Last Flight of the Ark (16 page)

“I’ll get them. Now that you’ve got the entire crew in the
Ark
’s bay, I need you to put the
Genesis II
on autopilot and send her into deep space. If that bomb detonates, I don’t want it near the planet,” he said.

“Roger.”

“You up for landing the
Ark
?” He knew he was asking a lot. She was heavier on the load than anticipated and the big vessels didn’t set down on soil very often. A lot could go wrong on a routine landing. Landing an overburdened, overtaxed, freighter-class ship that was never meant to leave space wouldn’t be pretty.

“Have faith in me, sir. I can set her down. Got my big-girl panties on.”

“It’s not your skill I’m worried about.” He smiled. “What color are they?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Be careful,” he said. “I intend to find out once this is over.”

“Careful is for the scientists. I’m an academy girl. The
Ark
will make it down, sir. She’s a good ship, but this will be her last flight. I doubt she’ll hold together for another launch, with or without cargo. Where I land her will be her final resting place. Pick a good one.”

“I’ll transmit the coordinates as soon as I’ve cleared the sector.”

“Standing by.”

They followed the sound of the hive through the forest to the edge of a plateau that overlooked a valley. He stopped and grabbed Jessica’s elbow. “Am I hallucinating?” He had to be. Across the horizon, ruins stretched from one end of the valley to the other. Buildings of stone, metal, and glass were packed together. Everywhere, vines, vegetation, and forest grew between them and on them. The city was well fortified, with five walls ringing it as though the ruins were the center of a bull’s-eye, but these, too, had felt the effects of time, crumbling in places. Even in its decaying state, it was awesome to behold.

From appearances, it had been a while since anyone had occupied the city. Regardless, no one could deny what sat in front of them. Nature could never craft the perfect lines and angles. This planet had belonged to somebody, at some time.

Might
still
belong to somebody.

Jessica didn’t blink. “I thought this planet was never colonized.” She lifted her hand to her brow and looked out over the city. “Who do you suppose they were?”

“I say we go down there and find out. We’re headed in that direction anyway. Perhaps there’s a clue to their identity and what happened.” Part of him was curious, and the other part wanted to run. It wouldn’t be the first walk he’d taken through a ghost town. Every time it was the same.
Creepy
. This time his senses were running hot. He could see, smell, and feel more than he ever had before. It increased the creepiness factor at least tenfold.

“Spooky.” Jessica grabbed his hand. “The only thing I can hear is that hive. It’s freaky. I never realized how alive our world was until I set foot on one without any birds, insects, or animals. Not even the wind dares to whisper. It’s like a giant vacuum.” Jessica rubbed her arms.

Kaleb glanced down, noticing the goose pimples racing across her skin. He wasn’t the only one sensing something was off. “Or maybe we’re closer than we think.”

“Perhaps.”

He pulled her down the slope, heading for the ruins. The encroachers wouldn’t be far from the shuttle and could be in the city. A definite possibility, as the city was too overgrown to land within the walls. He doubted the hive was down there, but it was close. God, was it close. Every nerve in his body tingled. As Jessica had pointed out, the presence of living energies was impossible not to notice.

And they had his undivided attention.

***

“It looks like a museum.” The building’s vaulted ceilings bespoke a classical architecture, like something straight out of ancient Rome. Graceful arches rose at least fifty feet above them. Carved stone with intricate designs. The details were enough to give any archeologist worth his paycheck a boner.

“Major wood,” he murmured.

“What did you say, sir?” Jessica said.

“I was just thinking….never mind.” He’d known a guy in grad school who would have killed to see this stuff. He frowned. Why would he even think for a second anyone would want to be in his shoes? He’d condemned himself and everyone under his command to exile, and soon he’d have to explain.

Jessica stooped down and touched the mosaic tiles on the floor, dusting them off with her fingers. She traced the images of people dressed in robes and gowns. “They look human.” The tone of her voice held a soft reverence, as though she were in a church. She brushed the surface some more.

“The clothing looks like something from our world. Ancient Greece maybe, but not quite,” Jessica said. She used her hand to push the debris over and pull a root away from the mural. “Look at this. It’s an island with five consecutive rings around it. It almost looks like….the city. Oh, God.”

