Voyage of the Stardancer

Chapter 4 - The Under City

We ran on around the bend that the creature had taken and came upon the entrance to an underground installation, its large armoured doors which had in the past had been partially blown off its hinges lay at a crazy angle with debris heaped up against it, a small dark hole at the bottom right of the door frame had small foot prints in the dust leading to it. We ran to the door not sure whether to crawl down the hole, but looking up at the aircraft which was now engulfed in a hugeball of flame and heading straight for the street we had ran down, we both dived through the hole, scrambling like maniacs and falling into the void down a long sloping ramp finishing up on top of each other.We had just stopped rolling when there was an enormous explosion as the aircraft crashed within metres of the entrance. Debris was vented into the void covering us both. When the falling debris and noise stopped we realised that we were entombed in the darkened chamber,the daylight creeping through the slight joints in the broken door lighting up the dust motes slowly settling to the floor. We pulled each other to our feet and after dusting ourselves off, our uniforms were starting to look the worst for wear, we looked around. The floor levelled off and continued at a slight incline into the blackness.The tunnel was quite wide, but being dark apart from the slight amount of daylight that crept through the damaged door, we stumbled on getting darker as we left the blocked entrance behind; we came to, or more precisely,walked into what seemed to be three large machines, parked in the tunnel. Feeling around in the blackness, the first one seemed to have caterpillar tracks, the second and third vehicles had wheels like the tractor we had commandeered, squeezing past them we walked on. With myself leading we cautiously walked on for a further two hundred metres till we came to a second blast door, which was quite intact. Feeling around the door we found that it was partially ajar, but not wide enough to crawl through. We switched on our universal translators which we wore on our left arms, the small screen glowing into life. They are a marvellous invention, it analyses the spoken word and translates a micro second later to a small chip implanted within the inner ear, so you hear what somebody says but the lip sync is always slightly late, to reply you speak into it then pressing the translate button it speaks a little phonetically but understandable to other person though a small built in speaker. With the glow from the screens we could see small foot prints in the dust around the door and beyond.Our little alien friend had certainly come this way.

With both of us tugging at the door edge, and with a low moan from the hinges we managed to open it enough to go through. We walked on, always down in a left-hand spiral till we could see a dim light in the far distance. As we got closer the smell of burnt fish oil hit our sensors, coming from crude oil lamps hung from the walls. A slight breeze passed by our faces as the tunnel levelled out and there, about ten metres in front of us was a crude wooden barricade, the young alien who had ran away from us was gesticulating wildly behind the barricade at two taller aliens dressed in patched and threadbare military uniforms who were holding what appeared to be projectile weapons, we held our open palms  at shoulder height to indicate we meant no harm. The aliens did not see it that way and both raised their weapons to fire,Brigsy and I both flung our selves to the floor. The left aliens weapon failed to fire, with him frantically pulling at the trigger several times, the other ones weapon exploded as a projectile exploded in the breech throwing him to the ground. He quickly got up and with a terrified expression, ran off down the tunnel, his friend following him after throwing his weapon at us. We starting climbing over the barricade when we heard a noise to our right; it was the small alien who had squeezed into a narrow space within the structure. He looked terrified, I spoke into the translator which had already been downloaded with some of the speech we had heard on the FM band when approaching the planet. I said that we were friends and that we would not harm him. After a very slight pause a musical sound punctuated with soft clicks emitted from the built in speaker. The effect was immediate, the boy has we found out later had been scavenging food from the outside which was strictly taboo, replied saying that we were the ancient enemy and here to kill him. We sat down so we were more his height and spoke to him, reassuring him that we were not going to harm him. He said his name was Bindar and was in big trouble for breaking the taboo. We asked him why they were living underground, he said that his people were waiting for the great evil to die then all would be good and his people would once again live in the light. This was foretold in the great book of the ancients which had been handed down from generation to generation. I picked up the weapon that the alien had thrown at us, it was a semi-automatic assault rifle, beautifully maintained and smooth with use. I imagined it had not fired because of a fault with the ammunition. We looked down the tunnel and could see lights built into the walls, which were not working, on asking him, he replied that his mother had told him they used to work before he was born but had not worked for many years since the time of the darkness. Hearing voices we looked back up the tunnel in the direction from where the barricade guards had ran, a crowd of aliens, some with more projectile weapons advanced towards us, I carefully placed the assault rifle on the ground and stepped back and sat down, we remained seated as having no where to run. The small alien, Bindar ran towards them speaking quickly in their musical clicking language, the translator trying to keep up but giving us only fragmented sentences of 'friends, do not kill, not the ancient enemy'. We sat where we were as the aliens slowly surrounded us, then after motioning us to stand and with the weapons poking into our backs we were herded down the tunnel. I turned to Briggs, smiled and said; well they did not shoot us. The translator spoke in our ears, SILENCE INTERLOPER!