Authors: Kevin Laymon
She acted quickly, using her blade she ran it up against the backside of her shoulder blade and sliced her arm clean off. Hacking off what was melting away, she began to lose a lot of blood. She felt dizzy and sick. Succumbing into a state of shock, she fell backwards and passed out.
***
Aries was forced to halt her assault as her laser weaponry had overheated from such rapid fire. Her guns radiated a bright red glow, excreting tremendous heat and forcing her to retreat back with Tyler.
Aisha lay on the ground ahead missing her left arm entirely. She was turning pale and beginning to flail about the ground intensely. Vomiting on herself, she was covered in her own blood, sweat, and puke.
“Aries! Save her!” Tyler shouted out as he tossed an energy grenade up over the rock he sought shelter behind.
Four large locust were ripping Abram’s drone, Taurus, to pieces. Dissecting the bot’s internal wiring as if it were a man and his intestine. In their frenzy, the insects paid no mind to the grenade drifting towards them. It had an LED indicator that was pulsing a bright green color as it landed and slid to a stop just below their feet. It’s green blinking halted and it pulsed a redness three times before detonating.
Time and space bent inwards. Within seconds the energy explosive rapidly pulled in all matter around them ripping apart the atoms that made up objects, then it mixed the ingredients and combusted them.
Within a six-yard radius, bits and pieces of matter, unrecognizable to the naked eye without a microscope, fell.
All fibers of being that once existed in that location were now apart on the ground--collectively a mesh of dark, red mush.
Aries zoomed over to Aisha and homed her overheated lasers in on the shoulder blade that was quickly draining the girl of all the blood she held inside. The bot overrode the overheat failsafe and set the lasers to a short, immensely hot, burst that quickly cauterized the wound-- turning it to a large stinking, black scab that ultimately sealed it off.
Then Aries levitated the girl up into the air and zig-zagging between gunfire, escorting her back towards the carrier ship.
Leon was off ahead getting swamped. Tyler advanced forward behind his cover and began laying down some of the bugs ahead but he knew he would never reach Leon in time. Then a shot pierced through the air that bellowed a war cry of death and decay.
Tyler knew just what this was. This was an ultra-high powered UIGN issued sniper rifle. Before him ten of the bugs disintegrated into body parts and blood. Leon had a full path to retreat back and, in doing so, the chaos seemed to settle ahead.
The assault was ceasing.
***
White lights subtlety blinked through the corridors, casting eerie shadows within the blocks nestled away in New Horizon. All civilian personnel were in a state of lockdown that night following the events of the evening prior. People were calling it ‘the day one massacre’. With no official word given, everyone was left to speculate in fear over the survivor's’ recollection of events.
Ness remembered all too vividly watching helplessly as those creatures stole hundreds of lives just hours before, dragging them off into the ground. Those people were gone forever.
It all happened so fast: thousands of people running back towards the ship, most of which didn’t even know what it was they were actually from, merely followed the rest of the frenzied flock to safety.
At one point his younger brother got caught in the stampede, fell to the ground, and got trampled. Ness had to double back and fight through the scared horde, pushing and getting tossed around like a rag doll, until ultimately reaching his bloody sibling so that he might carry him the rest of the way to safety.
Ness stayed up all night because he couldn’t help but indulge in the mass conjectured chatter. Even the guards assigned to their block had no answers, no insight, nothing but looks of concern about their own faces as they talked amongst themselves.
Lucas, doped up on high grade painkillers, slept soundly despite his broken face. A puffy purple eye, a broken nose, two missing teeth, and fourteen stitches across the back of his skull were the injuries he had accumulated. A doctor had to shave his head in order to stitch him up adequately.
Ness felt incredibly bad for his brother but Lucas, through it all, was strangely positive. He had joked earlier that he had never had pain killers before and he wasn’t sure if he was drooling all down his own face or not. Clearly Lucas had not actually witnessed the massacre with his own eyes, something Ness was truly grateful for.
***
Tyler sat on the austral ledge of the canyon. The area was lit up by the large moon to the west in the welkin. It cast an eerie color to the fires that fell from the sky to the south. The moon vastly trumped earth’s own. It was so big, bright and visible, Tyler almost felt as though he could reach out and touch it. Aires perched by his side like an obedient dog, looked with him up to the clear night sky.
That evening the crew were instructed to keep watch and guard the warp gate, whose magnetic field of defense would be useless if the creatures attacked again from the ground.
For the first time since their arrival, the sky was mostly clear. There were no dust storms, no lightning, and no fire. All the chaos was far off to the south west. Above was simply a calm galaxy of stars with very few clouds to obscure the view. The night sky revealed the most amazing view of space Tyler had ever seen. He could see large clusters of stars, trails of space gasses, some purple, some green, and dark collections of matter only a few light years away.
Two hellcats, small single manned aircrafts, screeched through the sky as they left New Horizon--most likely on a recon mission. Tyler couldn’t help but think he had climbed the wrong ranks within the military.
“Guess I should have been a pilot, huh Aries?” he said out loud to the bot.
“You would have never gotten in with your less than perfect eyesight,” she logically fired back.
She was heartlessly correct, but nonetheless he wanted to be one of the first to lead humanity into a better future. He wanted to explore distant lands and discover the marvelous wonders this planet potentially harbored. He wanted to be the leader he always thought he was born to be. But he was none of these. He was just some midnight security guard standing watch over a hunk of expensive tech.
He felt directly responsible for the lives lost that night. It was his ignorance that murdered hundreds of people --massacred in a single afternoon. The team should have scouted the planet better before warping in a carrier with innocent lives aboard.
