End Age: Vacation

By

Jon M Lee

Year 5692--Alpha Crux Sector--Vacation Planet Mort VII

Talun rolled from behind the concealment of a cavern wall outcropping; kneeling, bracing aim with his left hand, he blasted a hole in the giant slug’s midsection. His overdriven plasma rifle hummed with a hint of pleasure; the massive-to-muzzle projectile sent snake-streams of light out in all directions. On impact, the shot ripped a head-sized hole in slimy flesh and left a gaping tunnel through to backdrop stoneware. He tapped a combination into an unlabeled grid of buttons on the top of his rifle and closed the opened faceplate.

The ten-meter-long white sac of muscle and sinew quickly lost animation; congruently, Talun’s weapon dissipated fury. Lorne and Sevant stepped from the darkness and walked to their friend’s side, eyes locked on the passing threat. All three men wore assault armor ribbed with piecemeal, external exoskeletons. They all carried plasma rifles--each weapon modified to a man’s preferences. Together, they carried an assortment of tools and bullets ready to take down any contract.

Attention soon turned to a spread of debris strewn around what looked like an ancient, junked-out wheeled buggy. Talun looked to his companions--smiles on every face. They found a haul and eliminated the danger, now for the spoils. After three steps in the direction of the treasure, a liquid-dunked thrashing started to build inside the confined cavern. Talun ran a bare hand through his stubble hair and turned one eye up.

Perceptions focused, disseminated, and converged on a single spot. Three embryonic shadows writhed behind the slug’s thinning flesh. Talun, Lorne and Sevant firmed their grips, turned their muzzles up and simultaneously blasted three on-target holes through the slug’s children. Suddenly, a half-man-sized winged creature burst out from the gaping death-hole left by Talun and flapped to the ceiling. Five more joined overhead, ripping out the slug’s obfuscated side.

Talun, Lorne and Sevant all froze in place, dropped to one knee and squeezed off a volley of high-angle plasma bolts. Torch-pits of steaming black peppered the ceiling with each missed shot. Horrendous, deep-throat screams of pre-born pain overshadowed the sizzles of working weaponry. Talun’s thoughts did not dwell on the doldrums of aiming or anticipating and instead reckoned back to the days and the countless shots spent inside battle simulators--none of the programs covered combat with mutant bats trapped overhead.

Almost in unison, Lorne and Sevant landed perfectly placed shots; two of the creatures lost wing-drive and thudded on the hard floor. Talun repositioned and placed an opened brace-hand under an attachment grenade launcher. His thumb closed over, pressing down and arming the unit; one at a time, his fingers rolled down as he swiped the weapon across a wide angle. His mind blanked out and his eyes focused on the four grenades rocketing skyward--each flashing a uniquely colored strobe.

With wrought calculation, he pulled up his third finger and the green-lit grenade exploded--shrapnel cloud close enough to tear apart one creature. Within a second, the remaining three grenades detonated on command and killed the final three flying beasts. With six shredded or sizzled corpses at their feet, the three men stood and congratulated the effort with testosterone-driven sneers. An indoor rain started in the wake of combat as each missed shot dripped a steaming plasma-rock mixture.

Talun, Lorne and Sevant headed across the cave chamber and started digging through the pile of debris like three children unleashed on a treasure-trove of play toys. Each man tossed out pieces of discarded technology, building three small piles. After a few minutes of digging, Talun stepped out, pulled a large clear sack from his pocket and starting stuffing his stuff inside. His thoughts festered from an encompassing human condition of power hunger--something shared by virtually the entire species.

With human infighting stagnant for three millennia, the plethora of species across a human-dominated galaxy served as tested opposition. Talun came to these places wanting competitive advantage over everyone, never stopping to consider default superiority--off the shelf human weaponry already eclipsed all competition mustered by the millions of species under United Military rule. Talun, like most other serving humans, didn’t care about measured competition or variable scores. He simply wanted the best and considered the opportune chance to bolster position, a vacation.

Zipping close the bag, Talun said, “Do you guys want to head back to the lodge, or keep going?”

Lorne spoke with a nasty slur, “Hey man, all for it.”

Sevant said, “I don’t want to quit yet.”

The three men sat their bags together and stood in a circle. Lorne produced a small box of oxygen pills from his pocket and passed one out to everyone--the alien atmosphere wasn’t poisonous, but also didn’t have enough oxygen for human comfort. After downing the tablet, Talun pulled a clip of grenades from his belt and slipped them into the compact launcher riding under his rifle’s muzzle. He then turned his rifle over and looked at the plasma canister’s readout, 91%.

He said, “Give me an ammo check.”

“87 percent.”

“79 for me.”

“Ok, let’s move.”

They walked forward, disappearing into the next chamber. The three salvage bags dematerialized, automatically teleported back to base for delivery to delimitated quarters. Their technology haul from this trip already peaked over the planet’s average, but humans no longer considered greed a bad thing.

