When the Gods Aren't Gods: Book Two of The Theogony (22 page)

After a couple of seconds, the woman moaned and then flinched away from him. “Don’t eat me!” she cried. This startled the second woman, who woke up, looked at the soldiers in their suits and screamed. This caused the first woman to scream, as well.

Master Chief turned down his external input to compensate for the screaming, while turning up his output so that he could be heard. “Ma’am, it’s OK, we’re here to help!” he said. The women did not appear to hear; they kept screaming. If anything, they screamed louder.

“Dammit,” Master Chief said. H
olstering his pistol, he reached up, unsealed his helmet and took it off. “Ladies!” he yelled. “We’re here to help.”

Seeing his face appeared to help
, and they calmed visibly. “Oh, thank you,” cried the one in front of him. “We were sure that they had finally come to sacrifice us.”

“Sacrifice you?”
Master Chief asked as he pulled out his laser pistol.

“Yes,” said the woman. “We were to be sacrificed on the altar.”

“Well,” replied Master Chief, “you don’t have to worry about that any more. I’m Master Chief Ryan O’Leary; I’ll get you out of here.” He dialed his pistol to a fine beam, turning it into a laser cutter. “Don’t move,” he added as he cut off her shackles. He moved over to the other woman and cut off her shackles. Both women thanked him as they slowly stood up, stretching muscles that hadn’t been used in some time.

Calvin took
off his helmet and looked at the women. With his helmet on, they had seemed pretty; with it off, they were gorgeous, even with the dirt and cuts that they had. Their long black hair framed delicate faces with brilliant blue eyes. Their light skin only accentuated how blue their eyes were. “Ladies,” he said, “I’m sorry that I can’t send anyone back with you, but if you go out the door on the other side of the room, you can make it back out of the pyramid. Unfortunately, I’ve already lost several men, and I just don’t have anyone I can send back with you.”

“We aren’t going to walk through here by ourselves,” the first one said. “It is too dangerous. We might run into one of the priests or, even worse, one of the
gods.” The second one nodded her agreement. “We’ll go with you,” she added.

Calvin looked into their scared faces. “Where we’re going, it will be even more dangerous,” he said. “We are on our way to kill
Quetzalcoatl.”

“Oooh,” crooned the first one, putting
a hand on Calvin’s shoulder and looking up into his eyes, “you men and women must be really brave. We’ll come with you. We’ll be safer with you.”

Calvin reconsidered. “Well...it would be dangerous
for you to wander through here on your own. Maybe you should come with us.”

“Are you sure?” asked Master Chief. “They’re more likely to run into
something dangerous
with
us, since we’re actively looking for it. Besides which, we haven’t seen any Caucasians the whole time we’ve been here. Where did they come from?”

The second woman put her hands on Master Chief’s shoulder and looked up at him
, batting her eyes. “We promise that we’ll stay out of the way,” she said. “We won’t be any trouble for you.”

The first one nodded her head in agreement. “Quetzalcoatl was going to have us killed
,” she added. “We want to see him dead so that we know he will never come after us again.”

“Yes,” agreed the second woman, “it’s the only way we’ll ever feel safe.”

“Hmmm...” thought Master Chief. “Well, sir, if they stay back, it probably
is
safer for them to stay with us than for them to wander around the pyramid alone.”

“
I can’t believe you’re seriously considering it, Master Chief,
” remarked Mr. Jones. “
I admit that it’s dangerous for them to walk around alone in the pyramid, but we’ve already cleaned out the shit behind us. They could probably walk all the way out to the main entrance without seeing a single soul. Like you asked, where the hell did they come from?
”

“
Maybe they could walk out on their own,
” replied Calvin, “
but the spearmen we fought could still be in the pyramid, and there were guards at the main entrance to the pyramid. Those guys would probably kill them outright if they thought the women were escaping prisoners. No,
” he decided, “
it’s better if they stay with us.
” He looked at the woman next to him. “You have to stay back out of the way.”

She nodded her head. “We promise,” she said. “By the way, my name is
Sella, and this is my sister Trella.”

“I’m Calvin,” he said
. He indicated Master Chief. “This is Ryan O’Leary. If you need anything, let one of us know.” He put his helmet back on. “
All right, Master Chief, let’s go kill some snakes.
”

“
Roger that, sir,
” Master Chief said opening the door out of the room. “
Steropes and Vice Sergeant Al-Sabani, you’ve got point.
” The two on point went out the door, followed by the rest of the squad. Sella stayed close by Calvin, while her sister stayed next to Master Chief.

“
Master Chief,
” Bob commed on a private circuit as they walked out the door, “
what were the shackles binding the women made of?
”

“
I don’t know,
” Master Chief answered, “
some kind of metal. Why?
”

“
I was the last one out the door,
” Bob replied, “
and I could swear that I saw them disappear just before the illumination rounds went out.
”

“
It must have been a trick of the light,
” Master Chief commed. “
You saw me cut them off.
They were as real and solid as anything I have ever seen. They couldn’t have just disappeared.
”

Bob shook his head. His race had grown up in the dismal swamps of his planet
, and he
knew
his night vision was better than any of the humans. The shackles had disappeared. He was sure of it.

