their lips finally parted, Enya silently led him by the hand to a bed of soft grass, pulling him down to lay on top of her.

“Are you sure…?” Eustus breathed between her increasingly passionate kisses.

“Stop procrastinating,” she whispered in his ear just before her lips and teeth began to work their way down his neck, her hands unfastening the clasps of his uniform.

Eustus raised himself up enough to bring his fingers to bear on her blouse. Cursing his own clumsiness, he finally exposed her breasts and their erect nipples, and Enya sighed as his lips made contact.

They continued to wriggle out of their clothes like two butterflies, struggling to emerge from cocoons that were bound together, their frantic breathing echoing across the still water and the towering rock beyond.

“Ow!” Enya gasped, rolling over so quickly that Eustus toppled over onto his back beside her, his pants shoved down around his knees.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, terrified that he had done something to hurt her. “Did I–”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. A scowl on her face, she reached underneath herself with one hand, feeling around until she had found what she was looking for. She held up her hand to Eustus and smiled. “Just a dragon’s claw.”

“A what?” Eustus said, taking the object from her hand. It was the length of his index finger and really did look like a claw, curved and pointed, except that it was flat and completely black. The surface was fairly smooth but pitted, like a piece of rock or metal that had been sandblasted or weathered with age.

“A dragon’s claw. People have found them all around here. Nobody knows exactly what they’re made of. Some kind of weird rock, I guess. They’re supposed to bring good luck.” She paused as Eustus looked at the scythe-like piece of rock. “Do you feel lucky?” she whispered huskily, one of her hands stroking Eustus’s flagging erection back to life.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his eyes alight with renewed desire as he tossed the dragon’s claw aside, “I surely do.”

***

The warmth of the sun and the heat of their lovemaking made for two sleepy lovers, and Eustus had fetched the blanket Enya had brought. “For a picnic,” she had told him. Now, lying awake on the soft flannel, Enya’s head resting on his shoulder, his mind and heart skirmished over the future.

I’ve done my three required combat tours, he told himself. While that was not enough to retire from federal service, it was sufficient to get himself a posting to a non-combat position or Territorial Army assignment. He could stay here, he thought. With Enya. While he had only known her these two weeks, he felt as if he had known her all his life. He had known infatuation before, but never like this. He loved her, he admitted to himself. He had never really loved anyone before; there had never been time. But here…

Beside him was the crumpled heap that was his uniform, and the crimson dragon of the regimental insignia stared at him as if saying, “Traitor.” The men and women of the company beside whom he had fought and lived, whom he had helped to survive and who had helped him – how could he simply walk away from them? They were not the riffraff they had once been. No matter what the raw material, they were the best Marines in the service. Reza had seen to that.

Reza. He almost groaned to himself. What of him? How could he turn his back on Reza? Deep inside, he knew that Reza would understand the burning in his heart, the desire to stay with this woman who was now a part of him. Eustus had served him well, and they had long been close friends; more than that, they had developed the bond that only those who live through times of extreme hardship know, the knowledge that they can rely on each other, no matter what.

But that only seemed to make things worse. Reza would go on and on, until finally he was alone. And alone he would die, with no one to watch over him, with no one to be there for him, to remind him that he was human and not the half-alien beast that so many believed he was.

His thoughts sinking to despair, he turned his head to look at the cliff that soared into the noon sky. A glint of light from the ground nearby caught his attention, and he reached out and retrieved the dragon’s claw from where he had dropped it. Turning it over in his hand, he examined it closely in an effort to push thoughts of the future from his mind. One of his fingers slipped, rubbing across the curved edge of the “rock,” and he saw a line of red appear on his finger.

Some lucky charm, he thought sourly as blood began to seep from the half-inch long wound that was like a huge paper cut. He set the rock down carefully, avoiding the edge on which he had cut himself, and sucked on his finger to get the bleeding to stop. He knew that rocks and minerals of various types could be sharp either naturally or with a little help from busy hands, but the dragon’s claw Enya had given him seemed to have an extraordinarily good edge.

As he thought about it, checking his finger to see if the bleeding stopped, something about the dragon’s claw nagged at him. There was something vaguely and disturbingly familiar about it, but he could not put his finger – which by now had stopped bleeding – on it.

One of the horses suddenly looked up from where it had been contentedly stuffing its face with grass, its ears pricked forward. The other one did the same. Both of them began snorting, their nostrils flaring and eyes widening in alarm.

Eustus had been with Reza long enough to trust his own instincts and those of others, especially animals.

“Enya,” he said, rousing her from sleep, “wake up.”

