Visitation - Exodus (book 2 of 2)

Shara called me to come back into the waiting area away from and out of the air-lock. I didn’t wish to argue and joined Rilshen-por in stepping back through the dividing small door. The waiting area was empty except for Shara who waved us both into a side room she had opened.

“We shall be too close to the Relic,” advised Shara. “When it passes through on its way to the craft we needed to be somewhere else away from there. Have a seat for a short while until it has left the air lock and is on its way outside.”

“Who is flying the last craft?” I asked Shara having completely forgotten the rota that had been set down on the Ark and more importantly, having no real idea where the Exodus was up to.

“Ivan,” she replied simply.

“There have been more trips than expected, not because the numbers were greater than planned, but because of the records and technical equipment our scientists wished to take with us which had not been allowed for initially. You see we can all make mistakes, we’re only human.”

And with that she actually chuckled at her own joke.

I admired her humour but I was becoming nervous at the amount of time that was being taken and especially now with this most precious but incredibly slow moving Relic party. I was becoming agitated but could not figure out why in such an increased way verging on a feeling of panic. I knew what was happening and the procedure being followed, perhaps it was just the slow pace of events?

I had no idea of time any more, there had been no communication from the Ark, rightfully so, and I really did not know how matters had progressed, yet I was developing a sense of foreboding. Someone was telling me to be very careful, I was sure, but they were trying to talk to me in words that would not speak to me. I had been here before but then the words had been clear; they were not so now. I understood and felt the emotion that accompanied the misheard words, it elicited a similar one in me only too well, but what was I being told, what was the message?

Shara continued her reply to me either not being aware of my little interlude or perhaps it had been sufficiently brief not to have lasted very long in real time.

“Ivan has stayed cloaked and well away at a great height because I made him aware of this crucial last trip. When the Relic is ready to leave the airlock he will position himself on the ground and become ready to receive the precious cargo.”

I felt the static charge effect once more. The hairs on my neck were lifting and I guessed that the Relic party must now be passing by in the waiting area on the other side of the wall. I tried to remain as calm and as non-communicative as possible.

The air round us was almost crackling with the intensity of the charge it seemed to be generating. The Relic party must have been walking as slowly as I last saw them but I did get the impression that they really were passing by here at last. I turned to Shara but she immediately put a finger to her lips, as she had on that previous occasion, telling me to be quiet. I remained silent for what seemed to be forever. My legs were twitching to get a move on and this feeling of anxiety, or was it something else, was really building inside.

Another twenty or thirty minutes passed. I was feeling a sickness inside and just wanted to get a move on, get this final stage over and done with. Then, after what seemed an eternity, the effect started to subside. Ivan must have landed as they had surely passed and must now be in the connecting tube. Then the air really cleared, the static charge effect greatly diminished and most importantly Shara nodded in the affirmative.

Stepping back out into the waiting area the wall dividing it from the air lock now held a large opening that had not been there before. The small single door had been replaced by a large barn door size opening through which I could clearly see a similar opening in the external door of the airlock.

Without considering any other factors I followed an instinctive urge to fully close my helmet. Stepping through to the airlock it seemed that everything was OK. The large oval shaped tube out to the craft, against which it had been attached, was still inflated against the lower external air pressure.

I saw it now, the large openings for the Relic to pass through had not been closed and when the tube had to be detached from the craft all air in here would be instantly lost with a massive decompression, hopefully not an explosion. I had listened to the words of advice and assumed correctly in closing my helmet; soon full protection would be required.

Turning to Shara to explain the concern I felt inside, she was stood alongside me with Rilshen-por, the pair of them also having closed up their helmets, and the large opening behind us was closed.

“You only have to know which part of the wall to pass a hand over,” Shara chided laughingly whilst avoiding any response to what I might have said.

She was in good spirits but I was not. This feeling inside of me was telling a very different story; all was not well for some reason. Looking along the transparent flexible tube, the Relic party were at last gliding up the ramp into the craft.

Through the transparency, however, I saw something distant in the sky approaching fast, a triangular shape that had nothing to do with any of us. Shara instantly recognised the danger from my concerned thoughts and shouted out loud.

“Back inside, back inside.”

In a thought message to Ivan she instructed,

“Close the ramp, go quickly, cloak and go quickly. You must leave immediately, you are about to be attacked. Go, go, go.”

