Chapter Nine
End of Winter
Ellanara stopped and the others of the group fanned out to the sides to gaze unbelievably at the object at rest within the huge underground cavern of the mountain.
“Is that an airship?” Eshta stammered out in awed wonder.
“Yes it is and you’re going to learn how to fly it.”
Eshta glanced from the gleaming surfaces of the ship to Ellanara in sheer horror at her statement.
“In time that is.” Ellanara added mischievously, as the others around chuckled at Eshta’s expense. Eshta scowled at the offenders and they stopped.
“Is this the bar-Seth?” Loric asked quietly, as he gazed in awe at the ship. He’d seen the airships that had existed in his father’s time, but this ship was far larger than any of the others had been, which had led him to believe this must’ve been the ship of legend that he was staring at.
“No the bar-Seth sank below the waves long ago and has stayed there. This ship I have named the bar-Trinity.”
“How did you build such a ship down here alone?” Loric asked in wonder.
Ellanara smiled, as Abby appeared beside her, “I had a very good assistant, who helped me with all the calculations involved and I had them do the physical side of things.” She said in indication of the other room where an entire army of strange devices and machines moved in a flurry of movement, as if in response to her thoughts.
Loric looked from the robots to her, “You control all those machines with your mind?”
“Yes much the same way that you are going to control the other Hunters after their short circuited by the device that I’ve made. Now let us be about the said rescue of the other Hunters. Follow me please.” The wall opened and the group followed after Ellanara, as she strode across the hangar floor towards the massive ship named the bar-Trinity.
Loric could kind of understand the significance of the name in relation to the ship. The ship sort of looked like three ships artfully combined into one. The main fuselage was round narrowed to a point and was very much similar to the abdomen of an insect’s, while slightly flared out at the other end. Slightly above the main fuselage and to either side of it were the projections of two sharply pointed v-wings. At the apex of the “v” was a small round fuselage, which had a circular framework that went the length of the fuselage. The ship’s design was entirely different than anything he had ever seen before.
A walkway extended down out of the ship and the group marched upward into the ship. Once everyone was in the ship and surrounded by the strangeness of technology that seemed to exist everywhere the walkway closed and the hull of the ship reformed where the doorway had been. Even Loric was somewhat mystified by the elaborate interfaces that look deceptively simple, but probably weren’t.
He was accustomed to higher technology, but none of what he saw was familiar. He could only too well imagine how Kana and the others were feeling surrounded by this alien environment of never before seen technology.
“I want you all to relax and find a seat and strap yourselves in. None of you are going to be responsible for anything, until you’ve had time to learn it. I will manage all aspects of flying, fighting and landing the ship, until such time as you are able to take over and ease my burden some. Abby is going to teach each and every one of you what your responsibilities will be.”
Abby appeared and smiled sweetly at the group of wide eyed women, “Don’t worry dears I have experience at this and a perfect track record so far.” The words did little to comfort.
Ellanara turned to Abby, “Are you completely transferred over?”
Abby nodded yes and there was a brief moment of barely controlled excitement visible within the digital manifestation of an individual, which was odd to see in Loric’s opinion, since she wasn’t human.
Ellanara smiled at Abby and asked, “Are you ready to see the outside again?”
Abby vigorously nodded her head looking for all the world as impatient as a two-year-old to see what was inside a wrapped package. Ellanara stepped behind a central console in the bridge of the ship and initiated the coming to life of the bar-Trinity.
The bar-Trinity started upward and the mountain above cracked and grumbled, as it slid back revealing an opening to the night sky above. As Ellanara took the ship clear of the mountain by no perceivable means other than her mind she said, “Blow up the lab Abby.”
Ellanara guided the ship out across the Valley Lands, as the mountain that Thunder Ridge had been a part of for so many years literally crumbled and exploded outward in a terrific eruption of force. Thunder Ridge was now the stuff of legends and myths, only to be carried on in the hearts of those who had called it home once.
The bar-Trinity hovered over the device that had enslaved the Valley Lands into a perpetual winter. With one brief pulse of blue light the device below exploded into a fireball and almost immediately the heavens opened up in a downpour of rain that began to melt the snow blanketing the valleys below.
Flying low the bar-Trinity skipped out over the ocean headed for the Tranquil Islands. The closer they approached the main island where the Hunters were located; the glow of Ellanara’s eyes intensified into a storm of focused fury. Loric alone stood in the center of a ring on the floor back from the bridge of the ship armed only with the weapons that he had used as a Hunter.
