The Black Seas of Infinity (33 page)

Not far beyond sprawls a craggy mountain
range, its jagged charcoal peaks rising like some rabid behemoth
out of the pale sand. I bear toward the hilltops and break into a
run.

I’m not used to the gravity, the weak pull
contorting my strides into a series of giant leaps. I’m in mid step
when a bright light engulfs me. I feel an immense pressure on my
back, like a giant slap. My vision goes black. I try to move my
arms, but they refuse to comply. A moment of panicked darkness
ensues, and suddenly I can see again! In a kaleidoscope of spinning
vision I realize I’m sailing backwards. Whipping violently into
something solid, I slide limply onto the sand below. I gather in my
feet and look up. Just above, there is a perfect imprint of my body
in the rock face. Surrounding me on all sides are tall, rocky
crags. I look over my shoulder at the compound. The breach I made
is now a perfectly round, luminous hole, occupied by several
humanoid silhouettes. They must have hit me with some powerful
weapon, and all it did was propel me forward two-hundred feet!
Maybe they don’t realize quite what it takes to destroy me. Or
maybe it only takes a few more shots like that last one. I think I
actually blacked out for a second. I wonder what a series of such
blasts might do.

I turn left and start to run along the base
of the mountain. Blinding light engulfs me, and I’m somewhere else
again.

A dark, swirling maelstrom encircles me, and
I’m falling. Cracks of lightning belt out, the glowing streams
broken into pulses of brilliance as clouds roll by. Murky shapes
emerge out of the morass, clawing at the corners of my vision. I
try to crane my neck, but resolution stays just out of reach. A
leering face, a grasping hand, an incredible weight of agony and
despair. Entrapment and misery... Some ancient evil reigns here. My
limbs move in a slow delay, like a machine that I control, yet not
a part of me. I feel detached... impressions run through my head...
It’s all written... all planned out... I’m a pawn in an age-old
game... The currents quicken, the storm increases, and reality
blurs... I start to lose my grip on consciousness. The currents
buffeting me feel relaxing... beckoning... Waves of blindness flood
over me...

I awake to find myself kneeling at the bottom
of a shallow crater. The slope is textured, the sand partially
crystallized into glass. I try to scamper up the incline, and
sheets of hardened sand break off and slide down, carrying me with
them. I glance over my shoulder and see a couple of slim, disc-like
crafts closing in. I’ve seen enough war movies to recognize a
strafing run when I see one. Quick bursts flare up in a blinding
light around me. With each lull I notice the crater getting deeper.
The sides are now too steep to scale, the slippery sand trapping me
inside. I start reeling about, scanning frantically for a way out.
White light engulfs me again, and I feel the ground beneath my feet
give way. The radiance fades in the blink of an eye to reveal a
slick stone far beneath my feet. I start to kick violently as I
plummet into the depths. I pirouette around in a gravity-deprived
slow dance? My shoulder slams into something, the blow strangely
jolting in the thin gravity, and I crumple backwards into a ball.
Extending my hands, I run my fingertips over what feels like stone.
I must be in some underground cave. A small amount of ambient light
sparkles off ragged walls of rock. I look straight up. A black
tunnel extends above me, opening in a rough circle at the top to
reveal a few stars. I peer right and left. My meager zone of light
dissolves on the sides into black holes. I break into a slow jog,
heading off to the right. Something slams into me, and I’m thrown
forward. My body bounces off an invisible barrier and back into the
air, skipping across the floor like a rock on water.

I drop my feet and grind to a stop. The
rupture I fell through has been widened dramatically, a glittering
panorama of stars now conspicuous in the gaping hole. The
undulating volcanic rock is now more visible, the ebony floor
marred by a still smoking crater. Just as I break into a sprint an
intense pressure shoves into me, throwing me sideways. I stumble,
but manage to stay on my feet. They must be firing randomly into
the hole, and I’m getting buffeted by nearby explosions. I hurdle a
newly minted crater and keep running.

The cave narrows, forcing me down into a
crawl. The tunnel continues to close in with each step I take,
until it’s scraping my arms. My claustrophobia is starting to kick
in. I feel even more trapped, under this mountain of rock, than I
did in the Mayan pyramid. I can see nothing but black in front of
me. I try to turn my head, and it crashes into stone. The ceiling
won’t give, and I wrench my head back. Fighting a wave of panic, I
keep wriggling forward.

The sides don’t feel like they are growing
any closer, but the tunnel is so constricting I can’t even fully
raise my arm. I bash my head into something and stop. Thrashing my
arm around in front of me, my hand dives into a wedge of rock. The
tunnel has closed up even more, squeezing the crawlspace into a
sideways fissure. I really don’t want to go back. Those things seem
to have the ability to kill me, and a backwards crawl through all
this would be a nightmare. I twist sideways, scraping across the
jagged edges and pulling myself forward an inch. I readjust and
pull myself forward another inch. This is insane! I might as well
just go back and face the consequences! But I’m too stubborn.
Fighting a crushing phobia, I keep inching forward.

A squirming, jerking, pushing horror show
later, and I’ve managed to get through the slender rift and into a
slightly larger crawlspace. I still can’t rise above my knees. I’m
going to be truly fucked if this just dead ends somewhere.

Hours later, my probing fingers fail to find
solid ground in front of me. I’m totally blind, reacting off
tactile sensation, but a sweep of my hand reveals the tunnel ground
falling away in a sheer drop. I can touch the sidewalls and
ceiling, but the way beneath me ends in a sharp line a few feet in
front. I have no idea what to do. If it’s a deep hole and I fall
into it with no way out, I could be stuck for an eternity! I
scuttle up to the edge, brace one arm against a sidewall, and
attempt to feel for an opposing side. Nothing. I can’t go back! The
claustrophobia is already too much! I try to calm myself, bring my
mental distress down to a reasonable level. I have to keep
moving!

