Elora Ch. 02

Chapter 1- The hidden city

Elora, our enemy's home world, may also be the most beautiful planet humans have seen. The planet's surface is more than half land, almost all of which is covered in grass fields that shimmer red, orange, and yellow all at the same time. It's said that the natives named the planet Elo, their word for fire. Yet when they went into space and saw their home world from a distance, they renamed it Elora. The word translates to "Planet on Fire." The books written on Elora describe its beauty as though the planet were a God itself. Standing on the windy surface, the grass flickers and shimmers so bright in the midday sun that it blinds the naked eye.

For hundreds of miles, in any direction, there's nothing but fields. Yet, when you walk far enough, in the center of the horizon will stand a forest that towers over the flickering flatlands. The trees in these forests stretch to heights higher than any tree on earth. In a human city, they would stand as tall as skyscrapers, taller even. The forests span no more than a single square mile. They grow upwards instead of outwards. Their enormous shadow lurking in the distance, past the shimmering fields, is said to loom like a distant storm at sea.

As rare as forests are the rivers. They are as wide as the trees are tall. The gentle currents move quickly but never fast enough to stir the surface or to make a sound. They say it looks as though the water is not moving at all but standing still, maybe pausing to watch the fiery grass sway to and fro. In its calmness, the surface mirrors the flickers of the sun and the grass. It is as though the river knew of the beauty around it and, knowing it could do no better, set off to imitate what it could not beat.

Beneath the beauty, in millions of miles of tunnel, they hide. The ones who came and killed. Ugly, stalky creatures with silver, glistening eyes. They toil away underground, like some race of beardless dwarf ancestors of humankind. There, deep in their holes, they wait, surely knowing what is to come.

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An echo resounded as I walked up the marble stairs of the great hall and passed beneath the arch for the south entrance into the International Resistance Headquarters. We built the IRH after the initial attack on Earth. The concrete monstrosity was actually two domes side by side. Combined, the compound occupied most of what was once Oklahoma. Its construction took the combined efforts of all the remaining nations in the world, and the better part of four decades. It is the largest structure built in the history of Earth.

The Western dome holds the training grounds we call the hidden city. After the attack we were able to identify their home planet and image and scan every detail. We knew they were living beneath the surface and when we built the hidden city, we built it to mimic their underground civilization. Long before I was born, the remaining nations built 5,000 miles of tunnel beneath the Oklahoma fields. They tore up every road, tore down every house, and constructed the IRH.

They planted genetically engineered red grass. They couldn't make it glimmer or change color like the probes showed on Elora, but it was closer to looking like Elora than looking like Earth. They built the forests but knew nothing of what the interior should be. The tunnels were the important part. Some say there are thousands more miles of top secret tunnels deep below the main ones. The hidden city's purpose is to serve as a training ground for soldiers that will be sent to end the war the Elori started.

The East dome is called the K-Bay. Short for Kill-Bay. In it our scientists engineer weapons the likes of which human history has never seen. From the first day of the war our scientists had gone to work trying to reverse engineer their technology, but the Elori were smart. They targeted high-science and tech hubs first. Some say they took us back a hundred years on day one. And the first bunkers we eradicated had traps waiting for the scientists we sent in after, to do research.

Tunnels miles below the ground collapsed, trapping entire research teams to dark, suffocating ends. Triggers opened doors to tunnels that let river beds above collapse and redirect entire rivers into the tunnels until every inch flooded to the surface. The Elori's understanding of fear made them seem that much more human.

They killed every scientist slowly so the stories of mass suffocations and drownings would spread. They sent a message to others who would think to help. 'You will die slowly. You will die in the dark. No last words. Only helpless gasps.' In the Kill-Bay, scientists remember those that died before them. They build weapons not as angry men but as determined men, who remember. They build not to kill, not to torture, but to efficiently and thoroughly exterminate the entire species.

Unfortunately, their attempts to infect Elora with Earth-like plagues took hold but eventually failed and their attempts to collapse Elora's sun into a black hole only succeeded in causing the star to burn more intensely and shorten its life by a few percent. However, their more humble inventions have found great success. In the forests humans climb and fly with ease. In the fields our suits render us invisible and, at a run, we are fast as a lion and quiet as a fox. Their genius has been unyielding but it has yet to help us end the war.

