---

They approached in the black of night.

The helicopter stayed low to the ground, not more than 150 feet high at any point, weaving in between any taller buildings, always staying west of the Nile.

It was a moonless, chill night, with clear vision for miles, but there were no artificial lights as far as the eye could see. Giza and the surrounding area had been evacuated as completely as possible. Only the fiery red pit, and the brilliant blue beams emanating from the great pyramids lit up the empty sky.

Those blue beams appeared in the immediate aftermath of the cataclysm. During the daylight hours they shut down completely, only to reappear at night. So far, four nights had passed this way.

Robotic and manned flights were carried out over the remains of Cairo, in search of a target. It was widely assumed that the “Behemoth” was responsible for the devastating assault. The underground titan was first encountered months earlier by an American special forces team in tunnels bored under the Siberian tundra. It had not been seen since.

But flyovers of the pit that used to be Cairo revealed nothing but a gargantuan hole, filled in parts by fresh spurts of lava, which lent it an otherworldly glow.

Analysis of the blue beams emanating from the pyramids revealed intense electro-magnetic radiation, across the entire EM spectrum. More disconcerting, observations from space confirmed the blue beam’s shifted as necessary to maintain a consistent target: Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. No information could otherwise be derived from the beams, and drones sent into them failed immediately from the intense radiation.

In the 24 hours following the assault, half tje nuclear weapons on Earth were pointed at Cairo, ready to obliterate the underground monster. But finding n target to destroy, the NATO states decided upon a different path.

Daytime reconnaisance was carried out on day 2. The day team discovered nothing of any significance in the pyramids. During the day the ancient structures returned to normal, by all appearrances.

On day 4, a nighttime mission was sent. The primary team was Russian. Russia bid hard for the position, making it a pre-requisite for their nuclear cooperation. Six Spetnaz, crammed into a Kamov Ka-50 “Black Shark” stealth helicopter, retrofitted without weapons for maximum speed, were to reconnoiter the pyramids, approach as close as possible, and report back.

In the situation room, the President of the United States watched a live feed of each soldier’s vision. All around the world military leaders would be doing the same.

Commander Pell had not slept since Cairo. He sat beside the President, and the rest of his war time staff, their eyes glued to the screens. “T-minus 1 minute until arrival.” Commander Pell’s voice was haggard, but still bore a tone of command. The rest of the room didn’t say a word. “Enabling audio.”

The room filled with the muffled blare of helicopter engines and the steady breathing of the six Russian soldiers. On the lower left screen one of the soldiers could be seen looking at the pilot, who spoke through the com system.

Dvadtsat’ sekund.

A level headed man’s voice came over the speaker system in english.

20 seconds.

The other soldiers nodded. The engines could be heard slowing down, beating less frequently on the wind, until at last all six screens shook with a violent tremor. They were on the ground.

Davai!

Again the english speaker dubbed over what was said.

Come on!

All six men watched the exit hatch from slightly different angles in the dark, green lit interior of the still buzzing helicopter. One man, a superiors officer, reached over, opened the hatch, and jumped onto the ground, assault rifle poised. One by one, each man’s video feed showed him exiting the helicopter, stepping out onto the sandy desert, awash in bright blue light, and looking around for any enemy contacts – whatsoever the “enemy” might be.

Invariably, each man stopped for a time and stared up at the now very close Pyramids, following the unbroken blue beams upwards, beyond the night sky.

The first man, the one who opened the hatch, gave a hand signal, and the other six fell in behind him. He led the way, walking in a brisk crouch toward the base of Khufu’s pyramid, the tallest of the three. Two men in the middle of the line followed apace, each looking, weapons raised, in a different direction – while the last two men followed almost completely backwards, scanning the rear with their rifles. Slowly, surely, they approached the great pyramids.

Commander Pell’s hands began to sweat. His gaze was fixed on the video feed of the lead soldier, whose frontal approach displayed the pyramids steadily growing in size, the beams towering overhead.