She had sent the warning to Ivan before I had even got my thoughts together. Why was I so slow, what was this fear building inside that was occupying my whole being.

I saw the ramp lifting while the two tube men I could also see were almost in a stationary panic waiting for it to close up and into the hull, so that they could carry out the disconnection. They didn’t get the chance as Ivan just pulled away at speed with the tube initially being stretched and taken away with it. Then as Ivan cloaked the craft, the tube tore away roughly and came flying back to strike one of the two tube men.

Ivan had to be riding his luck as a bright orange flash crashed through the air, where I had last seen him, to strike the ground with a fierce explosion. It had missed Ivan but the one unmoving tube-man was blown off his feet some distance in our direction. He remained still on the ground, but I could see one of his legs twitching; he was either still alive or going through his last moments.

I had no idea where Ivan had disappeared to, but I knew where the attacker was, flying straight towards us. In the depths of the cave it was possible to see this triangular craft in some detail as it flew across our line of view. Why it didn’t turn for a closer look into the cave from where the translucent tube was still attached I didn’t know. It missed its chance because in the airlock, where the three of us were stood, it could not have missed such an easy target. Perhaps it was trying to determine where Ivan had gone, perhaps it might have thought that the two tube men were the only living targets left and that they were now probably dead.

As the craft turned away in its blind search for Ivan, or so I presumed, I saw the markings on its side which included the stars and stripes of the USA. What the Senior Keepers had told me was clearly true. I recalled the vision and video news back on Earth and this was the same type of craft that had destroyed the Jamaican hotel. It was also the same type that had attacked the base before it was taken out by the explosion.

Whoever was piloting this craft, the aggressor, had to be assuming that Ivan was somewhere above him as he was now firing the bright orange flashes blindly across the sky in the hope of hitting something. It was clear to me that the cloaking we employed was really effective despite its ancient source, and the aliens or was it the USA, had no effective way of detecting or penetrating it.

I saw this as my chance to go running out of through the airlock and the remains of the transparent tube, towards the man that had caught much of the first blast. There was a strength in my legs and lungs that had to be adrenalin driven and I soon reached him. A quick glance up I could see that this triangular craft had not noticed my movement. Turning to the wounded tube man it was clear that the side of his suit was scorched but a look into his helmet showed that although badly hurt he was managing a smile.

His suit had to be intact despite the damage as he was still breathing; I needed to move him to a place of safety and quickly. I caught a movement to my left which was Shara and Rilshen-por attending to the other man, now on his feet, that had been side swiped by the springing tube.

I reached down to my injured compatriot and taking his good arm brought him up to the sitting position. I was going to lift him in the only way I thought appropriate, the fireman’s carry, the same technique I had used at the base to rescue Caterin’s relatives. Looking into his visor it was clear that he was in pain. I tried to speak verbally for some reason, “Hold on, just a short while,” then realised that while I could now understand his language I simply couldn’t speak it.

I tried mental communication; “Hold on”, but of course I could not communicate with him mentally either. Yet his smile increased and his eyes told me to get on with whatever I was intending to do. He knew I was helping him and if it was going to hurt I had just been given his approval. I smiled back, nodded yes, and dragged him towards me in a single movement that saw him go straight over my shoulder as my other arm went between his legs. A heave with a strength that came from somewhere saw me stand up straight with him firmly over my shoulder.

A look for the alien craft confirmed that it had chosen to move some distance away and come closer to the ground. Perhaps its occupants considered that Ivan had been hit and was stationary somewhere on the ground. Great mounds of rock and dirt were flying into the air with each orange flash but thankfully this was sufficiently far away not to be an immediate danger to us.

As I turned to run back to the shelter of the entrance, to follow Shara and Rilshen-por who had started to carry the other chap between them, the air suddenly became charged again from beyond where I had just been stood. As I turned back to look, a shimmer only a short distance away, transformed into a solid object. Ivan had the large craft back on the ground and dropping the cloaking while opening the ramp at the same time.

“Nice one Ivan,” I sent my thoughts to him as I ran in an almost panic the fifty yards or so towards the ramp.

Where I got the energy from I do not know but my legs seemed to have a life of their own although my breathing was coming in increasingly heavy short breaths. Over to my left Shara’s group had turned round towards the craft and were keeping pace with me although a little way back. The injured guy’s feet were not touching the ground, his arms being wrapped over the shoulders of Shara and Rilshen-por as they did their best to run. I hit the ramp just ahead of them and took a breather as it glided me up into the interior.

