I decided to add this into chapter 23 rather than make a new chapter.
Chapter 23 (continued)
Staley turned Indigo around and shoved him towards the door. D’naia followed closely behind and they disappeared.
The hovercraft fired its energy weapons at the roof of the lodge blasting a hole into it and sending beams and concrete and dust down into the lodge floor below. The dust and turbulence extinguished the campfire and Staley used the cover to slip out of the lodge and into the darkness.
He climbed the steep path that lead up the cliff, upwards to the base of the giant idol. He was spotted by unhumans who then took up the path behind him, following Staley up the path, scrambling up over boulders and fallen trees and roots.
The Enforcers jumped from the hovercraft, their thirty foot fall slowed by their pulse wave generators. Unhumans who resisted was pulverized, exploded into a mist of blood and bone chips and jellied flesh by the Enforcer’s energy weapons affixed to their helmets at the temples. The Enforcers gave no chase to anyone fleeing. They were only in pursuit of Staley.
Up, up they climbed, Staley’s space suit covered in soot and dirt, his followers behind with their flint weapons and animal hide cloaks, and behind them the Enforcers, themselves cloaked in their light-bending, invisible suits, energy weapons armed, floating just above the ground on pulsating waves of inaudible sound. The Enforcers caught the lagging pilgrims from behind, shoving them to the ground as they passed them by. Those pokey unhumans dusted themselves off and carried on, undaunted and un-fearing. A whistling noise pierced the cold dark air and another human being was atomized.
Staley took to the rock face. He jammed his fingers into the cracks and pulled himself up onto it. Hand over hand, foot over foot he climbed up the sheer wall. Down below him it was dark. He couldn’t see the hovercraft through the trees. He scaled onwards, upwards. A slip and a fall down into the darkness would be certainly fatal, he thought. He heard the screeching of the Enforcer’s energy weapons not far behind and below. He knew that people were dying. He had warned his followers not to resist but he knew many wouldn’t heed his warning.
Another hand hold. Another pull up. His lungs burned. His heart pounded. A shove up with his legs and he was finally at the top. He grabbed hold of a root and pulled himself over the ledge. He caught his breath at the base of the ancient idol. It grew quiet.
He stood up in the stillness. High in the west hung Orion, the hunter, his right shoulder Betelgeuse a mere dying ember. He breathed deeply. The air was bitingly cold. He felt its chill as he drew the winter air deep down into his lungs.
Another unhuman made it up over the ledge. Then another and another. They gathered in around Staley as if to defend him from the Enforcers who were near.
“We won’t let them take you,” one declared.
“Do not resist them. Resistence is futile. This is my destiny. Do not interfere,” Staley ordered.
“Your destiny is with us!” Came another voice from behind them.
They turned their heads towards the voice but it was too dark to see. The unhumans began to murmer. Staley sensed their fear of the invisible Enforcers. The unhumans were quite willing to die there but not willing to be wasted as if in a slaughterhouse.
“Show yourselves!” Staley commanded.
The hovercraft lights illuminated the mountain top. The colossal deity, weathered by the centuries, stood silently gazing south with the crowd assembled at her feet. The Enforcers, floating on waves of sound, switched off their cloaking devices. A hundred of them appeared, encircling the tiny band of Paleolithic pilgrims.
From behind the base of the idol stepped forward the one whom Staley had most expected to see. It was Mr. Lever, bundled up in his oxblood overcoat and fedora with ear muffs. He so disliked the cold weather. His pistol was drawn but his hand trembled in the cold.
“Your destiny is with us, Mr. Staley,” Lever announced.
The unhumans drew in even closer around Staley, brandishing their flint-tipped spears.
“I will go with you,” Staley responded, “but only under three conditions.”
“You are in no position to make conditions,” Mr. Lever responded.
“You will agree to my conditions or I will throw myself over that ledge. You can’t reformat a dead man.” Staley then pressed down the spears of his followers. “Don’t be afraid. They won’t harm you if they want me alive. Lower your spears. Don’t you know that he who lives by the spear shall die by the energy blaster?”
His followers reluctantly lowered their stone aged weapons.
“What are your conditions, then, Mr. Staley? Please hurry, it’s dreadfully cold out here.”
“My conditions are this, first, you will let my people go, unharmed. Tell your Enforcers to kill not a single one of them from this moment on. You have nothing to fear by them. They’ll scatter as soon as you take me.”
“I suppose we can abide by that. What else?”
“You will let Indigo and D’naia go free. You will not track them down, ever.”
Lever laughed. “Terrific! That’s already been arranged. What else?”
“You will let them keep their lockets.”
Lever sighed. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he answered, nodding his head. “I’m afraid they’ve forfeited their immortality. I just can’t do that. How about I…”
Staley wasted not one more moment. He pushed his way through the ring of unhumans and started to coil for a giant leap into the void. Lever immediately sensed Staley wasn’t bluffing.
“Wait!”
Staley stopped just inches from the ledge, with his feet sliding towards the abyss and knocking a handful worth of gravel over the edge.
“Okay. Okay,” Lever plead. “That’s not a major issue for us. I suppose we can accept that as well. Just come back. Come back to us.”
“How do you know he’ll keep his word?” questioned an unhuman.
“Because he’s a Sunstein Agent. They do not tell lies,” Staley answered. “It’s against their religion.”
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