Once a Glemmie, always a Glemmie Part 3

Once a Glemmie, always a Glemmie Part 3

BOOWOOOMMFFFFF…. Another mine exploded. Dust fell from the ceiling.Bordons had worked his way to the large pyramid structure. He was sure Ace was dead, taken out by the first volley. He ordered Elliard to make his way to some cover, and take a defensive position. He hadn’t heard from him since the attack started. He dare not try to contact him, to reveal his position.

He had found the pyramid front entrance.  At one time, it may have been a grand entrance to some great place of worship, but now it was nothing more than a cave opening leading into darkness.  Inside, debris was scattered about, where the ceiling was giving into age.  Stalagmites and stalagtites showed the age of the place even more.   The walls were covered in indistinguishable murels and carvings.  After setting up several charges at the opening, Bordons found a startegic position deep into the entrance. He knew he had very little chance but he planned to take a few out with him.

These creatures knew exactly where they were going, knew this city like it was their hunting ground. Somehow these things had gained more intelligence than anyone thought they were capable of. At this point, Bordons didn’t care, he had to get back to the Relay and call in an orbital strike.

BOOWOOOMMFFFFF…. “Yea-heh!! Take that, you bastards…. !!” Bordons was slowly losing control. He had never taken this many losses in combat. He was never so unprepared for a mission. There was something missing; something he didn’t know; something no one knew…

A sound behind him snapped him back to reality. He swung around hard as he heard a moan. A figure moved in the shadows of the cavern he had found. It moved from behind some rubble. It was Scanner.

“Cap? That you?” He stepped into the light coming from the cavern opening. He was bloody and pale, looked as though he was going to die any minute. He stumbled to the ground near Bordons.

“Scanner, How….” Didn’t matter…Bordons removed his med-kit from his pack, and tried to treat the man’s wounds. He only found a few wounds, definitely not enough to account for all the blood was on him.

“The Doc shielded me from a blast… It took him with out though…” he said painfully. “Sir, the voices, the sounds…” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them suddenly… “Alien being, you invade our sanctity and bring the Enemy back to us…” It was that voice he had heard earlier.

“What…? Who are you…?”

We are what’s left of the Han’shi, a species that colonized this world millennia ago.”

Another explosion shook the walls around him. Bordons had to get deeper into the pyramid or be under a ton of stone when the ceiling collapsed. He grabbed Scanner, lifting him over his shoulder, and headed deeper into the pyramid.

You have brought this on yourself, you will die like we have… You have reawakened the beasts that we fought so hard to put to sleep…

Bordons dodged around a corner just as the entrance collapsed, and leaped over debris as he winded around the tunnels that lead deep within the pyramid, his belt-mounted lantern lighting the way. “Shut up, whoever you are, I’m busy!”

BOOOWOOOMMMFFF… another explosion. The first of the charges he set at the entrance. Regardless whether the ceiling held or not, it wouldn’t be long before they were in. He had to find another way out and get tot he relay.

“The Ka’Graffar were the Enemy, a formidable enemy for hundreds of years. They were savage warriors and impeccable tacticians. But we triumphed, but at a high cost…

Bordons, hoping there was another way out, dropped an armed grenade behind him to had reinforcement to his escape. He immediately picked up the pace.

The Ka’Graffar were defeated, and this outpost was erected to monitor their homeworld. In our arrogance, we thought we were above totally annihilating a species, so we did the next best thing…

Homeworld?? This was the Glemmies homeworld? Bordons was only half listening to the babbling psi. He turned a corner just as the grenade went off. Shrapnel showered the hallway as he continued onward down the sloping path. He stopped again and set up another plasma-mine with a laser trip wire to set it off. He hoisted Scanner again, and returned to jogging down the hallway.

“So what did you do to ‘em instead of killing them all off?” Bordons finally asked as he turned another corner and started down some stairs. The stairs ended shortly afterwards and opened up into a cavernous chamber, with a domed ceiling. Along the walls were stone carved murals depicting huge battle scenes between the Han’Shi and the Ka’Graffar and a few other species.

The Hall of Glory…” was all the voice emerging from Scanner’s mouth said.

In the center of the hall were statues of Han’Shi, all standing in a circle. Each statue was huge, obvious tributes to great warriors of the Han’Shi. Judging by the age of things, the Han’Shi were apparently some kind of precursor race.

Those are the Elders of the Wise, those that made the decision…We were so proud of ourselves… of our ‘progressiveness’, they called it. ‘Genocide is beneath us. We must show the mercy of a superior species.’ they said. Despite our great wisdom and progressiveness, we couldn’t save our civilization from imploding from it’s own weight. So many lives, so much loss…

“The decision to do what?!!” Bordons didn’t even know who or what he was talking to. He could only guess it was some kind of psionic presence of a Han’Shi, using alien psi-tech, left behind as a “tour guide” or “greeter”, so to speak.

The decision to devolve the Ka’Graffar to animals…

“Devolve? You mean back them up on the evolutionary scale?” Psi-technology and devolution technology??!!Bordons would normally be totally baffled by the level of technology these Han’Shi demonstrated, but he had to worry about his life at this point.

Correct, sentient.

“Then how did they re-evolve?” Could the cyber technology and genetic biotechnology the Expanse implanted in the Glemmies have reawakened the old genetic patterns? Were they just dormant waiting to be triggered? Perhaps this prototype bio-programming Ace had mentioned – AEP Neural Interfacing?

Our devolution technology wasn’t an exact science at the time…” the voice said as if to answer the questions Bordons was asking himself, with almost a sense of humor.

An explosion suddenly threw Bordons through the air, to a spot closer to the center of the cavern, near one of the statues. Scanner fell from his arms and went sprawling into another direction. Bordons felt the pain of shrapnel tearing at his leg as he fell.

Two shadowy figures joined the statue looking over him. The Glemmies knew the back door. He quickly looked for Scanner. He lay still with his eyes open, a few meters away, the blank stare showing no life. A twinge of pain hit Bordons that wasn’t related to his new wounds. Damn…

“Little master…” the first Glemmie spoke. How did they know our language? How much did they program into these things? “You are defeated. You must relent to your new masters. The Ka’Graffar have reawakened.” His light reflected brightly off their ornate alien armor. The chrome on the cranial-mounted missile launcher glinted in his eyes. “Human, you enslaved us, and instead awakened a new enemy. You will regret your ignorance and arrogance.”

Bordons tried to sit up, but the pain in his leg put him back down. He wasn’t going anywhere. He hadn’t looked at it yet, but there was a chance it wasn’t even there. He couldn’t tell right now, with all the auto-drugs being pumped into his system by the Expanse Military combat suit he was wearing.

The first Glemmie picked him up. Yep, the leg was gone…. Damn… As he started to black out, he heard the Glemmie warrior say, “We just need one more thing from you before you die… Our former enemy left us the technology to get it from you. We need the codes for your relay transmitter. Once we have those, we can transmit the magic that awakened us, so to speak. Then all Ka’Graffar will awaken…”

Damn, they will have total access to all Glemmie units once they get those codes… and then there would be war…

****

The incident on Grod was erased from record, and the transmission covered up. The Glemladine Revolt stared not long after the Karian Wars ended. Drag 14 was forgotten, erased for all military record. Medi-Labs folded their assets, collapsing under pressure to divulge all data on the Glemmie units. The CEO was said to have committed suicide just before the Revolt started. It is said that he received a message from an unknown source that said, “We have reawakened…“. Grod is now a quarantined world, under the watch of the Expanse military.