“What is it?” she said, her eyes snapping wide open. She was a deep sleeper, but when she woke up, she was fully awake almost instantly. She sat up beside Eustus, drawing the blanket up to cover her breasts.

“The horses are spooked,” Eustus said quietly, reaching for the blaster that normally hung low on his thigh, but was now nestled in the pile of clothing beside him. The feel of the weapon, nearly as long and large around as his forearm, steadied and comforted him. No predator of the forest could survive its firepower. He raised his nude body into a wary crouch, his eyes scanning around them, a tingling sensation running up his spine as his scrotum contracted, drawing his testicles into a less exposed position. He looked at the horses. They were staring straight across the lake, their eyes fixed on the cliff. “Something over there is spooking them,” he whispered, “but I can’t see any–”

And then he heard it, a keening sound that appeared at the uppermost range of his hearing and slowly moved down the scale.

“The sirens,” Enya whispered excitedly. “The horses heard them before we did.”

Eustus’s blood chilled at the sound as it evolved into a chorus of haunting voices that alternately boomed and whispered over the lake, the sound reverberating between the cliff and the trees around them.

“Jesus,” he whispered, but the name of the Christian Savior was swept away on a melody of sadness and mourning that was like nothing he had ever heard. The song evolved into a complex harmony that would have been the envy of the most accomplished chorus, the notes washing over Eustus and Enya like gentle but urgent waves upon two tiny reefs.

And then, as rapidly as they had come, the voices ebbed away, their mournful song fading into notes so low that Eustus and Enya could no longer hear them. The two sat, transfixed, until they noticed that the horses had resumed their eating, the sound no longer audible even to their more sensitive ears.

Eustus swallowed, then sat back down, the strength drawn from him as if someone had sucked it out with a straw. The blaster slipped from his numbed hand to fall harmlessly onto the blanket.

“I told you,” Enya whispered into the sudden silence as she pulled herself close to him, wrapping her arms around his chest. “Isn’t it incredible?”

“That’s hardly the word for it,” Eustus said, wincing at the sound of his voice, as if it were an unworthy intrusion to his ears after what he had just heard. “Come to think of it, I don’t think there is a word to describe it.”

Enya nodded. “That’s the third time I’ve heard it. The first was when I was nine. The last time was five years ago. And it’s different every time, as if you’re hearing different parts of the same song.”

“Has anyone ever tried to find the caves or whatever it is that makes the sound?”

“People have tried to find the source for a long time,” she said, “but I’ve never heard of anyone finding anything except little caves and such that didn’t lead anywhere, and had no strange acoustic properties that would account for the sound.”

He looked at her. “Care to do some exploring?”

She eyed him slyly. “Why? Haven’t you done enough cave exploring for one day?”

He pulled her close and kissed her, feeling his body react to the warmth and softness of her skin, the smell of her body. “You’re right,” he said as he lay down, pulling her on top of him, her legs straddling his waist. “Maybe I should get some more experience here first.”

“Excellent idea,” she breathed as he slid inside her.

***

Eustus trailed behind her as she made her way along the rock ledge like a mountain goat. Extremely agile himself, the result of Reza’s training more than any intrinsic ability on his part, he still felt clumsy as he watched her fluid movements.

“Watch your step here,” she warned, pointing to a spot on the ledge that was crumbling. Enya easily stepped over it, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were a hundred meters or more above the lake.

Eustus peered down quickly, then up, before he stepped over the crumbling part of the ledge. While it had looked sheer from their earlier vantage point, the cliff face had an undulating series of ledges that was almost like a secret staircase, wide enough to walk comfortably without turning sideways against the cliff.

“Are you sure that the place you saw was this far over?” Eustus asked, silently cursing himself for not bringing his binoculars so they could have gotten a better look at the mountain before they started up.

“Yes,” Enya told him. After they had decided to abandon – temporarily, at least – their amorous pursuits, she had taken a good look at the cliff and noticed a dark spot where there should not have been one. Below it were streaks of dust and debris, as if part of the cliff face had sloughed off, revealing… what? “It shouldn’t be much… Eustus!”

“What? What is it?”

“We found it,” she said, her voice alive with childlike excitement. “It’s a cave, just like I told you!”

Coming up behind her, Eustus saw it: a ragged opening that looked just big enough to crawl through. The ledge they were on, he saw, ran just to the edge of the hole. The rest of it had been taken down by the loosened rock that had fallen to expose the cave, and now lay somewhere under the lake’s placid surface far below.