She sucked in a breath. “I recognize this. According to Plato, Atlantis sank into the ocean. It was theorized that the Atlanteans became corrupt with power and it was even rumored they conducted experiments on humans and animals, bringing about their destruction. You don’t think….” She grabbed another root and the mural cracked apart. “Shit.”

A few feet away, he nudged aside rubble with the toe of his boot and the breath caught in his lungs. The images inlaid into the tile floor here were similarly old and broken, but he could still see enough to raise the hair on the back of his neck. “Jessica.”

She turned and looked to where he’d cleared and reached over to sweep it clean. “Do you see what I see, sir?”

He was looking. She didn’t need to tell him twice. A picture of Earth from above, that slowly focused in, tighter and tighter until it read like a storybook. Pictures of men and wolves strapped to tables. Pictures of half men, half wolves running around. The rooms in the mosaic looked like modern labs with large crystals that projected beams of light. But that wasn’t all. The more dirt she removed, the more his skin crawled.

The next images revealed pictures of people killing the man-wolves, driving them away. People eating people and changing their forms. Then hives, lined up row after row like soldiers. Piles of bodies stacked on top of one another and set aflame as though a plague had swept the land. More and more. It continued on in the detailed mosaics, showing not only the destruction of the island, but the city that sat in the center, lifting from the Earth and taking flight into space.

“They’re Atlanteans,” Jessica said.

“Let’s not speculate. Whoever they were, they were human or humanoid and they played with things they shouldn’t have.” He kicked dirt and dried leaves back over the mural. Now he had a serious case of the willies. He’d done the same thing, played with the laws of nature. A feeling of foreboding attacked.

History was only recorded and remembered for one reason.

He glanced out the decaying wall at the street. The light was falling. Soon it would be dark and they’d be lucky to find each other, let alone the hive. “We’ve got an hour tops before night falls. Let’s find that hive and get out of here.”

“Gladly. This place is giving me the creeps.”

Kaleb started for the exit and stopped. He grabbed Jessica’s arm, pulled her next to him, and pointed down at the toe of his boot. “What do you make of that?” He stared at another section of the mosaic floor, a picture of what appeared to be a series of cryo-cells and people climbing into them. Each cell was oval and shaped like a casket, but the next picture proved it wasn’t one. The figures climbed out and switched places with others, as though it were a shift rotation.

“That doesn’t look good. It looks like some kind of hibernation chamber similar to what we use to transport the animals.” Jessica stooped down. “Did you happen to notice all the figures are male except for one? I think this species is a hive community. One female or queen per settlement. If we can find the queen and kill her, there’s a good chance we can stop them.”

“I don’t think we need to find her,” he said. “I think she’s the one who posed as the commander of the
Genesis II
. She’s down here somewhere, and if she is the mother of the things in that hive, she won’t go far from her nest. My guess is she’s down here to protect her young. If we can find the hive, we’ll find her. For now, we better get out of here. We’ll come back and search some of these buildings with a bigger force.”

Jessica stood. “How many of those cells do you think they have?”

“In a city this size? I don’t even want to speculate.” He punched his com. “Melissa?”

Static fizzed across the link. “Captain Deluzio, do you copy?”

Nothing.

Jessica tapped her com. “I’m not getting a clear link either. Something in this city is disrupting communications. We didn’t have an issue before we landed.”

“And I know why.”

Kaleb and Jessica spun around. Captain James stepped into the doorway. “I’ve been trying to get a link with you for the last hour. I heard voices and followed the sound.”

“Why couldn’t we get a link?”

“I followed the hijackers underground. They’ve got empty cryo-cells in some tunnels under these ruins. Most have mummified remains. A few are empty. None of the cells have anything alive in them. I counted a total of seventeen empties. My guess is those are the hijacker’s cells. They also activated some kind of crystal and it appears to be scrambling our transmissions. I haven’t been able to get a clear channel since. I thought about destroying it, but I didn’t want to take a chance of triggering any booby traps. There’s some seriously advanced tech in this city and it could be extremely dangerous. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to stick around down there.”

