The Abyss of Time

Chapter Sixty One

The ground in the cave consisted of a flat surface of compacted sand that they had no trouble traversing and they followed the tunnel as it wound its way deep into the rising ground. After another fifteen minutes or so they entered a large cave where they stopped for one last breather before the last leg of their journey, into the cyborg camp itself.

     They had brought wax candles to light the way and Jack held one up to get a better look at the cave they were in. "Looks artificial," he said, "and there are carvings up there. There was some kind of civilisation here, long ago."

     "We can come back later to explore properly," Miller replied, trying to blink the tiredness out of his eyes. "Right now we've got a job to do."

     "Right," Jack agreed, but he got up to examine the wall more closely and despite his lack of interest in archaeology Miller watched him. "Pentagonal architecture," his son muttered to himself. "Doesn't look human. The whole thing has a kind of alien feel to it, don't you think?"

     "That's just the fatigue talking," said Burke, rubbing his eyes. "And the fact that most of it is still in darkness. It'd probably look a lot less alien with some proper illumination."

     "I don't think so," Jack replied, though. "I'm pretty sure no human hand created this." He moved further on and gave a slight gasp of surprise when his candle illuminated the outline of a teardrop shape, surrounded by radiating lines. "Good Lord," he said. "I think it's a church. They worshipped those teardrop things. We were vaccinated by the gods of whoever created this place."

     "You don't know that," Burke replied with some amusement. "By that logic, some alien studying human nineteenth century architecture would think we worshipped pineapples. They probably just thought teardrops look cool. And besides, even if they did worship them, that doesn't make them gods. They were aliens, or maybe our descendants."

     "If they worshipped them, that makes them gods," said Jack, though. "Because that's what a god is. Something that receives worship. This candle would be a god if I worshipped it."

     "Okay, cut it out," said Miller irritably. "We need to be getting on. They could be getting another four war machines going at any time."

     Jack nodded and returned for his trolley, but he held the candle up again for one last look at the alien church before they took hold of the trolley handles and moved on.

☆☆☆

     Before long the sand bore track marks and footprints telling them that both cyborgs and some kind of small, tracked vehicles came this way on occasion. They'd only gone a few footsteps further, though, when an alarm sounded. Miller raised a torch and saw, too late, a motion sensor mounted on the wall.

     "Arm yourselves!" he shouted. Everyone ran back to their trolleys, tore off the copper mesh and reached for their weapons. He cursed as he looked around at the tunnel they were in. A confined space with only one way ahead and one way back. He'd hoped to reach an open area where they could spread out before they were found. As it was, a single fragmentation grenade could take out his entire force in one go.

     "Run forward," he ordered. "Find side tunnels, open spaces. Split up. Shoot anything that moves." He grabbed a rifle in one hand, slung it over his shoulder and grabbed a rocket launcher with the other. Then he took his own advice and ran forward, searching for an enemy to fight.

     He found one almost immediately; a cyborg dressed in simple white coveralls and with engineering tools on the end of his arms. He jettisoned them and they fell clattering to the rocky floor to expose the barrels of pulse rifles protruding from the stumps of his wrists. He raised them, they spat white fire and the man to Miller's left fell silently as the top of his head was blown off.