Glade and Nathan worked together to get Trevor onto his cot. He only seemed to heat up worse as time went on. Kaida took his temperature, and sure enough, he was climbing steadily over one hundred. She put a moist towel over his forehead.
“He should be all right for now,” Nathan said resolutely.
A look passed between Glade and Nathan, two warriors who had seen their share of death and those on the brink of it. They looked away before Kaida noticed.
“Shouldn’t we get him medical attention?” Kaida asked. She injected Trev with a booster shot to ease the pain.
“He’ll be fine.” Nathan said gruffly.
“But—”
“He wanted us to see this through. He’d want us to get this thing first.” Nathan led the way through the passenger compartment and down to the cargo hold. Kaida saw the young man sleeping soundly and then followed after. Boost operated the door for them as they left and then followed after them. Nathan left the jet on idle.
As soon as Boost dropped the ramp on the ground, Nathan blew through the opening on his CTV. The wheels met sand, and he spun it to a stop. “Get in.” Glade got shotgun while the Kaida and Boost climbed in the armored back. Then off they went in a blur. They screamed toward the oasis that stood a few clicks ahead.
The CTV was a hybrid of an antiground striker and an all-terrain, which was why Nathan liked it so much. Reflective nanite technology changed the color to match its surroundings. A heavy machine gun was mounted on top. The CTV tore across sand like it was concrete. On any other day, this ride would have been fun, but not now, not with what was happening to Trevor.
Loffgannon appeared to be a dead, desert planet. Oddly, sparse chunks of trees grew between long distances by watering holes. And the one they were aimed at was like a miniature jungle, thick and overgrown, and the edges were roughly the diameter of a half mile. It was hard to tell what lay inside besides the small lake Nathan had seen on their approach.
He parked the CTV at the forest edge. He told Boost to stay with the car. Then the three of them entered. Kaida was walking between the two former soldiers when a gun appeared before her. Nathan gave her a serious look that said it wasn’t up for discussion. She held it and clicked the safety off.
“Be careful not to spook the target,” Nathan warned, and the others nodded back.
Boost watched as the three of them made their way past the jungle edge, which was oddly overlayed with a dirt floor. Strangely, the sand blew up to it but wasn’t able to get far. A counter wind blew from within. It was shady under the canopy of the trees, almost dark. The sounds of the minihabitat ceased as they entered, and Boost could see them no more.
Nathan had a handheld GPS, which pointed them straight ahead. It was most likely a point right next to the lake.
Bushes and twigs crunched underneath their feet. Small animals jumped through. It was hot and moist and smelled strongly of animal feces. Odd-colored fruits grew on the branches overhead.
“We’re being watched,” Glade warned.
Nathan felt it too. The hairs on the back of his neck were on end. But he didn’t see anything, and neither did Glade. What lived in this place? Why did Raxus choose such an odd stop?
Cautiously, they continued on. The deeper they got, the more it seemed like they had never seen the desert beyond. This was an ecosystem unto itself. Nathan did wonder who the highest was on this food chain.
He saw the little lake ahead through the trees. As they got even closer, he saw a makeshift shelter constructed from fallen branches and leaves. The smell of the water blew in from across its surface. When they had cleared the canopy and stood feet from the lake, he saw the black marks on the sand.
“We missed him,” Glade noted. “These are char marks from taking off.”
“Let’s check out the area anyway.” Nathan motioned for them to fan out. He wanted a quick sweep just to be sure; then it would be time to get Trevor to a medical professional. At least his last moments could be made peaceful. It’s the decision he should have made in the first place.
Glade held out one of his massive alien guns before him and walked opposite the lean-to. Nathan went the other route; he cleared the little makeshift shack and peeked inside. Of course, it was empty.
On closer inspection, he noticed it looked like someone had left in a hurry. There were scratch marks, footprints that indicated something running, and then there was the missing Eckelion.
“Do you think the Ruverans got him?” Kaida asked, standing behind him.
Nathan shook his head. “I think whoever was here left for some other reason—and quickly.”
“Look!” Kaida exclaimed suddenly. She was pointing to scratch marks on the tree used for the lean-to.
Nathan gave her a confused look.
“They’re symbols. Another cipher.” She pulled out her communicator and snapped a photo of it.
“Let’s get out of here,” Glade said, having walked the length around. He used his best judgment to deduce the Eckelion hadn’t used a water-hybrid vehicle and parked it beneath the lake. “There is nothing here. And I feel something…is off. Deceptively hidden. I can smell an unnatural decay. It is something…alive.”
Nathan wanted to tell him to calm down when he saw movement in the lake. It was so gradual, he almost missed it.
Blending into the sand was a cask. Casks were serpent like creatures, with a snake’s head and upper body; the rest looked like the body of a giant scaled lion. It was the same color as the lake bottom, except for its golden eyes, which had white slits through them. Those slits were fixed on him and motionless.
Nathan looked past it, feigning ignorance of its presence, letting the creature believe it could continue sneaking up to them.
“Cask,” Nathan mouthed, barely audibly.
Glade heard and gulped. He remained calm as he scanned and then saw it too. Unfortunately, he tensed involuntarily when he spotted it, and the serpent knew the game was up. The cask’s head popped out of the water, and it pulled its body out of the lake. Its mouth opened to reveal a multidirectional set of razor-sharp chompers.
The large animal came at them with wicked speed.
All three of them pulled triggers at it while sprinted out. Laser fire burst out and struck the creature. It dotted the monster’s body up and down. Bloody wounds opened, but it kept coming. Another one, which might have been sleeping when they arrived, came at the sound of the other’s call.
Both of the creatures charged at them.
