The Legend of Earth (The Human Chronicles Saga -- Book 5) (16 page)

“Well done, Zack. Now everyone, get on board.”

Just then a barrage of electric-blue bolts streaked into the room. Even though level-two bolts were more of an annoyance than a threat to Humans, level-ones were deadly; three of McCarthy’s men went down from level-one bolts to the back.

McCarthy’s remaining force of seven armed Humans was still enough to keep the prisoners under guard and Hydon subdued. The Juirean Elder still had not fully recovered the blow to the mouth and was groggy, his head wobbling as he was thrown into one of the hard plastic seats lining the fuselage of the craft.

The boring pod
did
indeed look like a small submersible, long and rounded in the front. Yet running along its sides were wide tracks like those found on heavy equipment – bulldozers and such – and along the rounded front were several large laser arrays. The interior was one single compartment, with the pilot seat located in front of a large monitor. There were no windows in the compartment, either in the front or along the sides.

Once everyone was inside, McCarthy dogged the hatch and moved to the pilot’s seat. He took a moment to scan the controls and then looked back into the compartment. Spotting Kaylor, he moved back into the compartment and grabbed the alien by his shirt, pulling him into the pilot’s seat. “Can you drive this thing?”

“I don’t know,” Kaylor said as he looked over the controls.

McCarthy placed the MK to Kaylor’s head. “You better figure it out quick. You’re no use to me unless you can.”

Kaylor was familiar with just about every control panel currently in use by the Juireans. He pressed a button, which he knew would activate the generators, and immediately his monitor lit up showing an image of the shiny metal wall the craft was facing.

“Good,” said McCarthy. “Now get us out of here.”

“What do you mean? We’re underground!”

“This thing is called a
boring pod
. It’s supposed to be able to move through rock,” McCarthy explained. “So start boring!”

Kaylor saw a bank of six uniform control buttons all colored green. There was Juirean writing under them, and from the little Juirean he could read, he believed they said something like
heat
or
melt control
. He flicked them all on and was rewarded by a brilliant flash from the monitor as the laser arrays beamed out a massive blast of intense heat. Within seconds, the wall before them had melted, opening up a circular tunnel that grew longer as the lasers continued to send out torrents of intense light. Red molten lava began to flow prodigiously into the chamber where they sat, filling it with an ever-deepening layer of fiery, viscous liquid and incinerating all the Juireans who had followed the Humans into the room.

Kaylor gripped the steering control arm and pressed forward. The craft lunged forward and into the tunnel, which was still being formed by the constant beams from the lasers. The interior compartment of the pod was now filled with a deafening roar as the tracks lining the pod began to scrape against the solid rock sides of the tunnel. A waterfall of lava could be seen flowing down the forward wall of the tunnel and disappearing under the craft. Kaylor experimented with a knob on the side of the monitor and the image switched to a rear view. The lava was flying up behind them like the plume from a jet ski and sticking to a wall that had already formed behind them. They were now inside a bubble within the rock, moving forward at what seemed to be a respectable speed.

Kaylor glanced over his shoulder; McCarthy was still there, looking at the monitor, which Kaylor had switched back to the forward view. “Where to? I have no idea where we’re going.”

“See if you can find a navigation function of some kind.”

Kaylor was already pressing buttons and turning knobs. Finally, the screen was replaced with a green-lined representation of the surrounding bedrock, showing layers indicating the various thickness and makeup of the strata they were moving through. Another adjustment and the view expanded.

In the center of the screen was their present location, with an orange line trailing out behind them, clearly showing where the tunnel met up with the underground bunker. Adam could see the monitor past Sherri’s head, as all the others in the compartment were fixated on the screen. When Kaylor moved the perspective out a little further he could now see the edge of the Kacoran Plain. The line they were presently on was about half way down inside the mountain – and they were heading straight for the edge. Adam could just imagine them break through the side of the cliff and plunging half a mile down to the boulder-strewn base of the mountain….

McCarthy saw the possibility, too. He pointed to a place at the base of the mountain. “Steer us down here.”

Kaylor experimented a little more with the controls, first making the path of the craft climb some toward the surface. The controls seemed to be counterintuitive, but soon Kaylor had them figured out and Adam could feel the pod take a steeper angle in its forward track. Looking at the distance they’d already traveled from the bunker, and compared to where they were headed, it should only be about half an hour before the tiny craft would be popping out at the base of the Kacoran Plain.