Kana had objected to Loric going down alone, but she had been overruled and now she sat biting her lip staring at him fretting over the danger he would soon be in. Loric noticed her focused gaze on him before she could look down fast enough and he started toward her.
Kana turned back around in her seat to face the screen with information on it that made absolutely no sense whatsoever to her. She heard Loric come up behind her shoulder and then he leaned down and began to talk into her ear in a low tone that only she could hear.
Eshta watched the creamy skin of her sister’s face go darker with a flush, as Loric spoke into her ear and Eshta flushed a little at the imagining of what he could be telling her sister to provoke such a reaction like that. Eshta only caught what his last words to her sister were, “Do you think I want to miss out on any of that? I’m coming back do you understand me?”
Kana’s head nodded, as she continued staring at the screen in front of her. Loric pulled her flushed face around and kissed her for almost a solid minute. It wasn’t a soft kiss, but rather it was a hard passionate kiss that had Kana reaching out after him, as he stepped away, as she evidently did not want the kiss to ever end.
Loric went back to standing on the ring in the center of the floor, as the couple was the subject of several giggling conversations throughout the bridge of the control room. Eshta hadn’t really thought much of the other side of life before, but the math of their being equal numbers of Hunters to women had not escaped her. Was there a Hunter that would be right for her? She was actually starting to hope so, which surprised her greatly. She blamed her sister for this new awareness of life that was unsettling the clear and decisive pathway that she had ordered her life to function within up till now.
The bar-Trinity glided toward the main city of Zastu on the big island uncontested, as it did not register on any of the enemy’s screens, even though the ship was clearly visible to the naked eye. A schematic of a building outlined in green tracer lines that extended far underground lit up before Loric.
“Is this the building that they are housed in?” Ellanara asked.
“Yes! Here on this level is where they are kept.” Loric said pointing to the thirty third floor of the underground section.
A yellow flashing light appeared on the selected floor. “Very well then. Are you ready?” Ellanara asked.
“Yes!” Loric responded.
The bar-Trinity centered over the facility and a wide measured circular beam shot down into the facility with terrific force. The 3-D schematic showed the beam penetrating all the way to the thirty third floor, as easily as plunging a stick to the bottom of the bucket of water. The ring around Loric’s feet lifted up and a whirlwind of colored air swirled up around him.
Ellanara called out looking up from her screens for the first time, “Remember that you have only a little more than fifteen minutes to get the Hunters topside before the bunker’s fail safe charges might go off!”
Loric nodded affirmatively and then he was gone.
The veil of colored winds spiraled down out of the ship and shot down through the whole the beam had created to stop where the beam had stopped and spun away into nothingness to reveal Loric standing in the smoky atmosphere of the penetrated high-security bunker that had alarms going off everywhere. Water sprayed down onto Loric from sprinklers on the ceiling that had been set off by fires on other floors.
Loric stepped forward from the beam down location and pulled the device from his belt and started to activate it, but it was knocked from his hands, as he was hit from behind. Swinging around he grappled with the massive Hunter that was even bigger than he was.
It was a vicious series of strike and counterstrike. Each opponent both skillfully blocked and delivered hits to the other in a harmony of fluid movement that bespoke of years of training and experience at fighting. It was a battle between men, who fought silently and as savagely as wild beasts.
Loric’s opponent was both bigger and stronger, but Loric was faster. Loric was getting the best of his opponent, but it was taking too long. Blinking sweat and blood out of one of his eyes from a cut above it he saw seven more Hunters running down the hall at him.
He was out of time. His opponent lashed out with the left hand and Loric dodged to the side of it and then quickly grasped the back of the man’s extended left shoulder and pulled himself forward, as he did so his right arm wrapped around the man’s throat, even as his knees shoved hard into the man’s back stunning him momentarily from the savage blow to his kidneys.
Both men fell over backward to the floor, as Loric held desperately onto his forearm grip around the Hunter’s throat, even as he shoved off powerfully with both of his legs pulling the Hunter along with him across the floor in the direction of the fallen device. The Hunter’s hands came up and grabbed a hold of Loric’s arm and he was unable to keep his hold on the man’s throat.
Releasing his grip Loric spun and slid towards the device only to come up inches short of it, as the Hunter’s forearm came around his throat and started to crush it. In desperation and with the last of his air Loric lifted up to his knees, while bent over at the waist with his hands on the floor and managed to take a short crawl forward, as he carried the bulk of the of the larger Hunter on his back. His available air spent he fell forward flinging his hand out to close over the device, as the Hunter on his back weighed him down to the floor.
