In Her Name

Eustus held the light up and turned around slowly so they could see what else lay in the chamber. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to what looked almost like a tapestry of Kreelan runes that ran from the chamber’s floor to disappear in the darkness beyond the light’s reach. “We’ve got to get Reza in here. He could read this for us.”

“Eustus,” Enya said, thinking aloud, “have you ever read much about Terran archeology?”

“No,” he admitted.

“My father made me read things on every subject he could find a book on,” she told him. “He had me read them to him aloud, because he wanted to learn, too, but he did not know how to read himself.” Another legacy of the Raniers, she thought bitterly. “In one of those books,” she went on, “there was something about the old Egyptians on Earth, and what they called the pyramids. That’s where they buried their royalty, in big chambers inside the pyramid, usually with everything the priests thought the king or queen would need for the afterlife. Food, clothes, everything. And I think some of them even had soldiers, or replicas of soldiers, buried with them to protect them, or something. I can’t remember it all anymore.” Those days were a long time ago, before the police murdered her father during a “routine” interrogation.

“That’s what you think this place is? Some kind of burial vault for royalty or something?”

“Well, it has the right feel to it. I mean, who – or what – would be important enough to the Kreelans that all these warriors would stand around it, guarding it, I guess, until they themselves died?”

“But then,” he asked, “what happened to the others, the ones who brought these warriors here? There must have been some, right? And why did they leave?” He thought for a moment. “Wait a minute. Maybe not all of them did. If pieces of shrekkas were laying around, maybe there was some kind of battle here?”

“But then who are these people? The winners, or the losers? Or maybe someone else?”

“Who knows?” Eustus said. “But we haven’t found your king’s – or queen’s – body, yet.”

“Let’s move toward the center of the room.”

“Okay, but be careful.”

With Enya still holding the light, the two of them slowly moved toward where the center of the chamber should be, at least according to the facing of the long dead Kreelan sentinels. There were a lot of them, probably hundreds.

“This room is really big,” Enya whispered as they moved through the darkness to a point where nothing was visible around them but the floor, which had been inlaid with colored stones or tiles that had remained like new, polished and free of any trace of dust. The lighter’s flame, tiny though it was, cast enough light that they could no longer see the blue glow that lay somewhere in front of them. “How long will this thing last?” she asked about the lighter.

“A few hours,” Eustus said. “I fill it up every time I use it. It runs on some kind of high-tech…”

Enya did not have to ask why his sentence abruptly ended. It didn’t matter, anyway. She would not have been paying attention. She had seen what had cast Eustus into sudden silence. “What is that?” she whispered.

Before them lay the treasure over which the ancient male warriors had been standing silent guard for countless centuries. Atop a spire of something resembling clear and slender glass sat what looked like nothing so much as an opaque crystal in the shape of some living thing’s heart. And at its center shone a faint blue glow.

The two of them stood there for a moment, transfixed by what they saw, by the simple but undeniable elegance and beauty of the structure before them, which itself stood only as high as Eustus’s shoulder. The crystal heart itself was a bit larger than a man’s fist.

“This is where the light was coming from, then,” Eustus said quietly as he moved closer. “The color’s right, but it’s so much weaker now. You can hardly see it at all.”

Looking more closely at the glassine pillar on which the heart was poised, Enya said, “I don’t know much about the Kreelans, but they must have incredible artisans. I’m not much of an art expert – Mallorys aren’t even allowed in the few good museums here – but my personal opinion is that there was an incredible talent and genius behind whoever made this.”

“So, this is our – what did they call them? – pharaoh, a piece of sculpted crystal with a blue glow in it. A radioactive isotope maybe?”

“Cherenkov radiation?”

“What kind of books did your father let you read, anyway?” Eustus asked, smiling. “I thought you were supposed to be a dumb miner or something. Cherenkov radiation… I don’t know, maybe.”

Enya stepped closer to the spire, the light now playing crazily through the glass. “What could it be?” she whispered to herself as she extended a hand toward the crystal heart.

“Enya,” Eustus warned, “maybe you shouldn’t–”

It was too late. As her fingers brushed the crystal’s surface, Eustus’s ears were filled with the crackle of electricity and his nose with the smell of ozone as the crystal heart suddenly pulsed with light, a blue flame so bright it left spots swirling in his vision.

“Enya!” he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulder and whirling her away from the crystal that had begun to pulsate erratically. “Are you all right? Answer me!”

She only trembled in his arms, as if she were in a state of shock. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the crystal, her lips trembling but mute.

Eustus half dragged, half carried her back toward the entrance. He noticed in the sudden explosion of light that there were six other tunnels leading down here. He was not confused as to which one to take because of the pile of smoldering bones that was the Kreelan warrior he had shot, whose shattered remains now served as a gruesome trail marker.

Behind him, the crystal heart began to pulse more rhythmically, and the light coming from it grew with every beat, so intense that Eustus did not need any other source of light as he frantically made his way down the tunnel.

Something is going to happen, his mind screamed at him. They had to get out…

“Eustus,” he heard Enya rasp.

“I’m here,” he told her as he propelled her along, ignoring the pain in his foot from when he twisted it entering the chamber. “We’re getting out of here!”

His ears began to tingle, and he realized that the voices were coming again. And he suddenly realized what the sound really was: it was the voices of the warriors standing guard over that thing. Eustus did not believe in ghosts, but he knew with absolute certainty that what they had heard was not the sound of wind through caves, or anything artificial. Those dead mouths back there might not be moving, but that’s where the sound originally came from. Where it came from now, he did not know, nor did he wish to find out.

The light continued to brighten, much faster now, and Eustus was almost blinded even facing away from it. Worse, he felt like his neck and arms were getting sunburned.

It’s some kind of bomb, he thought suddenly. That only made him move faster.

The voices, when they finally came, were every bit as loud as before, but Eustus was ready for the pain, at least psychologically. What he was not ready for was the song itself. No longer a mournful dirge, the voices seemed to be elated, filled with joy at something that Eustus probably would never understand.

Behind him, even as the voices rose, he could hear the snapping and popping of flames as the mummies began to burn in whatever supernatural flame Enya’s touch had sparked. He could hear the air crackle with heat, a wind rising in the tunnel as the heated air sought freedom outside, rushing up behind them like a frenzied locomotive.

“Eustus, what is it?” Enya cried. “What is happening?”

“I don’t know,” he screamed over the rising chorus of the dead warriors and the crackling hum growing behind him like a rapidly approaching storm. “Hang on!”

With a final leap, they hurled themselves into space, falling from the cliff face through the afternoon air toward the lake. They hit the water just as a stream of blue light, bright as any sun, exploded from the shaft and into space.

Far below, Eustus and Enya struggled toward the shore of the lake and sanctuary from the power of the alien beacon that now reached out toward the stars.

* * *

Reza stood in the company headquarters, thinking, waiting. Suddenly he felt a tingling at the base of his skull,