The Legend of Earth

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.

Adam and his team were hustled outside and moved away from the incredibly hot hull of the boring pod as quickly as possible. It was obvious the pod wasn’t designed to be opened so quickly after making a passage, at least not until the exterior had time to cool. Parts of the craft were still covered with rapidly-hardening clumps of lava, still glowing a hypnotic, iridescent red, and the tracks of the vehicle were rapidly being cemented into monuments of stone as the lava entwined within them cooled. Adam realized the craft had been designed for one-time use only. Once its journey was complete it would be impossible to break the stone cancer which had infected nearly the entire exterior and all exposed components. The craft had done its job. Now it was retired, to forever become part of the landscape at the base of mountain.

The group moved into the grove of trees and Adam’s team were ordered to sit on their hands on the cool grass, while Hydon was segregated and placed with his back against one of the trees, Michael Amarillas watching his every movement with a flash rifle leveled at his chest.

Adam took the opportunity to survey their surroundings. The grove of trees appeared to be large and grew thicker the further it spread from the rock-strewn cascade of boulders near the base of the Kacoran Plain. Off to his left, Adam could see a small creek running into the grove, fed from the myriad of small waterfalls painting the walls of the cliff.

Directly ahead of him and through more trees, Adam could barely make out the jagged skyline of Juir City, a towering plume of black smoke sending a quilt of dark shadows on the ashen ground below. He had only had a moment to glimpse the expanse of the millennia-old city from the top of the Plain when he first arrived, but he knew it had once been a thriving metropolis of several million beings. Now it was gone, replaced by a graveyard of burned out buildings, their defiant remains jutting skyward at radical angles and all a uniform, oily gray in color.

The stench of death was everywhere.

Adam looked at Sherri and saw her near tears. Even though these were Juireans who had died, they had still been living beings, the vast majority of them simply going about their daily activities with no diabolical or evil