#

Six Hours Later

Two women staff the control station of a processing chamber at the Lodge Reclamation Centre, sorting and screening. Salvage bags transported in from the local vacation spots dangle from a hanging conveyor track across the room. One of the largest bags, bloated by contents passes through a ringed sensor. The light flashes red and the conveyor stops.

“Biological contents. We have to open those.”

One of the women walked over and pulled on the bag, the hanging mechanism changed tracks and slid away from the conveyor. The light returned green and more hanging packages continued through the sensor rings. The two women pulled down until the bag, larger in volume than the two of them combined, tipped against the floor.

One of the women started to open the bag and says, “They’ve pulled a lot of bio-weapons out lately, I’m sure this is just the same kind of junk.”

“I’ve never seen any bio-rifles this big, some kind of breeding chamber or something maybe. This whole bio-weapon crazy is nutty. Half the time all you get is a sloppy mess.”

As the salvage bag’s seal broke, Talun and an alien creature stuck in a death embrace fell out. His blood splashed the slightly cupped floor, snaking to a central drain. Layers of hard, insect-like plates decorated with yellow rims covered the creatures brown flesh. A sharp-tipped, spline-covered limb stuck through Talun’s midsection, exploiting a plasma-burn weakness in his armor.

The two women separate Talun and the alien after calling for a medical team. In exactly two minutes, the paramedics arrive and rush his body off to the local restoration centre. Word of his injury zipped away on the communications grid, and in just over three hours, his partner arrived from the next sector--150 light-years away. Virtually never without her uniform, Maxne ran into the restoration centre in skimp bedclothes. She ran right through an empty waiting room and up to a desk staffed by a single calm-faced nurse.

Panic trimming her voice, Maxne said, “What happened. The notification said there is a problem.”

“Ma’am, who are you here for?”

“Talun Gann, my partner. I’m Maxne Gann. Please, tell me, what is the problem?”

“Oh yes, he should be ok in a few hours. Restoration is proceeding slowly because his body… he showed up inside a salvage bag, already expired. Many times, teleporting a body after expiration will boost cell degradation so high… to a point where restoration of the old body is impossible. The doctor says everything is ok this time, we’re lucky.”

Maxne closed her eyes and allowed the limb-shaking tension to fade. She soon found a seat in the waiting room. After a few hours, the door opened and Talun walked out wearing an issued green robe. Maxne instantly ran to his side. She helped him to a seat in the waiting room; his bones creaked as he sat down beside his partner. She pushed her cheek to his, holding him in a loving embrace.

Eventually she asked, “What happened to you on the trip?”

He said, “We found something amazing.”

#

Talun, Lorne and Sevant walked through the bowels of an underground cavern. A rigid antenna stretched skyward from each man’s energy pack--a compact and silent generator commonly secured above the waist on the lower back. Unidirectional light exploded out from the tip of each antenna and cast trifurcate shadows over every rock crevice in the geologically formed tunnel. Talun’s mind wandered in the blackness, his memory flipped like the pages of a dusty old book. He thought back to all the spelunking trips, hundreds on different planets; he never saw anything in the blackness to harness the word beauty, but all those locations gave him an ingrained excitement. He felt the same pulse again.

Turning the corner, collective attention angled upward to a large black sphere hanging from the ceiling. The three vacationing soldiers moved in on the object like wild animals closing on cornered prey. Talun looked to his friend’s expressions--sour, contemplative. He looked overhead to the dome of black silver, noting a tiny whimper of natural blue under the surface.

He said, “Any ideas?”

“None here boss.”

Sevant added nothing.

Talun said, “Wait, what’s the one thing most every species hangs overhead?”

“Lights.”

“Right.”

Intention to intimidate, the three men reached back in unison and turned off their antenna lights. The raw white blinked off and offered room for other illumination. After a few seconds, the black globe’s emissions built to a bright blue and everything became drenched in a soft glow. The soldiers pressed forward, moving deeper into the ancient alien underground. After a few hundred meters of globe-lit tunnels, a path-breaking ridgeline appeared in the distance.

Talun stepped to the edge and peered beyond. A seemingly endless field of sparkling nighttime stretched out below. The scene reminded him of Rud III and time spent standing on the tenth floor balcony looking out over the endless slum during overcast weather. The lights and cancerous shanties below followed the cavern’s natural contour and flowed like rippled waves across a serene lake. Talun turned to his friends, both their faces blended wonder, awe and excitement.

He said, “What do you think?”

Lorne said, “Artificial lighting, still some power.”

Sevant stepped closer to the edge and looked down.

He said, “Long drop, we’ll have to break out some gear and repel down. I knew we should have brought the Jump Packs.”

Talun turned back to the opening and said, “I didn’t think we would need them in a cave, but I see you’re point.”

“What exactly do you think this place is?”

