the shock wave sent other Chaktaw warriors hurling through the air to bone-crunching halts on the ice-covered ground.
Fromm motioned his troops and Behemoths to fall back. They did so while continuing to spew useless rounds of munitions from their magnetic rifles. Temporary retreat seemed the only course of action in face of the reaching tendrils and impenetrable hide. Fromm needed time to regroup and plan a more effective assault
Then a shadow flew overhead. The shadow of the battleship advancing.
Fromm and his men gaped skyward. The dirigible inched forward under power of its maneuvering thrusters, moving very slow until it hovered over the monster.
Still, Fromm clearly saw that the main gun remained out of action. Yet something moved up there, near the bow. Not so much near the cannon but underneath the main balloon near one of the support struts.
Fromm pulled away his poncho hood and raised a pair of spyglasses to his eyes. Through the magnified view he saw see two people reaching out from an access hatch near a large rectangular compartment. He recognized them as Jaff and Trevor Stone.
Fromm recognized the compartment at the same time that he noticed Jaff handing Trevor first one then another round cartridge.
Fromm shouted and led his men away from the monster a good fifty yards. The beast responded with a roar that suggested it saw victory in the enemy's withdrawal. He then stood and watched as his second-in-command and the human named Trevor executed their plan.
The rectangular compartment opened and one of the zeppelin’s massive metal anchors dropped to the ground like a giant arrow cast from a titan’s bow, its now-disconnected chain falling loose behind. Around that anchor were straps holding in place several cartridges.
Chaktaw artillery cartridges.
The anchor’s strike hit slightly between two of the three heads and the singularities inside the cartridges activated. A cone of destruction blast outward from the middle of the beast. At the center of that cone, two glowing red balls that hated all things made of matter.
And while Voggoth’s pet could withstand acid and fire; while it could shrug off bullets and shrapnel, it was still made of matter. The evil fiend collapsed inward, its blob-like mass and reaching appendages sucked down by two tiny black holes born in its midst.
Those points of destruction greedily competed for the body of the monster, tearing its ugly form into big chunks until disintegrating those chunks into nothingness, leaving behind a smoky haze and a black ditch.
– After destroying the wretched monstrosity, Fromm’s expedition entered the massive, dark portal to the city-sized enigma. The Chaktaw entry team included some thirty troops and several Jaw-Wolves. Trevor, Nina, and the balance of the battleship’s crew waited behind.
The puzzle-like obelisk began turning again moments after the expeditionary force disappeared inside. Each layer of the thing rotated and spun at varying speeds and no exit appeared, all to the sound of a constant, grinding drone.
Time dragged as the observers on the bridge waited in an atmosphere coated with tension. Tempers grew sharp; Jaff had to break up confrontations between techs and soldiers on numerous occasions.
Those confrontations mainly arose over the repair work which continued for hours but eventually half the ship’s controls had been replaced or safely bypassed. Jaff told Trevor that while the dirigible could not be completely repaired without additional resources from home, the ship would be capable of the return trip.
Neither Trevor nor Major Nina Forest would be accompanying Jaff on that return flight. The enigma stopped, the cessation of the constant grind coming as a thunderclap of silence.
From their vantage point in the gondola, the observers saw that not only had the object halted its motion, but a doorway locked open. From that doorway, Fromm emerged onto the snowy plains and radioed the battleship.
Jaff listened and translated to Trevor, 'It is time for you to go.'
– So this is what Jon saw?
Trevor marveled at the gargantuan pendulums and gears, the arcane oversized sockets and whirring mechanisms frozen in mid-stride throughout the cavernous interior of the enigma.
He could not imagine what it must have been like to lead a team through that machine while operating. He did see signs of the difficulties Fromm faced: Chaktaw bodies, some torn to pieces, others impaled on metallic poles, a few crushed.
Nina pointed out a carcass that was not Chaktaw, something diamond shaped with a hole blasted through its frame. Trevor could not discern if it was animal or machine and the remains were too far away to bother with closer inspection. No doubt it had been one of the guardians.
Trevor gained newfound respect for what his good friend Jon Brewer had accomplished during humanity’s trip to seize the runes. Jon had not only faced the same chaotic devices and guardians that decimated Fromm’s ranks, he also battled two armies in the process.
Stone and Major Forest descended the levels alongside Fromm and a pair of Chaktaw soldiers as well as the human slave. The click and clack of their footsteps and the jingle of equipment echoed through the silent chamber.
Trevor and Nina discarded the heavy blankets that had protected them from the arctic cold, for it was warm inside the mechanical metropolis.
Their last journey together reached its final destination at the center; the bottom of the enigma. There waited the runes. They looked identical to the runes Jon had brought to the estate. Indeed, if they worked as expected, Trevor would return to his Earth by walking through the Chaktaw’s runes and appearing in that secure chamber behind the estate where humanity’s captured relics waited.
If all worked as expected.
The complexity of the frozen machines faded behind and the stage at the center seemed disconnected from the rest of the universe, its own lonely corner of existence that just happened to be a doorway beyond honest comprehension.
Trevor spied the round orbs atop the jagged, stalagmite-like cones. Fromm had placed his hands on those orbs to claim this Earth for his people, the same way Jon Brewer had forever imprinted his mark on the runes on humanity’s world.
Trevor saw no difference in the hand prints.
The group assembled around the perimeter. The two lonely pillars waited in silence to guide travelers to their home worlds…to their home universes.
Trevor stood for a moment, enthralled by how an object could look so primitive, so advanced, and so mystical all at the same time. Nina did the same. Her gaze was seasoned with misgiving. She not only had to worry about the function of the runes, she had to contend with the doubt as to how she would be greeted on her home world. On Sirius.
Trevor turned to Fromm. The Chaktaw leader had removed his hood and stood next to the slave that served as his translator and the guard who held her leash.
'I wish you a safe journey, Trevor Stone,' she translated Fromm's words.
'I wish you good fortune in your fight to save your Earth,' he responded.
'We are very much alike,' the Chaktaw leader admitted. 'I would believe that there is no one in all of existence who understands me as you do.'
'And you I, Fromm.'
The Chaktaw leader tilted his head as if considering something and then, very slowly, pulled an elegantly crafted blade from his belt. He turned to his human translator-his slave-and slit the cord around her neck. It took the woman several seconds to realize that she was no tethered. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.
He spoke to her then pointed to the runes.
The woman said the only words Trevor ever heard her say that did not belong to someone else. She spoke them in Fromm’s native tongue, but Trevor knew she said thank you.
The woman staggered forward, glanced at both Trevor and Nina, and then moved toward the runes. She stopped in front of the two pillars, reached out tentatively, then stepped between. Her body dissolved into atoms and faded away.
'She’s home now,' Trevor said to himself and Major Forest.
