Aurona, page 2
Grandpa chuckled, slipping back quickly into his usual techno jargon. “Man, just look at the schematic! The blue lasers’ short wavelengths and the sonar are pinpointing every pebble along the shore!”
The once-roiling stream began to broaden and slow down, and they found themselves in a thicket of odd-looking vegetation. He throttled back, lowered the sled, and reached over the side. At the slightest of touches, a translucent, watery stem broke in his fingers with a decided snap. He raised his bushy brows knowingly. “Aha!” He turned to Adam. “A very exotic strain of the fumitory family, like Dutchmen’s breeches: it’s only indigenous to marshy ground. We’re very close; the runes mentioned a marsh.” Their searching eyes quickly spotted a small opening along the shoreline.
A finger to his lips, his head motioning toward the entrance, the old man turned toward the boy with a mysterious air. The tousled head nodded eagerly. He tweaked the sled’s antigrav upward half a notch. They entered cautiously, hovering noiselessly above the spongy ground, peering intently into the fascinating web of green. The humid environment was thick, oppressive, yet absolutely thrumming with life. After a long, silent moment, Adam’s faint whisper broke the spell, his voice barely audible.
“A-are they watching us, Grandpa?”
“Yes,” he shrugged, “Definitely. The animals are watching us.”
“Let’s hide, then!” Adam interrupted excitedly.
“Hey, all right!” Grandpa whispered, quickly opening up a new a bank of switches on his touchscreen. “Thinking, thinking, always thinking! That’s what I like about you, boy! Yes, it’s much smarter to watch the critters from cover!”
He programmed a few sequences. With a crackle and hum the sled became surrounded with electrical shields, completely masking their human odor and blotting out the sound of their excited breathing. A cloaking device followed, blossoming from a point somewhere below the sled and spreading slowly upward, simply airbrushing them from view. In a heartbeat they’d become a shimmering mirage, watching life as from another dimension. Many nervous eyes were now blinking in bewilderment from the surrounding jungle.
Suddenly, there was a tremendous crash and SCREAM right next to the sled!
“Yikes!” Adam slid off his seat, rapping his elbow. “Ouch!” Rubbing it furiously, he scrambled to his knees to peer intently through the electronic curtain, straining his utmost to see. “Grandpa!” He hissed. “W-what in the world was that?”
“Hey, we don’t exist, remember? You don’t have to whisper!”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
Something began to thrash wildly in the branches beside them. Loud screams stabbed unmercifully into the tranquil pulse of life, skewing the droning peace into an instant, shocked war zone. As the horrific din invaded their electronic walls, Grandpa’s hands groped blindly toward the controls, his nerves raw, poised on the razor-edge of flight. Without warning, the curtain of leaves whipped apart: a fierce, fire-eyed, demonic apparition burst through, flying directly at them!
Adam squealed in terror, looking up and holding his arms over his head. The silhouette of a struggling brown form was being dragged over their invisible dome, flailing and thumping loudly against the curved shield; it trailed a long stream of blood, the dark red beads sizzling, popping and dancing on the current. In seconds the action resumed on the other side of the sled. As they swiveled in unison, the boy pressed tightly against his grandpa’s shoulder, his heart beating nearly out of his chest. “W-what is that thing?”
“Hmm… I’ve seen a few in documentaries but never in real life. They’re an endangered species now. Let’s see; lemme do a split screen: the LifeForm Database cross-referenced next to a color-enhanced infrared camera.” He twirled a few dials. “Wow, there’s your answer, boy,” he nodded. “Look at the pictures!”
The database showed the creature’s face, with a full description below. Adam’s eyes grew wide as he glanced at the infrared image next to it.
A magnificent harpy eagle hovered before them in the sunlit clearing. The infrared was vividly color-enhanced: a hot-red avian shape showed clearly, with powerful, blue-green vortices of wind swirling off the tips of seven-foot, beating wings. It definitely looked like an alien creature with the long, curving feathers of his Medusa’s crest flaring wide in alarm. The predator was obviously stunned and surprised.
The enormous wings were powerful, the turbulence pushing the sled away from it. With a sudden loud pop the GPS sensors clicked, initiating an autocorrective maneuver: the port thrusters came on and the whoosh gave them away.
