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.or alive and just wishing he were dead.“I am ready to go,” he replied.“My throat hurts, my eyes are watering and I feel like shit, but I am functional.Let’s go.”“I’ll lead,” Irina said to the group, ‘then Remy, then Abdul, then Sigvar.Watch for any writing or any discolorations or abnormalities on the walls and floors.” The passageway was dark, except for the light that the suits shed.“Got it,” said Remy.“Just so that you know, I’ve only got about eight more hours of power on my suit.The swimming on the way here really drained me.”“Da,” said Irina in acknowledgement.“Anyone else have lower than that?” No one had less, and hers was at 14 hours of power remaining.Nearly all of them had at least one part of their suit that was yellow from the fall and the acid bath; Wazir had several sections that were red.Irina had to use some of her pharmacopeia for Wazir; his pharma was one of the broken parts of his suit.They needed to get out of here.Now.Let me know when you reach two hours remaining,” she said, starting down the hall.Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020Looking down at Sella walking along next to him, Calvin was glad that they had brought the women along.If nothing else, Calvin knew that he felt stronger and surer of himself with her by his side.Maybe it was the strength of a good woman that people always talked about, he thought.Their luck had been holding, too, since they found the women.Steropes had found two pressure plates before stepping on them.Looking at the holes in the ceiling above them, Steropes said that they would probably have dropped some sort of poison or acid on them, had anyone stepped on them.They had made a circuit of the pyramid and had travelled up a ramp that had elevated them about 40 feet.At the top they reached a door.Steropes opened the door to see a well-lit room approximately 100 yards on a side.As they went in, the door closed behind them with a ‘snick’ that seemed out of place.Calvin spun around to see that the door was a blank piece of metal on their side; no handle or other mechanism to open it existed on their side.A noise could be heard from inside the door as some sort of bolt was thrown.There was no going back.Under the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020“Merde,” swore Remy Martin as more powder came floating down from the ceiling, coating his suit in white.He looked at the analysis as he got yet another danger warning from the suit.“It is some kind of concentrated phencyclidine like PCP,” the Frenchman said.“The suit says it will probably cause hallucinations, and that seizures, coma and death are also likely.”“In that case,” replied Irina from where she stood outside the white cloud, “I think we’ll just wait until it settles.” This was the second time that something had dumped on them from the ceiling.The first time it had been some sort of concentrated venom that had clogged Wazir’s suit sensors and set off another red warning light on his suit.He was now following a long way behind Remy to stay out of the area of effect of any further traps.Remy brushed himself off as best he could and moved to stand outside of the PCP dust.“I think we are coming to the end of the maze,” he announced.“I can see a light ahead.” They had been walking in the maze for the last 30 minutes.Between following the right wall, as suggested by Leading Seaman Sigvar Borsheim, and the tracking function of their suits, they hadn’t ever gotten ‘lost,’ but the walls seemed to shift when seen from the corners of their eyes.Irina breathed a sigh of relief.Between the feeling of not knowing where they were going and having toxic substances dumped on them randomly, their passage through the maze had been disconcerting, to say the least.She was looking forward to traveling in a straight line again.and killing something at the earliest opportunity.The PCP settled and the rest of the group moved to join Remy at the maze exit.“As the Americans say,” announced Remy, “I have good news and bad news.The good news is that we made it to the end of the maze.The bad news is that there is nowhere else to go.” He moved so that the rest of the group could see the passage beyond him.After about five feet, the passage terminated in a small alcove.A torch burned in the five foot space, illuminating blank, featureless walls.It was a dead end.Inside the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Keppler-22 ‘b’, August 12, 2020Calvin turned around.Although the room had initially appeared to be empty, a group of humanoids could now be seen at the other end of the room.In their midst, Calvin got his first look at one of the flying snakes.Although hard to see at this distance, he dialed up his visual augmentation to its maximum and could see that the coatl appeared to be a six feet long snake, covered in feathers.It also had two wings which flapped slowly.Calvin couldn’t see how the wings held it aloft as it hovered about four feet above the ground
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