* * * * *

Under the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

Irina looked at Leading Seaman Abdul Wazir. “
Are you ready to go?
”

It had taken a while to get Wazir put back together.
They had taken off his suit, dumped it out and then patched the hole. He had then put it back on long enough to have the suit’s nanobots complete the cleaning of the residual toxic material. He had also received a load of nanobots that were cleaning the poisons out his system. If he hadn’t had the suit and its technology, he would either have been dead by now...or alive and just wishing he were dead. “
I am ready to go,
” he replied. “
My throat hurts, my eyes are watering and I feel like shit, but I am functional. Let’s go.
”

“
I’ll lead,
” Irina said to the group, ‘
then Remy, then Abdul, then Sigvar. Watch for any writing or any discolorations or abnormalities on the walls and floors.
” The passageway was dark, except for the light that the suits shed.

“
Got it,
” said Remy. “
Just so that you know, I’ve only got about eight more hours of power on my suit. The swimming on the way here really drained me.
”

“
Da,
” said Irina in acknowledgement. “
Anyone else have lower than that?
” No one had less, and hers was at 14 hours of power remaining. Nearly all of them had at least one part of their suit that was yellow from the fall and the acid bath; Wazir had several sections that were red. Irina had to use some of her pharmacopeia for Wazir; his pharma was one of the broken parts of his suit. They needed to get out of here. Now.

Let me know when you reach
two hours remaining,
” she said, starting down the hall.

Inside the
Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

Looking down at Sella walking along next to him, Calvin was glad that they had brought the women along. If nothing else,
Calvin knew that he felt stronger and surer of himself with her by his side. Maybe it was the strength of a good woman that people always talked about, he thought.

Their luck had been
holding, too, since they found the women. Steropes had found two pressure plates before stepping on them. Looking at the holes in the ceiling above them, Steropes said that they would probably have dropped some sort of poison or acid on them, had anyone stepped on them.

They had made a circuit of the pyramid and had travelled up a ramp that had elevated them
about 40 feet. At the top they reached a door.

Steropes op
ened the door to see a well-lit room approximately 100 yards on a side. As they went in, the door closed behind them with a ‘snick’ that seemed out of place. Calvin spun around to see that the door was a blank piece of metal on their side; no handle or other mechanism to open it existed on their side. A noise could be heard from inside the door as some sort of bolt was thrown. There was no going back.

Under the Great Pyramid of Cholula
, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

“
Merde,
” swore Remy Martin as more powder came floating down from the ceiling, coating his suit in white. He looked at the analysis as he got yet another danger warning from the suit. “
It is some kind of concentrated phencyclidine like PCP,
” the Frenchman said. “
The suit says it will probably cause hallucinations, and that seizures, coma and death are also likely.
”

“
In that case,
” replied Irina from where she stood outside the white cloud, “
I think we’ll just wait until it settles.
” This was the second time that something had dumped on them from the ceiling. The first time it had been some sort of concentrated venom that had clogged Wazir’s suit sensors and set off another red warning light on his suit. He was now following a long way behind Remy to stay out of the area of effect of any further traps.

Remy brushed himself off as best he could and moved to stand outside of the PCP dust. “
I think we are coming to the end of the maze,
” he announced. “
I can see a light ahead.
” They had been walking in the maze for the last 30 minutes. Between following the right wall, as suggested by Leading Seaman Sigvar Borsheim, and the tracking function of their suits, they hadn’t ever gotten ‘lost,’ but the walls seemed to shift when seen from the corners of their eyes.

Irina breathed a sigh of relief. Between the feeling of not knowing where they were going and having toxic substances dumped on them randomly, their passage through the maze had been disconcerting, to say the least. She was looking forward to traveling in a straight line again...and killing something at the earliest opportunity.

The PCP settled and the rest of the group moved to join Remy at the maze exit. “
As the Americans say,
” announced Remy, “
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we made it to the end of the maze. The bad news is that there is nowhere else to go.
” He moved so that the rest of the group could see the passage beyond him. After about five feet, the passage terminated in a small alcove. A torch burned in the five foot space, illuminating blank, featureless walls. It was a dead end.

Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula
, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

Calvin turned
around. Although the room had initially appeared to be empty, a group of humanoids could now be seen at the other end of the room. In their midst, Calvin got his first look at one of the flying snakes. Although hard to see at this distance, he dialed up his visual augmentation to its maximum and could see that the coatl appeared to be a six feet long snake, covered in feathers. It also had two wings which flapped slowly. Calvin couldn’t see how the wings held it aloft as it hovered about four feet above the ground.

“Is that Quetzalcoatl?” he asked.

“No,” replied Steropes. “That
is
one of the coatl, but it is not Quetzalcoatl. I do not believe that we will see him before we get to his temple. I expect something nasty, though; I could hear him laughing before we walked into this room. Now, I do not hear anything.”

“Um, that might have been good info to have had prior to coming in,” said Calvin.
“Now we’re pretty much stuck here.”