“Oops,” Adam whispered. “He’s outta here!”
Like a circling halo of snakes, the crest shot out in alarm and he clamped his steely talons down in a viselike death-grip. His prey, a small female monkey, gasped her last and hung limply. As he rose in the air, Adam spotted a subtle movement on the monkey’s underbelly. “Uh-oh!” He shook Grandpa’s shoulders and pointed emphatically. “Is that what I think it is?”
The man shielded his eyes in the glare, squinting up into the blinding, flickering shafts of light. Shortly, he spotted it. “Yes, yes, there’s another one, Adam, there’s definitely another monkey…. It’s a baby! By gosh, your eyes are sharp!”
A tiny, month-old infant was clinging for its life to its mother’s fur. They watched helplessly, speechlessly, as the eagle neared the sunlit hole in the canopy. Suddenly, the little one lost its grip! Plummeting head over heels, it looked like a tumbling speck of dust grasping desperately at the empty air.
“No!” Adam gasped. “He’s falling!”
In a quick, deliberate chain of reflexive actions, the man leaped to the rescue. He dropped the shields and cloaking device, sidestepped the sled with a strong blast from the starboard thrusters, and at the last possible second, threw his raincoat wide like a net. The frightened ball of fur bounced once, flew through the air, and beelined into the man’s thick hair, looking for something furry and familiar.
Adam was bouncing now, too. “Yeow! Where’d he go? Did he get away?”
A big hand gently cupped over his fluttering lips for silence. “Shhh! Cool your jets,” he whispered. “We don’t want to frighten him any more than he is!”
A fuzzy head popped up, prompting a stifled squeal. “There he is!”
Somehow he’d managed to squeeze out a few words between the man’s thick fingers. Grinning, the old man tried his best to hold the thin, flailing arms to his sides, but the eight-year-old’s patience had reached its limit: he could be contained no longer. Slippery as a bar of wet soap, he wrestled his mouth and arms free.
“Is-is he hurt, Grandpa? Is he hurt? Huh?”
The man sighed in resignation and let go. Scowling, he poked around in his thick hair. “All right, let’s see…” Oh-so-carefully he plucked at the tiny, clenching fingers with his big mitts, as if they were errant sticky burrs. “Ouch! Ooooch! Darn thing’s worse than Velcro!” Resolutely gritting his teeth he yanked hard, pulling out long frazzled strands of salt-and-pepper hair. “Okay, okay! Take him quick, Adam!”
The boy drew back, stunned. “Huh? Me? You’re letting me hold him?
All hands and feet, the infant was grabbing at the air. Adam reached out tentatively. It latched onto his thumb, swung down into his lap, and cowered tightly against his chest. Afraid to move his head a fraction of an inch, he lowered just his eyes to study the frail creature. It didn’t take long for the bond to form; in a few moments it was as if they were old friends: the boy rocking back and forth on the seat making soothing sounds, the monkey squeaking in response.
As the man watched the two in fascination, he noticed a dark cloud slowly shadowing his grandson’s face, erasing his delighted smile. He leaned toward him.
“What is it, boy?” he whispered.
Adam glanced up, his throat tightening. “H-he’s just like me, Grandpa,” he choked, tears brimming.
“Of course he’s just like you. He’s got two hands, two ears, a nose….”
“No, no!” he interrupted. “Now, I mean! H-he’s just like me now!” The barely contained tears brimmed over, and he began to sob.
As he watched the boy cradling the newly created orphan, he finally understood what had really been conveyed between the lines. A deep wound had just been opened, one that would never go away. Impulsively he reached out and swept the weeping boy to his chest, his heart aching anew. The event that shattered their small family happened only five years ago. As the memories jolted painfully, relentlessly, into place, he began to blink back his own tears. Trembling, he sighed deeply. This little one now in his arms was barely three when his parents died on that distant planet, but he was sharp enough to grasp what had really happened. He glanced down at his grandson again. The boy’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his tear-streaked face dappled in the sunlight. He drew him tighter to his chest.
