Scorched Earth: (The Human Chronicles Saga Book #16) (25 page)

Chapter 29

Pollic Pon was a huge city about a hundred miles from Juir City. It served as a receiving and distribution center for the planet, along with ninety other centers scattered across the surface. But Pollic Pon was the largest, as well as the closest to Juir City, and that was where the Lan’olic ship was scheduled to land.

Fortunately, the movement of ships in and around such a large distribution center was mostly automated. With thousands of landings and take-offs per day, it was the only way to avoid collisions and misrouted cargo.

Adam and Riyad sat back in huge, comfortable chairs and let the computers guide them to a soft landing at their designated location. Robots then accessed the rear hold and unloaded the cargo with mechanical speed and efficiency.

By this time, the two Humans—still in their environment-suit disguises—had already left the alien ship. They knew it would be shot back into space for a return trip to Oannan. But without a crew, once manual control was returned, it would race wildly off course, eventually to be stopped and boarded. Fortunately, all this would do is create more questions; Riyad had dumped the bodies into space. All the investigators would have would be ghost ship and a missing crew. Whether they would put two and two together and alert those on the Kacoran Plain, that was an unknown.

As a species, Juireans were too few and too important to tend to such mundane tasks as driving taxis. That job—and many others on the planet—was left to the assorted creatures who came to the capital planet seeking well-paying jobs, or at least better than they could find on their homeworlds. The driver of the transport Adam and Riyad climbed into was another of the races neither of them had seen before. He had almost iridescent red skin and wore a tight-fitting garment made from a material resembling tin-foil. He had the standard two arms, two legs and Prime-looking face. The eyes, however, had double eyelids that closed from top to bottom and side to side. Adam’s own eyes began to water just looking at the alien in the rearview mirror.

He leaned forward and presented a stack of Juirean credits.

“Will this get us to Juir City?”

The alien took the chips. “Juir City is a long trip. Without a return fare I will need double.”

Adam handed him more, feeling like he’d just been hustled.

Without expression or comment, the driver guided the transport away from the huge spaceport and onto the main road leading to Juir City.

Adam had spent a year on the planet after the Humans took over, with most of his time surveying the damage caused by the Kracori asteroid attack. The huge rock had been guided to a water splash-down a hundred miles out into the Southern Sea, so most of the catastrophic damage was to the area around the city. Huge tsunami waves climbed nearly to the top of the Kacoran Plain, where the main cluster of Expansion-ruling buildings had once stood. Most had already been destroyed by the Kracori air and space assault prior to the rock being dropped from orbit, so further damage was limited to what was left to burn on the hundred-mile long flat-top mountain, along with the brutal, two-year-long nuclear winter that followed.

The planet Juir of that time was nothing like the Juir of today. Adam was amazed at the speedy recovery of the natural ecosystem. Grasses had returned, along with thick groves of large-leafed trees. The skies were blue, even as the surrounding mountains showed considerably more snowpack than before the attack. It was cold outside—colder than normal—and according to the experts it would remain so for another twenty years.

The trip to Juir City took two hours in light traffic, but before reaching the rebuilt metropolis, Adam had the driver pull off the main road five miles west of the city. The alien didn’t question the instructions. A new road wound through the groves toward the imposing edifice that was the sheer rock wall of the Kacoran Plain, climbing to a height of three thousand feet above the city.

Adam had the driver stop before reaching the small town of Hammic, four miles farther along the road.

“We’ll get out here,” said Adam.

Without question, the driver stopped the car.

Adam was in awe of the driver’s total lack of concern or curiosity. So he felt really bad when he reached out and knocked the driver unconscious. The Humans found emergency equipment—including rope—in the transport. They bound and gagged the driver and placed him the cargo hold of the vehicle. Adam would need the transport after the rescue. He moved the car into a grove of trees and out of view from the road.

“Let’s hope this doesn’t take too long, otherwise our red friend here will die of dehydration and starvation.”

“Can’t be helped. It’s a long walk from here back to Pollic Pon.”

Riyad looked up at the towering wall of stone. “Are you sure it’s still there?”

“No, I’m not. But I came here ten years ago and it was then.”

“That’s reassuring, otherwise we’ve got one hell of a climb ahead of us.”

A towering and imposing wall of granite rose up before them, yet even then it was a fifteen minute hike to reach the mountain, where millions of years of wind, rain and snow had caused huge piles of fallen boulders, rock, soil and gravel to accumulate at the base.

The Kacoran Plan was the last remnant of a huge shield volcano. Sometime in its fifty-million-year-long history, a hundred-mile long capstone formed at one level within the mass of basalt and granite, and over time everything above and around it weathered away until only the imposing, flat-top mountain was left standing.

A hard wind was howling down the mountain, and Humans were grateful for their environ-suits. Adam stood back and looked up at the mountain, before scanning to the left and right along the base.

“You seem lost.” Riyad observed.

