To Be A King • 2
The Planet • Part two of a six-part sci-fi fantasy. New chapters every Tuesday.
If you are new to the story, you can begin here:
In the previous chapter, Cliff and General Rattar left on a secret mission to the Planet Thrawan.
When we started our descent to Thrawan, I had that familiar gut reaction I always get when arriving on a new planet—a mix of excitement and anxiety that has kept me going for the past twenty years.
As we exited the ship, I wondered why it was classified off-limits. The planet seemed quite ordinary. All I could see were rolling fields of tall grass. We walked west.
“Cliff, we’ve seen a lot in our time, haven’t we?”
“Yes, sir, we have.”
“The raids of Hemm 3, the Frost Rescue, the Kort Campaigns. I’m not ashamed to say I loved it all.”
I had no reply. I kept walking, wondering why Rattar was being so introspective.
“Are you planning to retire at the end of this hitch, Cliff?”
“That’s correct, Sir. I have seen and done enough. I’m ready for a quiet life.”
“The Council is going to make me retire. I hate the thought. Sitting around all day telling war stories at a pub might work for other Generals, but not for me. I need to stay active. I need a mission.”
“I’m sure you will find something exciting to do, General.”
“That’s my plan.”
A moment later, we crested a rise. I stopped dead in my tracks and couldn’t believe my eyes.
“It’s real,” Rattar said. “I discovered it two months ago.”
In the field in front of us, massive stones rose from the ground, set in a circle, like Stonehenge on Earth. No, not like Stonehenge. Exactly like Stonehenge.
“How?” I asked.
“I don’t know. My theory is they have been here as long as Stonehenge has been on Earth. Perhaps the same people built them both.”
“What do you mean?” I said, trying to make some sense of it.
“You can never repeat what I am about to tell you to anyone, Liz included. No one else can ever know. The military doesn’t even know. Do you understand?”
I was getting a little worried.
“What do you mean the military doesn’t know?” I asked.
“I was on my way to Tokanda for a brass meeting when the ship started acting up. We lost most of the controls and communication and flew way off course. Then, the systems suddenly started working again. The pilot reset our course for Tokanda, and we were about to hyper-jump when we saw a tiny green planet. The pilot checked the star maps and said the planet was uncharted. I told him to set down on the planet and run a full diagnostic on the ship just to be safe.”
“While the pilot was running the diagnostic, I did a quick scout of the planet to kill time and satisfy my curiosity. I took the three soldiers who were accompanying me as a scouting party. We came up over the same rise and saw the stones.
After the initial shock wore off, one of the men walked into the center of the ring and vanished. We all froze. A second later, he came back out in the other direction, facing us.”
“You’re joking, right?” I said.
“No. It gets even crazier. He said he turned around, and we were all gone. So he walked back out of the circle, and there we were again. I tried it myself. The same thing happened. I walked in and turned around, and the men were gone. I walked out, and they were there again.”
“It must be some kind of optical illusion,” I said.
“That’s what I thought. It had to be. But it wasn’t.”
“What was it then,” I asked.
“A portal.”
Next part:
Thanks for reading and responding. You make it fun.
Mark
A portal. Now the story is really getting interesting.
Oooo! Let's go in! I got nothing to lose.