Beyond the Sky: Chapter 8
The Black Triangle
“What’s gone?” Velli asked on reflex.
Udan looked around, as if searching for a note or some other indication, then said, “It’s classified. Even I shouldn’t technically know about it. But it was several pieces of hardware in boxes.” He turned back to the Burrowers. “Did someone move it?”
“We searched the tunnels earlier, nothing was out of place,” the leader replied. On one table were masks and boxy devices of some kind, like detectors. Dangerous work had been done here.
“Then let’s look again!” he pushed towards the exit, Velli followed. “Split up!” he shouted back.
Velli ran after him, weaving through tunnels. Passing a side branch, she saw movement.
“Wait!” She stopped, jogged back and peered from the corner. Down a narrow tunnel with corrugated walls, a single Burrower worker wrapped tape around a pipe, sealing off a hiss of steam. No sooner than she finished, another behind her promptly sprang a leak. She grumbled and turned around, then saw Velli and screamed. “Intruders!”
“It’s all right!” Velli grabbed her arms, stopped her from hitting a button on the wall. Probably an alarm. The worker wore a full-body suit, with a toolbelt and breathing mask connected to an air flask. In an instant, she guessed what had happened.
The warriors confirmed it when they asked her. She’d been in the tunnels last night, mask on to compensate for poor ventilation. She hadn’t even known anything was wrong until she returned to the maintenance shop and found it empty. Then, in true worker fashion, she carried on with her tasks.
“You didn’t think to ask where everyone went?” Velli said.
“It was not my place,” she replied, as if wondering what such a question even meant.
A phone on the wall rang, a warrior went over and took the earpiece. Briskly, he hung it up and turned to the leader. “We must go back up. Something is happening.”
An elevator tucked down another corridor brought them up into a towntunnel. Even before the cab stopped, Velli heard a crash and a gruff shout in Slee pidgin: “It’s in the pantry!”
Someone fired a gunshot. The lead warrior lifted the grill, she burst out after him. More smashes and thumps issued from the upper levels, a genuine scrapping in progress! A short warrior went tumbling out and landed on a walkway. A shotgun boomed, and a second object fell down.
It stopped a half-span above the floor, a machine like a black disk twice the size of a dinner plate, given wings with maroon strakes. A red light shone from the nose like a sinister eye. On its belly, flat panes glowed with eerie purple light.
Someone swore.
The warrior beside Commander Udan fired from the hip. His warshot pockmarked the walls behind it, leaving a clear area in the center—breaking around the machine like a wave. Nevertheless, the thing went spinning away, seemed to push itself from the wall, and stabilized. It rotated back and forth between the onlookers, as if analyzing, or hesitating. Then, the purple glow brightened and it ascended to the tunnel’s middle, flitting away to right and curving towards the atrium.
The squad and Burrower warriors ran, hot on its heels, turning the corner just in time to see it fly up a ventilation shaft and out of sight. The leader waved to someone by the great circular door, who turned to a bank of levers and wheels. With a wail of scraping metal, the entrance began to grind open.
In the valley outside, people ran: Cepic upright on their legs and Fesks in bounding hops, a Yune dropped from a ledge and beat his wings to ascend. Others stood still, looking up.
Teliv swore, and looked to Velli as she rushed out after him. “You were right!”
Over the valley outside, some dozens of spans up, floated the Black Triangle. The little floating machine came up beside it and disappeared over the top. The aircraft had been descending, but now appeared to halt, floating there without jets or rotors.
Udan wasted no time: “Bring it down!”
Some of the squad ran for the hill, back to the truck and its heavier weapons. Velli unshouldered her rifle, put the craft in her sights, and fired a burst to no apparent effect. The others lit it up too, as did the Burrower warriors.
Still nothing. This was strange—no ordinary pilot would risk his machine in this way. Whenever the JNF came across a scout copter, it fled like a startled animal. This one seemed downright oblivious. She soon learned why:
Atop the hill, Teliv shouldered a rocket launcher, sighted the Black Triangle, and fired. With a rushing hiss of combustion, the projectile whizzed up, aim dead-on, and detonated short, blast seeming to deflect around an invisible barrier projected some arm-spans from its fuselage. The craft drifted sideways ever so slightly, as if pushed.
Now it was Velli’s turn to doubt. Aiming again, she fired a shot and then another—marksmanship was not her strong suit—and the second seemed to deflect. The craft began to rise, then tilted at an angle and lit its three rocket engines, ascending up and away.
“We scared it off!” Naaca shouted.
“Maybe it really is magic,” Velli mused, lowering her rifle.
“You have seen this before?” The golden warrior rushed over.
She raised her ears, and recounted the story.
The warrior fiddled with his shotgun. “For some weeks now, the Flyers bringing our mail have talked of things like that, but we care little for the sky.”
“And now, it’s taken your people!” Udan exclaimed.
Velli said, “They didn’t harm me. The pilots, that is. They put me to sleep and went away.”
“But they did come to the village after the slavers burned it. Maybe they led them there?”
“It matters not!” the lead warrior declared. “Whoever is behind this, they will pay in blood!”
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