I guessed that the passenger, equipment and flight deck compartments doors were closed and sealed against the outside low pressure atmosphere so I stopped at the top of the ramp in the lobby area to wait for Shara’s group. As soon as they joined me, the ramp was closed, the internal air pressure rapidly equalised with the compartments and the connecting doors immediately unlocked. The cargo hold door swung open and I could see the all white of one of the Keepers.

I carried my casualty straight into the hold, the simplest route and the one ‘offered’ where all the Relic party was and where I hoped the Keepers could offer some assistance. The Relic had been turned off and thankfully it was not emitting any sort of hum, it was not levitating but sat quietly down on the floor, well away from the door.

The Keepers gathered round and took my injured load carefully to place him on the floor. I looked into his helmet and although stressed, he managed a painful smile. I nodded back and his eyes said it all, a simple, “Thank you.” Shara and Rilshen-por were right behind me with their casualty although he seemed to be more winded than injured. The way he flinched at being lowered to the floor however, hinted at broken ribs. The Keepers immediately took this guy, the injured man I had brought aboard and Rilshen-por into their safekeeping.

Despite this adrenalin fuelled ‘excitement’, the feeling of dreadful worry and concern came over me once again and much stronger this time. Why was this happening, why was I feeling like this? We were safe now surely and leaving the planet for even more safety, were we not?

Leaving, Shara and I were smiled at as we made our way jointly without speaking through the lobby for the flight deck. We were well off the ground as I entered the flight deck to the rear of Ivan. He was piloting this craft on his own. I lowered my helmet visor and the sensation of freedom was most welcoming.

“Nice one matey,” were the first words that came to me and in verbal not mental communication. “Where were you hiding?”

Shara brushed past me as Ivan responded with, “Just a short way back from where I had been, travelling beneath the alien craft that tried to see me off.”

He even laughed, albeit nervously, and I should have joined him but I couldn’t.

“Why are you on your own Ivan?” I asked. “Where is Mark, your co-pilot?”

“Don’t panic Ian,” he replied. “He was pretty much exhausted with the long hours, so I let him stand down for this last trip.” In a deep growling voice he came out with, “This ‘effing blyat’ won’t cause me much problem now, we’re almost home and dry.”

I had not heard him swear before, I knew what ‘effing’ meant but the word that followed in Russian, possibly, of that I had no idea. Ivan was tired, always pushing himself to get the best job done and now in addition he was angry and cursing. The sensation inside me rose to absolute panic and fear but I couldn’t tell why. It was not Ivan nor the lack of a co-pilot but something else I could not identify.

As I brought down my visor I blurted out loudly and mentally, “Keep helmets on and suits sealed.”

Then I screamed, again mentally, “Hold on, hold on,” as I sat down and grabbed the arms of my seat, not bothering with any restricting seat belt.

I had no idea where the outbursts had come from; it was as though it was not me doing the shouting. Something or someone was warning us all and using me to issue the warnings. Shara on the point of removing her helmet changed her mind and left it where it was. Ivan had his helmet on the seat alongside him but was so busy at the flight controls that he took no notice of me.

“Are we cloaked?” came an involuntary question. It was not me asking again, it was someone else, not my voice but different, yet it was my thoughts driving the speaking.

“Cloaking as we speak Ian, stop panicking,” came Ivan’s reply now directing his anger towards me. Those were the last words, of any sort, I ever heard from my good friend Ivan.

An almighty blinding flash and explosion from somewhere over to my left became the only thing of existence in the flight deck. The blinding light took away any recognition of where I was while the explosive force hit me hard enough that before I could fully register what had happened I impacted against the unmoving end wall of the flight deck. I dropped down the wall and hit the floor as I tried to find some air to pull into my lungs. The air was there in my suit, I thought, but my lungs would not perform at all to pull any of it in. I was aware somehow that my chest was fully cramped, hurting and would not work as the pain in my back and legs finally caught up with me.

Although the only sound I could hear was the extreme ringing in my left ear, the right one barely functioning at all, I was somehow aware of the sound of the air escaping from the craft. Perhaps it was the smoke that had filled the cabin, now moving rapidly in the same direction as myself, towards a big slot cut right through the cabin that explained a little of what had happened and what was about to happen.

