EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (22 page)

As we traveled, Mina told us that we must meet with the Elders again to ask their help. She would like the Elders to create a way to survey how many Teranor there were hiding in plain sight on the surface. One of her thoughts was that if we could not travel the ribbon to and from Earth, then maybe their travel was limited as well. That would mean there were a finite number of Teranor present to be dealt with. She went on to say that maybe there was a way to confine all of the Teranor and restrict their movement and communication while we introduce Mankind and Terankind. Our minds and imaginations were limited but with all of the brain power of the Teran population behind us, we might come up with more creative ways to approach this dilemma.

We vugged through EarthUnder making our way to a meeting that Jasmina had called with the Elders. When we arrived, the Elders have already conferred with each other regarding our ideas. They immediately entered into a dialogue with us about what they felt they could do to help. It seemed that they did not wish to generate any form of conflict. The Elders did reveal that they had already seen the numbers of Teranor presently breathing on the surface of the planet. They had also tallied the Teranor population elsewhere in other parts of the cosmos. The Elders explained that they had closed the X-points near Earth and had moved the magnetic portholes close to the sun to seal Earth from approach. Soon the Teranor were going to feel trapped and they would recognize that they too were in danger. They had their chance to be left alone and they chose to be the aggressor, taking lives while destroying planets and civilizations. Apparently the Teran Elders were prepared to draw a line in the sand, and I got the feeling that these people could back it up with more force and conviction than the Teranor were prepared to handle.

As we conferred with the Elders I began to understand where some of Mina’s powerful inner strength came from. Having the support of these wise souls is a magnanimous boon to one’s spirit, knowing that the strength of all your people can meld into the power of one: that is my Mina’s gift to this world. She is the culmination and the epitome of both our races; she is the standing stone. I am in love with a woman who is infinitely more than I can ever be and somehow, magically, she has loved me for many lifetimes. How lucky am I? I love a walking weapon with the power of an entire planetary population at her fingertips.

Jasmina listened to my sarcastic thought. Her response was simply factual and level minded, “The mentors coach us to temper our thinking and to try to see a way out of conflict. If we respond to the Teranor with the same form of violence they practice, then we shall all lose our peace, our lives, and our home planet. If we can inspire the Earthlings to help and persuade the Teranor to depart without doing damage to this world, then everyone gets to live out their lives without memories of war and suffering in their past. In a global conflict there are no winners, even the planet loses.”

The Elders implored us to work hard and fast toward a peaceful solution to this dilemma. They knew well the hazards of trying to coexist with these evil doers. As we prepared to depart from the Elders, one of them spoke up to tell Gary that he would have to stay behind. All three of us were stunned and halted by this proclamation. The Elder elaborated, “When we removed the controller from your brain stem, there was severe damage to the cerebrum and the medulla oblongata. The irreversible damage caused during its installation forced us to perform a transplant of your central nervous system. Your knowledge and memories are still your own, but we have given you the brain of one of our most revered Elders; his brain was still youthful and vibrant when his body had run its course. You have within you not only your own life memories, but you also have all of the memories and knowledge of an Elder of our kind. We would like to ask you to remain here with us to help bring our worlds into balance.” It seemed the most natural action as Gary moved toward the Elders; when he turned to face us with his broad smile beaming, we knew this was meant to be. There was no need for goodbyes as we would remain in constant contact with one another.

Chapter Twelve

Teranor Captive

M
ina and I stayed with the Elders for several surface cycles to receive training in dealing with the Teranor. Brain bone memory of past conflicts and deceptions were brought to mind during our exercises. Tears gushed from our eyes as our emotions welled up from witnessing so much death and loss. The Elders shared with us countless possible scenarios and enlightened us on their numbers, concentrations, activities, strategies, and intentions. It was like getting a mental map of everything that the Teranor thought they were keeping shielded from prying eyes. We appeared to have the upper hand, but deception can disguise a fickle outcome.

Our training finished with wishes for safety and success. I couldn’t clear my thoughts of the damage and suffering caused over and over again by the Teranor. My human side could not comprehend how the Terans had endured such tyranny for so many lifetimes. Compassion turned to rage with every image of conflict or aggression now depicted in memories from past generations. It was impossible to know what to do with these feelings. My heart ached with the agony of millions of lost lives and tortured souls. I saw entire planets thrust into a rapidly dying hell when the atmosphere diminished and inhabitants competed for the last remnants of food, water, and breathable air, their pride and productivity long erased from their lives and the last glimmer of hope flickering out like a candle in wind. Memories were filled with dire emotion and despair. Blood flowed, tissue burned and voices cried out in agony as thriving planets were scraped of resources and a dry, dead hull was relinquished. In distant consciousness were the faces of Teranor, proud of their harvest and devastation. They were blind to compassion, deaf to the cries of those they crushed. They were consumers, takers, a greed-obsessed breed of monstrous affliction, trained only on the next bountiful orb. I felt a keenly intense obsession by the Teranor for Earth; they knew we were here. Their seething lust for more had turned to an unrelenting craving for revenge.