“Enya,” he asked seriously, “do you think this is safe? I mean, whatever caused the rock to fall might happen again.”

She paused a moment, considering. “They were doing some blasting at the MacCready mine not too long ago – that’s on the far side of the mountain. I imagine that’s what must have caused it. But Ian told me they weren’t going to be doing any more explosives work for a while.” She frowned to herself. Unless Belisle betrays us, she thought. “It should be fairly stable, as long as you don’t go firing off your gun or something.”

Eustus grinned. “I already did that.”

She laughed, then began to move toward the cave entrance. Eustus, concentrating hard now, followed close behind her.

“Let me have your light,” she said.

Out of long habit, Eustus carried a variety of essential items on his pistol belt everywhere he went when dressed in his combat uniform. His blaster, of course; but he also carried a handheld light, comm link, basic medical kit, and his combat knife. Unclipping the light from his belt, he handed it to her. “Be careful,” he cautioned.

Nodding, she turned on the light and shone it as far as she could down the cave mouth. “Well, it’s not just a pocket, anyway.” She turned the light off and clipped it to her pants. Then, judging the distance carefully, she half stepped, half jumped from the end of the ledge into the low mouth of the cave.

Eustus followed quickly behind her, willing himself not to look down as he crossed the small gap. Enya took his arm and steadied him in the low opening. Crouching down, they made their way forward in a duck walk, Enya shining the light ahead of them. After a few meters of scrabbling over rough rock, they emerged into what seemed like a larger tunnel, big enough for them to stand upright with plenty of room to spare.

“Look at this,” she said, shining the light around the tunnel. “This looks like it’s been bored out.”

Eustus looked back at the section that led outside. The walls there were much rougher and rocky, almost as if someone had pressed a cap of debris into the main tunnel. “Could it be an old mine that your people dug out some time ago?”

“And be covered over with rock like that?” Enya shook her head. “No. I know we could bore a hole up this high if we really wanted to, but it would be bigger than this. A lot bigger. Besides, the rock that was covering this up looked like part of the cliff, not just debris pushed back down the shaft. If that were the case, this cave would have been filled with rocks and dirt, but it’s not. It’s too clean.”

“An airshaft?”

“With no opening to the outside?” She shook her head. “And it’s so smooth.” She knelt down and brushed away some of the dust on the floor. “It’s almost like glass. Our boring machines are good, but nothing like this.”

Eustus frowned. None of it made much sense. It’s almost as if someone had bored out the tunnel almost to the cliff face from the inside, he thought. “Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out what it is,” he told her.

Enya leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I love a man with a sense of adventure,” she told him.

Wondering what they were getting themselves into, he followed her into the cave.

“This is unbelievable,” she said after they had gone about three hundred paces into the tunnel.

“This thing’s as smooth and straight as a pipe,” Eustus said quietly as he followed the slight downward angle of the floor. The echo inside was becoming increasingly eerie, and he had to fight back the urge to grab Enya and head back toward the rapidly fading light behind them. “Has any evidence been found of any other sentient races having lived on Erlang before your people arrived?”

She shook her head as she walked onward, following the white beam of light from the flashlight.

“No, nothing. People have looked, of course.” She did not add that only the Raniers had had the time and money for archeological pursuits. “But only animal bones and such things have been discovered. No paintings, carvings, pottery, or any of that kind of thing, and certainly no tools or other signs of a sentient race.”

Eustus frowned. His brain knew something, he could sense it, but he just could not quite make out what it was. I’ve got all the pieces, he thought, I just can’t put them together right.

Something hard and sharp in his pants cargo pocket rubbed against his leg.

The dragon’s claw.

A tunnel made neither by human hands, nor by nature.

The dragon’s claw. A weird rock that was sharp enough to draw blood.

“Oh, my God,” Eustus groaned as he shuddered to a stop, the hair on the back of his neck standing at stiff attention.

“What?”

“Give me the light, Enya!”

Her eyes wide with concern in the pitch darkness, she handed the tiny torch to him.

Grabbing it from her, he shone it on the dragon’s claw he had carefully extracted from his pocket. “Oh, shit,” he murmured. “I knew I’d seen this before.”

“Eustus, it’s just a rock,” she told him with utter conviction.

He looked up at her, his face creased with fear, something she had never seen him show before. “No it’s not, Enya. It’s Kreelan metal, a blade from what Reza calls a shrekka, the most lethal blade weapon the Kreelans have. They can penetrate armor that’ll stop a pulse rifle cold. You said these things have been found all around here?”

