Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire (54 page)

BOOK: Beyond Armageddon: Book 02 - Empire
7.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

“I think not, General,” Reverend Johnny stopped pacing and pointed.

All the turning and stopping, reversing and turning again, came to a halt. The puzzle had, indeed, solved itself. A huge black hole of a doorway opened directly in front of the human army camped on the plain of ice.

General Brewer commanded, “Entry team! Let’s go!” He turned to Casey. “Captain Fink, you stay outside with the troops. If you don’t hear from us in about an hour, or if you have reason to believe we’ve failed, follow us in. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir! Good luck, Sir.”

Three dozen well-armed soldiers mustered at the front of camp. General Brewer and Reverend Johnny led them toward the opening in the obelisk. That opening stood tall enough to accommodate a Goat-Walker and wide enough to fit eight lanes of traffic.

As they approached, the massive gate made Jon feel puny; insignificant, like Jack finding the castle after climbing the beanstalk.

They formed two columns and jogged inside. The soft glow of the midnight sun faded as they followed the huge corridor. However, hundreds of pinpricks of light flickered to life on the dark walls, like stars on a night sky, providing just enough glow to illuminate the passage.

Boots thumped on a solid floor but despite the height of the ceiling and a hallway that stretched forward seemingly forever, no echo sounded.

“Cold in here,” Johnny remarked as his breath exhaled in white puffs.

“Listen,” Brewer held a hand aloft and the column halted. “Do you hear that?”

A rumble…deep and low as if machinery worked somewhere in the distance ahead. Jon thought he felt a vibration in the wall…

           
…Outside, Captain Casey Fink waved his arms and walked the same circular path over and over wearing a track in the snow both in an effort to generate body heat and as a result of nerves. He alternated his attention from the obelisk to the Wraiths off in the distance to his left, to the Vikings off in the distance to the right, and then back to the strange contraption ahead.

           
At that moment, the puzzle started again. A thick ring near the top rotated, then one at the bottom in the opposite direction, then a pair in the middle, one slower than the other.

           
The door through which Brewer, the Reverend, and their men had entered disappeared…

           
…The corridor trembled and the soldiers rocked back and forth. They moved—the entire passageway moved—with mild g-force pushing them toward a side wall.

A slab of black slid out and blocked the passage ahead. Another did the same behind, this one catching a soldier at rear of the column, shoving him into some unseen groove leaving behind his arms and rifle while the rest of him disappeared, either pulverized or carried off.

Groans, mumbles, and curses from the men. Jon suddenly felt more claustrophobic than he had during the entire trip on the submarine; he feared the roof—or perhaps the walls—would suddenly slam together and crush his entire team.

           
“Dear Lord, we are spinning! The levels are moving again!” Reverend Johnny shouted the obvious.

           
Brewer shouted back, “It’s a trap! All this way for a trap!”

           
Johnny said, “No, no that’s not right. It’s a puzzle, General! A giant puzzle box made of levels and rings. A combination spinning and turning to different solutions, one that showed us the path. Another to…to…”

           
Their movement stopped with a heavy
thud
as if something locked into place. Every man in the entry team including the Reverend and General Brewer slammed against the wall and fell to the ground, gear scattering and legs wobbling.

           
An eruption of noise burst into the hall.

           
CLANG. SMASH. POP. BANG.

           
Over and over again, a sound of grinding, whirring, hissing, machinery.

           
Johnny staggered to stand, retrieved his heavy machine gun, and gawked at the flood of light now filling the tall corridor as he finished his thought, “Another to let us in.”

           
Brewer regained his feet but struggled to regain his senses.

           
The passage opened to chaos incarnate. The heart of the enigma.

           
His mind fought to decipher the sight. Huge, inextricable, alien. He took the vision in bits and pieces in an attempt to digest the whole.

Jon looked up and saw a ceiling so very high above, a ceiling cluttered with piping, gears, tubes, and pillars, some running along the roof, many more hanging down to various heights. Everything moving, pumping, sliding, and rotating.

He stood on a ring made of some kind of cream-colored metal that traveled the circumference of the massive round chamber, stretching off to either side. Ahead, that ring ended at a short drop off where another ring waited, then another, then another, terraced and descending into the bowels of the structure, each crowded with gears, cranks, wires, pipes, blocks of stone with pulsating veins, and spinning top-like gadgets, and glass balls with electronic explosions inside and huge corkscrews and stretching springs.
 

A city-sized machine.

           
Jon watched a massive gear as tall as a small skyscraper roll along the lip of one of the rings, matching its teeth to notches in the floor.
 

A gargantuan pendulum swung from the shadows, swooped through the mass of machinery, and then disappeared again on the far side of the incredibly huge chamber.

On the concave walls, long cylinders jetted forth and connected with arcane sockets, some several times larger than a man. Spinning drill-like extensions darted out for unknown reason. Giant rock balls rolled in oversized gutters.

           
Like his men, Jon gaped at the sight, paralyzed by the size, complexity, and energy of the place.

“It’s like…like we’re fleas in a giant Swiss Clock.”

Reverend Johnny replied, “The Lord has made everything for his own ends, even the wicked for the evil day.”

           
A twisting, swooping tunnel encased in some sort of grayish metal or rock worked its way above, through, and around the madness. Jon spied several openings that might be entrances of some type; perhaps this was a thing meant for transportation. A conveyor belt of sorts moved through that tunnel in a stop, start, stop, start again fashion.
          

That tunnel rose and turned then descended then turned again like an insane version of the monorail at Disney World. Jon could not see if it traveled all the way to the bottom but it made no difference because the nearest entry port was a distance away.

From far down beyond the descending platforms came a light seemingly a mile away, its shine somehow seeping through the pandemonium to reach Jon’s eyes.