Both Mina and I could see what the Teranor would do to the Elders if we failed to protect Earth from their despicable corruption. Wise words of the Elders rang in mind, “The appearance of good from violence is temporary, but the evil of violence will last eternal.” My human side kept telling me to fight fire with fire. Mina reminded me that the Terans have survived for many millions of years and that we might have to relocate to evade conflict. My first instinct was to stand and fight, but then, how do we go up against planet killers? The Teranor had developed technology far beyond the scope of my imagination. They had created ways to scour entire planets and squeeze them like a sponge to wring out every last drop of what they find of value to their own continuation. In the mind of a Teranor, mowing down humanoids or other life forms is no more significant than leveling a field of grain or weeds for that matter. And we are to them nothing more than weeds standing in the way of their progress. I could feel Mina searching for an answer to our challenge. For ages Jasmina’s people disguised Earth as a dying planet by creating an image from space of desert lands overtaking the lush green while the ice caps melted away, generating floods and storms.

Some 260 million years ago Mars was taken by the Teranor and Earth was left as a less attractive candidate for harvest because even then it appeared as a dying planet. Much of the life on Mars was moved in secret to EarthUnder, where it was shielded from view. Many of those creatures were not able to adapt and expired. Mars, which once held grand oceans of water, lush forests, and grass-covered steppes is the scoured, scorched, rock sphere we see glowing red in the night sky, red with the aura of Teranor devastation.

Now the Teranor have come full circle to return to our solar system prepared to take from this less attractive planet. They find that their passive yet powerful enemy resides within the shell surface of New Tera. The act of revenge is far more important to them than taking this planet for their gain. One can feel the lust they have for retribution for having been abandoned on Tera.

I could not understand how the Elders remained so calm knowing that everything might be lost. “Free the mind of worry, free the heart from hatred” rings in my ears as the words were repeated for me by my lovely companion while she watched my thoughts and shared my concerns. She too appeared to be unusually calm and collected. How could anyone live calmly under conditions of such tremendous threat of imminent harm?

Jasmina saw the same scenes that I could recall from the gift of memory imparted to me. Horror took hold as entire races of humanoids and all manner of creature were made to vanish. I could see individuals explode into vapor and could hear the cries and screams as millions were decimated in a single fell swoop. The Teranor had utilized countless insidious parasites to invade and demolish entire world populations. One creature that I saw in my mind was the Headworm, which infiltrates its host through the ear, nose, or throat and renders the body paralyzed. The host could breathe and communicate, but could not swallow, so without food or water, the host would die in three days, days of anguish and agony.

The Teranor inundated planetary populations with creatures of this type. Once numbers were diminished, the dark ones ignored the remaining few survivors while they ripped the life elements from each planet they destroyed. It appeared that the Teranor were taking these assets and resources to a giant planet that they inhabited in a shielded galaxy. They used gamma radiation burst powered portholes to carry these resources back to their corner of the universe. Utilizing these space portholes, the Teranor could move objects from as small as grains of silica to the size of their massive, ancient, plasma-drive warships. With the power of the Terans pushing these X-points into the sun there would be no arrivals or departures for anyone.

The issue now was how to deal with the invaders who were already here on our planet. Could we isolate them? Could we stop their conspired intentions and could we somehow get them all to go away forever? Maybe we could get inside their brains and eliminate the part that produced aggression?

“That’s it,” Mina proclaimed, leaping to action! “You’ve done it, Bryce; we need to present this idea to the Terans. We can enter the minds of every Teranor on Earth and steal away the part in each brain that causes them to aggress. Then we can collect all of that bad energy, thought, and memory and incinerate it. We must meet with our people immediately.”

The Elders agreed that there was a way this would work. They revealed a count of roughly three million Teranor on the planet and a large faction of human recruits and disciples. They too would need to be treated for this horrendous behavior with a mental alteration. One of the Elders spoke, “We will need to perform this on an individual Teranor to be certain we can completely remove this part of the memory without risk of retrogradation. Jasmina, do the two of you believe you can capture a Teranor and bring it here for us to test?”

Mina nodded yes, and I backed her up by saying that it was going to be a lot easier than trying to take on the entire invasion force of Teranor. The Terans smiled at my statement. They seemed to be amused by human candor. Mina smiled as well and as we walked back to the Vug, she put an arm under mine and said, “They enjoy one of the traits that I love in you.”