Enya nodded. “Yes. I mean, it’s not like thousands have been found, or anything, but all the ones that I know of – probably a few dozen over the years – have been picked up around the valley outside. Eustus, are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Once you’ve been tagged by one of these, or seen someone else get hit with one, you don’t soon forget. I would’ve recognized it sooner, except that it’s in terrible condition, and the center hub is missing.” He thought about that for a moment. “Enya, this thing must have been here for a long time. An incredibly long time. Kreelan blade steel is the toughest material known. It lasts forever and stands up to practically anything. Some metallurgists are even convinced that it’s some kind of quasi-organic material, able to reshape itself, to maintain its edge and balance without any kind of sharpening.” He looked at her. “We’ve never been able to duplicate or reforge it.” He looked down at the blade he held gingerly in his hand. “This thing must have been here for thousands of years.” He looked up at her. “Maybe longer.”

Enya was very quiet for a moment, until the eerie silence in the tunnel made her afraid not to speak, just so her ears could hear something. “So, you think this tunnel was made… by them?”

“That would seem to fit,” he said quietly, turning the shrekka blade over in his hand.

“Then what is this place?” Enya asked. “And if there were Kreelans here at one time, where did they go? Why did they leave?”

“I don’t know. But I guess nobody can say anymore that the Kreelans have never ventured beyond the Grange. Because they were here, all right. At least they were when our ancestors were still learning how to finger-paint on cave walls.”

“Could… could they still be here… down there?” She tilted her head toward the darkness of the tunnel.

Eustus shook his head in the reflected light, but with less conviction than Enya would have liked to see. “If there had been any still alive here, I’m sure your predecessors would have met up with them. I’ve never known Kreelans to be particularly shy around humans.”

“What should we do?”

“I think we should go back and get Reza. He’s the only one who could make any sense of this, and–”

He broke off as Enya collapsed. Her hands covered her ears, her mouth open in a silent scream of pain. Even as he made a motion to help her, the sound erupted in his skull like an explosion, knocking him to his knees. The flashlight fell from his hand, went out as the switch hit the smooth rock, plunging them into darkness.

The voices had returned. The keening wail rapidly grew and multiplied into the chorus that he had heard outside, but in the tunnel it was so loud that his teeth rattled.

“Come on!” he screamed into the gale of sound, his words carried away as they left his lips. Staggering to his feet, he felt in the darkness for Enya, suddenly terrified that something had happened to her. But his desperately groping hands found her arm, and frantically he seized her and pulled her to her feet. Dazed and deafened by the sound that was now so powerful that it seemed to be jarring his insides loose, he ran through the tunnel, dragging Enya behind him, trusting his feet to guide him down the center of the curved floor, running toward the distant light.

The sound only grew stronger, until he was sure that his eardrums must burst.

“Not much farther!” he shouted to himself, even though he was unable to hear his own voice.

Suddenly, he stumbled and fell sprawling into thin air. “What–” he cried. The fall was not far, less than a meter, but the rock he fell upon struck him a stunning blow, and Enya landed right on top of him. The two of them lay there, dazed, as the voices ebbed and flowed, then slowly died away into silence.

After a few moments, he finally had enough strength to do more than hold his eyes open. “Enya?” he croaked. He was struck with surprise at being able to hear his own voice through the ringing in his ears. He thought he would be totally deaf.

“Here,” came the muffled reply. She was lying beside him now, breathing steadily.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so,” he managed. His head hurt like hell, he had a split and bleeding lip, and he might have twisted an ankle, but nothing was broken. “You?”

“I’m all right. But there are better ways of getting me to fall on top of you in the dark. Where are we?”

Now there was a good question, Eustus thought, smiling at her humor. She was tough. He liked that. “I don’t know. I thought I was running toward the entrance. I could see a light. But… I guess I must have run the other way, deeper into the tunnel.”

Pause. “You saw a light? At the far end?”

“Yeah. But now that I think about it, it wasn’t the right color. Too cool, not yellow like the sun. Bluish, sort of.” He found her face with his hands, held her to him. “I guess the tunnel just ended here… wherever here is.”

“Where’s the light?” she asked. She kissed his hands, glad they were both alive, but increasingly curious about where they were. What was this place?

“Dropped it in the tunnel. We should be able to find it on the way out.”

Still trembling from the force of the voices – or whatever it was – that had struck them, Enya raised herself to her knees, trying to orient herself in the darkness.

But it was not completely dark. Somewhere in front of her, it was impossible to tell just how far, she could see a dim bluish glow like a smudge of watery blue paint on a black canvas. “Is that the light you saw?”