Leon appeared behind him. He was wrapping his burnt hands in a fresh set of gauze as he approached back from a meeting aboard New Horizon.
“So, how is Aisha?” Tyler questioned.
“She will be alright. They stabilized her then put her under. They are going to open that wound up and fit her with some advanced prosthetics.”
“Girl could have dropped every last one of them if her cloak didn’t drop,” Tyler pointed out.
“I know. Only piece of stealth tech we had and it’s gone until more carriers arrive with whatever they have. But maybe those crazy tech guys can salvage something from the portion of Pisces you found,” Leon suggested.
“What do you think happened to Abram?” Tyler continued.
Leon looked off into the distance with a pause, “I don’t know. If they were going to kill him they would have done it before dragging him off kicking and flailing about.”
“So, you think he is alive?” Tyler guessed.
“If he isn’t I have no doubt that big ogre snapped thirty of their necks going down.”
This forced a faint smile on Tyler’s face. “The cave you and Kaito found, think that’s where they went?”
“That would be my best guess.”
“Think they followed you guys back?”
Leon didn’t respond and Tyler quickly felt bad for asking, realizing that the thought must have plagued Leon all through the night.
“Fox has some scientist dissecting a few of the dead bugs. She said the president will make an announcement soon to comfort the civilians and get them back to work and in the morning the three of us are to make way for the cave, see what we can find,” Leon said coldly.
Perhaps this was punishment. It sounded of suicide.
“When do we leave?” Tyler asked.
“Two hours before sunrise, about three from now. I told Kaito to rest his eyes for a bit before we head out. You should prolly do the same.”
Leon pulled a stimpack from a satchel strapped to his arm and bit off the plastic shielding around the tip of the needle. Spitting the unwanted piece away, he stuck the needle in his arm and plunged the syringe, injecting the collection of biofuel into his bloodstream.
Tyler cringed in watching. He didn’t so much dislike needles, but to watch Leon go through with the act of self-injections so easily, as if living off of stimpacks were somehow the norm, seemed strange.
Leon stood up to walk away and Tyler laid down against a rock, staring straight up into the estranged alien night sky before closing his eyes. He wouldn’t sleep that night, but he would be lying if he didn’t admit that closing his eyes felt incredible.
***
Ness awoke from his faint nap in the middle of the night to the sound of people crowding around the forty-foot screen perched above the entrance of their block. The time had come for the promised statement and people were eager for answers. Even the guards looked up to the glass, eyes glued for what the announcement might entail.
The president of the United Intergalactic Movement appeared on the transparent glass dressed in military gear and holstering a rifle.
“Look at this pompous ass-hat, dressed from head to toe in propaganda as if he is gonna personally defend us from the safety of his carrier light years away,” a man in his thirties yelled up to the glass.
People in the crowd grumbled for the man to be quite so they could listen as the speech began.
“Almost two decades ago the people of earth were forced to begin facing its greatest series of ultimate truths and challenges man had ever encountered. Yesterday, the squad we sent out into space two years ago to construct a device that would pull us through time and space, saving us from our ultimate demise, successfully made landfall and constructed the device we refer to today as the warp gate. They triumphantly pulled in New Horizon, the first of many carrier ships planned for phase one evacuation. The civilian inhabitants of New Horizon are tasked with breaking ground on planet Flare and laying the foundation for our future city, Liberty. Soon after beginning their jobs the civilians were attacked by a species of vile bugs native to the land.
Now while we all share in mourning the loss of our family and friends and wish to spend time in grief, we must also stay focused at the very real, and very serious task at hand. The sooner we continue and finalize construction phase, the safer a future we provide for all. Now we have a very skilled collection of scientists aboard New Horizon who dissected those bugs and feel as though we have learned a lot. We have a series of recon missions in the final phase of fruition and I am certain we are more than capable of squashing these cockroaches and eradicating them from our new home world in a timely manner.
So please, I beg you, sleep easy this night. No boogeyman is coming to get you. I cannot drive home just how crucial it is that we construct our great city and ensure the safety for all future generations. Now I know what society asks of you is not easy, but I assure you, we all bear this burden and share in this troubling time. In the coming weeks more carriers, with supplies, food, and workforce will be warped into Flare as humanity shifts its existence from one galaxy to another. Turning back is not an option, our home world draws closer to its inevitable demise every passing second, of every passing minute. So I ask you to hang in there, we will all be joining you soon to join forces in reconstructing the pillars that support the foundation of humanity. Goodnight and God bless.”
The glass screen was again clear as the broadcast ended and Ness couldn’t help but get shivers. He always saw the president of the United Intergalactic Movement to be a man for the people, someone anyone could relate to, but not all shared his, perhaps naive, view of their leader.
The crowd argued and bickered amongst each other following the announcement, forcing the guards to taze four rowdy inhabitants and haul them off to solitary confinement for a few hours.
The emotions of everyone were high strung following the ‘day one massacre.’ Ness just hoped the military's plan of action would be quick and effective, so everyone could return to looking collectively forward to tomorrow.
He laid his head back down in his bunk and closed his eyes. In just a few short hours, the crews were again to set out and pursue construction phase, this time with beefed up security.
***
Just as sunrise approached, Leon, Kaito, and Tyler grouped up near the warp gate.
Leon dropped two large cylinders into the dirt. Their weight kicked dust up into the air. Then he unholster one of his pistols with his right hand and screwed one of two smaller cylinders he still carried onto the barrel of his weapon. He followed by doing the same to his second pistol.