“I did some research on the history of this region after we decided to make the trip. Supposedly, this area held the last resistance against our assaults. The record says we eventually rooted them all out and took the planet for resources. United Military left the planet unpopulated and moved on.”

“So you think this is some kind of enclave, where they tried to protect the last of their people.”

Talun, wanting to give a verbal expansion, bit his tongue and held his feelings. He didn’t like many of the black spots on human history, he didn’t like the way his people treated other species during the two-thousand year long expansion era, and he didn’t want to add fuel for debate with his friends. He let the anger subside while looking down on the visage of ancient suffering. He knew destiny would never bring back an eradicated culture when no human cared enough to preserve one.

Lorne stepped right to the edge with the others and said, “The place looks dead.”

“Long dead… Let’s go.”

Riding on waves from the distant black, a hideous screaming howl echoed through the massive underground city. The three human’s ears perked up. A smile spread across Talun’s lips.

He said, “Let’s go.”

#

Maxne and Talun held hands while riding back to their home on a scheduled transport ship. Maxne poked his arm with a handheld medical scanner and watched the readouts.

She said, “Your cell degradation jumped ten percent. We have to schedule you a visit for rejuvenation.”

“We will. I have to tell you-- I lost my plasma rifle on the planet.”

“What! Where, we can go back and get it.”

“No, it’s gone, destroyed. I mean, I’m not worried. I can make another one, just depressing to loose such an investment.”

“How did… whatever happen?”

“Complicated… After we got down the cliff wall, we just followed the trails deeper into the city. The buildings were little more than huts strung together for density. Eventually we found a road and followed the turns to an entrance tunnel, where we found something else amazing.”

#

Talun stood motionless, transfixed on a vehicle parked ten meters away. The armored buggy gleamed with an unbroken shine covering every exposed piece of the vehicle. Separated seams in the metal wheels showed the limits of period human technology--eight curved, ribbed plates formed the tread while stabilization mechanics hid inside the protected wheel. Two turrets, the largest in the middle and limited to a forward arc, augmented the bank of weaponry on the front. Talun never imaged this trip would yield such fortune.

He stepped forward, oblivious to the activity of his companions. The promise of ancient technology lured, beckoned him to investigate. Closing in, he raised his rifle over one shoulder and let go--a mechanical clamp built into part of his exoskeleton popped out and took the hand-off. He reached out; his fingertips stroked the cold armor plates. He leaned in and pressed an ear to the metal hull, they danced to a silent symphony of pent destruction.

Equally entranced, Lorne pulled open the cockpit hatch. A boot-sized green creature leapt out onto his chest. He fell backward, paralyzed and screaming. Talun whipped around and locked eyes on the animal, some kind of cross between a mutant frog and a bipedal species. Sevant slipped over with three quick steps, bent down in a smooth motion, grabbed and then chucked the green glop with all his strength.

The tiny creature splattered against the flat wall of a nearby shanty with a single wet-hammer smack. A gooey brown outline remained as the lifeless body peeled away under the force of gravity. Talun, Lorne and Sevant stepped closer and scrutinized the creature.

Lorne started to ask, “What do you think--“

Talun bent over and sniffed the stained wall. He perceived nothing, no violent odor, no gaseous death. He turned to receive bent-eyebrow expressions from his friends.

He said, “I have a sneaking suspicion. Come smell this.”

Lorne and Sevant looked at each other. After a moment of silent debate, Sevant stepped closer and turned his nose in with a scrunched face.

“Do you smell anything?”

“Not really, just the normal air, maybe with a little more intensity or something.”

“My point exactly. If this place is an enclave for survival, where is the biosphere? Where are all the plants to keep up the breathable air, whatever breathable is to the native species on this planet. I bet anything these little guys serve the same function as plants do on other planets. They probably exist in a symbiotic relationship with the other species, each producing consumable air for the other.”

Lorne climbed on top of the vehicle and squeezed down inside one of the turret wells. He said, “Man, there is a ton of stuff in here we can salvage. You should see all the scratch I’m looking at.”

Sevant followed Lorne up the handholds and climbed into the other turret well. He pulled out a salvage bag and started to jerk pieces of equipment from the exposed internal systems.

Talun stared at the opened cockpit hatch with a wild look behind his eyes. He wondered if the power cells still held a charge. He said, “Wait, don’t strip out anything.”

#

A strumming wine spilled out across the underground barrio. The ancient assault buggy tore down a loosely defined road with three humans at the helm of embattled weaponry. Talun drove, giving over complete control to his instincts. The memories of a hundred armored assaults played in his mind like silent films. He thought back to the first time he drove at night, charging down the cliffs on Telga VII. His soul twanged with the recollection of mixed fear and excitement.