Eustus turned over so he could look where she was, orienting himself with her body. “That must be it, but it was a lot brighter when I saw it. It was a point of light, like a star, not like it is now.”

“What could it be?”

“Some kind of fire, like methane burning? That burns with a blue color, doesn’t it?”

Enya shook her head in the darkness. He felt her hair brush against his hand. “No, we should be able to distinguish the flame clearly. This looks like the light is being diffused, or something. I’m going to see what it is.”

“Wait,” Eustus said, digging into his utility pouch. “We don’t have the light, but we can still get some light in here. I don’t smoke, but this is too handy an item not to carry. Here, use this.”

Enya heard a clicking sound, then saw Eustus’s bruised face in the yellow light of the tiny flame of his cigarette lighter. Behind him, she saw something else. She pitched backward, screaming, her eyes wide with terror.

With reflexes honed through years of combat, Eustus drew his blaster, rolled in the direction of the threat, and fired three times. Only after the crimson energy bolts flashed from the weapon did he get a glimpse of what he was shooting at.

A Kreelan warrior.

He fired twice more for good effect before he noticed that there were others, all around him. His nerves jangling with dread, he reluctantly took his finger from the trigger. If they had wanted to kill him, he would have long since been dead.

“Give me the lighter,” he said in a shaking voice, still holding his pistol at the ready. His nose filled with a strange odor from the work his blaster had done, but it was not the customary stench of charred meat. It was more like burned dirt or dust, with a tang of molten metal.

Enya reluctantly surrendered the tiny lighter, then scrambled to her feet, following Eustus as he stepped closer to the warrior he had killed.

They saw immediately, however, that she was already dead. Long dead.

“Lord of All,” Enya whispered as she stepped around Eustus, kneeling beside what remained of the corpse. “It looks like a mummy.”

The skin, where it showed through the extensive armor the Kreelans wore, was desiccated and shrunken over the bones. The eye sockets were empty, the silver-flecked orbs that had once filled them long since shriveled to nothing. The hair, still meticulously braided after all this time, clung tenaciously to the skull. The hands were skeletal, making the talons look all the more deadly.

“Let’s look at that one,” Eustus suggested, interested in examining a whole specimen. The one he had shot was missing its entire torso, and the smell, while not terrible, was very unsettling.

“Why are they still standing?” Enya asked quietly. As far as the light could reach, there were corpses standing at attention in what looked to be a circle, facing inward. Facing what? “Did someone somehow prop up the bodies?”

“From what I’ve seen, they were probably this way when they died,” Eustus said. “I’m sure no one touched them after they were dead. Kreelan anatomy’s a lot different than ours. It could be that their skeletal structure is more durable after they die, breaks down slower, maybe.” They sure seem that way on the battlefield, he thought. “Besides, Reza told me once that the Kreelans remove the collars from their dead, kind of a last rites thing. These ladies still have their collars on.”

“Except, my love, that these aren’t ladies,” Enya said.

“What? Of course they–”

“Look at the breastplates,” she said, pointing to the dust-covered armor of the nearest intact warrior. The dark metal followed the contour of the massive rib cage that once must have supported a formidable mass of muscle, but the form was clearly that of a male. “No breasts there.”

“Hold this,” Eustus said, handing her the lighter, his heart pounding with excitement. Humans had never encountered a male Kreelan, even a dead one.

“What are you going to do?”

“Check this guy out,” he said, taking his knife from its sheath and cutting away the armor from the mummy’s waist. “I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “Will you look at that. This Kreelan has an honest-to-goodness mummified pecker. The Confederation Academy of Sciences is going to love this.”

“What does it mean?” Enya felt slightly embarrassed, looking at the alien’s exposed genitals, shriveled though they were. Remarkably similar to a human’s, this one must have boasted a penis in life that would have been any man’s envy.

“Well, for one thing, we might be able to figure out how the Kreelans reproduce and how often. Kind of give us an idea of the Empire’s demographics, I suppose.” He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know, except that it’s something no one’s ever seen before.”

“After seeing what you’ve got, I’m not very interested in an alien mummy’s privates,” Enya said lightly. The knowledge that they had found a potentially very important piece of the answer to the puzzle posed by the enemy thrilled her beyond the fear that still nagged at her from being in this strange chamber.

“Yeah,” Eustus quipped, “especially since mine’s a first sergeant.”

They both laughed, shedding some of their fear in the process. They were on an archeological dig now, not running for their lives from some unknown terror.