Soon, they were less than 100 feet away from the base of the pyramid of Khufu. The lead soldier stopped his unit and kneeled down to use his radio. The english translation was overlayed on top.

The base of the structure appears clear. Permission to proceed?

Russian high command gave the pre-agreed upon order to proceed. Most eventualities had been planned out in advance, including the possibility of the whole operation going FUBAR at any time.

The lead soldier double clicked his radio in acknowledgement and the chain of men continued forward, through the dusty night, towards the insane display ahead of them.

It was clear now where the blue light began and ended. Although the beams spread a sheen of blue for miles in every direction, up close to the base of the structures, the video showed a distinct line, almost near the very top of each pyramid, above which the beams were emanating. Small bits of stone and rock could be seen floating around the edges of the beam, silhouetted in the intense blue light.

The men were not 20 feet away at this point. The base of Khufu’s pyramid could be seen clearly – the giant stone bricks, taller than a man and wider than an elephant, loomed just nearby the the lead soldier. But, as the final 10 feet was bridged, the brick’s appearance subtly changed. They bore almost runic markings on their sides, glowing in the same blue as the beams themselves, only slightly dampened.

Pell did not recognize the markings, though he assumed they must be hyroglyphs.

Are you copying this?

The soldier received his double click affirmation on the radio and continued around the base of the pyramid toward the entrance. Each video screen swiped back and forth in a controlled arc, the totality of those arcs amounting to a 360 degree field of vision. 500 yards away, the stealth helicopter could be seen in a couple of the men’s feeds, its propellers still turning, warmed up and ready to leave.

Slowly, the men made their way around the base, until they arrived at the entrance to the Great Pyramid of Khufu. The triangular stone entrance glowed brighter than the base stones and the men approached it, one of them removing a geiger counter from his pack. The device only clicked sporadically, indicating a surprising paucity of free high energy radiation.

At the foot of the entrance, the lead soldier set two of his men in a guard position with a gesture, and the remaining four entered the bright blue archway. One of the men looked up right before entering, and raging above him was the unbroken beam of light, seemingly infinite in its race to the stars.

Now they were inside. Four video feeds depicted the walls glowing vibrantly. They came to a fork, and the team split up, two men going one way, and two the other. One path appeared to lead upward and another downward.

The lead soldier took the upward path, and Pell remained fixated on his video feed. Pell noticef a detail which, no doubt, the soldier had also noticed – a particularly vibrant line of blue light along the corner of the wall, on one side of the hallway.

As the two pairs of soldiers went deeper into the structure, their video feeds began to cut in and out. The President turned to Pell, worried.

“It’s just interference Mr. President, the stone is thick.”

The team that took the bottom path quickly reached a dead end. Their voices came over the radio obscured by static.

Path ends . . . entrance.

But the lead soldier continued up the main pathway, following the bright light along the wall, his video feed fuzzy around the edges.

At last, he arrived at a single giant stone block. The hallway appeared to culminate in it, and at the rock wall’s base, the bright blue line of light connected and branched out along the wall’s entire surface, forming an almost vein like pattern. The lead soldier radioed something to high command. The translators only cauhht a couple of words.

Center . . .Zeta. . .

Pell sat up straight. There was no order Zeta, the pre-set orders were all numerical. He quickly reached for the phone and requested the operator connect him to the Russian high command.

Meanwhile, the first soldier seemed to accept some affirmative response and began to walk up to the blue veined wall. Between bursts of static, Pell watched as the Spetnaz came within a foot of the wall and slowly reached out his hand. From what should have been inert stone, blue energy coalesced in a 2 dimensional square around his fingers.

The air seemed to flow out of the situation room. The blue square bore symbols like the ones on the external stones – except the Russian soldier seemed almost to recognize them.

To Pell’s horror, the man began to interact with the symbols, “pressing” them with his pointer finger, slowly and with great care, as though he understood what he was inputting.

The phone was ringing now, and Pell tore a modicum of his attention away from the video feeds. A man answered.

“Get me Lebedev.”

The man on the other end responded in accented english. “Commander, I’m afraid the general is not available.”