With each mission, the threads of combat tension faded, leaving a pure product, elation. He gave everything over to the high, not fearing injury or death, he trusted in unbridled reactions. Suddenly, a large green creature, similar to the one found inside the buggy, ran out into the road. Talun’s hands slipped down a finger-width and reinforced grip. A muddy splash washed across the buggy as the creature shredded under impact.

Lorne called out through the rattletrap interior, “What did we hit?”

Before Talun responded, he slammed the brakes. Three more of the creatures stood a few meters away on a squat building’s rooftop. An explosion rang out and pieces of green flesh scattered the area. His eyes followed smoke trails back to Sevant’s turret cannon.

Sevant yelled out, “Yeah! Still works!”

“Nice shot… Hope you have a few more of those.”

Dozens of the animals crawled out from every alley and window, attracted by commotion. Talun stomped the accelerator and drove through the pack’s middle. The two cannons fired out in all directions; the buggy looked like a mobile pincushion from the smoke trails left by aligned shots. Every second of forward transit and every gram of accelerator pressure multiplied together, carrying the hell-born buggy and the three humans deeper into the unassuming and hostile breeding grounds.

The barrio landscape transformed to an endless field of animate green-skin creatures. A thousand combined howls berated the engine wash, overpowering all artificial sounds. Talun searched the monitors for sigils of the already vague roadway, but he clued on nothing. Obscured and befuddled he continued to leave their fates in the hands of his indelible reflexes. He fired the forward machine guns and drove right into the flowing middle. The cannon shots spiked over guttural noise. They seemed capable of fighting off the building wave, until the buggy stopped--crashed headfirst into a rock wall.

Talun tried to roll backward, but a massive metal thrash signaled at least one broken wheel. He popped the cockpit hatch and emerged from the steel coffin, pulling himself out with all speed. Standing on the front slant, he reached over shoulder and pulled down his plasma rifle. Collectively, they fired hundreds of shots, trying to beat back the encircling hoard of green. The cannon’s muzzle burn sent out bursts of bright yellow, drenching the area in sloppy strobe. Rippled waves of jitter traveled through the vehicle’s frame with every shot.

Reacting to compounding forces, a huge chunk of rock fell down and nearly smashed Talun. He turned to look at the sheer face. A huge crack slowly widened from the crashed vehicle’s point of impact. His muzzle turned to bear and a single shot flew through and disappeared into a cavity on the other side of the wall. He looked up to the turrets; Sevant stood at the peak, firing his plasma rifle down into the swelling crowd with disregard--the middle turret locked in a forward position, aiming directly at the opening crack.

Talun walked up the vehicles slanted face; with concentration on sure footing, he blind fired his rifle into the green tide. Stepping to Sevant’s side, he screamed, “Shoot the wall with the turret!”

“What?”

Trying to reach over the thumping cannon-shot and pervasive growls, he screamed as hard as he could, “Shoot the wall!”

Sevant watched Talun’s finger point to the mounted turret and then to the wall. Instantly, Sevant handed off his weapon and dropped into the open well. Talun shifted his feet and stood aspread over Sevant. With one rifle pointed out to each side, he pulled both triggers as fast as he could. The pounding rear cannon held firm and continued to fire multiple shots a second, but the combined firepower could only hope to beat back a determined enemy for so long.

The forward-facing cannon erupted with rage and started pulverizing chips of stone from the wall. After a dozen shots, an open hole into another layer of discovery sat breeched, a meter away. Talun ran down the front of the vehicle and dove headlong into the convex shadow, both rifles pointed strait out into the blackness. In seconds, Sevant and Lorne joined him just as the building mass of green bodies collapsed over the stalled buggy.

Talun dropped grip on the rifles and pulled a pack of three metallic discs from his thigh. He scrambled to his feet while reaching back to turn on his antenna light. The brilliant white flooded in all directions and revealed machine-cut rock walls virtually smooth and free of blemish. He slapped one of the discs down to the bottom left and another at the bottom right of the corrugated hole. With a single jump, he stretched high and stuck the third at a leaping peak. A red-tinted film instantly appeared over the portal--a rounded energy shield.

Still feeling the echo of a firing plasma rifle in his hands, Talun turned to his friends. Their eyes glossed over with burning intensity, bloodlust. He received the death-tool offering and looked at his plasma rifle’s readout, 3%. He replaced the ammunition cell with his last fresh one as Sevant did the same. They dropped the dead canisters, sending a shock-twinge warble into the darkness on impact with the stone floor. Talun’s attention turned to the open dark filled with unknown danger, but his focus remained on recently recorded memory--the images of freshly shredded green bodies.

Out of wrought response, he said, “Let’s go.”

#

Maxne and Talun sat behind a counter in their workshop and unpacked the salvage bags he collected during the vacation. The scene called back to childhood when two children spent the day playing amid a field of toys. Talun pulled a metal tube wadded over with green and blue wires from one bag.

He said, “I found this thing in the laboratory, some kind of energy converter, not human and not made by the planet’s indigenous species.”