Now that they knew their would-be enemies were dead and crumbling with age, incapable of attacking them, Eustus held the light up and turned around slowly so they could see what else lay in the chamber. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to what looked almost like a tapestry of Kreelan runes that ran from the chamber’s floor to disappear in the darkness beyond the light’s reach. “We’ve got to get Reza in here. He could read this for us.”

“Eustus,” Enya said, thinking aloud, “have you ever read much about Terran archeology?”

“No,” he admitted.

“My father made me read things on every subject he could find a book on,” she told him. “He had me read them to him aloud, because he wanted to learn, too, but he did not know how to read himself.” Another legacy of the Raniers, she thought bitterly. “In one of those books,” she went on, “there was something about the old Egyptians on Earth, and what they called the pyramids. That’s where they buried their royalty, in big chambers inside the pyramid, usually with everything the priests thought the king or queen would need for the afterlife. Food, clothes, everything. And I think some of them even had soldiers, or replicas of soldiers, buried with them to protect them, or something. I can’t remember it all anymore.” Those days were a long time ago, before the police murdered her father during a “routine” interrogation.

“That’s what you think this place is? Some kind of burial vault for royalty or something?”

“Well, it has the right feel to it. I mean, who – or what – would be important enough to the Kreelans that all these warriors would stand around it, guarding it, I guess, until they themselves died?”

“But then,” he asked, “what happened to the others, the ones who brought these warriors here? There must have been some, right? And why did they leave?” He thought for a moment. “Wait a minute. Maybe not all of them did. If pieces of shrekkas were laying around, maybe there was some kind of battle here?”

“But then who are these people? The winners, or the losers? Or maybe someone else?”

“Who knows?” Eustus said. “But we haven’t found your king’s – or queen’s – body, yet.”

“Let’s move toward the center of the room.”

“Okay, but be careful.”

With Enya still holding the light, the two of them slowly moved toward where the center of the chamber should be, at least according to the facing of the long dead Kreelan sentinels. There were a lot of them, probably hundreds.

“This room is really big,” Enya whispered as they moved through the darkness to a point where nothing was visible around them but the floor, which had been inlaid with colored stones or tiles that had remained like new, polished and free of any trace of dust. The lighter’s flame, tiny though it was, cast enough light that they could no longer see the blue glow that lay somewhere in front of them. “How long will this thing last?” she asked about the lighter.

“A few hours,” Eustus said. “I fill it up every time I use it. It runs on some kind of high-tech…”

Enya did not have to ask why his sentence abruptly ended. It didn’t matter, anyway. She would not have been paying attention. She had seen what had cast Eustus into sudden silence. “What is that?” she whispered.

Before them lay the treasure over which the ancient male warriors had been standing silent guard for countless centuries. Atop a spire of something resembling clear and slender glass sat what looked like nothing so much as an opaque crystal in the shape of some living thing’s heart. And at its center shone a faint blue glow.

The two of them stood there for a moment, transfixed by what they saw, by the simple but undeniable elegance and beauty of the structure before them, which itself stood only as high as Eustus’s shoulder. The crystal heart itself was a bit larger than a man’s fist.

“This is where the light was coming from, then,” Eustus said quietly as he moved closer. “The color’s right, but it’s so much weaker now. You can hardly see it at all.”

Looking more closely at the glassine pillar on which the heart was poised, Enya said, “I don’t know much about the Kreelans, but they must have incredible artisans. I’m not much of an art expert – Mallorys aren’t even allowed in the few good museums here – but my personal opinion is that there was an incredible talent and genius behind whoever made this.”

“So, this is our – what did they call them? – pharaoh, a piece of sculpted crystal with a blue glow in it. A radioactive isotope maybe?”

“Cherenkov radiation?”

“What kind of books did your father let you read, anyway?” Eustus asked, smiling. “I thought you were supposed to be a dumb miner or something. Cherenkov radiation… I don’t know, maybe.”

Enya stepped closer to the spire, the light now playing crazily through the glass. “What could it be?” she whispered to herself as she extended a hand toward the crystal heart.

“Enya,” Eustus warned, “maybe you shouldn’t–”

It was too late. As her fingers brushed the crystal’s surface, Eustus’s ears were filled with the crackle of electricity and his nose with the smell of ozone as the crystal heart suddenly pulsed with light, a blue flame so bright it left spots swirling in his vision.

“Enya!” he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulder and whirling her away from the crystal that had begun to pulsate erratically. “Are you all right? Answer me!”

She only trembled in his arms, as if she were in a state of shock. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the crystal, her lips trembling but mute.