“The hell he isn’t. What the fuck are you doing out there?”

There was a brief pause, and then an abrupt click before the line went dead.

Pell slammed the phone down and barked an order. “Send in the secondary team. The primary team has been compromised”

Sitting beside Pell, the President chimed in unhelpfully. “What is that man doing Commander?”

Pell wanted to scream at the hapless political hack. I have no fucking idea what he’s doing. But he managed to stay calm. “It appears the Russian’s have their own agenda sir.” Pell left it at that.

The President had ceded all control over the mission to Commander Pell, as had, ostensibly, most of the world’s military leaders. All but the Russians, it seemed, who had decided to go rogue for reasons Pell could not begin to comprehend. All he knew was that a Russian soldier was inputting something into a machine no human being on Earth could possibly claim to understand.

An officer received a radio confirmation from the secondary team. They were en route to arrive in under two minutes.

Pell looked back at the lead soldier’s feed. He was still typing away at what was essentially a touch screen made of blue energy. As Pell watched, the soldier pressed one final symbol and, suddenly, the lights went out. All the video feeds, both the men inside and outside the building went pitch black. The blue beams were gone.

A minute passed in static filled darkness until, one by one, the soldiers turned on their night vision scopes and everything took on a green tinge.

….complete . . . withdrawal. . .

The men who had taken the lower path were now at the gate, while the lead soldier and his companion started down the upper pathway at a sprint. All six men met at the entrance, and seamlessly broke into a run together, staying in the same formation, the same soldier again taking the lead.

Everyone watched the video feeds, astounded. Pell had no idea what had just happened, but he needed answers. “Inform secondary team – orders are to neutralize the primary team – with non-lethal force if possible. We need answers.” Even as Pell gave the order, he was all but certain not a man among the Russian team would be coming back alive.

“ETA 20 seconds.”

Everyone watched as the six video feeds showed the Spetsnaz racing back toward their chopper, their cameras bouncing as they bounded across the now darkened sand, when, from the North, a missile flew in from the darkness and the Russian helicopter exploded, displaying six billowing mushroom clouds of smoke and flames.

From there on, all hell broke loose. The Russians turned back toward the pyramids, seeking cover behind their titanic stones. Meanwhile the Seal team executed a tactical disembarkment, coming down fast and heavy from only a 1,000 feet on wide brimmed parachutes. The softness of the desert sand allowed each soldier to take their individual landings much faster than usual, and they could be seen in the Russian video feeds racing through the air, down to the earth, their parachutes detaching and blowing away in the wind.

The melee took about twenty minutes to settle. 4 American casualties, with 2 dead and 2 wounded, one critically. 5 of the Russians were dead, including the lead soldier. The sixth man was bleeding badly from the chest. Everyone in the situation room – every military leader watching this around the world – could see the man dying in front of them as he looked down at the hole in his chest and watched blood spurt from it.

It was in this final soldier’s screen that they saw the explosion. The Russian collapsed on the ground, facing Khufu’s pyramid, when the entire video screen shook violently. In the distance, a tunnel of flame shot out from inside the pyramid’s entrance. Three seconds later, there were several more blasts, each slightly larger than the last. As the American’s radioed in for orders, one final explosion occurred, this one different then the others, coming from deep within the pyramid. Blue cracks appeared all over the gargantuan structure, and the very last thing anyone saw before all the video feeds cut out, was an expanding wave of blue energy, brighter than the sun.

---

READ MORE FLASH FICTION

ACTION	APOCALYPTIC	DARK	ESTABLISHED UNIVERSE	FANTASY
FUNNY MAYBE	HORROR	MISC	PULLIN’ THE HEARTSTRINGS	SAD MAYBE
SCIENCE FICTION	SCIENCE FANTASY	TWIST ENDING	WTF IS THIS?

READ LONGER STORIES

THE DEMON’S CANTOS	INCIDENTAL SUPERHERO
BENEATH	THE HUMANITY SAGA
THE TRAVELER	I, LYCANTHROPE