Maxne slid a bread-loaf-sized box across the table and opened the lid. Fifty v-shaped metal dents lined down the long side and a collection of readouts and dials spread across the exposed interior. Talun pressed the loose wires into the slots one at a time, making not attempt to sort or distinguish. Maxne turned on the unit and they waited for the diagnostic to run.

Maxne said, “Why did you keep going with nearly no ammunition and no medical supplies left?”

“Just greed, we wanted more stuff and felt room to push.”

“So, you found a lab down the stone corridor?”

“Eventually wide hall ended and we found a solid metal wall with a single door.”

The electrical diagnostic machine whined, signaling cycle completion. Maxne looked over the readouts, turned a few dials, and watched the numbers scale.

After a minute of testing, she said, “Well, this is a power converter with 130% effectiveness. Far better than anything we could ever buy or build. This is a real find.”

“To bad we don’t know what planet it originally came from.”

#

Talun and Lorne waited at the hermetic door with weapons ready while Sevant tried to hack into the control system through a nearby access panel. Talun pondered his friends’ comments during the obligatory silence. The door and the wiring did look like human engineering, but who and when? His mind tried to wrap around the horned box; the only fact-fitting solution brought a human organization here some time after the planets purge, but he could not understand the significance, what drew them and why did they pick this planet?

The door slid open, motivated by Sevant’s probing. White intensity rayed into the room as the smell of stale dust rolled out. Talun seethed with anger; the light draped across ten human skeletons lined side by side, bleach-white with age. His brain pulsed with pain--dead two-hundred or more years and he still felt wince. He knew he could have done something to save these humans, but time took away his power--their flesh probably rotted away before his birth. He made an internal bond over their bones; he would do something to save their deaths.

After a minute of swelling abhorrence, the three men stepped through the portal, turned away from ancient tragedy, and set out to study the contents of the room. Hundreds of tabletop machines dotted around the human laboratory like a great collage of construction-paper scraps. The metal walls looked almost seamless apart from two doors and the one back corner of exposed rock. Talun picked up a standard-sized data-pad and pressed the power button. The screen flashed for a second and cut off; in the fading instant of flowing power, he read the date’s year in the top corner, 5145.

He delved into memory, knowing the date and the circumstance seemed familiar. Something he read once. The company name Drexelcorp came to the surface. Accusations against them included illegal genetics work on species conquered during the expansion--human’s only take care of their own, but they also don’t indiscriminately experiment on other races. Talun turned the flat piece of plastic over and confirmed suspicions; huge letters spelling DXL covered the flat rectangle, the corporation’s initials.

Talun spoke aloud, “Drexelcorp.”

“What?”

He held out the pad so the others could see the lettering.

“If this place belonged to them, that would mean some of the aliens survived our original invasion.”

“Maybe they came for those things back in the cavern.”

“I don’t think so. Plus, If Talun’s idea is right, about their role in the biosphere, then why are they still alive?”

“Point made… Not only did Drexelcorp find some of the aliens back 500 years ago, but they are still alive.”

“Take five and salvage what you can, then we move on.”

While searching the tables and bagging gear, their attention continued to turn back to the corner of exposed rock. Talun left his full bag on a table for the transport and heading back to investigate. The rock encroached on the room’s angular design. At first glance, he thought the builders’ left an intentional exposure, but soon realized the truth. The metal surfaces appeared to go under and around the rock, like the stone flowed out into the completed room.

Talun turned to Lorne and signaled at the wall with two fingers. Lorne pulled a tool from a thigh holster, unfolded a muzzle-like opening, and pointed touched the top to rock. A quip of bright light radiated from the handheld-seam as the crackling of vaporized molecules hung overhead. He put the tool away, exposing a finger-sized smooth hole in the face, and raised a companion box. He pulled a small round detonator from the side and slid open the lid--the box contained a volume of purple colored liquid-form explosive.

Lorne looked to the others, making sure they stood back before he armed the charge. He submerged half the detonator in the liquid and slowly pulled out. The liquid reacted and quickly crystallized, forming a long tube dense with air. At forearm length, he let the lid snap shut and clip off the end--enough liquid-form remained for nine more charges. He snapped the container back out of the way and slid the explosive in the perfectly sized receptacle with both hands. As he stepped back, the detonator flashed red a few times.

A garg thud of next-room thunder highlighted the blast. The engineered explosive sent almost every bit of available destructive force into the surrounding rock. A jet of brown stone chips shot from the hole like a pellet blast. The stone corner crumbled and fell away, revealing a ribbed tube cut through solid rock. Talun stepped into the tunnel and looked both directions; he reached up to touch the deep-textured surface and could barely put his full palm on the ceiling. The idea of an underground tube pointed to a natural formation, but he knew such an exact pattern pointed to artificial origins. He also knew humans never built such tunnels.