The forest immediately opened with sounds of other animals. Glade led the way out with Nathan at the rear. The old space captain saw the fruitless effort to kill it with body shots, so he started hitting the legs and feet.
“Keep going!”
The jungle felt like it went on forever. Trees snapped. The casks screamed. Hearts beat into eardrums. Laser fire shot blindly into thick foliage.
The casks stomped down trees after them. The first one was thirty feet from Nathan and closing. He kept shooting at the legs, which helped somewhat, but the beasts were catching up. They must be desperately hungry to risk so much for a meal.
At last, they cleared the jungle and hit sand. Boost pulled the car close, and just as they went to get back into the CTV, a cask slammed into it. The impact threw it back into the jungle. It was dazed by the hit allowing them to scramble past it. Boost disappeared along with it.
“I’ll hold them back!” Nathan yelled, now reacting in complete wartime survival mode. He would be able to buy them a few moments. He took off diagonally, but only one of the four took the bait. Hungry and wild with pain, it came. He guided himself back toward the ship, and now there were two groups making a dash.
When Nathan turned again, he saw the cask’s mouth filling the sky above him. Then a second later, a hole was running through it. He looked back around and saw the turret on top of the ship. It was firing on the other one. Someone was manning the Wrath’s turret.
Then his CTV appeared next to him, and he jumped in. They swept ar
ound and picked up the other two astonished individuals on the run. Altogether, they careened across the desert, wind blowing in their faces, backs toward the ship.
How? Was all he could think as they ran up the cargo hold.
Boost closed the door after them as they all went up toward the pax compartment. It closed on another hungry batch of wild casks. The ship’s hull sounded off as more and more came out of the woodwork.
Nathan led the way up to the top of his ship and saw Trevor near the controls. He was lying on the ground again, out cold. Nathan slapped his face a little bit. His skin was like fire to the touch. He was in a pool of sweat.
Nathan shook him, and finally, Trevor stirred. “Hmm?”
His heart rejoiced that he was still coherent. He picked a great time to come out of it. “Good job, kid. You hanging in there?”
Trev opened his eyes and looked around. Color was returning to his face. “I had a dream I was…” He realized where he was. “Oh…It wasn’t a dream.”
Kaida and Glade exchanged a look.
“C’mon. I need my copilot.”
Trevor pulled himself up without Nathan’s help. Kaida found a maintenance towel and dried him off a little with it. Trev found his bearings just when he needed them. The ship took a hard hit from something.
Nathan looked outside the turret. Seven or eight casks were trying to claw their way in, and beyond the dead casks, a group of them was coming out of the jungle.
When Nathan looked back inside his ship, he saw Trevor was already scaling down the ladder toward the cockpit. He was okay for the moment.
Nathan met him in there and took his seat. “Time to go.” He hit the surface defense, which electrified the outside of the ship. Surprised screams rang out from outside. Then the bumping began once more. Nathan throttled the engines up and started making ground. Their weight and balance was a little off, but he’d been through worse scrapes.
“How bad?” Nathan looked over as he pulled into a takeoff pattern. Looking down on them was one last cask; it was screaming and trying to break through the front windows. Then it fell off and began a five-thousand-foot free fall.
“We have more trouble.” Trevor coughed.
“What now?”
Trev just pointed. According to the radar, outside the planet was a mass of gray, just like they had seen on Flora.
It was the darkness anomaly.
“How did it get out here so fast?” Kaida asked herself. “That means…” She didn’t have to say it; most of the known universe was most likely gone. All that remained on this side was deep Ruveran space and the abandoned galaxies beyond that.
As soon as they passed through the layer of sandstorms, they could see the darkness once more. It was the same pulsing black mass tearing through the center of the galaxy. It engulfed the solar system’s sun and then spiraled from it toward the center, ripping apart the planets near it. One dark stream hit Loffgannon, and the effect threw their ship into space. Just as they began to get their bearings, the anomaly began pulling the system into itself. Tongues from the great abyss reached out to taste them.
Nathan engaged the force drive. The counter began to tick bar by bar, though much faster than it had before.
Thank you, Oran.
The shadowy chunks left of Loffgannon were being pulled along with them. The hungry black force pulsed as it swallowed everything in its path.
The velocity at which everything was being sucked in was increasing—or else Nathan’s body was pumping so much adrenaline that time slowed.
He watched the bars and then turned back to the windows. They were spinning now as the darkness pulled them into oblivion.
Just as it came to swallow them, Nathan engaged the force drive, and they hyper-jumped blindly into space.
They burst out several galaxies away, grateful they hadn’t flown through anything. The Wrath glided along slowly, at rest.
Trevor didn’t celebrate this time. It had been much too close. He wiped the moisture from his hair and coughed.
“I can’t believe it’s gotten this far,” Trev said into the quiet. He was still coming out of his fever.
“It’s getting worse. If it’s this far…that means it’s run through the ribbon and is spreading faster than it can ever be repelled,” Nathan said and then added grimly, “I don’t want to think of what happens if we don’t find this artifact thing.” He dusted sand from his outfit. “There won’t be much left to save if we don’t act fast.”
Kaida and Glade were behind them filling the additional crew member seats. They couldn’t agree more.
They all took a collective breath.
“Where are we headed?” Trevor asked. “What’s left? Is there anywhere left to go?” His hand was hovering over the NAV.
Kaida had the cipher solved in her hands. “It’s a short journal entry. It says he waited for Cleph’thera. He and his Absolver were attacked. His Absolver was poisoned. After Raxus had to bury his friend, he knew he had to leave. Then there’s just a name: Zephlar-318,” she answered.
Trevor searched through and found it. “It’s not too far from here.” He calculated the route. Nathan hit the ignition, and the Wrath flew forward.
Chapter 19