We took off in the Vug heading away from the areas I had become familiar with. It felt like we were deep under a continent and far from the edge of any oceans. The pressure in the air here seemed heavier and darker, but there was the same brilliant light and color. People and creatures moved about as elsewhere, but something felt unlike other areas of New Tera. We lowered and slowed, coming to rest in the gaping mouth of a cavern in a wall of rock. We stepped out of the Vug and Mina led me into the pitch black of this stony throat. As eyes adjusted to the darkness, the cave appeared to be a warehouse stacked with crates. Mina explained that we were here to find implements that would help us on the surface to silence and abduct a Teranor for the test. These were tools and artifacts from another time that were not used in New Tera. She opened a crate and handed its contents to me. It appeared to be a halter for a horse. From another crate she pulled shackles and cuffs. Then back to the Vug we went.

Walking out of the darkness and stopping in front of the Vug, Mina took the artifacts out of my hands and bent to place them into the Vug. Just as I stepped to follow Mina into the Vug, something grabbed me from behind. I was abruptly flying back into the cave as Mina screamed, “It’s a Taker; ghost, Bryce, ghost now!”

My abilities having grown keener, I ghosted in an instant, the contraption lost its grip on me, and I drifted to a stop. Jasmina sprinted toward me and past, running into the pitch-black dark of the cave. I could hear her voice in my head telling me to follow. If there was a Taker in the cave, then there had to be a Teranor or surface access. She could see the faint red glow of a body fleeing into the depths of the cavern. The Taker was a four-pronged gauntlet on hinges, controlled from a chain that reeled in the Taker and carried the captive to an end. It was yet another evil artifact from a less civilized time. A Teranor was in this cavern and if we could capture it, then we could learn of its origin and use this evil one for our test. If there was one Teranor here, then more would come, which meant that an invasion was certain. We had to catch this monster or rush to the surface to capture another. Either way the Elders had to be warned and the cavern had to be sealed. I caught up with Mina as she took care not to pass by the well-hidden aggressor.

Just then a long spear hurtled out of the dark traveling so fast we could hear the wind sliced by the razor edges of the trident blade. In less than one beat of her heart, Mina repulsed the spear as a gurgling scream emanated from the dark. Mina raised her hand and brought the Teranor out, glowing with the crimson of blood, eyes shining yellow in the dark. Mina commanded it to stand as she checked the narrow end of the cave for a passage, but it was solid stone. She returned to hold the Teranor in place while the Vug brought us the restraints. After wrapping the evil one, we took him back into the open, where he screeched in spite of the halter, his eyes burning from the light of this world. Mina notified the Elders of our discovery and soon we were back with the Elders.

The Vug lowered to the ground as Gary arrived to greet us. “That was fast,” Gary quipped. We pulled the Teranor out of the Vug and stood him in front of the Elders. A perpetual flow of Terans formed masses of bodies surrounding our core group around the red, glowing intruder. These Terans had never seen a Teranor. As the crowd pressed closer the Teranor drooled and snarled at the bodies surrounding him. Talleyrand appeared overhead and lowered into the gathering. His silver hair hung over his shoulders like virga rain. Talleyrand’s body was sheathed in a mirror-bright metallic skin suit, hands encased in gloves fabricated from woven wire. He strode with deliberation directly to the intruder with no hesitation and slapped his glove-covered hands onto both sides of the Teranor’s cranium. There were no sounds and no thoughts from the onlookers as the corrupted captive fell to his knees and screamed out his hatred. He screamed and screeched until sound ceased to vibrate from his vocal chords. His eyes began to bleed as they rolled up into his head and the red aura faded as the Elder took evil from the spirit of this monster. He lurched and writhed as thick, dark crimson sludge oozed from his nose and mouth.

Talleyrand finished his contact as the body of the Teranor slumped to the ground. The Elder turned towards the others and announced that the process was completed. He asked that the Teranor be cleaned and the evil be disposed of. Talleyrand removed the gloves from his hands as I confronted the Elders to speak. The human in me blurted out that if there was one, then there must be more. Talleyrand agreed that while he was removing the evil in the captive’s brain, he did see the outline of a master plan to invade New Tera.

Talleyrand spoke, “This was a front runner, there are more, many more to come. We must act now, and swiftly, to counter their plans. I have seen into their minds and I can say what they will do next. There is no time to prepare the humans for what we must now do. The Teranor have prepared Headworms, Ice Flies, and Cordyceps fungi for release into the surface population. We will dispatch the Mizlets to handle this threat. We shall dedicate our population to removing evil from the Teranor, but their leadership has been shielded and we shall require a specialized team to deal with the Teranor imperious elite. Jasmina, you and your Bryce Monroe Sterling will lead a large, swift, trained team to the surface to encounter the Teranor leaders. You will need to make tactile contact with each individual leader to bring this conspiracy to its critical halt. The Elders feel this is our only way to begin saving the planet.”