#

Maxne walked into the workroom with a brown paper sack stuffed fat with bits and bobbles of electrical parts picked up at the Free Market. Talun started pulling stuff from the bag and spread everything out on the workbench. An old stripped down laser rifle propped up on a stand in the middle of the sorted pile. He watched his partner’s mannerisms as she sat down in the next seat and started casually digging though the parts. She glanced over some piece and then moved on to the next, not caring to actually gather details. He could tell she wanted something, but didn’t know what.

He asked, “You find everything ok at the market?”

“Yeah, no problems. I followed your list.”

She placed a small data-pad on the bench.

“Did you… see something you wanted?”

“Not really, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Well, something is bothering you…”

He looked her in the eyes and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I just keep thinking about all the time you spent working on your old rifle. And now, there is nothing to show. Sometimes, I guess, I just wonder what it all means.”

“There is no meaning. We are who we are, and this is the way we live. You can search, but there is nothing to find. I should be done with this in a few hours, but the work can wait if you want to do something.”

After a deflating sigh, her eyes angled over to the skeleton of a weapon. She asked, “So you decided to rebuild an old laser rifle? The one Lorne gave you years ago? When you finish, let’s go to the testing centre, I need to work out some settings on my rocks.”

Talun turned back to the table and resumed sorting the pieces. He said, “Yeah, appropriate since I gave up my old rifle to save his butt. Most of the new enhancement bits will work great; this should pack a punch when I’m done.”

A pleasant silence ran through the room for a few minutes before Maxne said, “You promised to finish telling me about your vacation when I got back.”

“Indeed. Well, we just followed the tunnel, going slightly downhill. About a half-hour later we hit the end and found a junction chamber with about a dozen different tunnels.”

#

Talun stepped down from the tunnel, his eyes locked on an alien machine sitting only a few meters away. Elongated bulbs covered with webbing formed together and constituted the main hull. Sets of gear-looking wheels stuck out in two circular sections. The three humans stepped closer with weapons forward. Talun reached out and touched one of the wheels, the ribbed grain felt familiar under his fingertips. His eyes turned back to the tunnel and he connected function.

He said, “This thing is built to go through the tubes.”

Lorne said, “Some kind of underground transit system then…”

Sevant let out an audible gasp. Talun looked up and saw a perplexed mask driving his friend’s facial features. The three gathered around to examine Sevant’s find. A thin layer of dust covered a wooden handle on the alien vehicle’s side. Three wide imprints disturbed the long unbroken layer. Talun held out his hand along side, the clean-wiped stripes perfectly matched his finger spacing. An echoed pinging sent the three men instantly spinning outward; they stood frozen with backs together.

Talun said, “Ok, something is nearby, watching and waiting. Keep your eyes open. Just hold for the good shot.”

His senses perked, everything magnified. A tiny drip of sweat from Lorne’s brow splashed down with the percussions of a full bucket dumped on the floor. His hand gripped the handle of his plasma rifle tighter; the torque-squeaks of flesh-on-rubber radiated through the room. He gave his wellbeing over to a trained, reaction mechanism. His mind slipped backward, recalling hundreds engagements, and focused on the tension before the conflict--like the quiet before the storm, this moment is when he felt most at home, alive.

A gangly flesh-colored arm stretched out from behind the rim of one dark tunnel holding a fierce weapon pronged in spikes. A blue sprite of starlight shot from the metal tip and zipped across the room, passing centimeters from Talun’s head. Striking precision reaction, the three humans retaliated with a volley of plasma bolts. A dozen black pits scorched into the wall. The alien arm disappeared. Talun broke from behind the alien pod and launched a scrambling chase.

Speeding through the formed tunnels, their antenna lights rippled across ribbed walls. Talun broke away from concentration and allowed his reactions to take over; he no longer needed active thought compelling a speedy pursuit--the compounded wounds of many battles dug deep into his psyche, desensitizing and decoupling his actions from his emotions. The tunnels twisted and turned, eventually giving way to a stream of bright orange light at the end. The chase abruptly stopped.

The sound of sweat splashing the curved ribs stretched to ears. The three men knelt silent with weapons raised and watched for any sign of the alien’s return. Slowly, they crept forward and emerged from the tunnel. The air of the massive cavern plumed with fumes from exposed veins of lava. Talun looked around, searching for any sign of the alien. He locked onto a gargantuan glob of flesh far at the opposite end of the grotto. The creature pulsed with slow ripples of activity.

Lorne said, “Where do you think he went?”

Reacting to the voice, the creature instantly began to writhe behind energetic muscles. Expecting a response, Lorne looked to Talun’s face, and then followed his friend’s eye line. Lorne grimaced ill. The creature stood on four legs, a gaping mouth lined with hundreds of sharp teeth turned to the three men. Hairs along the creature’s body, stiff and thick enough to impale, stood taught. The beast’s brilliant green eyes opened, partially obscured by dreadlocks of matted hair. The decrepit pale hound broke out, sprinting across the cavern.