The runes.

“General, do you think we should—” a hailstorm of rail gun rounds cut off Reverend Johnny’s question as the shots ricocheted around the entry team.

A group of Vikings stood on a jetty higher than Jon’s group and a hundred yards away to their right. Their camouflage ponchos struggled to find the right pattern. Some turned cream like the floor of the rings, others splashed blue resembling the arcs of electricity shooting across parts of the machine, others shaded black, gray, silver, and red in reaction to the various colors found in the chaos.

“Take cover!” Jon yelled but that cover presented as much danger as bullets.

“Dear God, we are not alone,” but Johnny did not mean the Vikings. He directed Brewer’s attention in the opposite direction where, in the shadow of a pyramid-shaped metallic structure spitting sparks, gathered a cadre of Wraiths.

The alien races appeared as confused and intimidated by the gigantic apparatus as the humans. However, the commanders of each of the three groups managed to focus their charges on the mission.

The Wraiths split into groups. Three hurried toward the transport tunnel, aiming for one of the entry slots. Others descended the rings level by level.

The Vikings moved carefully, clearing every corner like a SWAT team sweeping a building.

Jon spread out his force in a picket line and hurried to the next ring. His right flank made contact with the Vikings. One human soldier absorbed a series of rounds in the chest and fell. Another tossed a grenade at the enemy. Its detonation caused a nearby glowing red ball of crystal to explode. The resulting shock wave smashed more machine parts and crippled two Vikings.

Jon’s left flank engaged several Wraiths. Their screams shattered tubes and chipped pulsating rocks and also killed a soldier.

Reverend Johnny responded by climbing on top a large glowing block. He fired from his elevated position at the Wraiths, evaporating one and forcing the others to retreat.

Through it all, the invaders on each side dodged moving walls, swinging hooks, and bursts of energy between power couplings.

Unit cohesion evaporated, for all the combatants. The chaos of the great machine conspired to eradicate any order as did the constant sniping between enemies. Each of the invading forces deteriorated into smaller groups.

No one—alien or human— noticed the covers on three compartments near the ceiling slide open.

Jon, with a trio of soldiers in tow, came to the edge of the ring. The next level sat some six feet below but as he stood at the lip and prepared to leap, he noticed groves that resembled—

“Look out!” A soldier cried as a massive gear came whirling along the edge like a mammoth wheel.

Jon and his three comrades jumped for the next level, one did not move fast enough. The groves of the gear caught him, crushed him beneath, and split his body in two, half of which stuck to the metallic surface as it rolled away.

The chaos of the machine afforded no time to mourn, no moment for reflection. The instant Jon Brewer hit the floor on the next level he had to avoid an extending pole charged with electricity jabbing out from an opening in the terrace wall. Crackling energy singed the top of his crew cut.

Brewer spoke to the two men on his flanks, “Watkins, Cooper, stick close to me.”

Watkins—a short fellow with a beard who had been nicknamed ‘the Dwarf’ by some of the men—offered, “There are more of my squad in the area, Sir. I can round them up if you like.”

“No time, we have to move fast. Just stay on my six.”

Jon knew he could not waste the time to coordinate the entire team; every second that ticked by meant a Wraith or a Viking could find and imprint the runes first. He suppressed his instinct for military order and gave in to the chaos; the battle for the runes had become one last headlong sprint through this maze of machine with armies dwindling to individuals.

His adrenaline, his focus, and his fear of failure compelled him forward like a junkie in desperate search of a fix and for Jon Brewer, that fix was the need to prove his courage and worth. Not to Trevor, not to Lori, not to his daughter, but to the ghosts of the men he once abandoned on a battlefield the day Armageddon struck.

That focus kept him from seeing those three compartments high on the wall in the shadow of the ceiling. From those compartments came yet more madness in the form of three guardians, one flying out in search of targets, the other two walking down the wall on spindly legs, hidden from view by the pieces of the machine they protected.

Below, a Viking hustled around a mass of wires and rock and came face-to-face with a human soldier who fired and missed, the Viking answered with better accuracy.

Three Wraiths boarded the conveyor-belt in the transport tube. That belt moved them forward quickly until it stopped at another opening in the tunnel for a short pause not unlike a city bus halting to pick up passengers.

           
A human soldier tossed a grenade at their feet. The demons reached for it, but the conveyor belt moved them forward again into the confines of the tunnel where the grenade exploded with a muffled boom.

Meanwhile, Reverend Johnny ran and jumped across the top of machine parts with his big gun sweeping for targets. He watched humans and Wraiths and Vikings worm through the maze of machinations.

He saw a Wraith impaled by a spear-like device. He saw a Viking fall into an open hole followed immediately by a large rock with pulsating veins dropped into that same hole where it certainly crushed the alien.

Reverend Johnny glanced down and locked his eyes on the black sockets of a Wraith staring up at him. The vile fiend opened its long mouth and began its deadly scream.

“Shut up!” Johnny’s shout lacked his usual elegance but his machine gun provided its usual lethality.

Further away in the space between two house-sized bricks, a Viking soldier found his path suddenly blocked by some mechanical monstrosity walking on three legs supporting a round center piece. On that centerpiece, a track holding a long blade that spun around the body of the thing like a helicopter rotor.

Before the alien realized exactly what he faced, the guardian wobbled forward and cut him into smaller parts. As those parts fell to the floor, the poncho finally settled on a color: red.

Other books

Promote Yourself by Dan Schawbel
Wiseguys In Love by C. Clark Criscuolo
Enchanting Lily by Anjali Banerjee
Changes by Charles Colyott
Body Of Truth by Deirdre Savoy
The Cowboy's Homecoming by Brenda Minton
Serial Killer's Soul by Herman Martin