Squirming forward, I take the plunge. Falling
straight down, floundering like a fish out of water, I crash into
the ground, a brittle rock crunching under my impact. Crawling to
my feet, I look around in total blackness. I have a weird sensation
of displacement, like I’m in an isolation chamber. I walk to my
left and crash face first into something. Falling back, I scramble
up and try walking the other way, this time with my hands stretched
out in front. Within a few feet my fingertips bump into another
obstruction. I turn slightly and try again. Another few feet, and I
bump against another coarse wall of what I assume is stone. Resting
my hand against it, I follow the surface with my fingers. Keeping
my hand level, I slowly circle the chamber. Nothing. It seems I’m
in a featureless ditch buried beneath a mountain of rock. Stepping
back, I crouch into a squat and pounce at the wall. I feel a slight
give and hear a faint trickle of pulverized stone. I kick it
swiftly, and rock chips away in a grating metal-on-stone crunch. A
few more blows, and the depression has deepened into a crevice
large enough for my foot. Slowly moving upwards, I chisel apertures
in a repeating pattern as far up as I can reach. That should
suffice. Using the notches, I start to scale the rock wall, digging
out new ones as I ascend.

After I climb upwards for about ten minutes,
a shaft of light cuts across the darkness below me. It looks like
the focused beam of an artificial light source. It’s emanating from
my lower right and reflecting off the smooth tunnel wall. Then I
notice the spotlight is singling out my crude footholds.

A few minutes pass in silence, and then the
dark blur of a helmet erupts from the side. Releasing my grip, I
plunge down. With a jarring impact, the body attached to the head
flies out of its portal, following me in an impromptu nosedive. Our
bodies plummet several feet in a clumsy tangle, bouncing roughly
against the walls as we fall.

Crashing into the floor, I roll to the side
and spring upright. The gunmetal gray suit of one of those
creatures lies sideways on the ground, the contours barely visible
in the shadow. Deathly still, the body rests in an awkward fetal
position. A small crystalline globe emitting a bluish light lies
nearby. I scoop it up and rotate it above my head slowly, examining
the pit I’m in. Glassy rock, pocked by small pits, the hollow I’m
in carved out by long gone water. Just above me, I spy another
opening in the wall of rock. It’s not far below the hole I first
came through. No clue where it leads, but it’s a smarter bet than
staying here. As I’m carving a new foothold, I realize this is
going to be much harder than I thought! I’ll have to try balancing
the light and climbing up at the same time. I set it down and hack
away at the wall with my cupped hand. The new footholds are going
to be significantly sloppier, but if that thing has company, I have
no time to spare.

Scaling up the wall in a flurry of vigorous
fits of hammering fingertips, I mold a rough ladder. Dropping back
down, I scoop up the ball and climb. Shoving the light into the
lower tunnel, I crawl in. As I pull my feet inside, I rise to a
crouch, the low ceiling preventing anything more.

Long and relatively smooth, the passageway
appears to be a subterranean canal chiseled by eons of water
pressure. Holding the light aloft, I inch forward. After a few
feet, the tunnel splits, and on a whim I take the left passage.

An hour later, the crawlspace starts to widen
and I angle more upright, shuffling forward in a quicker stride.
The light of the orb reflects off something strange and artificial
looking. A glimmer of something large and curved chokes off the
path, its glossy black surface mottled by a bizarre, swirling
texture.

The end of the tunnel draws closer, the
increasing light giving the chamber a weirdly artificial
appearance. Crude stone walls have mutated into a roughhewn tunnel
that looks unnaturally straight and rigid. Then the passageway
abruptly ends.

I’m facing a featureless barricade. Slightly
convex, with a thin bulbous ring of some charcoal gray substance
encircling the outer edges, it’s definitely not a natural
formation. The whole thing is a solid, semi-gloss black, the
surface polished into a silky smooth texture. I run my hand over it
lightly. Nothing. I push on it. Still nothing. I push a bit harder.
Zilch. I scuttle back a little and tap it with my fist. Still no
response. I turn to the tunnel wall and begin bludgeoning it from
my hunched over position. Chunks start flying in a rain of jagged
black fragments.

It takes a good hour of smashing and
chiseling, but I manage to deepen the hole several feet, my body
slowly entering the growing cavity as I hack my way forward. I’m
attempting to round that barricade and angle my digging in a
looping semi-circle.

The air has grown smoggy with dust. The
glowing orb casts an eerie under-lighting, reflecting off the dust
particles suspended in the air, the haze pirouetting into slowly
moving shapes in the low gravity.

A chunk of the rock gives way before my
hands, revealing a smooth surface beyond. Pulling the orb up, I try
to examine it through the cloudy haze. It looks like it’s made out
of something similar to the barricade. It’s obviously not a part of
the rock covering it. In fact, there is a tiny crease of separation
between the two. It looks like a wall of some sort. Clawing at the
rock, I manage to use the slight gap as leverage and rip out
chunks. The same smooth wall lies beneath. Backing up a little, I
start pounding on the structure, my cramped position compromising
my force.

The surface holds fast for a moment, then it
gives way in a sudden outward burst. Flying forward, the momentum
throws me into a newly created fissure. The narrow confines trap my
shoulder, and I have to drop the light and brace with my free hand
to pull it out, a feat I accomplish with an overzealous rush of
strength that propels me back. My head bounces off the low ceiling,
and I stumble forward, slowing my fall just before I step on my
light.

Picking up the glowing ball, I hold it up to
the hole. It looks like a slim, dark corridor lies just beyond.
What looks like grating spans the length of floor.

Gripping the edges of the gash, I pull it out
in chunks. When it looks wide enough, I hold aloft the light and
wriggle through.