Neverwylde (The Rim of the World Book 4) (16 page)

            Kyber gave a nod. The other Seneecians didn’t object, and Sandow pressed the hypo to Tojun’s neck.

The shot’s effect was instantaneous. Tojun appeared to relax, no longer in distress or suffering. His hands slipped from where they had been clutching his stomach, revealing the extent of his injuries. Revealing the fact that Hoov’s people had shredded his leather-like uniform, tearing chunks from his body as they ate him alive, the same way Hoov had been consuming the creature it killed when they first met him.

Kyber and his men surrounded the dying Seneecian. They each laid a hand on Tojun, bowed their heads, and softly began crooning in a low, sing-song voice. At one point they paused and Kyber lowered his head, placing an ear to Tojun’s mouth. Kelen saw her husband nod, then they resumed their chanting. When they finally stopped, she knew Tojun was dead, and she covered her mouth with her hand to muffle her sobs.

Sandow withdrew a fresh uniform from his blanket, handing it to Gaveer. “Here. I know you’ll want to keep the body intact until you can send it to your gods.”

Gaveer thanked him and took the uniform. They fit Tojun’s body into the one-piece, which acted like a body bag. When they were done, Kleesod started to mark it with a symbol of respect, but Kyber stopped him.

“We need to hurry away from here. We will give him his honor once we reach the temple.”

Kleesod acquiesced. “We will take turns carrying him. I will go first.” Hoisting the body over his shoulder, the Seneecian waited for the others to join him and together they trudged down the tunnel, searching for the next corridor.

It wasn’t long before they found the end of the tunnel and the holographic wall that made it appear they’d reached a dead end. Fullgrath signaled for silence when they halted. Hefting his blaster, he cautiously stuck his head through the visual membrane to check the other corridor. Suddenly, he yelled in surprise, jerking backwards. At the same time, an appendage swung downward in a chopping motion, cutting through the opening. Fullgrath yelled again, flailing his arms to keep from falling.

“They’re out there!”

One of the creatures charged through the opening. Mellori got off a shot, which neatly decapitated the thing. Another alien burst through the doorway, but Fullgrath managed to recover enough to take it down.

Kyber gave Kelen a hard shove. “Go back!”

She stumbled into Sandow and Dox as they turned to retreat down the tunnel in the other direction. Kleesod hurried to keep up with them, along with Massapa. Gaveer took the lead, fangs and claws bared.

They’d barely gone ten meters when the Seneecian abruptly halted and let out a growl. Massapa screamed a warning, moving ahead of the others to stand with his fellow crew member. Kyber grabbed Kelen and Sandow, throwing them against the wall. She whipped her head from side to side. “They’re coming at us from both ends!”

“We’re trapped!” Sandow cried.

Kyber pressed her against the rock, ready to protect her. Kelen dug into her pocket for her blaster, when Kyber shifted his feet. She slid sideways a few centimeters, nearly tripping over him as their legs entangled. She threw out her hands to brace herself for the fall, wincing in anticipation of the collision, and landed on her arms. Chaos erupted in the tunnel as everyone fought the aliens attacking from both sides. Kyber leaped forward, forcing her to jerk her hand away to keep it from being stepped on.

Her hand and blaster vanished.

She gasped, blinked, and moved her arm. The hand and blaster reappeared.

Reaching out with her other hand, she grabbed his ankle and pulled. “In here!” she yelled. “In here! This way!”

He twisted sideways to look for her and she scrambled on hands and knees into the little tunnel, showing him the location of the entrance. Behind her she heard Kyber calling out, yelling for everyone to take the escape route. Shoving her blaster down the front of her pants, she began crawling as fast as she could through the darkness.

Keeping her head low, she continued onward as she kept her ears open for the sound of anything appearing ahead. She could tell someone was following her. By the heavy wheezing, it sounded like Sandow. The poor man had dust allergies, and he hadn’t had an injection to protect him from it since their crash landing on this world.

