A Warrior's Return (18 page)

I was packing heavy and I felt pretty good
about it myself, but Talaric was trying to be a spoilsport and not
let me go along with him and the others. I was giving him my most
bewitching smile, even as the others campaigned on my behalf in
order for me to accompany them on the mission.

“You did say that I was one of your crew now
didn’t you Talaric?” I said soothingly.

Talaric swallowed and I knew I had won.

Katie, who was fairly encased in weapons
herself, had a huge grin on her face as she elbowed Talaric in the
stomach, “Come on big boy admit it, your babe’s hot, packing all
that heat ain’t she!”

Talaric raised his arm, as if to cuff Katie
for her impudence, but she had danced back out of the way
giggling.

Talaric shook his head again and turned
towards the door and said disgustedly, “Let’s get on with it, but
so help me I’m holding you all responsible if anything happens to
her!”

I turned to follow and saw Rafael give me a
big thumbs up. I pulled him to me and squeezed him hard for a long
moment.

I knelt down before him and gave him a
serious mom look, “Promise me you’ll do everything that Eleanor
says!” “Promise!”

I looked at him a little longer, suddenly
unsure if I should go on the mission after all.

“Oh he’ll be fine! You go ahead and go have
some fun, while me and Raffi man the fort.” Eleanor said.

I gave them both one last look, “Thank you
Eleanor.”

“Not a problem, now you better run along
before they leave you completely behind.” Eleanor said and I turned
away.

I had to run for a while before I caught up
with the group trekking out over the sand dunes. One good thing
about being an exotic dancer was what great shape it kept you in. I
was very grateful for that aspect of my former career right
now.

Landing close to the target turned out to be
more than a two-hour walk in the early morning heat of the Sahara.
Katie looked like she was second-guessing about bringing so many
weapons along.

We came to an exhausted stop on top of a
tall sand dune. Sparky, dressed in casual gray with only a 9mm
strapped to his hip, checked his calculations for the hundredth
time. Shaking his head, as if not understanding he said.

“This is the place. We’re standing on the
exact spot.”

“I don’t see any remnants of a city! I
certainly don’t see a weapon Sparky!” Talaric commented in bad
humor.

Sparky affronted to the implication that he
had gotten something wrong shot back, “There was a flood don’t you
know! Not to mention several thousand years have gone by. Those
kind of changes tend to change things a bit!”

“Or maybe you were off in your calculations
or perhaps the scale of the globe was wrong.” Talaric responded
testily.

Equally testy Sparky shot back, “The scale
was perfect and so were my calculations! I checked them twice!”

“While you two boy scouts stand there
arguing, I’m going to sit down and take a load off my feet!” Katie
said, as she stumbled away a few feet and plopped down onto her
butt in the sand. Her face was flushed and she looked miserable
from a combination of the heat and the heavy load she was
carrying.

Titus and I screamed at the same moment, as
we both saw the disappearing sand behind Katie.

“Katie!”

But it was too late; she was already falling
over backwards into the abyss behind her, her scream trailing out
in the wake of her fast descent into the unknown. All of us dove to
the rim of the hole and peered down into the dark depths below, but
it was an impossible to see anything with the brightness of the day
behind us.

There was eerie silence, except for the
sound of trickling stand.

Katie’s voice broke the silence suddenly,
“Hey guys, you’re gonna want to come down and take a look at this.
It’s pretty cool! I think you can slide down on the sand mound in
here safely enough.”

I closed my eyes briefly in relief at
hearing her voice and knowing that she was okay. Talaric was
already lowering himself through the hole closely followed by
Sparky. Titus dropped me down and then came through himself.

It was weird going down the sand that had
collected over time forming a sort of stairwell ramp to the
surface. It was sort of a half walk combination slide on your rear
to go down into the dark interior space.

There was more light than I had thought down
here. Most of it came from the surface opening, but some light was
coming from what looked like wall sconces that were dimly
glowing.

The place was massive!

We had come down several stories. The domed
ceiling we had come through had become broken at some point by
something. In time this whole place would fill with sand, but for
now it was still spectacular to behold.

There were beautiful murals and artwork
everywhere. I would liked to have seen this place when it had been
full of life and not full of sand.

Sparky had been fiddling with a panel door.
Something sparked and the doors creaked open part way. Sparky
started to step through, when Talaric abruptly caught a hold of him
and pulled him back.

“What’s wrong?” Sparky asked Talaric, who
was shining a flash light along the floor of the room beyond.

“Nothing.” Talaric said as he stepped past
the doorway and explained further for his hesitation to explore,
“I’ve had bad luck with doors lately and what lays beyond them,
excuse me if I seem a bit overly cautious. It’s just that you never
know what you’re going to run into anymore.”

I half screamed and jumped backward, when
Talaric’s flashlight beam landed on a smiling face.

“I couldn’t agree more with you son.” Came
the deep reply, which sounded full of good humor.

Every flashlight focused on the man, who
rose up out of a chair against the wall and was walking toward us.
Talaric’s flashlight dropped to the floor, as the big man with
features and a build so similar to his own came closer.

Talaric sounded choked up as he asked,
“Father?” As if he didn’t believe what he was seeing.

The stranger’s big arms came out and
encircled Talaric lifting him off the ground in a mighty bear hug
that Talaric returned in equal measure.

“My son! Oh my son! How I have longed to
feel your strength again! Zevin is my heart and Gavin is my faith,
but you have always been my strength Talaric!”

I had never really seen Talaric cry
outright, but now he was crying openly and so was the other man.
The sight of it had tears pouring down my own face.

The emotion of the moment was simply so
powerful that it was completely overpowering and the rest of us
could do nothing more then stand in place, as we watched a
one-of-a-kind reunion take place between a father and his son.