Without a word, executing understood tactics, Talun burst away and slid down behind a boulder. He looked over shoulder and saw the beast’s paw smash, obliterating any semblance of a smooth walk. Past the shattering cloud of chips, he saw a glint of Sevant slipping into a crevice. His vision wheeled, finding Lorne diving back into the ribbed tunnel. Plasma bolts flew forward from the three circumstantial battlements and prodded at the white creatures hide like a tri-speared fork.

A deafening howl of pain bellowed from the beast’s stomach. Talun’s shots landed in chink, searing and eating into soft tissue under the beast’s neck. A dozen blasts of plasma tore deep, inducing lethargy. The beast slowed and stomped, apparently beaten down by the stacked plasma blots. Suddenly, the beast exploded in fury and slammed one paw into the sheer above Lorne’s ribbed hiding spot. Stone fractures collapsed into the tunnel, muffling fading screams.

The beast turned to the crevice protecting Sevant. The creature’s razor mouth and matted locks jammed into the stoneware crease, trying to excavate the contents. After a moment of futility, the beast recoiled, opened a massive jaw, and spit a single globule of green mucus inside. Sevant fell out onto the ground, flailing in pain and exposed. The creature leaned over his prey, ready to devour the hard-earned prize, when a hardboiled sandpaper voice broke into serenity.

Talun rolled out from behind the obscuring boulder, pointed his rifle at the beast and said, “You better get away from him!”

The beast whipped around and slammed down a paw. Talun barely managed to roll away before impact. A single shot from his plasma rifle struck the tip of the animal’s snout. Unfazed, a second paw swept in, trapping Talun in a hairy vice. The creature’s head leaned forward, a pink tongue licked along the rim of the beast’s dirty-white razor-laced lips. Talun’s arm squeased down, opened the control panel on the top of his rifle, and started punching in a code.

For a moment, only the faint of a sizzling nose and the blips of a keypad echoed in a cave. Inside the moment of clarity, the image of Maxne appeared inside Talun’s mind. He recalled the day he met her, both their clothes stained with grease. Luck allowed them to meet, and now, luck delivered him to death--real death, dissolved in the gullet of some hideous animal. The creature’s mouth opened; out of reaction, Talun threw his rifle inside.

He didn’t think about the act, he didn’t consciously press the button combination to overload the weapon, he didn’t have too anymore--the execution of war became wrought procedure decades ago. Talun, like many other tragically afflicted warriors of the United Military, didn’t care about the lives they took or the pain they dispensed; he felt disconnected from the conflict, desensitized.

Talun’s rifle exploded with all the fury his highly modified plasma compression chamber could muster. A thunderous jet of pressure exploded from the side of the animal’s head, tearing free flesh and ear. Echoed thuds rumbled through the glowing grotto as the beast slowly fell to knees and collapsed in place. Talun ran to Sevant’s side and swiped globs of mucus from his face. His friend looked up, acknowledging a worried face. Before a single word of relief found harmonization, a large rock fell from the collapsed tunnel, followed by Lorne.

He pulled to a seat and looked around, orienting. Glowing vents on every piece of his exoskeleton expelled heat generated by constant strain. A few sparks shot out from a damaged servo on his left arm. Talun looked to both his friends, beyond the ragged expressions, and saw the desire in their eyes--the desire to continue exploring and collecting.

He pulled a backup ballistic pistol from a clamp on the back of his belt and said, “Let’s go.”

#

Maxne fired off a dozen shots from her matched set of ballistic pistols. Smoke wafted from the barrels as she held the weapons out steady. Her eyes turned down to the readouts on the firing range table; dozens of numers flashed with different calculated measurements. She turned to Talun, standing at a nearby lane and aiming his newly built laser rifle at a distant target. Orange pulses of light radiated from the vents along the weapon’s side and gave way to a bristling laser beam.

The shot instantly drew a line from the weapon’s muzzle to the distant target and held solid on point. The beam shifted slightly with each of Talun’s breaths. After ten seconds of concentrated fire, he released the trigger and set the weapon off to cool. Maxne reached around his waist from behind and locked her fingers together. His eyes watched the readouts as he leaned back against her weight.

Giving him a minute to take in all the information, she asked, “So, what’s the verdict?”

“Serviceable for now, but this thing needs a lot of work.”

Talun turned around; Maxne’s arms maintained finger grip at his back. He put a finger under her chin and angled her face up to make eye contact.

“I don’t care about the work I lost, I just didn’t want to loose myself, my memories of you. Whatever kind of creature we fought, if I fell, I wouldn’t have come home in shape for restoration. I just didn’t want you to go through the same thing as last time, reaccelerating me to everything.”