The tunnel serpentined, curving and abruptly angling at different directions, causing her and the others to slam their arms or shoulders into the walls. But the one thing it didn’t do was ascend or descend. She wish she’d had the foresight to pull out her tube light. She could have held it in her teeth to help light the way. Kelen kept crawling, never slowing or checking to see if anyone else was behind her and the doctor, until Sandow gave a weak holler.

“Hold up, Kel.”

She paused and crouched down to give herself a little respite. Further down the corridor she heard Kyber call up to her.

“How far are we from the other tunnel?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Did everyone make it?”

“Yeah,” Fullgrath acknowledged, his response so muffled she almost didn’t catch it.

“This place is tight,” Massapa remarked. “If we remain here for too long, our muscles will start cramping.”

“Don’t worry. We should be coming up to the adjoining tunnel soon.” She pulled out her tube light, turned it on, and shone the beam underneath and behind her, between her legs, but it was impossible to see anything other than some arms and legs. Gripping the light in her teeth, she continued forward.

She lost track of how far they crawled. At one point she stopped again to wipe her palms on her pants. Her arms and hands were scraped and bleeding from the roughly cut stone, and she knew her knees and shins were in the same condition.

“How much fa-farther?” Sandow gasped and coughed.

“I don’t know.”

A hand patted her ankle. Peering back at him, she saw him pointing past her. “Is that a widening? That looks like a widening in the tunnel.”

Kelen whirled around and shone her light to the left. Instead of the tunnel wall, there appeared to be a darkness. “I think you’re right.”

“Oh, good. We can stop there to get our bearings.”

She hurried ahead to discover a depression had been carved into the side of the tunnel. In fact, a depression had been dug into both sides, facing each other. At the same time, the corridor’s roof sloped upward. The bubble-shaped area was big enough to allow her to sit upright, and she gratefully pulled her knees up to her chest to make room for the bigger Seneecians. Kyber squeezed in next to her and crossed his legs. She leaned against him, thankful for his warmth and nearness, and relishing in the sense of security he gave her, regardless of their circumstances.

Somehow they all managed to fit within the two carved sections. Tojun’s body remained lying in the main corridor. Across the way, she saw Mellori turn on his tube light and play it over them. Beside him, Jules checked his tablet.

“Well?” Fullgrath grunted.

The ex-navigator pointed down the way they’d come. “Hoov’s in that direction.”

“What about where we’re heading?”

The young man shook his head. “I can’t tell if there are any of those aliens waiting for us when we get to the other side.” A grin split his face. “But I can tell you this. If we keep going, we should end up in an orange room.”

“You’re kidding.” Mellori snorted. “That should be interesting. Wonder what we’ll find when we get there.”

Gaveer spoke up. “One thing is certain. Hoov’s people are meat eaters. More than likely, the food we found in those purple rooms was not meant for them.”

Sandow nodded as Kelen stared at the Seneecian in surprise. “I agree with you,” the doctor admitted. “That is a very astute observation. It would also explain why there is no green cavern here. It’s too cold to sustain plant life. Those creatures had no choice but to resort to being meat eaters.”

“Or cannibals,” Fullgrath added.

“It also explains that red room,” Massapa murmured. “They must think of their kills as trophies.”

“So who used those purple rooms? The little guys from the first temple?”

“There’s no way to know,” Mellori commented. “The size of the rooms suggest they were for Hoov’s people, but the food dispensers… I don’t see those insect aliens eating porridge.”

“They could have,” Gaveer added. “Until they discovered they preferred the taste of flesh.”

“No.” Kleesod shook his head. “I disagree. There were too many partially-eaten, decayed, and withered corpses in that red room. I say Hoov’s people were always meat eaters, and the food dispensers were for the species that eventually migrated to the other temples.”

“Which brings us back to species number three,” Fullgrath brought up. “Who or what were they?”

“Speaking of threes…” Jules uncrossed and re-crossed his legs. “Why have we only seen two species here? Hoov and the hairy thing it killed, that makes two. Where’s the third one? Why haven’t we seen any actual evidence of it?”

“They probably ate it,” Fullgrath grumped.

A moment of silence enveloped the group as they mulled over the question. After a while, they chose not to delve any further into the question of the unknown beings, and Kelen brought up another thought. “Guys, all that stuff we found in that cavern. I don’t think Hoov’s people just happened to come across it. I think they may have confiscated it after they killed the crash survivors.”