“He has been laughing at me periodically since we a
rrived here,” Steropes noted. “I didn’t think that this time was any different than any of the previous ones. Besides, there was no other way to go except through here, so we had no choice.”

“Still,” replied Calvin, “it might have been good to know that ahead of time.
This seems like it is becoming less of a mission to rescue people and more of a personal vendetta. Please let me know next time if something changes.”

“I w
ill,” answered Steropes.

Calvin looked around the room.
Unlike the rest of the pyramid, the walls and the ceiling of the room were covered in some sort of gray metal. In addition to the group at the other end of the room, the only other things in the room were the devices that were producing its light. Spaced every 20 yards along the wall were eight devices that looked like barrels that were about a yard in diameter. The barrels were about four feet high, with a cylinder that was about six inches in diameter sticking up another three feet from the center of the barrels. At the top of the cylinder was some sort of illumination device. It was too bright to look directly at it, so Calvin couldn’t see if it was a light bulb or some other means of producing light. They all hummed with a low electronic vibration. Between them, they produced an audible noise that raised the hair on the back of the Terrans’ necks.

“Any idea what those things are?” asked Calvin, indicating the barrels.

“No,” replied Steropes. “I have never seen anything like them before. They were not in the coatls’ previous pyramid. I would urge caution.”

“You think?”
asked Calvin. “I’m not sure how much more cautious I could be, except for sitting down and not moving.”

“
Umm, sir, do you want me to do something about the natives?” interjected Ryan.

Calvin looked back to the group at the other end of the room. The humanoids that he had noticed before were obviously priest
s, complete with big headdresses. He could see that there were six of them as they arrayed themselves in front of the Terrans with the coatl flying slowly back and forth behind them. The priests each had large spears like the group the Terrans had fought previously.

“They don’t appear to have any long range weapons,” replied Calvin. “Let’s get a little closer and see if they would rather talk than die.”
The Terrans formed into an arrowhead formation and began advancing across the open room.

“
We would rather that
you
died, instead,
” a voice said suddenly in their heads. “
But that will be taken care of shortly.
”

“Who are you?” asked Calvin.

“
I am Talectelcoatl,
” the voice replied. “
I have a surprise for you.
”

“I’m not a real big
fan of my enemies having surprises for me,” announced Ryan. “Can I please shoot them now?”

“I think that would be a good idea,” Calvin said. “Platoon,
fire!
”

Before anyone could shoot, the coatl reached up with its tail and threw a switch which the Terrans hadn’t noticed before. The noise
from the barrels immediately grew both louder and started rising in pitch. As the first lasers fired, all of the barrels detonated simultaneously. There was a strobe of light and then everything went black.

TSS
Vella Gulf
, In Orbit Around Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020

“I am
having a problem tracking the main part of the Space Force on the planet,” said Sarah Sommers from the science station.

“What do you mean, ‘you’re
having a problem tracking them?” asked Captain Griffin.

“I mean that I
can’t
track them,” replied Sara. “I had a strong signal from the group that Cal...that Lieutenant Commander Hobbs was leading, and then, one by one, their transponders all became very weak, and now I can just barely see them. I still have the two other groups that got separated, but I don’t have the main force on my scope anymore.”

“What do you suppose happened to them, Arges?” Captain Griffin asked the Psiclops standing next to Sarah.

“The nature of the signal cessation is unknown,” replied Arges. “It is possible that their signal is being blocked or that something happened to their suits. The fact that their signal strengths decreased one by one is indicative to me that they went somewhere that their signal is being blocked or jammed. The reason for this, however, is unknown. There is an area of the pyramid where our sensors cannot scan; it is possible they entered this area.”

He looked at the scope and then took a sharp breath of his own. “Captain Griffin!” he exclaimed, “My sensors just recorded an electromagnetic event
from the surface of the planet!”

“What kind of electromagnetic event?” asked Captain Griffin.

“I am trying to ascertain the nature of the event,” replied Arges. “I do not have any indications of a nuclear detonation, but it was a definite electromagnetic pulse (EMP). It is possible that it was a weapon-generated EMP.”

“
A what?” asked Griffin.

“There are ways of creating
an EMP without a nuclear explosion,” replied Arges. “For example, an explosively pumped flux compression generator, or EPFCG, can be used to generate a high-power EMP by compressing magnetic flux via a high explosive detonation. During your Cold War period, the United States developed EPFCG technology that could produce a pulse in the millions of amperes and tens of terawatts, and still be man-portable. The event I just witnessed, however, developed over 200 terajoules of power.”

“What’s a terror jewel?” asked the helmsman.

“A joule is a unit of work or energy,” said Captain Griffin, who was becoming an expert at downloading information through her implant to keep up with Arges. “A terajoule is equal to one trillion joules. About 63 terajoules were released by the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, so whatever just happened down there released the same energy as more than three nuclear weapons.”

“Correct,” said Arges. “I also noted a peak magnetic field strength of
about 1.3 giga teslas.”

As he stood up to make his announcement, Sarah leaned in to the monitor. She looked up, her face as white as if she had seen a ghost. “They’re gone,” she said. “They’re all gone.”