“I’m not even worried about such things. I’m just glad you’re back safe. At least you took care of those aliens so the next group won’t have the same trouble.”

#

Talun, Lorne, and Sevant slink through an alien structure. The silk-like flooring felt like cushioned air beneath their feet. Purple and kaleidoscope strips of material hung from the walls with no measure of perceptible style. The twenty meter hall soon ended and led into a room filled with cylindrical floor-to-ceiling water tanks. Talun wrenched both hands around the grip of his backup pistol and stepped into the room. The lights of three bursting white antennas made the chamber gleam reflections.

Talun’s eyes scoured every shadowy crevice of hostility. The light rays passed through glass and water, creating ghastly wavering silhouettes on the opposite wall. Small aquatic creatures of all types swam inside the enclosed water-pillars. Catching a glint of hard black at the edge of his visual range, Talun wheeled around and saw an alien standing petrified--the same species they chased into the creature’s cavern.

For a moment, the two stood equally transfixed in silent serenity. Talun, for the first time in a great long time, suppressed his human urge. He rejected his body’s reactions and used conscious thought to guide his combat action, he willed himself to not fire. In that moment, he felt a chance in his being, a change in the pit of his heart; he felt compassion for a species other than human--something shared by virtually nobody else. He did not fire at the alien, but Lorne did.

Two dozen plasma bolts shot across the room and tore the alien apart, literally. Pieces of limbs sprayed blood as they exploded in all directions. A few missed shots smacked glass and shattered one of the cylinder tanks. The water dumped unidirectionally and flooded down from the ceiling coupling--apparently the water-pillars only connected larger tanks built above the ceiling and below the floor. After a few seconds, the majority volume passed and only drips fell from the gaping hole.

Chatters of an alien vocabulary began to fill the air. The three soldiers turn their backs together and kneel, emplaced, watching for any intrusion. Aliens began to run into the room; their feet sloshed and patted on the wet flooring. They stopped at the shattered water-pillar; Lorne and Sevant opened fire. Talun knelt silently with his weapon outstretched, he wanted to jump in, but his thoughts lingered and turned back in on the same ideal he used to stop firing the first time.

His thoughts sputtered, trying to process the idea of simplistic superiority. He knew humans conquered everything long ago, but he could not shake the feeling of sport. He came here, invaded space taken by his ancestors, and now he killed the people living here. The word rolled in his mind; he never referred to another species as people before. The moment of introspective lax introduced Talun to his own internalized ideals--sentient intelligent beings, however oppressed, deserved the same considerations as humans.

He knew such salivations would forever elude all non-human species, and nothing he did here could possibly change humanity’s priorities. Talun put the bead of his sight on the chest of one of the ducking aliens and blasted away. He gave back over to impulse and shunned his thoughts. He reached to the side and grabbed a grenade from Lorne’s thigh. Talun stayed knelt, took a few backward steps out of the plasma paths, and circled around to flank the enemy. He popped the timer on the grenade and let roll across the soggy floor. A streamer of water spun up like the rain slung from a rubber wheel at speed.

The blast shook the walls and ripped apart half the opposition. Another tank shattered from the concussion wave’s expansion. Talun ran headlong into the fray, his weapon fired with pinpoint accuracy. The grips of his boot grabbed the rim on one shattered water-pillar’s base. He leapt forward from the stack and fired three shots into the final three aliens. Momentum slid him across the floor and he continued to fire accurate shots at the last three falling bodies.

The shell of intensity covering the room cracked when Talun’s trigger finger relaxed. The combat wake smelled like burning fruit at a lakeside retreat. Water dripped from the ceiling and drained away. A soggy muck covered the floor, dozens of small aquatic creatures flopped around. Talun stood up and looked over the carnage; he turned to face the first shattered water-pillar.

Suddenly, a monstrous predatory animal burst from the grate beneath the cylindrical base. Water rolled off the creature’s thick-shelled hide. The beast lunged at Talun with sharpened limbs and drove a spike through his abdomen. The animals other limb raised up high and dove down, piercing Talun’s clavicle and diving deep to his organs. The world quickly faded black, lost in an overdose of pain.

#

“Next thing I remember is waking up inside a restoration pod. The techs told me I arrived inside a large salvage bag.

“Lorne and Sevant didn’t have access to any other rescue option? They should know how much a post-death transport would effect your cell degradation.”

“We used up all our good stuff just getting down into the first cave. Hell, ten of us left the lodge as a group. Rabid creatures cover the planet’s surface and make any expedition a dicey situation. Our fault really, with the way we used to wipe out ecosystems just to conquer planets.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing from you… This sounds like you don’t even like being human anymore. Would you rather be one of the other species out there?”

“I don’t know what I want. I know I have changed.”

“Humanity is the sole superpower of the galaxy, no other species can have the kind of lifestyle we all take for granted. But, you’re not happy with the way things are?”

“No, I don’t think I am.”

< END >