“It’s very possible,” Mellori answered her. “In fact, I think it’s highly probable.”

“Here is another possibility,” Gaveer mentioned. “If other space crafts crashed here, where are those ships? Did Hoov’s people loot them for what they contained, and leave the rest of the ship undisturbed?”

Kyber lifted his head, a look of intense concentration on his face. “The chances of more ships landing here suggests they were not swallowed by a wormhole, as we have always suspected, but were victims of a space anomaly. A
tegis.
”

“A what?” Jules asked. “A
tegis
? What’s a
tegis
?”

Kleesod explained, “A
tegis
is a rip in space. A ship that inadvertently goes through one may end up in a solar system or galaxy billions of light years away from their own world.”

“How does that differ from going through a wormhole?” Kelen inquired.

“We believe a wormhole has the ability to bend time, as well as space. You could end up anywhere in the universe, at any time of the universe’s existence. This is all conjecture, of course, since no one has ever returned from going through a wormhole. But going through a
tegis
is different in that, if you can find your way back to the original rip, you can slip through it and return to your original location where you initially encountered it.”

“So, I take it from your explanation that your people have managed to go through a
tegis
and return?” Sandow remarked.

Kelen caught Kleesod and her husband exchanging looks before the Seneecian replied.

“It has been documented, but not in recent history.”

“When was the last time it was confirmed?” Mellori queried.

“I am not certain of the exact date, but perhaps five hundred years ago.”

Fullgrath let out a bark of laughter. “Are you telling me your race has been space worthy for the past five hundred years?”

“We have been voyagers for over a thousand years,” Kyber solemnly told him.

Kelen gasped. She knew the Seneecians were an old race, but she had no idea they’d been traversing the galaxies for that length of time. No one did. At least, no one on Earth did.

She cleared her throat, but she couldn’t produce enough saliva to remove the grit in her mouth. Dox dug inside his bundle and handed her his water bag. Thanking him, she took a long swallow and handed it back to him.

“Who else besides Dox managed to keep their bundles?”

Mellori held up his, as did Sandow. Counting hers, that made it four out of twelve. Well, it was better than nothing.

“Jules, you said we were nearing an orange cavern?” Kyber reminded him.

“Yeah. We’ve been steadily moving closer to it.”

“If we manage to reach it, we can use the panel to transport away from this section of the planet. If everyone is ready, we need to continue onward.”

Everyone agreed. Kelen wasn’t surprised when Fullgrath once more took the lead. Glancing behind her, she saw how Gaveer and Kleesod took turns dragging Tojun’s body between them. Wiping her face on her sleeve, she took her place in line, and they resumed their crawl through the small labyrinth.

Chapter 24

Orange

            They lost all track of time and distance. She had no idea how long it had been since they last ate or slept, but they couldn’t afford to stop to do either. Not with Hoov and company trying to get at them. To the aliens, they were an escaped food source, and therefore invaluable. After one more brief stop to pass along the water bags, Jules reassured them they were making progress, but couldn’t tell them how much farther they had to go.

            Kelen’s legs and hands had gone numb from the pain. She knew the others were in similar straits but no one complained. No one spoke, other than to ask for the water. Kleesod, Gaveer, and Massapa took turns dragging Tojun’s remains along at the back of the line.

            Everyone gave sighs of relief when they finally reached the disguised end of the tunnel. Fullgrath lifted his blaster before checking the corridor, and Kelen felt her stomach clench in fear. Their nerves remained on edge as the big weapons master carefully eased his head through the doorway. Almost immediately, he sat back. “It’s another one of those lit tunnels,” he informed them. “It looks clear, as far as I can tell, and I didn’t hear anything suspicious.”

            “Then we have been traveling northward,” Kyber surmised. “Jules, do we go right or left?’

            “Umm, left.”

            Kelen snorted. “Umm? First time I’ve ever heard you sound uncertain.”

            “Bite me, Kel.”

            “Glad someone still has a sense of humor around here,” Sandow remarked.