Invaders: The Antaran (Invaders Series Book 3) Read online

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Logan, time is ticking. We can talk about what I told Jenna later. Right now, I must check with Sand.”

  “Sand? Check with him for what?” I said.

  Rax had already fallen silent. Thus, I stood in the piloting chamber waiting to find out what was really going on.

  -36-

  Ten minutes later, while following Rax’s instructions and still unenlightened regarding “Sand,” I piloted the Guard ship through the darkness of the Utah-sized cavern. The outline and extent of the machinery down there changed, growing larger and more complex. Even though we were behind armored plating, the thrum and throb of the machines shook my chair and the entire ship.

  “You must land,” Rax informed me. “We dare not take the Guard ship any farther.”

  “How about telling me what’s going on?” I said. “I’m getting sick of the suspense. I mean, if I’m going to know—”

  “You must understand,” Rax said, interrupting, “that I am in constant contact with Sand. He does not want you to see him. He does not believe you are sufficiently civilized or trustworthy enough to know the terrible secret.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Sand has debated destroying the Guard ship and the three of us to keep the terrible secret intact. It is only the fact that he doubts he can slay Lord Beran and his confederates on his own that is causing him hesitation.”

  “That’s just wonderful,” I said. “He wants our help, but only because he’s in trouble. This sounds like a bastard who will bite the hand that feeds him and turn over the Guard ship to another in a heartbeat.”

  “If you are referring to me—”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Let us stick to the issue at hand,” Rax said several seconds later. “Sand’s secret is terrible and all-encompassing. He is—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “So, what does Jenna know about this Sand fellow?”

  “Jenna knows nothing about him. I have told her this is a matter of human extinction, and she is satisfied with that.”

  “You’re kidding me?” I said. “She didn’t ask for specifics?”

  “Jenna is a good agent. She knows how to take orders, even orders that she doesn’t understand.”

  “Well, I’m not good at that.”

  “I know. It is one of your key failings.”

  “No. It’s one of my major strengths.”

  “If you believe this—”

  “Forget it,” I said, cutting Rax short. “I’ve had my fill of debates while working with Beran.”

  “So, you were in collusion with him,” Rax said. “That modifies my previous—”

  “Come on,” I said, interrupting. “Give me a break. That was just a bad choice of words on my part. Beran screwed with my mind. You think I’m going to side with him?”

  “Knowing your character…no,” Rax said.

  I landed the Guard ship onto the rocky bottom of the underworld. All around us was the black machinery, constantly working, shaking and throbbing.

  “I’ve been wondering,” I said. “How long have these machines been in operation?”

  “Something on the order of six thousand years,” Rax replied.

  “Without stopping?” I asked, incredulous.

  “Oh, yes,” Rax said. “If they had stopped…”

  “What happens then, the end of the world?”

  “I have said too much,” Rax told me. “Sand…ah, I believe I have finally found the right argument with him. Please, Logan, I must use my entire focus to speak with Sand. This could take some time.”

  “How long is that?”

  Rax didn’t answer.

  I sat in my piloting chair, wondering what Beran was doing now. Had we slain all the Tosks? I still felt bad about the shootings earlier. I didn’t see how the Polarion Portal could cause the end of the world or pose a dire threat to all of Galactic Civilization. I kind of doubted the machines had been down here for six thousand years. That didn’t make sense. I mean…machines ran down all the time as entropy took over, causing things to fail. Did Sand keep everything running by oiling the gears, replacing worn out parts?

  I put my hands over my chest, settled back and soon a great weariness came crashing down. I must have dosed off and begun to dream. I was on the ladder again, climbing—

  “Logan, wake up.”

  I blinked in my chair, raised my head and realized I was safe in the Guard ship.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Sand has agreed to see you,” Rax said from the dash. “He is unhappy with the event, but he believes he needs one resourceful human to understand the full story. Our time is limited. Beran is already summoning reinforcements from space, from the region around Saturn. There is a possibility the Antaran will directly attack the machine. If the Great Machine should stop…”

  “Right, right, planet-wide calamity,” I said. “Got it. I’m ready to see your guy.”