Chapter 18

Shortly after Jonnif’s fleet had headed into the
Volousian Discourse
– the circuitous route near the galactic core – four large troop carriers had been dispatched from Eilsion, following the fleet. They had just now arrived on station, three in orbit around Juir, and the fourth above Bal and the energy module plants which covered much of the planet’s surface.

The forty thousand Kracori ground forces these transports carried would be the cleanup crews for the two conquered worlds. They would form into hundreds of killing squads and scour the surface for survivors.

Their task was made easier on Juir by the centralized planning that had taken place on the planet over the centuries. There were now only seventeen-hundred mass cities dotting the entire planet, with kilometers upon kilometers of vast open spaces between them. Except for maintenance stations and energy sites, no private settlements were allowed in these open areas. All the invaders had to do was strike at the cities, and then clean up the aftermath by strafing the long lines of refugees fleeing their burning cities.

By the time the ground troops had arrived, some huge tent-cities had been set up outside a few of the settlements far removed from Juir City. But these, too, would be easy targets for the cleanup crews.

After suffering through incredibly cramped conditions for the past two months, the Kracori were ready to strike down upon the surface and eat anything they came across – and it had already circulated throughout the troops just how delectable was Juirean flesh. To calm the growing tensions within the ships during the trip, Kracori commanders promised all their warriors as much of the tasty flesh as they could consume, most of which would be just lying on the ground cooked and waiting to be eaten. This pacified the Kracori warriors, at least for a while. Now their stomachs growled for the real thing.

Jonnif stood on a leading edge of the cliff overlooking the smoking remains of Juir City as the first of the shuttles streamed down from the sky. They came on gravity drive, ripping up the surface in great clouds of black, ash-infused dust. Soon ten thousand Kracori would be fanning out across the area, just as twenty thousand more would cover other parts of the planet. Jonnif had no false illusions. Even after the massive bombings had killed over half the population of Juir, it would still be many long months before the last Juirean would be extinguished from just this one planet alone. But if the attack on Earth proceeded according to plan, the Kracori would have all the time they required.

Mininof approached him with a datapad and a scowl. “What’s wrong?” Jonnif asked.

“There has been seismic activity detected within the mountain.”

“
This
mountain?”

“Yes … and it’s moving.”

“I do not understand.”

“Monitors are picking up something moving through the rock. It’s small, barely noticeable, but it could be an excavator of some kind.”

“Hydon – he is trying to escape!”

“My thoughts as well; by All-Ludif, he will not succeed.”

“Where is this excavator headed?” Jonnif had already turned away from the cliff and was headed back to the camp, a grouping of a dozen large tents that had been set up around his spacecraft and served as the headquarters for his command.

“It is cutting a path toward the base of the mountain, on the city side.”

“Send a transport and a contingent of warriors. How long until they reach the edge of the mountain?”

“Only minutes, Jonnif.”

“Send any ground forces we may already have in the area. He may be traveling with a small group and they could be hard to locate in all the confusion around the city. I do not want to lose him.”

Chapter 19

McCarthy’s men are good
, Adam acknowledged. He had been watching them for the past half an hour, and even as the location of the small boring pod drew closer to the edge of the mountain, they never took their eyes off Adam and the other prisoners. Even if they had, Adam wasn’t sure what he would have done, not here in the confined space of the pod. One errant rifle blast and the vehicle could be disabled, encasing them forever in a tomb of solid rock, hundreds of meters thick. But now the pod was nearing its exit point. Adam was relieved; he had never been claustrophobic before, but this was pushing it.

When they eventually burst out into the open, the only sensation was the sudden reduction in the god-awful screeching sound they had endured for almost forty-five minutes. The monitor in front of Kaylor still showed the graphic display of their route, but soon the Belsonian switched the views and the compartment flooded with daylight from the screen. The tiny craft continued to crawl along on its lower tracks down a fairly steep grade until it eventually settled out onto a grassy meadow, near a grove of trees with white and red buds showing through leaves of green.

McCarthy leaned closer to the screen, scanning for any signs of Juireans or Kracori outside. Seeing none, he turned and ordered Carter Thomas to crack the hatch.

Immediately, the compartment was filled with the smell of smoke – and not the pleasant, wafting-through-the-pines kind of smoke – but rather an acrid mix of burning rubber and ozone. They were also nearly consumed by a blast of intense heat from outside.