Darren Wearmouth - The Critical Trilogy Box Set

The tunnel was wide enough for both Denver and Charlie to move forward. Layla brought up the rear with Vingo wedged between them. She shared a look with Denver that told him she would gun the alien down if he tried anything.

“So where are we heading?” Denver whispered over the comms, stepping as carefully as he could over the solid surface. It seemed to be a kind of smooth granite. His suit clanked with each step, making him wince with the echoes of their movement. It reminded him of a mausoleum he had once spent a night in. The rock seemed to have its own weird acoustics.

“This is one of the escape routes for the information arbiters.”

“Who are they when they’re at home?” Layla asked.

“This isn’t their home,” Vingo replied, not getting the turn of phrase, but continued, “They’re the ones who catalogue the sum of the tredeyan intelligence. It’s here, where our servers are, and our AIs that look for patterns in the data. It’s the arbiter’s job to interpret the findings as well as catalogue useful information. This vault goes back five hundred millennia.”

They reached the end of the corridor and turned ninety degrees to the left. Denver stopped and held up his hand, indicating for Layla and Vingo to halt. “Dad, you hear that?” he whispered.

“Sounds like… what the… is that?”

“Croatoan,” Denver said. “You know anything about this, Vingo?”

“No… approach with caution; we’re coming to one of the server analysis rooms. I can hear… there’s something else up ahead. We need to get to that room.”

“Fine,” Charlie said, inspecting his rifle. “Load up; shoot anything that moves in there. Follow my lead.”

Charlie stepped forward in a half-crouch. Denver stuck by his dad after glancing back to make sure Layla was okay. She looked as determined as his dad and filled Denver with pride. If they were going to assault a hyper-important vault on an alien planet during a war with super-advanced aliens, he wouldn’t want to do it without Layla and his dad by his side.

Before Denver brought his attention back to the white light at the end of the tunnel, he saw Layla mouth the words, ‘I love you.’ He responded in kind, flashing her a confident smile, and returned his focus to the room.

As they approached quietly, rifles at the ready, Denver started to feel something buzz around his mind. At first he thought it was static on his comms, but when he asked the others, none of them detected anything.

It was almost as if he could sense…

He didn’t get a chance to warn the others as a man-sized scion prism floated out of the white light and entered the tunnel. Another appeared behind them, making Vingo yell out with a kind of screeching panic.

The two prisms steadied themselves. Their cones raised half an inch to expose their glowing blue insides… their lasers. Denver closed his eyes, bracing himself for the impact, but instead he heard a voice say, “Put down your weapons, and enter the room. You might still live yet.”

“Did anyone else hear that?” Denver asked over the comms.

Vingo was gibbering something in his alien tongue and raised his rifle toward the prism in front. The scion machine snapped a thin, narrow beam of light between Denver’s and Charlie’s heads, striking Vingo in the chest.

He stiffened immediately and shook within his suit. He collapsed forward, dropping his rifle to the hard surface.

“Enter the room,” the neutral voice, neither male nor female, ordered again.

“Of course,” Charlie said, stepping forward, but still holding his rifle to his side, the barrel pointing down to the floor.

Denver turned to Layla and helped her step over Vingo’s prone form. The second prism behind them seemed to tilt when it got close to Denver. Man and machine regarded each other. Denver felt that strange buzzing sensation in his head again. The second prism moved forward until it hovered over Vingo’s body. A ghostly white field emanated from its base, lifting the tredeyan off the floor.

“Please, into the room,” this second prism said, specifically to Denver.

Denver nodded and turned, following the others into the white light of the server analysis room, feeling strangely secure despite his initial fear and uncertainty.

The lights within the ten-meter-square room dimmed as they entered. It had golden walls that shimmered against the light cast down by an overhead glow panel. A narrow holoscreen no more than about thirty centimeters in height stretched around the walls at a little lower than chest level.

Data in a script he didn’t recognize flowed around these screens. Two more prisms, smaller this time, like the one he and Layla had encountered outside of the temple, hovered in front of the screens, shining their pale blue lights onto the surface. Denver presumed they were scanning for information, much like the other one did around the statue.

When he brought his eyes to the center of the room, he saw the source of the croatoan sounds. Bound by thick metallic cuffs around his wrists and ankles, the scarred form of Hagellan lay stretched out. The scion who had lifted Vingo dumped his body to the rear of the room onto the glossy black granite floor and returned to hover above Hagellan.

The old croatoan managed to lift his head and thrashed when he saw Charlie, Denver, and Layla.

Blood dripped from his mouth and sprayed out into the air when he called out.

“What’s the meaning of this? What are they doing here?” he croaked, sounding more afraid than Denver had ever heard any croatoan. It pleased him, seeing the ex-council member in such a humiliating and weak condition.

“Well, well, well,” Charlie said, with a smile on his face. “Looks like you’re in a bit of trouble there, old friend.”

Hagellan tried to spit at Charlie, but the spray just dripped uselessly down his thick neck and pooled onto the granite floor. The scion prism above him extended out that ghostly white field that had previously lifted Vingo. This time it didn’t lift, but pressed, forcing Hagellan’s throat to the ground, cutting off his words.

The other prism hovered between Charlie and Hagellan.

“Humans,” it said in that neutral voice, “your mission is over.”

“Mission?” Denver asked. “The only mission we’re on is to get air and survive this goddamned planet. What’s any of this got to do with us?”

Vingo came to and hobbled to his feet. He swayed and clanked against the wall. His eyes grew wide when he saw where he was. He spun to face the holoscreen and reached into a compartment on his suit leg.

The scion didn’t seem bothered and were silent as everyone watched Vingo take what Denver thought was a recording. The tredeyan spun round and flicked his gaze across the occupants of the room, a kind of confusion coming over his face.

He didn’t hesitate, though; he made for the way they had come in. Denver raised his rifle and was about to shoot the fleeing alien when the scion prism knocked Denver to the floor and pressed him down with a force that made it difficult for him to breathe, even with the protection of the suit.

“Let him go, you fucking machine,” Charlie said, firing a burst of fire at the prism. The bullets ricocheted off the armored surface and embedded into the gold walls with heavy thuds that reverberated around the surface.

One of the rounds had pierced the tough hide on Hagellan’s chest, making the beast wail out and thrash more within his shackles. The prism holding Denver glowed brightly as a bolt of laser fired from it, striking down Vingo with a single blast, the tredeyan’s body cauterizing before it even hit the floor.

The neutral voice from the scion spoke up. “Stop, it’s over now.”

The force on Denver’s throat eased and lifted him to his feet.