  “Good,” Rax said. “We are transferring now.”

  This transfer seemed to take longer. How would I know? That’s a good question. I shouldn’t have been able to tell.

  I dropped onto a hard surface, having appeared an inch above it. I staggered forward, barely able to regain my balance and avoid sprawling onto the ground. I heard Rax clatter against the floor—steel flooring by the noise.

  That was the poorest teleportation I’d ever experienced. I scooped Rax up, put him in my back pocket and looked around.

  I was in a large, empty room, entirely steel in construction, filled with stale air.

  “What the heck, Rax? Where is this place?”

  The crystal did not answer.

  “Rax?” I asked.

  The stale air was starting to get to me. I took several deep breaths, and then took another. That did nothing to ease me. I began to realize this place had almost no breathable air.

  “Hey!” I said. “Sand! Can you hear me?”

  I heard nothing but a distant throb of noise. Kneeling, I felt the slightest tremor in the floor.

  Breathing deeper than ever, I tried to suck whatever oxygen was in the air. The room seemed to spin, to rotate.

  I was obviously about to pass out, maybe die in here.

  I lay down because, if I survived, I didn’t relish collapsing and breaking bones. Then, everything went blank.

  -37-

  A roaring sound seemed to surround me. Was this another dream or was I inside the Great Machine?

  I inhaled, tasting the sweetness of breathable air. Then, a sharp throb of a headache made me wince. I suddenly felt horrible, vomited, breathed and vomited again.

  I felt more horrible than ever. Maybe that’s because I’d passed out due to a lack of oxygen. At least I was still alive. At least—

  A furnace-like roar increased in volume as I lay there. It seemed like an angry sound. I had the sense that the furnace might rise up, and that would be the end of me.

  I found the strength therefore to pry open my eyes. What I saw confounded me to such a degree that I sat right up. That might have been a mistake. Dizziness clutched me. My eyesight blurred, and a nauseous feeling made the vomit rise in the back of my throat. By force of will, I kept what remained of my food down. I kept staring, massaged my throbbing head and finally received my reward.

  I saw a metal head tower over me. It was three, maybe four stories tall. Giant rivets showed everywhere on the metal head. Its eyes were great flames at either end of a horizontal a pit. It lacked nostrils, and the mouth…it was a great robotic mouth with titanium for teeth. Fire burned back behind what resembled a tongue. I realized the lips moved. The otherwise-primitive robot-head had molten metal lips that constantly reformed as the head spoke.

  Here was source of the furnace-like roar I’d heard earlier. The head spoke, but the words made no sense.

  I massaged my still-aching head again, leaned toward the thing and concentrated the best I could.

  The head spoke once again, and this time, I could make out
the words. “Are you the Galactic Guard Agent Logan?” the head asked.

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “Speak up so I can hear you,” the head said.

  “Yes!” I shouted. “I’m Logan. Who are you?”

  The head closed his mouth. The eyelids shut with a faint clanging sound before opening again.

  In that swift interim, I looked around. Hills of gems surrounded me. There were individual hills of diamonds, rubies, onyxes and more. The fortune in precious gems was staggering. I also saw crude robots. They were bronze-colored, had rivets holding them together, and held what appeared to be broad-bladed shovels in their metal-mitten-like hands. The robots were nine feet tall or thereabouts. Each must have weighed a ton.

  The towering head opened his mouth, and the fires behind the molten-metal tongue seemed dimmer than before.

  Several of the robots, moving in an exaggeratedly mechanical manner, approached hills of gems. One thrust his shovel into diamonds, another into rubies, and others into emeralds and sapphires and onyxes. Clanking as they moved, the robots approached the huge metal head and hurled the gems into the cavernous mouth like old trainmen hurling coal into the maw of a locomotive’s furnace.

