Authors: Kevin Laymon
Kio-Kai abruptly halted his flight towards investigating the befallen object when he heard the high pitched scream of the heavens cry out as a second vessel came raining down. This one would land much closer and so he shifted his travel south towards the second object.
***
Tyler followed Aries for about an hour in the stinging hot dessert. While she looked ahead to lead him to the rest of the group, he spent time directing his gaze about the surrounding terrain.
This planet's topography was seemingly similar to that of mars. Large red mountains cast shadows over the distant landscape, dark canyons bore secrets Tyler aspired to explore, and dust storms howled to the west.
In discovering Flare decades ago, the planet pinged positive for both oxygen and water. Humanity wasted little time rushing forward to lay claim over what appeared to be the holy grail of space exploration.
Little was known about this place. So distant and obscure from clear sky, it was troublesome for scouting drones to analyze much of the data leading up to this point. One thing was for sure though, the oxygen rich atmosphere granted life to some abnormal yet extraordinary creatures.
A small, spiky eight legged lizard scurried across the sand, seeking shelter beneath a cluster of big chocolate colored rocks. Quite large in size, the reptile was quick for having such short, brown little limbs.
Reaching the peak of the plateau were his friends had landed, Tyler stopped and looked around, taking it all in. He could see down into some of the distant canyons. They bore plant life: green, purple, and white colors stretched from within the darkness sparking his imagination and pleading with his curiosity.
His moment of daydreaming came to a halt when he felt a push along his backside and was overcome with a sudden helpless sensation of vertigo. He free fell, face first, towards the dirt. Trying to save himself from the fall, he jerked his stomach inward, allowing himself to spin just enough so that his shoulder blade absorbed most of the blow to the ground.
He looked around for a culprit and saw no one other than Aries ahead turning back to join him in investigating his fall.
His eyes caught the faint shimmering blur of white and orange off to his left and this confirmed his assumption.
“Ok, you got me Aisha,” he called out.
The blur before him then appeared. Laughing it was a woman, Aisha Sayegh. She was tall with dark tan skin and long choppy hair in a color that accented her skin with its brown hue. White and orange armor covered most of her curvy body and a large metallic blue sword rest sheathed on her left side.
She was accompanied by a drone of gold and blue named Pisces. About the only similarity it bore to Tyler’s drone Aries was its size. Its layout was two large spheres atop a y shaped body, with a third, larger globe attached to the bottom section. It had one single thin antenna drooping out the back along with hundreds of thin wires of various length.
The drone had no weapons. Its single purpose was in projecting stealth cloaks.
Tyler wasn’t sure how exactly Pisces worked or stealth technology for that matter. It was quite rare anyone even had such high tech gear. Aisha was the only one of the squad of six to possess it.
Tyler rose to his feet, brushing himself off of dust and dirt. “Glad to see you landed ok.”
“Sorry, I didn’t think you would actually fall,” she defended with a giggle.
The two walked up the hill, which leveled off to a large plateau that stretched across the barren landscape for miles.
Tyler was greeted by Kaito Shimizu with a smile and a wave, which was far more receiving than Aisha’s method of welcoming. Wasn’t tough to beat pushing someone down a hill. Tyler would happily take Kaito’s simple nod and wave over that any day of the week.
Kaito was the youngest of the six, skinny with slick black hair that shined as if he was in a shampoo commercial. The Japanese boy was the most intelligent, on paper, of the crew. His results in exams and testings were close to perfect and the highest ever recorded. His brain was simply genetically wired to be faster than the rest in solving puzzles. His shot placement with a rifle was also the best of the group. He could compete with AI drones in the field of accuracy and for that he was assigned team sniper, given the best and most powerful rifle of the six, an advanced UIGN sniper rifle.
He wore the rifle draped across his back. The optic scope alone was almost as big as his head. Kaito’s drone was a shielding specialty drone named Libra. Libra had no weapons. An incredibly fast, small ball of pure energy, it could intercept incoming attacks, absorb, and vaporize them before they could harm Kaito or his allies.
About fifteen feet behind Kaito was the fourth of the squad of six, Abram Orlav.
Abram was tall, thick and muscular with short black buzzed hair. The Russian native had high cheekbones and big puffy eyes. ‘A gentle giant’ Aisha would tease during training but he was far from gentle when need be.
The giant’s weapon was a warhammer that Tyler physically could not even lift. How the Russian born man wield such a devastating hunk of metal was beyond him.
Abram’s drone, Taurus was about as rugged as he. Operated on a set of tracks much like an old military tank, it was a landlocked defensive unit. Much bigger than the other drones, Taurus served more as a personal portable shield that had no offensive weapons, let alone data powerhouse.
Abram had excelled through every bit of training thrown his way, even the bits designed to fail him.
One test scenario in particular was setup to fail and evaluate how the applicants handled defeat. The challenge was to rescue a comrade encased in bulletproof glass before the timer expired while another two comrades were unconscious beside him
. There was a designated blast zone that if anyone was left within would be tagged as dead. Now this test was intended to resemble the tough choices made, where the right answer is to leave the comrade who is stuck behind the glass. There was no way to save them and the applicant's time is better served escorting the remainder of the unconscious crew to safety.
Abram Orlav, in an immaculate display of brute strength, broke the glass. In doing so, he tore up his arms and required forty-seven stitches, but not before he rescued the stranded comrade. Throwing him over one shoulder, adding the other two over his other shoulder and carrying them all to the safe zone.