After a long moment, the boy began to whisper haltingly, his child’s eye recounting the confusion of that awful day. “I-I don’t remember too much, Grandpa, except for all those people running by, yelling and crying. And that big nurse lady was squeezing me too tight! Yelling, yelling way too loud!” He lowered his head. “It wasn’t until she took me down into the hold to see all those long, black boxes that she finally let me go and handed me….”
“That’s right, boy,” he whispered. “She gave you to me. I have you now.”
They sat quietly in the middle of a green nowhere, lost in reverie for what seemed like an eternity.
Finally, with a scowl and a sigh, the boy forced himself away to sit up a bit straighter. Brightening, he reached down with his free hand to pick up a wad of waterlogged paper. “You know, it must be already way over a year since we drew these maps from your weird old runes! We’re the only two people in the whole world that knows about them! But it seems like it’s taking forever to get to….”
“Wow, a year’s gone by already?” Grandpa interrupted, raising a brow. He was relieved: it was as if the sun had come out again. “Well, it’s been way, way longer for me, boy! I’ve held onto those runes ever since I was a young Planet Hopper!”
“Wow, since the olden days!”
The old man held up an admonishing finger. “Easy! Don’t start…!”
Grinning mischievously, Adam slipped off his lap and stood up, looking around intently. “Are we getting closer to the outpost?”
“Yeah, very close, kiddo. But now it’s time to watch very carefully, because the next part is gonna get pretty, ah, dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” The tear-swollen eyes were suddenly eager.
“Dangerous,” he affirmed. “So just do exactly as I say, right?”
“Right!”
He tousled the boy’s hair. “Let’s go,” he whispered.
Two hundred and sixty miles overhead, Grandpa’s shiny trio of MicroSats had been silently pinpointing their position. He flipped down a touchpad from the console and began to draw on its surface with a stylus, his hand moving quickly, plotting an intricate overlay on top of the 3D photo terrain. He’d personally developed all this classified tracking technology and hardware for the government, so he’d been right on the scene for the mission’s hurried, last-minute preparations. It had been surprisingly easy to stow his personal, multifunctional thumb-sized satellites aboard TriNight.
As the sled glided around a last, tangled thicket of palms into a swampy opening, a fine, scopelike set of crosshairs moved slowly across the screen’s real-time overlay. Finally, the crosshairs aligned with the big X on the photomap.
“Bingo!” Grandpa muttered. “There you go, right down to the fraction of an inch! Can’t get any better’n that!” He stopped and looked up decisively. “We’re here!”
The boy’s bright young eyes had been watching every movement, taking it all in. He bounced up and looked around, gently cradling the monkey in his arms. The antigrav sled hovered noiselessly, as steady as a rock, its fine blue laser beams dancing brightly on nearby stationary objects. They were beside a stream with what appeared to be a massive wall on the other side.
“Aha!” Grandpa’s booming voice echoed off the hard surface, breaking the silence. “So that’s what it looks like!” Shaking with excitement, the boy stowed the monkey into a small specimen cage under his seat. “Grab your backpack!” The old man jumped off nimbly, his boots squishing into the boggy earth. With a clatter and a splash, Adam was quickly beside him. The wall appeared to be seamless, so fine was the fit of each massive stone, revealing just a glimpse of the mastery of the unknown architects. Almost completely overgrown, vines and strange mosses now enveloped an incredibly smooth, mirrorlike surface. They waded slowly across the swollen stream, their eyes fixed on the mysterious ruin.
There was a sudden flash of light stabbing out of the gloom ahead! Grandpa looked down at his grandson’s chest. Twin beams were tracing out mysterious patterns!
The boy drew back, his hands flailing to brush them off. “G-Grandpa?”
“Wow! You found them already?” he whispered.
“I found them?” he choked. “I-I think they found me!”
Grandpa stood there like a rock, his eyes darting, analyzing. “Hmm, I’m only guessing here, but I think the beams must be establishing our species.”
Adam’s chin was quivering, the light dancing on his chest. “Now what?”
“Well, I think it’s time you say the word, that’s what.”
“Huh? There’s a word?”
“Think now. The beams found you, and they’re waiting for the word! It’s gotta come from you….”
“Wait, wait! Don’t tell me! Is-is it that funny rune word we talked about?”
“Yes,” he answered calmly. “That one.”
