“wwwwhhhhhhahhHHHHAAAAA”.
With a whirr and a clang, the guardian rounded the last bend in the maze and flew along the exit path, into the cone of the Wraith’s scream.
Perfect timing.
The flying machine sparked and exploded into harmless shards.
The victorious Wraith cocked its head, turned to its partner, and gawked its black maw in a devil’s grin of satisfaction.
The two robed creatures descended toward the runes…
…Jon fired his carbine to his right as he ran toward the last ridge of the last ring.
The runes waited below.
He fired at three Vikings running parallel to his sprint. Cooper did the same, a few steps behind his General.
A bullet found its target, causing an alien to stumble and roll over the edge of the ring as its arms and covered head twitched and shook in death spasms.
One of the poncho’d Vikings lobbed an explosive charge. The detonation delivered a powerful concussion. Jon sprawled to the floor and lost his rifle in the spill. He watched helplessly as it slid forward and over the edge.
He heard Cooper scream and turned to see the man rolling on the floor holding a badly wounded knee. At that moment, Jon realized he was on his own…
…In the center of a cone of light waited the runes. Two rough pillars resembling gray stalagmites six feet tall and nearly four feet apart from one another each fixed into a small base of similar material. Whoever or whatever forged the odd device also carved strange symbols on the pillars.
At the top of each pillar was a round silver ball that resembled metal or something similar.
Jon knew what he had to do. So did the Wraiths. So did the Vikings.
The world’s fate…humanity’s future…depended on Jon Brewer-now unarmed and exhausted-reaching the ‘runes’ first.
The two Wraiths jumped the final ledge and approached the pillars from the left. Two Vikings did the same from the right.
One Wraith raised its lethal voice and enveloped a Viking with its scream, popping the brown-colored hood and creating a fountain of blood.
The remaining Viking stopped, knelt for improved accuracy, and pulled the trigger of his rail gun. The projectile slammed into a Wraith’s shoulder, causing it to spin and twist while at the same time evaporating to dust.
He fired once more for the remaining enemy but missed as the creature retreated.
The alien stood and raced for the great prize that was now for his taking…only to be stopped as strong hands grasped his shoulders and spun him around where Jon Brewer’s fist smashed into the poncho hood just below the invader’s goggles.
As the alien struggled with consciousness, Brewer yanked the rail gun from its grip and swung the rifle like a club, smashing his foe in the neck and causing the alien to tumble to the floor.
“wwwwhhhhhhahhHHHHAAAAA”.
His head filled with an ungodly vibration as the remaining Wraith returned and attacked. He felt his skull tremble and his brain expand like a balloon filling with helium.
The noise stopped. Jon fell to a knee and, out the corner of his eye, saw a pile of chalky particles and an empty cloak where his assailant had stood.
He felt something wet in his ear; blood no doubt, and the vibration that had assaulted his mind still echoed through his bones. Still, he lived and when he heard Reverend Johnny’s booming voice shouting down from the ridge above, he knew why.
“I have a penchant for dramatic entrances, General Brewer, but even I admit that was too close for comfort!”
He found the strength to stand and glanced behind and above him. There stood Johnny with the barrel of his heavy machine gun still smoking.
Brewer waved and found his voice. “Cooper is up there somewhere; hit pretty bad, check on him.”
Johnny nodded in understanding and went off in search of the wounded man.
Brewer forced himself to regain control over his body and faced the runes at the center of the city-sized chamber.
If he were not so exhausted…if he were not so banged up…if he did not have such a goddamn headache…perhaps he would have been afraid of what he had to do. As was the case, he just did it, with very little thought.
Jon placed one hand on each of the silver globes at the top of the pillars and found that they were not metal but, rather, felt more like clay.
Everything stopped.
Every single piece of machinery in the obelisk.
Every sound.
The orbs sucked at his hands and held them as if making a plaster cast of his fingers. He felt a tingle in those finger tips…then hands…then wrists…then up his arms. He shimmied and shook and shut his eyes thinking the device planned to electrocute him.
Images flashed one after another in a warped slide show for his mind’s eye.
He saw faces of aliens and the worlds they originated from. He saw bent glowing trees and boiling oceans; he saw planets surrounded in crisscrossing rings and red giants burning their rays into cracked earth.
He saw cities carved into the sides of blue-rock mountains and homes grown from glowing crystals.
Then he saw Earth, the beautiful blue and white globe that had become a battleground.
Then he felt the gateways being shut down.
Felt it.
The invaders were cut off.
The orbs released Jon’s hands but they were not yet done with their work.
A roar of energy built around the runes. Ghosts of images from other worlds danced about; but they were only ghosts, flickering images echoing across dimensions.
Strange creatures. Some of which he recognized from five years of fighting, others he had never seen.
They were not there in the enigma; they were on their home worlds but for a short time the door between those worlds and dimensions became more a window.
Jon tried watch but he was interrupted. The Viking warrior had recovered from his pummeling. He was not happy and he was not a ghost.
The shorter alien smacked Jon hard with a fist, then another, then reached up and grabbed Brewer’s throat.
The General struggled to pull the hands from his neck but could not escape the alien’s potent grip.
As he felt his wind pipe crush, Jon Brewer saw the face of his wife, Lori, and heard her words.
You come home to me and your little girl. You come home.
He had not traveled thousands of miles by air, in a submarine, and across the Arctic Circle…done battle with skyscraper-sized demons and subterranean sharks…only to choke to death in the hands of one short little alien bastard.
No. I’m going home today.
He brought a knee into the extraterrestrial’s gut then butted his aching head into the enemy’s poncho just above the goggles.
This time the grip released.
“Fuck…” Jon landed a solid left then a devastating right hook. The alien staggered as its goggles slipped crooked from the blows. He then kicked his big boot into the shorter alien’s chest.
“…YOU!”
The kick sent the Viking backwards hard and fast and between the pillars.
Jon watched in amazement at what happened next.
As the alien stumbled between those pillars, his body broke apart atom by atom and then disappeared. A moment later, that same Viking warrior joined the collection of ghostly images around the runes.
Jon got it. He understood.
The runes might control-and now shut down-the gateways coming to Earth, but they also served as an exit home. A one-way ticket for aliens to their point of origin.
He gaped at the runes and mumbled, “Wow.”
Then another surprise.
A wall of energy blasted out from the runes in all directions, encompassing the entire city-sized structure and expanding even further…
…Outside on the ice cap, Captain Fink and his men as well as the remaining Wraiths and Vikings saw this wall of energy roll out from the obelisk as if it were a tsunami. He instinctively raised his hand and a scream escaped his lips as the force enveloped the human camp as well as the aliens to either side.