I struck one of the chair pedestals and the pain of my left leg became excruciating forcing a tremendous scream from me. My lungs were working again but they hurt terribly at such a stentorious, uncontrolled scream and the subsequent rapid, shallow breaths that followed. I was face down in agony and sliding along the floor.

Shara had caught my other leg with a very firm grip as I had started to go past her towards the gaping slot. She had fastened herself in the seat at my shouting about holding on whereas I had not and that with me taking the full impact of the blast, she had been shielded and relatively protected. Now out of her seat she had caught me in the few seconds it had taken for me to be thrown the full length of the cabin and start to be sucked back by the decompression.

Despite the numbing confusion of the explosion and the unfolding drama being played out in such a short period of time, Shara was on the mark. She took the appropriate action, falling on me as I passed her and stopping me flying out of the gaping hole in the floor. My head was over the open gash, my body somewhere between pain and incapacitating paralysis, my leg was pinioned by Shara in her firm grasp to stop me moving any further. My head seemed to be working, I felt Shara’s painful grip but every other sensation was drifting rapidly away.

There in front of me I could see the ground thousands of feet below but now seemingly closer and coming up towards me. There also was the alien craft below us shooting out great orange flashes that, thankfully, were not in our direction. They couldn’t see us, perhaps the inflicted damage had just been a lucky shot striking home which they had not registered.

I was alive; I had not disappeared through this tremendous slot in the outer hull of the floor, wall and roof. I turned my head, with the strange mixture of pain, silence and intermittent loud ringing in my ears, to see Ivan still at his flight console.

Ivan was still at his seat but what I saw could not be right. The ragged slot through the craft ran close by him but it must have missed. He wasn’t moving but why was this side of him blackened? In my semi-stupor with the pain coming back to increase in strength, I realised that Ivan’s left arm wasn’t there. In fact his left side was missing from the side of his neck down to the remains of his backside which was glued messily to his seat.

He was blackened, burnt and cauterised with stringy, black sticky things hanging off him, his partly melted chair, his suit and probably parts of his body but so charred to be unrecognisable as belonging to a human being.

“Why no co-pilot Ivan? Why?”

It was too late to ask him this, too late to ask him anything. He would never answer my question nor anyone else’s ever again. I tried to reach up to him; I wanted to touch him, my friend. He was most certainly gone, but I wanted to touch him. I screamed again at the pain that went through my whole body as I tried to lift my arm a short way off the floor.

I fell back to look at the slot again while my senses continued to work, erratically I guessed, but in some sort of manner. The slot did not go all the way to the back wall so I came to the conclusion as the mists were closing in that both the passenger seated area and the cargo hold had not been breached. I was grateful for the mists because it felt as though they were starting to take away the pain but suddenly as it came back, I found myself grating my teeth in agony. I could feel the grip on my leg and it was now hurting like hell.

“Ian, hold on. Your suit is leaking but I have my hand clamped over it. You will not die for lack of oxygen but I can’t promise anything else.”

It was Shara and she was being overwhelmingly honest but not at all in a fully reassuring manner, yet I still found the information, as final as it may be, welcoming in some odd sort of way. Ivan had left this world doing his job to the last, but Shara cannot be right, no one is flying the craft, we were all going down. I looked out through the obscene, raggy black flesh-stained slot to see the alien craft coming closer.

We were still descending but not as fast as before, but definitely descending, going down, yet slower still. Was this an illusion, my mind laying tricks to ease the pain of dying, a death that was about to be enacted upon all of us as we hit the orange desert below or impacted with the alien craft.

We had to be cloaked still as the triangular alien craft was still firing at every inch of sky except where we were. I could see what it was doing, I could see everything below even where this craft’s structure obstructed my view. This had to be a dying man’s vision before passing away.

Somehow I was not concerned about myself and started feeling quite content at accepting my fate but this should not be for the others. They didn’t deserve to die trapped in the other areas of our craft as we hit the unmoving rock-strewn ground below. Questions continued to go through my head, in as much as they did when I had problems to solve and could not sleep. Now they were persisting and holding off this final sleep into which I was surely falling.

“If we are cloaked then the power drive must still be functioning.”