The marble halls of the main entrance of the IRH are lined with the flags of every remaining nation on the left and the flags of every fallen nation on the right. I walk a football field's length before arriving at the first set of steel doors. I look up the hall and then down it. No one except me. I step in front of the doors and they quickly slide open. Another marble hallway but this one has many doors. I walk, heels still clicking against the marble, passing one door after the next. None are open, none are labeled. Am I too early?

"State." I realize the voice is coming from ahead of me. One of the doors down the hall is open.

"Sir?"

I speed up my walk.

"Get a fuckin move on will ya. Those steps I hear are too fuckin slow."

I get to the door and sharply turn in. The commander is in usual form, pants around his ankles with his dick buried in some pretty private first class. I come to attention.

The commander turns to me. I'm sure my facial expression is blank but he acts as though it isn't. "What the fuck do you care? Just give me one god damn minute."

She moans, quietly in sync with his short thrusts. There's almost nothing to see. Both are fully clothed with only their pants down. He humps her petite ass harder each time and the slap of skin on skin precedes each of the young woman's moans. The commander grunts, rams her a bit harder, grunts again, and stops his thrusts. He sighs deeply and slows his breathing. Then he abruptly pulls his cock out of her and pulls up his pants. She stays bent over for a few moments, catching her breath, her reddened bottom totally exposed. Oddly, the sight of her bare doesn't distract my mind. Today is launch day and nothing else. I look away and a moment later she pulls up her pants.

"Maria, thank you. And thank your captain for suggesting you stop by. I needed that."

"My pleasure Sir. I volunteered. But I will tell her Sir."

"Well thank you Maria. Carry on." She took a minute to tuck in her shirt and compose herself, and then walked out. He turned to me and looked me over. "State, that didn't get you off-focus, did it? You still seeing straight?"

"Only straight."

"Good."

"Sir, can I ask why I'm here instead of at the launch prep?"

"This is your launch prep."

"Sir, if this is my launch prep, then where's Siama?"

"She's already here. You'll see her soon." He paused for a long moment. "Listen, State, this operation you designed... it's... we've got a lot riding on it. I need to know you're still focused. There are a lot of things trying to distract your mind right now but Siama isn't leaving anyone behind and Siama doesn't have RB doubling her testosterone levels. She's straight as straight gets. You know that, I know that. This strategy wasn't her idea but she knows this operation better than anyone, maybe as well as you do. If you're distracted... if you get distracted in-route... I hope you'll do the right thing."

"I'm seeing straight Sir, only straight."

"I'll be honest with you son, everyone knows I'm a BFS. I know it. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm faster, tougher, and stronger than most. Hell, when it comes to big fuckin sticks, I'm the biggest fuckin stick around... I might not be like you. I don't see all the angles you see, but I've made it this far up the ladder, so maybe the two of us can assume I'm not just a BFS who fucks every pretty private first class that comes around."

"You do fuck every pretty private first class that comes around, but other than that I don't disagree, Sir"

"Good. You're 26 now and you've only had the RB in for eight years. You think you can trust yourself but you know that shit is progressive and it's effects are going to get stronger. Not you or anyone on this fuckin' planet can say how much worse. The council is so fuckin' sure that as it accelerates it will just keep making you smarter. I say they don't know shit. There's no data on this... this anomaly. Your brain could go from exceptional to dysfunctional in a day. The effect on your testosterone could just be delayed. Soon enough you could be the biggest BFS there is. You've got no fuckin clue State, no one does. You're going to be in a war zone. Nothing fucks with your body like the stress of war."

"The council..."

"I told you! The fuckin' council doesn't know. No one knows. Don't create a weak spot. We're fighting a smart fuckin' enemy. I'm telling you State, you keep Siama close, you keep her safe. Every soldier on that ship believes in what you've built, and I'll never say this to anyone else, but I will say it to you right here, right now. Siama is our hope. She doesn't have RB bullshit inflating her thinking. She's the sure thing."

"We're a team Sir. She'll be there every step of the way. If anything happens, she'll be there."

"You see to it that she is, soldier." The commander points to a door on the far wall. "She's waiting. You'll be running one last exercise before you rejoin the ranks. She'll explain the rest."

"Yes Sir, thank you Sir." I walk over, turn the knob, and walk through. The room is empty. I turn and look back to the commander.

"State, you two... you can end this." He paused a moment. "But then again, if you die, our hope may die with you... Good luck." He nods. I nod back and close the door.