  The giant head chewed the gems, crunching and crushing them, swallowing the mass. Now, the fire behind the molten-metal tongue once more roared with great strength.

  I had a brief suspicion that I was hallucinating. I pinched myself, and yelped at the pain.

  The head regarded me again as the robots shuffled to their respective gem mountains.

  “I am Sand,” the great metal head said.

  “Rax spoke to you earlier?” I asked.

  “He did indeed.”

  “Where is Rax?” I asked.

  “He does not need to hear this,” Sand told me in his furnace-like voice.

  “Are you going to kill me?” I asked.

  “I have not yet decided.”

  I nodded as if that made sense. The huge metal head, the robots, the gem hills and the fantastic underworld machine had begun to have an effect upon me. This all felt surreal. It was difficult to take it seriously. I mean, the other things, like the moon base, had seemed easier to accept. Maybe it was the crudeness of all these things that made it so difficult.

  “I am Sand,” the great metal head said again. “I am the Guardian of Life. I am the Sentinel who never sleeps. I never desert my post because I cannot move. I feed on the wealth of the world. I oversee the Grithies in their tasks.”

  “Would you hold it right there, Mr. Sand?” I said. “Did you say Grithies?”

  “I am just Sand. I accept no titles except for the ones given me at my construction.”

  “Uh…okay.”

  “Yes, I did say Grithies. I find it strange that you seem to know about them.”

  “There were Grithies in the lowest underground Greenland cavern. Don’t you know about that?”

  “Ah….” Sand said in a louder furnace-like voice. “I did not. I see that I must speak to Argon once more. He has been withholding information again. That shall not stand.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Argon is alive?”

  “Do you wish to see him?” Sand asked.

  “Heck, yes,” I said.

  “Remember that you said you wished for this.”

  I nodded. I knew very well what I’d said. Still, I didn’t like Sand’s warning. It seemed ominous.

  Soon, I heard a scraping sound. I turned, and my mouth dropped open in shock and horror.

  Ten or more of the big robots pushed a gigantic clear cylinder toward me. In the fluid-filled cylinder was machinery, some of which caused constant bubbles to rise like those in an aquarium. A mangled mess of a body floated in the blue solution. The mangled, man-shaped thing lacked a left arm and most of his right leg. He wore a skintight suit around the rest of him, and a full mask around his face. A tube snaked from the mask to…to an oxygen supplier, I supposed.

  Sand spoke. The robots stopped, and I stared at the floating, mangled mess in the huge tube.

  “That’s Argon?” I asked.

  “You are correct,” Sand said.

  “Can he hear me?”

  “No. He cannot hear you,” Sand said in his ponderous way.

  “Is he alive?”

  “He breathes. He thinks, at times, and he answers a few of my questions. I assure you, Argon will answer more.”

  “So…how did he get this way?”

  “He barely escaped the destruction of his Greenland base when he fought the space pirates. My agents discovered his dying form. The Grithies fashioned the cylinder and the machines to keep him alive. I have probed Argon for a time. I learned more but not enough, never enough.”

  “Can I talk to Argon?” I asked.

  Sand spoke. The huge robots clanked around to the other side. Slowly, working in unison, the robots shoved the cylinder away and soon out of sight.

  “I guess that means no,” I said.

  “You are correct,” Sand said. “Argon does not need to speak to anyone but me. Otherwise, he might turn stubborn again. That, I will not allow.”

  I wanted to ask Sand if he tortured Argon, but he clearly did. I didn’t want a confirmation just yet. I wanted to hear Sand’s story, and I wanted to survive the meeting.

  “Mr. Sand,” I said, loudly. “Excuse me, please. I mean, Sand.”

  The giant robot head waited.

  “I belong to the Galactic Guard,” I began.

  “I know this.”

  “Sure you do. I’m just stating facts.”

  “I have already warned you that time is short. We must do this swiftly.”