Feeling on the verge of blacking out Loric fumbled for the activate button and finding it his shaking fingers pressed it hard. The Hunter’s, who were almost to him clutched at their heads and went tumbling to the floor, even as the big Hunter on his back slumped limp on top of him. Choking and gasping for air Loric crawled out from under the big Hunter and half pulled himself up against a wall breathing heavy, as he tried to collect himself.
The Hunters seemed to be coming out of the pain and going straight into the maddened craziness of the realization of what had been done and worse what they had done themselves. Loric knew full well what they were experiencing and concentrating he put all his focus into relaying his own personal experience into all of the minds of the Hunters.
They saw the identical agony of consciousness as their own, but they also saw why he’d chosen to live, and that there was a purpose worth living for, even a forgiveness of peace that was to be had. There was also the natural guttural urge to survive against all odds that was theirs inherently from their birth as Valley Landers.
They were Valley Landers and that alone was enough to make them fight through the screams of a monster in their heads to stop their tirades of grief and rage to look in unison towards Loric. He matched the hell he saw in their eyes with his own remembered guilt as he made his way back up to his feet. The rest of the Hunters filtered into the smoky room, until they were all present.
Loric met their gazes and pounded his chest over top of his heart and then gestured to them all, “For you and them!” He said pointing to his head in indication of those that had been lost and those they had helped kill for the enemy.
“For the hope of the future we survive, Valley Landers and men of the Vallian! We fight on together!”
As one man they thumbed their fists to their hearts and said, “Yes Lata!” Which meant master or commander in an ancient dialect of Vallian.
Loric nodded glad to see the spark of life in their eyes, even if he was not worthy of the respect they gave him. He reached down and helped Rolanis up off the floor. Slapping him on the back Loric said, “You about had me that time friend.”
Rolanis’s face twisted in remorse, as he finished wiping the blood and sweat from off of it. He started to say something, but Loric waved it away and said, “No need to apologize.”
Rolanis, as a boy had been a bully virtually because of his large size, even then Loric had grown tired of it and had met Rolanis’s challenge and in a flurry of flailing fists and punches behind the old weaver’s cottage Loric had come out the victor much to everyone’s surprise. The two boys had been the best of friends from then on up until the day of their capture, when they had ceased to be able to discern friend from foe, but had known only the program dictates of their masters to kill everything that lay beyond the Islander’s interests.
Loric headed for the stairs at a sprint and the men of his birth followed closely behind him. The bunker was in a state of panic, as people ran to and fro, all order completely gone in the chaos that had erupted with the splintering of the bunker from above. In their haste to make it to the surface the former Hunters ran over top of staffers, security forces and scientists alike.
Near the top of the stairs Loric saw an old man crouched among other fallen and frightened people off to the side of the stairs. “Bring him!” Loric shouted out and with a roar Rolanis leaned forward and snatched the old man up, dragging his badly shaking body along with them in their mad dash up the stairs.
The group of men burst out of the doors of the surface building and out into the open to see that it was the only intact building left standing to be seen. Explosions rocked throughout what was left of the once thriving city, as fires consumed the rest. Dark black smoke billowed into the sky from the burning fires of the city.
In the distance across the waters of the city’s harbor Loric could see more smoke rising from another island. It had taken the Islanders several weeks to destroy the Valley Lands and an entire way of life. Ellanara had destroyed their world in but fifteen minutes.
Loric turned to the old man, who was staring brokenly out at the shattered industrial landscape of the city. The man’s gaze came to meet Loric’s his face still disbelieving of everything he was seeing.
“Do you see Doctor Tagean the mistake of your enlightened movement now? The mistake was to leave any of us alive. Your own methods have brought down your destruction upon yourselves. Enjoy living here in our absence.”
The bar-Trinity zoomed to a stop overhead, as individual whirlwinds of color swept down and caught up the Valley Landers taking them upward into the ship. The bar-Trinity cruised away out over the ocean, until it was out of view.
When the ship was out of sight the old man fell to his knees crying at the destruction of literally everything he had spent his life creating. There was nothing left of their grand enlightenment. The only people left in any great number were those who had been enslaved in the Southern Settlements, who now ran free hunting every Islander that they could found, until there would be none left.