The God Seed: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 3) by Ben Stevens

Author:Ben Stevens [Stevens, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-04-05T16:00:00+00:00

13

The bulbous, insectoid alien vessel skimmed over the waters with the sun at its stern. The setting rays cast a purple-pink hue over the calm sea, turning the whole tableau into a polished slate of rose quartz. Just beyond the illusionary edge of infinity, where the glow of sunset melted into a hint of darkness, a hazy wall rose from sea level into the sky above, becoming one with the clouds.

The subtle truth of the matter was revealed as the silent, speeding ship grew nearer and began to climb, gaining altitude as it approached the wall of smoke.

Below, the rosy glass sea was now roiling, churning, and steaming, sending thick curtains of noxious vapor upwards to lofty heights, generating the clouds seen earlier from afar.

Now having reached a mountainous height, the alien ship plunged heedlessly into the veil of steam, for, while lacking any viewport, window, or cockpit—or anything else a human would find practical and traditional for a flying vessel—the ship possessed senses beyond simple human understanding or perception. Like much of the Annunaki technology, it was more than a mere machine; it was a living creature, bound in service to those it carried. And it was perfectly capable of “seeing” through what human eyes could not penetrate.

After a spell, the consistency of the vapor clouds began to thin somewhat, as land formations below began to break up the steam-generating, boiling sea.

From out of the tumultuous waters jutted hundreds of jagged, toothlike crags of unknown stone. Without a sound, the ship passed over and through the tips of these mammoth peaks; each cluster of the stony, impossibly steep archipelago looking like skeletal hands, reaching, grasping, trying in vain to capture the elusive ship, which was dwarfed in comparison.

The lofty, crooked pillars broke up the sea enough that the steam now only appeared here and there, forming columns beside the crags, filling the gaps. Shorter, more plausible landmasses below bridged the gaps between some of the sharp peaks, and wicked, gnarled forests could be spied among the slick boulders and sulfuric hot springs.

Like a will-o’-the-wisp floating over the moors, the Harvester ship glided effortlessly through the labyrinth of stone, banking here, dipping under an arch there, navigating its way deeper into the center of the uncanny cluster of islets.

Then, after the bizarre course seemed like it would go on forever, like some mad, fevered maze, the knifelike peaks pulled away as the ship continued forward. A massive, mostly open space revealed itself; the center, the eye, occupied only—but significantly—by a structure of utterly alien design, and utterly gargantuan proportions.

In the center of what now could easily be called concentric (if somewhat random) ring after ring after ring of bony finger-shaped peaks was a calm sea. Its waters did not boil or churn out steam clouds, as the waters before and within the jagged islets, but instead lay perfectly, eerily still. From this cove, which itself was large enough to swallow the Ziggurat and the Shanty several times over, protruded four twisted, sinuous arches.

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