  I nodded. “Lord Beran of the Antares Institute captured me—”

  “Galactic Guard agent,” Sand said, interrupting. “Let us get to the point. Long ago, the Polarions came to Earth and built a portal. They did it in their time of power and brilliance. They found the weak rips in reality here and set up a station. The greatest of the Polarions broke through. He returned, taking more of his ilk with him. A female Polarion came back and spawned a child. That child grew up and created the Starcore. I have been informed that you know the story of the Starcore.”

  “That’s right. I destroyed the Starcore.”

  “This I know,” Sand said. “It is one of the primary reasons I have taken you into my confidence. The female Polarion that had returned from Paradise, as the Polarions named that realm, was not like the others of her kind. She had radically changed before she died.”

  “How did she die?” I asked.

  “Do not interrupt me, Guard agent. Our time is very short. She died. That is the critical thing. Her son lived, and he created a terrible danger with the Starcore. One other Polarion returned from Paradise. He was half-mad. He spoke of wonders, marvels and the continuing changes to the Polarions on the other side. He created this underworld, these machines, and he built me.”

  “Sand,” I said. “Please excuse me for interrupting, but this place doesn’t seem like something a Polarion would make.”

  “You are correct in your assessment, Agent Logan. As I said, the returning Polarion was half-mad. He spoke of the terrors of Paradise, the things that had twisted the Polarions and were twisting them still. For the Polarions had not gone to a fair realm, but to a terror realm of sinister intelligences.”

  I shook my head. Sand seemed to be contradicting himself.

  “The half-mad Polarion labored long on the pristine Earth, using Grithies and other mysterious powers to fashion the Great Machine. He caused mighty shafts to sink down into the planetary core. The core heat powers the Great Machine, and ever the machine works to create the energy that keeps the Polarion Portal sealed from this side.”

  “Okay… Can I ask you a question?”

  The fires in Sand’s eyes grew, perhaps showing his anger at my having spoken again.

  “What is it this time?” he intoned.

  “I thought you—or whoever—needed a chronowarp to use the portal.”r />
  “That is a statement, not a question,” Sand said. “However, that will suffice to get to the point. Yes, from this side, one would need a chronowarp to help twist the fabric of reality at the portal point in what is now Antarctica. The only chronowarp on Earth has been destroyed. Yet, it has come to my attention that Lord Beran the Antaran has the genius to create another chronowarp.”

  “Wait, wait,” I said. “If there isn’t a chronowarp—”

  “Surely, you are not that dense,” Sand said, interrupting me. “I control the Great Machine. I am the Guardian of Life that keeps the robots at their task. The Great Machine has but one purpose. I would think it obvious by now.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and spell it out for me.”

  “The Great Machine was built to seal the portal from this end. We must never allow the terrible Powers that the Polarions have become to return to this realm of existence. The Great Machine protects this universe from invasion. I stand guard day and night. As long as the machine runs, the Earth is safe, the galaxy is safe. But if ever the Great Machine stops…that could well be the end of everything as the insane but all too powerful entities would wreak havoc upon the weaklings here.”

  “This is really on the level?” I asked.

  “This is why the Galactic Guard has quarantined the Earth, the entire Solar System, from the rest of Galactic Civilization.”

  “What about Argon?” I asked.

  “I take that to mean, why do I keep Argon alive if he is so potentially dangerous? The answer is simple. Argon never went to the “Paradise” on the other side of reality. Argon is one of the ancient Polarions who had the wisdom to refrain from crossing over. I believe the half-mad altered Polarion put Argon and his kind in the stasis tubes in Greenland. Why the madman did this, I have never satisfactorily decided. As you might have surmised—if you had enough intelligence—the madman created the embryo of the Galactic Guard that has morphed into what it is today.”

  “You’ve spoken to Galactic Guardsmen?”

  “No. But I have monitored the guardsmen that landed on Earth. As an aside, I am the one who caused Rax’s original Guard agent to die. The crystal does not know that. If Rax does learn of the deed, I will have to destroy him.”