A Warrior's Return (6 page)

The name had several meanings, but the most
relevant was, ‘worshipers of the luminous star’. The natives knew
them simply as the ‘bloody people’. Pulling his knife out Clark cut
the pad of his thumb slightly and with blood welling out of the cut
he pressed it to the shallow depression on the device.

The tablet scrollwork glowed green and the
tablet began to thin out and increase in width and length. A screen
formed as the intricate scrollwork stretched out to more
recognizable configurations.

It was a language read by astronomy. Star
constellations, whose vectored shapes formed a language, were lit
up across the screen. It was Greek to Clark, but the language was
partially understandable, because of the universal use of the
common symbols used. Pulling and touching symbols on the screen
suddenly revealed a matrix of colored lines, as several
constellations lined up with each other and formed a three
dimensional triangle in the shape of a pyramid.

Clark knew a moment of profound success. He
had unlocked the device, without any expensive state of the art lab
or army of scientists peering over his shoulder.

Clark watched as the entire jungle scene
around him was illuminated by the multiplying rays of color that
emanated out of the device. The out tracing laser lines of color
began to reassemble the framework of buildings and structures that
no longer existed in physical form. It was incredible!

No doubt in time an entire city framework
would be revealed, but that was not what Clark was interested in.
He looked at the screen before him as the shapes taking place
around him were represented on the tablet as well.

Something different came up on the screen.
Most of the lines were just green highlighted lines, but an area
off to one side was showing up in solid green, an intact
structure?

Clark with one finger turned the rendering
3D image on the screen from a top view to a crosscut view. The
solid green parts of the emerging city grid were underground.

He double tapped on the area of solid green
and there was a creaking of stone and a dark passageway opened up
thirty feet away out of the ground. Clark let go of the tablet,
which continued to float in space and approached the dark
entrance.

Stairs led down into the darkness. He
stepped onto them and rows of green panel lights came on
illuminating the dissent into an eerie green hued darkness. After a
momentary hesitation Clark descended into the darkened
corridor.

Down he went into the ground in search of an
answer that he almost hoped that he didn’t find, because if he did
then somebody else might too and he couldn’t afford for that to
happen.

The steps were slippery underfoot and he
made his way down them carefully. In places the green lights
flickered like they had a short of some kind in their wiring. This
place had to be incredibly old and yet it was still
functioning!

The stairs ended at a door. The door, with a
creaky hiss, slid open and a room beyond was revealed. Clark
stepped into it and the room came alive with lights and flashing
icons. There was a fine layer of dust over everything and the
evidence of the presence of water at some point.

Clark almost tripped and fell over something
on the floor. It was a skeleton, a female skeleton. The face of the
partially mummified skeleton was grotesquely twisted in an
expression indicative that the last moments before death had been
terrifying ones.

“Not my most flattering look I have to
admit.”

Clark looked up quickly, as a holographic
image of a woman appeared. Clark didn’t let on to it visibly, but
he was shaken by her appearance. Her skin was literally red!

How that had been achieved he did not know
or want to know. Her hair was bright green. Only her eyebrows were
a normal shade of blackish brown. She had ruin tattoos it seemed
everywhere. Everything was visible, as she was only dressed in a
series of see-through gauzy veils of different shades of color.

She was certainly exotic, Clark thought, but
he didn’t care for her modifications as a man. There was an aura of
twistedness about her, as if everything good and wholesome had been
thrown out the door and been replaced with every corrupting
influence imaginable.

She reminded him of when one time in Africa
he’d woken up from a night’s rest to find a cobra upraised off the
ground. Its head had been flattened out with fangs bared, as it
swayed back and forth slightly. He would’ve been dead, if one of
his crew hadn’t poked it with a wire to distract it so he could
move away.

Her eyes had the same black glassiness to
them as the snake’s had. It didn’t help that during her very frank
appraisal of him that her tongue snaked out repeatedly to moisten
her lips.

“Well mankind hasn’t degraded in quality of
form as much as I thought they would have. A pity that we can’t
enjoy what each of us has to offer. It could take years. Years are
probably a limited commodity for you though aren’t they? What is it
like living only half a century or a century at best? Old and
decrepit by the time you finally reach your last days. Hmmmm? Not
so nice is it. There was a time when a hundred years was as if but
a couple years and one still had hundreds of years yet to
experience life. So sad that you won’t get to experience what real
living is like.”

Her syrupy sweet words were ticking Clark
off. He badly wanted to rattle the bag of bones at his feet, with
his boot to remind her, of her own decrepit state, but he refrained
rightly guessing what her reaction would be. She was a creature of
pure vanity and could see nothing better than herself, even though
in his opinion she could have been the opening act of a carnival
freak show.

“Tell me young man why have you come here to
my tomb, to disturb my peace as to what I can no longer enjoy?”

Deciding to both flatter her and still be
truthful Clark said, “Knowledge. I’ve come to seek knowledge.”

“Oh, now that is a good reason. Maybe
there’s hope for humanity yet. Knowledge will cure and provide
anything one desires. Other than one’s own pleasure, knowledge is
the only thing one should focus on actively pursuing in life. As I
always say, ‘If one has a problem one just hasn’t learned enough
knowledge yet.’”

Her sing song attitude abruptly darkened, as
she gazed off to the side.

“If I had but enough knowledge I could’ve
strengthened the force field enough to keep the water at bay!” She
gestured with her hand indicating what Clark now realized was a
huge room.

Most of the room was under water. Clark
walked over to the edge of the water and gazed out upon the still
waters covering the room. Clark could see that where he stood was
the upraised end of what had once been a huge gallery that was now
underwater.