Eustus half dragged, half carried her back toward the entrance. He noticed in the sudden explosion of light that there were six other tunnels leading down here. He was not confused as to which one to take because of the pile of smoldering bones that was the Kreelan warrior he had shot, whose shattered remains now served as a gruesome trail marker.

Behind him, the crystal heart began to pulse more rhythmically, and the light coming from it grew with every beat, so intense that Eustus did not need any other source of light as he frantically made his way down the tunnel.

Something is going to happen, his mind screamed at him. They had to get out…

“Eustus,” he heard Enya rasp.

“I’m here,” he told her as he propelled her along, ignoring the pain in his foot from when he twisted it entering the chamber. “We’re getting out of here!”

His ears began to tingle, and he realized that the voices were coming again. And he suddenly realized what the sound really was: it was the voices of the warriors standing guard over that thing. Eustus did not believe in ghosts, but he knew with absolute certainty that what they had heard was not the sound of wind through caves, or anything artificial. Those dead mouths back there might not be moving, but that’s where the sound originally came from. Where it came from now, he did not know, nor did he wish to find out.

The light continued to brighten, much faster now, and Eustus was almost blinded even facing away from it. Worse, he felt like his neck and arms were getting sunburned.

It’s some kind of bomb, he thought suddenly. That only made him move faster.

The voices, when they finally came, were every bit as loud as before, but Eustus was ready for the pain, at least psychologically. What he was not ready for was the song itself. No longer a mournful dirge, the voices seemed to be elated, filled with joy at something that Eustus probably would never understand.

Behind him, even as the voices rose, he could hear the snapping and popping of flames as the mummies began to burn in whatever supernatural flame Enya’s touch had sparked. He could hear the air crackle with heat, a wind rising in the tunnel as the heated air sought freedom outside, rushing up behind them like a frenzied locomotive.

“Eustus, what is it?” Enya cried. “What is happening?”

“I don’t know,” he screamed over the rising chorus of the dead warriors and the crackling hum growing behind him like a rapidly approaching storm. “Hang on!”

With a final leap, they hurled themselves into space, falling from the cliff face through the afternoon air toward the lake. They hit the water just as a stream of blue light, bright as any sun, exploded from the shaft and into space.

Far below, Eustus and Enya struggled toward the shore of the lake and sanctuary from the power of the alien beacon that now reached out toward the stars.

***

Reza stood in the company headquarters, thinking, waiting. Suddenly he felt a tingling at the base of his skull, unlike anything he had ever felt before. A warning?

“Alfonso…” he said to Zevon before getting to his feet and going to the door. Opening it and looking outside, he noticed nothing amiss. All was as it should be. Freeing his spirit, he searched around the encampment for any threat to his people, his mind’s eye scouring every rock and tree.

“Sir?” Alfonso asked quietly, his rifle at the ready to protect his commander. He knew Reza probably did not need it, but that would not keep him from being prepared.

“I do not know,” Reza said as he completed his mental sweep of the area. Nothing. But the tingling continued, grew stronger. “Something feels… wrong? Different? I am not sure.”

Zevon scanned the area, as well. He happened to be looking at the enormous mesa a few kilometers away when seven streams of electric blue light erupted from it and shot through the sky.

“Captain! Look at that!” All around the bivouac, Marines were leaping to their fighting positions, regardless of what they had been doing.

But Reza did not hear him, nor did he see the blazing blue lances Zevon was frantically pointing out to him. He did not have to. At the instant the beams erupted from the ancient cavern, Reza felt as if a set of electrodes had been inserted into his brain and an invisible switch thrown.

Convulsing but a single time, Reza’s eyes rolled up to expose the whites before he collapsed to the ground.

***

Eustus fought to keep his footing as Enya helped him run through the forest and Hell erupted behind them. He still couldn’t believe they had managed to survive the fall from the blazing tunnel into the lake. They had struggled to shore and started running for their lives.

“Look!” she shouted above the roar of the cataclysm behind them.

Turning his head just enough to peer back through the canopy of smoldering trees, Eustus could see that the shaft of blue light behind them had changed its position. Sweeping slowly in a horizontal arc through the mountain, the beams – he could see others now, too, lancing toward the horizon – were slicing the rock apart, as if they were consuming the upper half of the mountain. Sheets of flame and rock, molten and vaporized to plasma, shot out and upward. The lake was now a boiling pit, the trees at its edge bursting into flame from the heat of the ash and rock that spewed from the disintegrating mountain. Beneath them, the ground shook with the force of an earthquake, the trees around them swaying precariously over their heads.