“Did they see you?”

“No, sir.” He nodded toward another exit. “I followed them. I found something else outside the city, near their shuttle. It’s like a giant wasp’s nest and it stinks like something dead. Lucky me, my hearing has become as acute as my sense of smell. I heard you and came back down here. It’s through that door and up a walkway to an area above the city.”

“Let’s go. That sounds like the nest we’re looking for. The sooner we destroy that thing, the better.” Kaleb grabbed Jessica’s arm and pulled her toward the exit. He glanced over his shoulder to Bryant.

“Captain James. I need you to go back to the shuttle and see if you can reach Captain Deluzio and Lieutenant Jeffers on that com. I didn’t have a problem reaching the
Ark
from the shuttle. Maybe the distortion is confined to the city.

“Yes, sir.” Captain James nodded. “Follow the path up the stairs. It’s about a quarter of a kilometer into the trees. You can’t miss it.”

“Yeah, we noticed. It breathes.”

“You up for this?” Melissa asked as Frank parked his ass in the nav’s seat.

She studied her console. Still no contact from the surface, or coordinates. They couldn’t wait anymore. They were going down, one way or the other. Low on fuel and high on luck and it would take a hell of a lot of both to land the ship.

He nodded. “I’m up for anything but hanging out in that bay.”

She glanced sideways at him and choked back the laugh. A wild look gleamed in his eyes.
Poor baby
. His shirt hung out here and there and the first two buttons were gone. Not open, gone. One of the silver bars on his lapel was absent and at least a half-dozen lipstick marks peppered his face. It appeared his admirers had jumped on the chance to join his pack. Or jumped on him. Maybe both.

“You might want to strap in.” The
Ark
lurched and bucked, bouncing Frank a foot out of his seat.

He snapped his restraints. “Why’s that?”

“This is our only window to make the descent. It might get a bit bumpy.”

“Yeah.” He glanced at her and grinned.

“We’re almost out of fuel.” The
Ark
began to shake, rattling Melissa where she sat.

“How low?” His tone shifted from playful to serious.

“Empty, except for the backup cells, which don’t amount to much.” Melissa dropped the flaps and lowered the nose.

“Empty—as in we’re almost out, or empty as in oh, shit, we aren’t making it to the surface?”

“The ‘oh shit’ part, but we’re making it to the surface and in one piece.”

“What makes you so certain?” Frank latched on to the armrests, his knuckles white.

“I’ve never crashed a ship before, and I don’t intend to start now.”

“Why’d you have to say that?” Lights everywhere began to flash and beep. Frank’s gaze swept over the control panel. His mouth tightened into a hard line and his skin took on a green pallor. He swallowed and tapped the glass over a gauge. “It says the ship’s hot.”

“Happens. She’s made to take the heat.”

He touched another. “This one says life support is low.”

“The planet has enough oxygen for all of us.”

Frank pointed at a flashing sign of a man assuming the crash position: head tucked between his knees, ready to kiss his ass good-bye. “That can’t be good.”

“That’s easy to fix.” She hit a switch and the lights died, leaving the deck in the dark except for a glow from the navigational screen.

“That doesn’t fix it.” Frank turned to her. His eyes were popped wide and sweat had already started to bead on his forehead.

“You worry too much.” Melissa gripped two levers beside her seat. “Going manual. I need you to activate that panel over there. It handles the flaps, emergency boosters, and backup fuel cells. We’ll need them all to land this ship.”

“We? I don’t know anything about flying.”

“You don’t need to fly it or land it. That’s what I do. I need you to follow instructions.” She nodded to a panel in front of him. “I’m gonna take the
Ark
down on fumes. I’ve cut everything but our auxiliary power and engines. When we hit the clearing, we’re going to dump the backup power into the engines, hit the forward thrusters, and bring the ship to full reverse. We’ve only got enough fuel to do it once, so it’s critical she remains steady or we’ll go into a spiral and I won’t be able to stop it. Timing is everything. On my mark, you’ll engage our vertical boosters. If we do this right, the stop will be sudden but she’ll drop to dock like a feather.