“But-but I forgot how to pronounce it!”
Grandpa held up a finger. “Listen carefully. We’re in a locked pattern here, and there’s no getting around it. The rune needs to be spoken to avoid consequences. Big consequences.” He looked into the boy’s frightened eyes. “Now, remember the keyword, ‘Valota’? Try it. You can do it.”
The boy took a deep breath. “Val-oh-tah!”
They waited in expectation. Nothing happened.
He tried again, enunciating a different syllable. “Valo-tah!”
Immediately, something snapped upward under his feet! He gasped, his arms flailing for balance. “Grandpa! Under me! There’s some kind of underwater cable!”
In a geyser of bubbles, a loud mechanical whir penetrated the surface of the stream in a distressing, high-pitched pulse. The water exploded into motion, a blur of scale, claw, eye, and tooth. Frantic life forms boiled toward the shore, flapping and slithering: lungfish, slithering electric eels, small reptiles, water snakes, frogs, and salamanders, the entire resident amphibian population scrambled wildly away from the source. As the bizarre assortment of cold bodies bumped and twined around his feet, Adam finally lost it. He screamed a high C sharp and jumped into his grandfather’s arms. “Wh-what is it, Grandpa?” he quavered.
Keeping his cool, the old man poked at the cable with his toe. “Hmm…. This must be what they called the Hetex, remember? The trigger? How clever! They hid it underwater! We might’ve been searching all morning!”
A loud scraping sound came from the wall. They both jerked their heads up.
“Stay cool, boy,” he hissed. “I think that’s the Motaz! Remember that word?”
Adam squinted into the mass of greenery, trying to focus on the source of the sound. “The M-Motaz? What does it do, Grandpa? What…?”
A seam showed up on the wall, appearing from nowhere! With a rending squeal and a loud snapping sound, vines and moss were yanked loose in a huge rectangle. A deep rumbling shook the ground as an enormous rectangular block slid inward into the shadows. The opening was quickly showered with scrambling lizards and falling bromeliad cups; the spiky, hot-pink plants tipped over, spilling and wetting the dry stone.
Grandpa nodded knowingly. “So that’s the Motaz! It’s what they called the ‘moving opening.’” He swung the boy up onto his big shoulders and walked briskly toward the wall. “The runes were spot on, Adam. Now it’s time for your job. Make it quick now.”
The boy was frightened but knew what to do: they’d rehearsed it a zillion times. As he scrambled up over the edge, an odd odor hit him in the face. Cold wind was rushing up out of the darkness, the swirling eddies blending the odd, sharp smells of hot metal, crushed stone and sap from the bleeding vines. Together, they stunk with an acidic pervasiveness. He crawled a bit further into the darkness on his hands and knees, squinting. A tunnel! All that cold wind was flowing up out of a tunnel! His hand suddenly rested on something warm and smooth. Startled he looked down, his eyes focusing on a faint gleam under the eons of dust. He spun around on his knees, whispering a single word to Grandpa over the edge.
“Rails!”
There was a flash of a smile. The big hands silently motioned for him to hurry. He quickened his pace. Yes, a double set of rails shone beneath the edge of the massive stone plug, now against the far wall. He slid a finger over the slick surface. What kind of metal could this be? Why, it wasn’t even rusty! He dug into his backpack and pulled out a knotted climbing rope, locked the grappling end firmly into one of the rails, and tossed it down over the edge. He stopped short. Somewhere in the darkness behind him, he thought he heard a small, metallic clink. What in the world was that?
Grandpa had heard it too, and his head jerked up. Rope in hand, he nimbly scaled the wall with the skill of an acrobat, flipping up over the edge. He landed in a squat, drawing his ion gun. “Down!” he hissed.
As Adam flattened himself, there was a clap of thunder and something massive cleaved through the air, whizzing by the very spot where his head would have been! Their jaws dropped as an enormous stone sphere crashed far out in the jungle, leaving a trail of flying branches and terror-stricken animals in its wake.
It all grew quiet again. Somewhere in the ominous silence, there was a second faint metallic clink, this time followed by an electronic hum. Adam flattened his body and closed his eyes in fearful anticipation. “No, no, Grandpa! Another….”