Tyler remembered being so impressed with the man that day, he had asked him why he didn't stop when he cut his arm down to the bone. The giant man simply concluded that, if this scenario were real he wouldn’t have stopped, so why stop in a test intended to simulate real life?
The man could have been squad leader if politics didn’t have their say in every little thing. Though country borders mostly all but disappeared leading up to Project Salvation, the spiteful Americans could never allow a Russian native the power and control of leading the squad whose mission were phase one in saving the human race.
Off to the side, drawing lines in the sand, was Leon Fleisher. He was speaking to his hovering drone as he scribbled into the sand. Tyler not being able to hear what Leon was saying thought it looked a little crazy for him to be rambling to a robot as he painted in the dirt.
Rich in German heritage, Leon’s parents were immigrants to the United States, and his father actually helped a great deal in the creation of the warp drive back in his mid-twenties.
Leon was a natural born leader. Thin and clean with blond hair and blue eyes; he was the only member of the crew to have a beard, which was chiseled and upkeep to perfection as was his posture, mannerisms, and leadership. His mind was sharp and in testing proved more than capable of thinking outside the box with quick, calm, calculated efficiency.
Leon’s drone Scorpio was the most similar to Tyler’s. If both bots were side by side, one might even misconstrue which was which. The only real difference was internal and color. Scorpio had faster processing power and a larger database of knowledge. He was black and red, while she was orange and white.
“Look who I found,” Aisha called out to Leon as they approached.
“Nice of you to join us,” Leon said while patting Tyler on the shoulder.
The two always did get along in their training sessions.
Leon scratched his beard and continued, “We have been trying to reach the fleet since we landed but our comm systems won’t work. Scorpio said the planet’s natural emissions radiate an interference our tech just can’t penetrate, so there is that.”
The five of them stood around in silence for a minute while Leon pondered their next move. Without communication to the fleet they were on their own.
“It’s hot as hell on this planet,” Abram chimed in, cutting into the quietness of the group. Together they all laughed forgetting for a moment that they carried the weight of humanity's salvation on their shoulders.
***
Valerie Fournier awoke to the smell of burning hair and sulfur. A smell that couldn't be any more unique to the human senses. She began to vomit in both pain and disgust. Her body shrieked out in punishment from her foolish attempt to rise up and get to her feet. She did it anyway.
Calling out to her drone, Virgo, with no response; she limped towards a mirror and froze in horror. Her face was burnt and her hair gone. All that was left where dark scabs of grotesque mutilation upon her face. Her heart rate elevated as she began to panic. She looked around and called out again to Virgo. No response.
Small fires burned sporadically throughout the vessel, most of which were coupled with torn holes through the craft’s exterior. Warped, jagged steel lay uselessly scattered about like a car's blown out tire strewn across a highway.
Valerie sank to the floor crying as she held her once beautiful face. Her whole life she was told she looked like her mother: the most beautiful women Valerie had ever known. Today that comparison would be an insult. Today she looked as beaten and ugly as her father, long since dead, consumed by the sickness of hatred and alcohol addiction.
“I will not die weak and afraid like him,” she sniffled out.
Again she forced herself to rise to her feet. She stumbled towards the exit of the craft but it was twisted and torn into pieces. Rock and fire blocked the path. She faltered over to the other side of the ship and punched the release for an emergency hydraulic escape hatch. It blew out with a boom and she fell to her knees in agony to crawl out.
She sniffled back tears and rolled over onto her back. Dusty clouds obscured the skies all around her with the exception of what sat directly above.
She was granted her own little cut out view of clear space. Trails of purple and blue gasses mingled with nebulas that encased planets and stars light years away.
What a view,
she thought. In that brief moment of awe, she felt no pain.
***
“What about the French girl?” Abram suggested.
“Her name is Valerie, you big dumb ogre,” Aisha corrected whilst poking fun.
“Alright ladies, let’s get to work,” Leon demanded. “Kaito, me and you will go scout out what's going on with Valerie. Most likely she has some sort of a communication error and has lost her bearings. Scorpio confirmed earlier that she landed and her vessel was intact, so hopefully she stayed put. We will go grab her and meet back here. How long is a day on this shit hole?” he added, looking up to his drone.
“A daily cycle on planet Flare is approximately forty-six hours. At this particular latitude, longitude, and time of year, twenty-five of those hours are daylight and the other twenty-one hours are spent in darkness. The next night cycle begins in approximately nineteen hours,” the bot was quick to respond.
“We have four intact warp drives at our disposal, luckily we only need to utilize four to construct the warp gate. So that spares us the time needed to go grab Tyler and Valerie’s ships. We can salvage the other two at a later date and use them for spare parts. Should be done with construction by sundown,” Leon commanded.
***
Firestorms raged to the south. This meant the first crucial order of business was to set up the magnetic shield. The warp gate had to be fully powered and functional to activate its defensive shielding; putting pressure on the crew to get things up and running as soon as possible.
Abram, Tyler, Aisha, and their three bots worked on constructing the warp gate all afternoon. Abram stripped the three ships of parts needed and positioned the pieces to where they must correctly reside with Taurus as his ferry for bulk transport. Aisha ran color coded wire down through steel conduits. Tyler welded parts together while Aries educated him on how to build such an intricate piece of technology.
The crew was lucky in that the UIGN constructed their ships to be easily stripped apart and put back together to form the warp gate. So, for the most part, it was a matter of reading and executing fairly simple instructions.