“Not any more than usual.” Adam moved off to the right, threading his way through the crumbled stone debris. Fifteen minutes later he pointed.

“There, see the path and that small stream? That’s where we’re going.”

The small brook flowed from the maze of rock rubble as an ancient path ran along its bank.  Adam and Riyad wove through the narrow opening, following the creek until it led them to a wider clearing. Against a flat cliff wall was a perfectly round hole in the side of the mountain, thirty feet in diameter, with a small waterfall draining from it—and a rusted metal grate blocking the entrance.

A small plaque was attached to the iron bars, along with a small box bolted along the top. Adam walked up to the sign and pressed a button on the box.

A scanner inside the box detected the Human’s translation bugs and transmitted an audio version of the sign’s message.

“It was through this tunnel, that the honorable Juirean Elder Hydon ra Elys escaped the assault on his bunker by the Kracori, agents of the evil Klin sub-race. Elder Hydon would later meet his fate at the hand of Kracori, yet not before driving the aliens from our revered homeworld of Juir. It is in his honor that the reconstructed capital building was named the Malor-Hydon Tower.”

Adam snickered. No mention of all the help Hydon had in escaping from the Kracori. Of course, that would have stained the myth surrounding the event. Adam and Riyad knew better. They led the effort to bore through the mountain in a huge laser-armed excavator, thereby saving the Juirean leader from certain death—at least for a while. The
later
the sign refers to was when the Kracori loaded him into a starship and spirited him off their homeworld of Elision. He was never heard from again. And it wasn’t he who drove the Kracori from Juir. It was the rapidly-approaching Human fleet that did the trick. But again, that didn’t fit into the narrative of the times.

Adam and Riyad each had a backpack and satchel full of weapons, ammo and other sundry items that might come in handy for their assault on the Juirean stronghold. Yet the one thing they didn’t have was a crowbar.

The covering over the entrance to the tunnel wasn’t a gate, just a rusted iron grate. Iron was iron on any world; it’s when alloys were made from the basic material that the differences in strength were found, depending on the gravity of a particular world. Why make an alloy or artificial material that could support a building four times the weight when it wasn’t necessary? That’s what gave Humans most of their physical advantage throughout the galaxy. But if something was made out of the raw material, there wasn’t much they could do about it.

Adam examined the anchors in the solid stone of the cliff face. There was rust, but none of the rods had even the slightest give. They were left with only one solution.

“Hopefully it won’t attract too much attention,” Adam said.

“Yeah, why would an explosion at the base of the most-guarded mountain in the galaxy draw any attention? Happens all the time, I’m sure.”

“If you have any better suggestions….”

“None. I just like to complain. It’s what I do,” said Riyad, smiling.

“Take cover. I’m using an M-4 grenade.”

Adam moved back as far as he could in the small clearing and cocked the M-101. He held the weapon at hip level and pulled the trigger.

It was a few moments the results were known. They weren’t great, but enough.

The lower left section of the rock face had crumbled, freeing an anchor rod, bending it outward. Adam and Riyad rushed over, and after a lot of huffing and puffing, managed to bend it out a little more, making an opening big enough for them to crawl under.

Adam went first. Riyad passed him the packs and weapons and then followed.

Adam had brought several sets of forehead lights with him anticipating a climb through a three thousand foot long tunnel. Although their suit helmets also had lights, the men had already removed them. They were hot and stuffy, and the coolness of the fresh air circulating through the tunnel was a welcome relief. They placed the lights around their heads and surveyed their surroundings.

The passageway had been melted through the middle of the mountain by powerful lasers set at the front of an excavator pod, which was a one-time-use piece of equipment. For locomotion, the cylindrical-shaped vehicle traveled on long tank-like treads, leaving tracks in the molten rock not unlike stairs. This would make the climb to the top much easier. The rest of the rock lining was smooth as glass, and with a small stream flowing rapidly along the bottom.

Adam was relieved to find a fairly decent breeze circulating through the tunnel. This meant it was open all the way to the top, or some other vent farther along. Without the circulating air, it would be a good bet a cave-in had blocked the passage and another way up the mountain would have to be found.

Without a word, the two men began moving up the convenient stairway along the sloping sides of the tunnel. There was a strong musty odor and the walls were slick with a coating of moisture which fed the stream.

After the Kracori dropped their asteroid into the Southern Sea a hundred miles from here, huge tsunamis swept across the coastal plain, inundating Juir City before running halfway up the mountain. The waters also entered the tunnel.

Only Hydon and a handful of Humans escaped in the pod before the flood. The rest were still in trapped the security vault when the waves hit. At first, the surging column of water created an incredible crush of pressure building up before it. Then the heavy vault door exploded outward, relieving the pressure. By that time, the towering pyramid structure atop the vault had been destroyed and the mountaintop devoid of life. So no one was around when a geyser a thousand feet high erupted from the surface of the Kracoran Plain. Everything in the tunnel and the vault was flushed out within the spectacular fountain.