David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

A series of small, circular portals — like small glass plates — emerged from retracting panels all along the shuttle’s fuselage. Sparks of light appeared behind each glass circle — little lanterns dotting the darkness. The revins moved closer, gasps of glee piercing the air. The lights got brighter and brighter. The brush and fir were illuminated on the periphery of the open range. The faraway oak and pine on Apache Peak lit like faint stars dotting the universe. The bare skin of the gathered crowd radiated, gleaming pale like the frost they stood upon. They squinted in the glowing flood, holding their hands up to shield the light. And with that, a blinding torrent filled the eyes of every being standing near. Even with their eyelids closed, they were consumed with the lambent. Their pupils burned.

Chaos broke out. A painful shout erupted amongst the crowd, now stumbling forward in their blind daze. A faint whirr could be heard, cycling up like a fan gaining speed. And then a staccato of gusts — like arrows splitting paper. The light shifted in circles. The revins panicked, shrieking out hollow pleas — the cries cut short in a garbled pop and hiss. The proselytizer stumbled forward and caught a shadow in his field of view, briefly glimpsing the shuttle from between the eclipse. In those few seconds, the elder could just make out a turret, under the nose, firing a rapid salvo of light into the confused crowd. The craft rotated as the battery ripped through revin flesh, perforating limbs and incinerating patches of tissue. A strobe of white fire. Bodies were split open and whole swaths of skin turned to ash, guts cauterized, leaving them disfigured and writhing. The elderly herald crawled on his hands and knees until he came face to face with the opaque cockpit of the shuttle. The ashes of revin bodies swirled in the air, a discord of dying cries piercing the night. The old man threw his hands up in the air and was consumed. Gone.

The floodlights on the shuttle faded and the pyre glittered with the embers of bodies riddled through with gunfire. The shuttle stopped its gentle rotation, coming to rest facing the Kartchner cleft, the turret pointing straight towards the cavern opening. A hatch opened from the underside of the cockpit, extending downwards as a ramp, steps protruding pneumatically from the interior. A light emerged from inside the craft, illuminating the desert floor beneath the plank.

From there, stepping into the soil, a figure emerged from the craft and into the high desert air. It was encased in a synthetic poly-fiber exosuit. A traveller. It sunk its heel into the dirt, twisting its foot back and forth in the ground like it was unsure of something. Unsteady in the world. Wrapped from head to toe in a lithe, airtight shell. White chassis, like the shuttle it emerged from. Head enveloped in a helmet with the same steely luster of the cockpit it was walking under. A case was wrapped around its back, contoured and sleek. The traveller reached up to the gun turret beneath the nose, a foot or so above its grasp, and the armament unlocked, the gun case sliding downwards from the pneumatic retractor. The traveller caught the handle of the cylinder rifle as it dropped into its hand.

A flutter of dead leaves swirled past, pooling above the shuttle and carrying on into the darkness. The wild hummed with fascination. Creaking bones. Mule deer gathered on the western ridge. From the chasm ahead, a colony of ghost bats escaped the black and ascended into the night, their eyes gleaming back in the dying embers of the massacre. All heartbeats, drumming in unison with the faraway tides. Love was gone. The traveller swung its ashen cylinder rifle in the direction of the cave, moving forward cautiously. Light footsteps crunching in the frost-packed soil. Small steam bursts shot into the air from a sub-vent at its nape. The same red circle on the shuttle’s wing was emblazoned on the traveller’s breast. A light flickered at the rifle’s muzzle, illuminating the chaparral and the winding path leading to the cavern.

The traveller stepped into Kartchner Cavern, sidestepping down a broken walkway and into the cold, damp rock of the upper cleft. Its rifle light darted around as the traveller shuffled past a cairn near the entrance. Shadows dancing on the walls in the wild, flickering in the artificial light. The furtive figure continued on for some time with its beam of illumination vectoring from left to right in the narrow corridor. The glow would sporadically catch the white poly-fiber shell as the traveller passed through the underworld, casting itself in a haunted spark. The echoes of its footsteps bounded into the ether and the air ascended. The traveller shone its light forward and the massive cavern came into view.

Long, massive stalactites hung down from the ceiling, which met with sharp stalagmites jutting up from the ground. Row after row of limestone speleothems. Straws falling into the air and columns twisting upwards, molten-like, as if a fire had swept through and reduced the dark to a deformed horror. The void breathed in as the traveller descended, walking with the light shining from side to side, the jaws of the underworld opening up and swallowing whole. Each footstep echoed off the high ceiling and carried away into the far reaches of the cavern.

The traveller clambered down through a narrow passage, lined with broken concrete slabs, and came upon an otherworldly chamber — the throne room. The muzzle light panned from left to right, igniting the incisors above and below. The light rested on the center of the massive room and there, in the spotlight, was a pile of synthetic wreckage. The traveller tapped the side of the cylinder rifle and the beam widened, illuminating the whole chamber. Countless heaps of crushed and separated robotic appendages stretched the entire length of the chasm. Fiber optic filaments and stripped wires glittered in the electroluminescence cast by the muzzle. Sheared tires, bent hands, twisted paneling. A binary tomb. The fuselage from three drones rose from the pile like leaning obelisks — wings broken off, the nose of each streaked in dried blood. Calvary of the constructed.

Shallow breath vapors were rising into the air from behind two columns. The traveller knelt down slowly, keeping a watch on this faint condensation. The vapors stopped. From behind one column stepped a pallid figure — a revin, white as the moon, eyes fused shut, fingernails pinning out like obsidian razors. It walked slowly towards the traveller, expressionless. Its naked skin, translucent in the artificial light. Tendons and muscle pulling taught with each footstep. A slight grin curved up from one corner of its mouth and the traveller raised its cylinder rifle in line with its forehead. From behind, the other wraith sprang on the travellers back, its claws raised high in the air and coming down fast at the sub-vent. Both revin wraiths screamed, piercing the cavern with a shrill wail. The traveller reached back with one hand and grabbed the gaunt creature from its open jaw and threw it forward, crashing into the other revin as it sprinted headlong. They tumbled into a massive column and, as they righted themselves, the traveller unleashed a volley of white gunfire into their flesh. Their sides blew out in a cloud of ash where the gunfire hit them, incinerating patches of their bodies as they crumbled into a charred, contorted heap.

The traveller scanned the rest of the room cautiously. Nothing living remained, save itself. From a zipper pouch near its chest, the traveller pulled out a small object, clutching it in its fist, pausing a moment, head bowed. Its hand opened and it looked down at what it had in its palm — a small flash drive. It took it between two fingers and flicked a small switch on the side and the flash drive lit with a small green light.

From a pile in the deep corner of the chamber, a hushed beeping emitted into the quiet air of the cavern. The beep cycled, deadening each time — as if the power behind it was waning. The traveller ran over to the pile and furiously pulled at the cables, axels, and synthetic appendages atop the sound. As the junk was lifted off, the beeping was more audible, but slowing. Finally, the source was uncovered.