Talaric was the first to draw back, but only
slightly, “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”

“One question at a time my boy. I brought
someone with me that I know you’ll be anxious to see. As to why
we’re here, well simply put we came to help you.”

“But surely you didn’t have to risk
yourself! Our people need you so badly at home!”

“I’m not that crucial anymore and besides my
children have been having all the fun as of late. It’s high time
that I got back into the action.”

The two men jabbered back and forth, as they
walked down what seemed like an endless dimly lit hallway, as we
followed mutely from behind entirely forgotten it would seem.

The lights got brighter and soon we could
clearly see. A pair of doors finally appeared and it looked, as if
the long journey would soon be over.

The doors opened and two men, as big as
Talaric and his father stepped aside holding the doors open. Were
all the men of Talaric’s world so imposing?

I saw Katie’s tongue flicker out and moisten
her lips, as she stared at the two men wide-eyed. She looked from
one to the other and back again.

I sidled closer and leaned down to whisper
into her ear, “You’d better settle for the black haired one. You’ll
have a fight on your hands with Eleanor, if you go for the
blond.”

She smiled and nodded slightly. “I liked him
better anyway.” She said, as she gravitated slightly away toward
the black haired man.

There were two more big men in the room and
two women. One was older and the other much younger, but they were
both so similar in appearance that they had to be a mother and her
daughter.

They were both stunningly beautiful in a way
that only redheads can be sometimes. Talaric left his father to
walk toward the red haired woman with streaks of gray in her hair
and fell to his knees before her burying his face against her
middle, as she hugged his head fiercely to her.

This then had to be his mother and most
likely his sister, who had come up to hug Talaric from behind.
Eventually Talaric broke contact and what we had come here for
became once again the purpose of the moment.

“How did you get here?” Talaric asked.

“Your brother Zevin and Ellanara have
discovered a transportation device. It has a very limited range and
basically this is the only planet close enough to go to by this
means. This place is the only such place still linked to receive
anyone. And before you ask, no we cannot go home from here the same
way. The ability to link out of here was purposefully destroyed a
long time ago according to Ellanara.” Roric said in answer to his
son’s unasked question.

“So you’re stuck here like I am!” Talaric
exclaimed.

“For now it would appear so, but don’t give
up faith Talaric I’m sure that with all the bright minds gathered
here and a little Divine providence, a solution to the problem at
hand will be found. First off though, we need to protect our world
from invasion. We’ll worry about getting home later.” Roric
finished.

Talaric nodded, “We came here, because I
found information dating back prior to the great flood on Earth of
this place called bar-Seth, as being where our ancestors first
originated from. It was also from where they left Earth supposedly.
To keep an enemy of theirs at the time from leaving along with them
and escaping the coming destruction of the Earth they built a
weapon here that kept the enemy ships from being able to leave
Earth and there enemies were destroyed in the flood along with the
rest of humanity except for Noah’s family. My hope in finding this
place was that I would be able to turn the weapon back on and stop
the invasion of our world the same way that transportation through
space was stopped before. Have you found any evidence of the weapon
in the couple days you’ve been here?”

Roric inclined his head toward Ellanara, who
was sitting with her back to a series of displays depicting
shifting numbers in a variable number of configurations that looked
unbelievably complex.

Sensing that she had the floor to speak she
began, “First off, this is no longer bar-Seth.”

“But our map indicated that this was where
it was located ancestrally?” Talaric said puzzled looking.

“Yes, for a long time it was, but it moved.
You see bar-Seth isn’t a place, it’s a ship. A spaceship to be
exact.”

She turned a dial beside her and one whole
side of the room shifted apart to reveal a large bay window. As
one, we all drifted toward the window that looked out upon a
massive and truly epic scaled hanger bay.

Here and there it was filling up with sand,
but enough was still visible of it to truly get a picture of how
massive the bar-Seth had to of been.

“As you can obviously see it is no longer
here. It and the weapon that you seek are the same. It’s really not
that much of the weapon, but rather a simple ingenious idea, but
one that came at great cost. The bar-Seth was our ancestor’s
greatest technological achievement. They built it entirely
underground in this facility, while appearing on the surface to the
rest of the world to be technologically backward, when really they
were light years ahead of everybody else. They knew they had to
leave, but if they left so would the enemy and they couldn’t
conscience that the corruption of the other peoples of the Earth
would be allowed to expand into the universe, so they did the one
thing that they could to keep them here. They sacrificed the
bar-Seth. The Vallians left Earth quietly in low-key vessels like
what you, Zevin and Larc came back to Earth in, without attracting
to much attention to themselves. Those vessels were never intended
to be much more than safety pods that docked directly into the
bar-Seth. A select few of our ancestors remained in this facility
to oversee the bar-Seth. Once the link had been established to
another world they were given the go-ahead to complete the exodus
and seal Earth off from the rest of the galaxy. Before they left
through the link we came through, they turned the bar-Seth’s
engines on and initiated the first step of water vortex travel to
run perpetually. The bar-Seth’s constant signal lock essentially
shut out the ability of any other ship to dial out, because of the
overriding force of the signal. It took a massive amount of power
to operate such a signal at a constant rate of high energy. Our
ancestors built three huge thermal generators and tapped directly
into the heat of the magma chamber that lies beneath this facility.
The generators were able to sufficiently power the bar-Seth’s
beaming array for years, until the flood came. The generators made
more energy than was needed and the extra energy was diverted into
the ship’s shield generator, which was expanded to protect the
entire facility. The Orlandian’s were never able to break through
it, but the flood waters did. Two of the generators are off-line
and the third only puts out enough power to basically keep the
lights dimly glowing.”

Sparky, enthralled along with the rest of
us, of what had taken place in the past managed to get out a
question, as he stared vacantly out at the empty hanger bay, “Where
did it go?”