“Come on!” he shouted, pushing her forward, “We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Where are the horses?” she cried.

“Long gone, if they’ve got any brains at all. Run!”

They staggered onward, forcing steadily hotter air into their lungs. Eustus felt like the steam that was now roiling from the doomed lake was poaching them. Above them, he could hear the crackling of the treetops as they burst into flame. And everywhere was the rain of ash and glowing blobs of molten rock.

Behind them, the great beams continued to circle the mountain, faster now, grinding and burning it away to expose the pulsing core that Enya had somehow brought to life.

“Look out!” Enya screamed as she shoved Eustus aside, both of them toppling over a rock outcropping. A huge chunk of burning rock smashed to the ground where they had just been, burning a hole into the earth. “What are we going to do?”

Eustus didn’t have a good answer. The smoke-filled air was so hot it was almost searing their lungs, and flaming debris was raining all around them. As slow as he was moving now, limping along on his injured ankle, they didn’t stand a chance of escaping the fire.

“Enya,” he pulled her close so she could hear him shouting, and also so that he could feel her next to him one more time, “I’m not going to make it. Can’t run fast enough. You’ve got to go on alone, try to–”

“No! I’m not leaving you! We both go or we both stay!” The look in her eyes left no room for argument as her hands tightened in his.

He turned away, not wanting Enya to see the look of hopelessness on his face. He expected to die in the Corps, but he never thought it would be like this. And not with the woman he loved beside him.

He looked up to the sky, now so clouded with smoke and ash that the sun was no more than a dim disk in the darkness, searching for inspiration. Instead, he saw salvation.

“Look!” he shouted, pointing at the glinting metal shape that was rocketing toward them. “They’ve found us! They must’ve homed in on my comm link!” Eustus had tried to call the company and warn them of what was going on, but could hear nothing over the din crashing all around them.

Weaving through the flaming treetops, the hail of liquid rock spattering dangerously on its lightly armored sides, the “jeep” – one of a dozen light utility skimmers in the company – settled half a meter above the ground beside them, the troop door already open. Eustus saw a fully armed and armored figure with the name ZEVON stenciled on the helmet, frantically gesturing for him to get on board.

“Get in!” he shouted at Enya, who needed no further prompting. Zevon hoisted her aboard with one arm, his other still clutching his rifle, aiming it out beyond Eustus. With a grunt of effort, Eustus threw himself in after her, slamming the hatch shut just as a shotgun blast of debris hit the outside of the door.

“That was close, Top,” Zevon said through gritted teeth as the jeep’s pilot raced upward and away from the burning forest as fast as the little vehicle could take them. The debris outside sounded like hammers were being thrown at the skimmer, and Eustus’s nose filled with the smell of charred clothes, skin, hair, trees, rock, and metal. “What the fuck – sorry ma’am – happened?” Zevon asked.

Eustus and Enya exchanged a strained look. “We don’t really know,” Eustus said as he took a long drink from the canteen Zevon handed him. He gave another to Enya.

“The Kreelans have been here,” Enya told him. “It was a long time ago, probably hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. There was what looked like a tomb or something deep in the mountain.” She cast her eyes down. “I think I touched something I shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah,” Zevon said, looking worried, “looks like it.”

“Back off, Zevon,” Eustus warned. “It wasn’t her fault.”

“It doesn’t matter to me, Top,” the younger man replied. “But you two are going to have to explain to the XO why the company commander is in a coma.”

“What the hell do you mean, he’s in a coma?” Eustus demanded. “What happened to him?”

“He got some kind of funny feeling just before those beams lit off,” Zevon explained. “Said he felt like something was wrong or different, but he didn’t know what. We went outside to look. A minute later, all hell broke loose back there where you were, and the next thing I know the captain stiffens like someone hit him with a cattle prod, and he falls to the ground like a sack of potatoes.” Zevon was silent for a moment. Reza had been like a father to him, and he was not able to deal with the situation as well as he would have liked. “The medtechs have been working on him, but all they know for sure is that he’s in some kind of coma.”

Eustus closed his eyes. “Sweet Jesus, what have we done?”

Enya leaned close against him, tears in her eyes.

“Eustus, I’m so sorry. It was stupid. I–”

He put a finger to her lips. “It wasn’t your fault. There was no way for us to know. I should have dragged us out of there the instant we figured out it was Kreelan, and gone to get Reza.”

The jeep emerged from the cloud of smoke and spiraled in to land at the Marine firebase, now fully alerted to a disaster the magnitude of which had yet to become apparent.