Cloaking was but a different function of the drive but by the same space displacement technique as took the craft in any direction and provided the sense of gravity here within. I was being technical while I lay here in the moments of approaching death. My head was swimming with silly questions, they had to be my last; perhaps they were really only a part of the mind’s defence mechanism to make passing on easier. I was not in any more pain, that had all but disappeared. My eyes were seeing what I should not see and my head was swimming with pointless questions.

I was looking down on myself now but felt the grip on my right leg. My mind had melded with Shara yet again but this time I had not noticed the process, it seemed to have happened all by itself. I managed to turn my head enough to look at Shara for the last time but I was looking down upon myself attempting what I could not do. I felt her strength build within me, her aura of warmth encapsulate my being, yet was it because I was within her body and she in mine? Had she changed places with me for my survival, was this the ultimate sacrifice she was making?

Now I was within my body yet within hers simultaneously. She was surely sharing her existence, her life giving aura, her very being with me in a last effort to keep me alive.

My head then reeled with the intensity of a great explosion from the general direction of the cave entrance so far below and it shook both the craft and dominated my senses. The explosion shattered my connection with Shara and disrupted her life-giving aura completely. I could feel her weakening, not her grip on my leg, but her protection to my life.

I looked past myself or was it only myself doing the looking, and saw the entire hillside erupted to the orange flashes of the triangular alien craft as it continued its attack. One of the orange flashes seemed to have found its mark on something within the underground complex.

I heard within the depths of my soul, the last screams of the dying Senior Keepers. Then their calm, clear voices telling me so clearly. “All was as it should be, we are well.” They had moved on, I was not to worry about them. Perhaps I would be joining them shortly; is that why they had sent me their last message. I was confused and surely now in the last moments of my death.

But the flashes and explosions were continuing to stay in the same place and I managed to realise somehow that we had stopped falling. I was dreaming, I had to be, as surely as my life was coming to its finality. I did not wish to die but I was certain that death was coming and there was nothing that could stop it.

The words, “You must hold on Ian,” kept bouncing through my head.

“We are still flying and we will make it.”

“You must hold on.”

“The craft is flying and we will make the Ark, I feel certain.”

These fine words had to be from Shara, I think I detected her accent, her little nuances in her speech. I was rambling to myself, I was hearing things; was anything making sense, I didn’t know.

My eyes opened for a last look through the gash. We might be higher or was I deluding myself to make the leaving all the easier. There was a humming, a charge in the air that made my skin tingle, a warmth coming from where, I did not know, a soothing embrace but also a powerful one; could this be the Relic? I no longer cared.

It was too late to care about anything, I was lost and I knew it; I felt my last ounce of energy draining away. A final forcing of my eyes to stay open and I could see the darkness of space and the stark steady light of a million stars. Perhaps we were travelling into space, perhaps I was just imagining it, perhaps Ivan was not burnt to death, perhaps someone else was flying the craft, the missing co-pilot perhaps. No, that could not be right, he wasn’t here, the only mistake Ivan had ever made and it was going to prove fatal for us all.

Was someone or something else piloting the craft, I had no idea what it could be, my mind wandered as it started to shut down, perhaps it was, no, no. . . perhaps, no, not that. . . perhaps . . . perhaps. . .

I was becoming sick internally, physically sick but without pain, just nausea from my thoughts having to consider odd things in repetition, swirling round and round, hurting, sickening, lights, colours, strange sounds and more, still more; figures, tall figures, brilliantly lit, though faceless figures, holding out their hands, offering their help, but too late or perhaps too soon, yes too soon, or perhaps . . .

A darkness started to creep in below me, in contrast to the brightness before me. I saw it clearly with my eyes closed and no longer seeing. The dark was warm and inviting and I knew instinctively that I should envelop myself in its healing depth and then perhaps the light, perhaps the light would come automatically.

The darkness, the loss of pain, the removal of all feelings of sickness, this calming, no pain, no discomfort, breathing no longer the problem to overcome. I needed this darkness now; I needed it to come to me, to come and envelop me in its velvet smooth, all embracing pleasure. The darkness was taking me gently and its ardour removed any will I had left to fight or complain.

It was where I should be, I knew this, yet perhaps the light, the light . . . no . . no . . the darkness, the welcoming and soothing darkness . . . the darkness . . . yes . . . this was to be my choice, as if I actually had any option.