“Behold knowledge senselessly destroyed all
because a petty God didn’t care for us having fun! So He destroyed
it all! He destroyed us with water! Water! Of all things water!
Cold, depressing, rushing, choking water! I hate water!” She
screamed towards the submerged room beyond, thoroughly lost in her
remembered emotions of probably her death scene and her inability
to stop the water despite all the powers at her disposal.

Smoothly Clark intoned into her remembered
hysteria, “Surely with your advanced technology you could have left
this planet and avoided the great flood?”

She turned to him and the clear light of
craziness was in her face, “We could have! We could have joined our
colonies in the stars, but we were deceived! Locked away here on
Earth for hundreds of years, until the end of all as we knew it
came by water!”

Clark asked, appearing the soul of consoling
demeanor, “What could lock such a mighty and highly advanced people
away from their destiny in the stars?”

She stormed back and forth in remembered
fury and frustration, “They build a phase interrupter generator!
How they advanced so fast in technology I do not know! We couldn’t
penetrate the shielding of the complex where they had the phase
interrupter no matter how hard we tried to! And we did try! We
thought of everything and still nothing!”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Clark interjected
softly.

“The Vallians!” She fairly spat the words
out.

“The traitorous murdering self-righteous
wretches is what they are. You know why I persist and other
programs like me, preserving what knowledge and power that we can
through the eons of time of the former greatness of the Orlandian
Empire? So that we may have revenge! Sweet revenge on those who
brought our ruin down upon us! We will rid the galaxy of them!
Every last one of them will be hunted down and destroyed!”

“Where they a mightier nation than your
people?” Clark asked.

“Mightier, hah! We ruled the entire world,
even the fallen stars walked among our number! We were invincible!
The Vallians were but seven tribes scattered out over the plains of
bar-Seth. They kept to themselves, how were we to know that they
were secretly plotting against us? They were great warriors, but
how were we to know that they had advanced so quickly? It’s all
because of that cursed Ta’lont! He helped them and gave them the
secrets to destroy us! The traitorous wretch was supposed to have
died! How he lingered on and managed to recover and turn on us is a
mystery.”

“Your technology is so amazing I still don’t
see how a single weapon could have overwhelmed you so?” Clark
asked.

“It didn’t overwhelm us! We had full use of
everything, except our energy particle beam technology. Without it
we couldn’t form water vortex channel gates. The inability to do so
effectively locked us here. If they had but met us in battle we
would have crushed them several times over! Instead they left like
thieves in the night.”

“They left? Were there ships immune to the
interrupter signal?”

“No most of them had already left before
they turned the device on. The rest left in some other way than
water vortex travel. We do not know how, but we will learn of it!”
She said fiercely and then something finally seemed to dawn on her
and she turned back to Clark her countenance full of suspicion and
Clark knew the game was up.

“So many questions and yet you seem to have
an idea about what we’re talking about. You’ve been leading me on
with your questions to find something out! How very clever of
you.”

Her words may have been praising, but he
didn’t doubt that she intended to kill him now in some way. The
door behind him slammed shut. So that was the way of it.

“You’re going to tell me everything and I
mean everything!” She said savagely.

Clark thought quickly, he’d managed to
manipulate her once; perhaps he could do it again. He had to make
her angry and he thought he knew just how to. His hand slipped to
his left side pocket unobtrusively to rest on two canisters
squeezed into his belt there.

He said, “You’re right I was leading you on
with my questions and it was remarkably easy to I have to admit,
which explains how my great ancestors duped you so easily.”

“What! Your ancestors! The Vallins all left!
They…..”

She stopped and stared at him suddenly
realizing, “You came back!”

“Yes, that’s right. Our memories of the past
are somewhat sketchy. We’ve been embarked on so many grand
challenges out there in the greater galaxy that we haven’t had time
to tie up our loose strings so to speak. Having finished
eliminating all of your star colonies we thought we would make a
trip back to Earth. Sort of a sightseeing trip, while we were here
we thought we would just put the rest of the last of your pathetic
and ill-fated cult to eternal rest.”

She screamed in abject fury and brought her
hands up and electric power shot out of them into Clark’s chest. It
was like grabbing onto a high powered electric wire pasture fence
and not letting go. Clark thought he felt his blood boiling, but he
held on as through sheer force of effort he pulled the two
canisters free of his belt.

“You will die Vallian, but not in this way.
I want to see you suffer! To see you writhe on the floor in
agony!”

The power binding Clark lessened as a second
doorway on the other side of the platform opened. A writhing knot
of tangled up snakes three feet high capsized over into the
room.

“Our energy both attracts and aggravates
them if we wish for it to. Right now you look like the best thing
they’ve ever seen to sink their fangs into. I’ll drink in your
agony and keep you alive while you feel every cell in your body
die!”

Clark’s thumbs flipped the triggers on the
canisters and with a superhuman effort against the immobilizing
electric shock he tossed the canisters. One landed at snake girl’s
feet and the other landed in the fast approaching swarm of venom
dripping assassins.

“What is this?” Snake girl screamed out
questioningly and the power grip on Clark lessened a little more
and with a mighty push off of his powerful legs Clark catapulted
over backwards to fall into the cold waters of the lower room
level.

Barely two seconds after he sunk below the
surface of the water, the platform above exploded into a searing
white ball of light, as the phosphorus grenades exploded.

The room above was enveloped in a searing
blast of heat so hot it could melt the hardest of steels known to
man. Holding his breath Clark waited for a moment and then popped
to the surface and pulled himself back up onto the upper
platform.

Everything was charred black. Getting to his
feet he stepped toward the still open doorway the snakes had fallen
through. His boots kicked through piles of charred snake dust along
the way. Snake girl still stood there, but there wasn’t much left
intact of her holographic image. What was left was sporadically
flickering.