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| Fringes (Discontinued. Working on a new, better story.) Posted by: Clip/Tai at 02-02-2014 20:25 PM, Last Modified 04-27-2014 19:10 PM |
Warning: This story portrays a fictional apocalypse of humanity in the near future. Some content is regarded as graphic and violent. If you have no interest in this content, do not view it. This book is fictional and any/all persons or events relating to real life people or events is completely coincidental. The title is in no way implying this book is related to the television show "Fringe". The author (Me) has no interest in plagiarizing this television show's name. This novel contains mild cursing in occasional points when it is deemed necessary. Please Enjoy.
Prologue
I heard our pilot mutter a curse under his breath, as more small chunks of compressed rock pinged off of the hull, unheard by those in the more core parts of the ship.
“You alright?” I asked, obviously distressed. His face was contorted into a sick looking grimace of concentration. If he couldn’t handle it, then I would need to alert the napping co-pilot, if he wasn’t already awake from the constant reverberations running through the steel carcass of the large transport vessel.
“I-I’m fine. Don’t know if the ship will hold though.” He stuttered something else I didn’t quite catch about taking it out of his pay as the ship violently vibrated again.
“It better. Those Terrans said their ships don’t break unless they get hit with a missile.” I recalled the words of the shipyard requisitions officer.
The aged Terran with tobacco in his cheek and an eye patch over his left socket had assured the captain and I that the ship was near indestructable to anything but military grade hardware.
“She’ll haul twenty tons o’ shtuff clean out o’ the atmosphere of any rock yer sorry hide is landed on. Powerful engines that one. Indeed indeed. Let us settle on the fair price o’ twenty grand.”
I snapped back to reality as a tremor ran the bulk of the ship and something metallic clanked. It might of been my imagination but the ship sort of felt lighter and more maneuverable. I looked down at the pilot, ready to ask what’s taking so long when I noticed his face was reddening from the stress of maneuvering the hulking ship. That cut my question off short.
His concentrated look immediately disappeared when a loud, metallic clang shook the hull, indicating that the crude station-to-ship docking procedure was successful.
“What’s the RCX look like?” I asked him, checking a screen that registered for low fuel.
“It’s only half gone.” He muttered, glancing at the display on the console. I sighed.
“If I wanted to spend my paycheck wasting fuel, I’d go buy some and dump it out the friggin airlock.” His balding head began to gleam with perspiration, even though it was a good sixty degrees on the bridge. The temperature may seem moderate for Terrans but on space vessels, it was a momentous waste of energy and credits. I’d have to go have a chat with the lead engineer to see how bad our consumption of energy is.
“Calm down, I got us here in one piece, didn’t I? I mean, judging by how bad the Kuiper Belt was on the flight in, that’s something you can be thankful for. Besides, you buy the fuel and I’ll buy the beers.” He stammered out the response, hoping it would defuse the argument. It’s typical for him though, he hates confrontation.
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s get some shut eye first.” I suggested.
The ship was deathly quiet as we bid farewell to each other and went our separate ways to our three by six foot rooms. I honestly never measured the room I sleep and live in but feels as cramped as a confession box. But without someone to confess to.
I looked at the calendar. The solar date was September 12th. The solar time was 17:32. I nodded. Time was good. We arrived with ample time to relax. But we had a delivery to make first. I was too caught up in the journey to think about the delivery of slaves. Well… not exactly slaves but asteroid miners. Their pay was far below the sustainable level and their lives meant nothing to anybody, including themselves. If someone broke a hole mining the asteroid and leaked space into the tunnels, the miners inside would die and nobody would blink an eye. Robots couldn’t do the job because they were too expensive to buy and maintain.
As soon as the miners disembark they’ll be out of our hair and getting their own insignificant paychecks. I jogged back up to the cramped bridge and awoke the kilometer of sleeping prospectors with the usual speech. “Attention flight crew. It is now time to wake the cargo.” I repeated the announcement in case they didn’t get it the first time.
With the announcement done, I leaned on the dashboard and soaked in the view of KBO6. The asteroid known as Kuiper Belt Object Six was a massive rock with a stable yet endangered orbit that was registered to be on a collision course with a smaller but equally dangerous asteroid. The near-planet sized rock filling the viewscreen had large, well lit towns poking out at random intervals. Gigantic plastic domes covered the towns from the vacuum of space. The town we were connected to had to have a fueling station.
On the way down to the docking arm, I walked past the sole medical officer on the vessel. Body modifications have come a long way from the tattoos and steel piercings of the earlier 2000s as the scientific and medical fields progressed exponentially. The body modifications on the medical officer made him look feral. Longer canine teeth that poked out of his mouth when he closed it, eyes that glowed eerily in the dim hallways, muscles that bulged under his clothes.
His demeanor always had me wondering how in the hell he got into medicine when he obviously looked more suited as a club bouncer or a tattoo artist. Anyone unlucky enough to be his patient would be scared out of their mind. I completely understand why I had to hold down the engineer so he could be sewn up and given a Tetanus shot.
“Ah, security officer Metron.” He stopped me. “I never got to thank you for helping me stem the bleeding on engineer Sinons. Quite a feisty devil, ain’t he?” His canine grin became more pronounced as he spoke.
“Yeah.” I laughed. “Its sad he can’t get anesthetics.”
The medical officer rubbed his chin, pondering. “Heart problems I believe.”
Even his accent sounded animalistic, like a panther in the jungle. It would sound much more unsettling if he had a slight pur and moved like a large feline.
His appearance and sly voice began to get to me, putting me on edge and making eye contact hostile.
“That’s right.” It was difficult to keep the edge from seeping into my voice. His eyes narrowed involuntarily at my snappy retort.
“Now now, there’s no need to act like I’m some sketchy chem dealer.” He looked dramatically wounded at the thought.
“Sorry. Frayed nerves from the flight in,” I sighed, trying to release some built up stress. “but it turned out alright. I’ll have to inspect the hull after we refuel.”
He grinned like a wolf again, “As the chief security officer, you never really get a break, do you?”
His joke failed to calm me. Instead, it did the opposite and made me feel even more tense and edgy. I sighed again, desperately trying to relieve some of the tension building in my body.
“Yeah. Always have to be involved in everyone elses’ business.”
He blinked, as if an epiphany had just hit him, “Ah, I just remembered why I came over here. Another ‘accident’ in engineering involving two very upset grease monkeys and a sharp pipe. I’ll talk to you later, officer Metron. Stop by and see me later about those nerves. I know just the remedy.” He walked past me, grinning his off putting smirk.
“Yeah. Be seeing you.” I continued on my way to-
Hold on. They’re outside. I can hear their gnarled guns spitting slugs.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Lost Caito… No… I was leaving the ship to go get fuel.
I walked down the corridor connecting the orbital docking station to the half city on KBO6. The lobby that the corridor was connected to was wide and bustling with activity. I don’t know why, but I was surprised to see no aliens in the lobby. And a little disappointed. Mankind hasn’t actually found aliens, or left our solar system for that matter, but the child in me was expecting four-legged bugs walking around with toy looking laser guns.
I entered a larger hallway than the one I had disembarked in, and after reading the signs, found myself in the one of the asteroid’s considerable communities of miners, doctors, and manufacturers. After about an hour of searching, I found the humble refueling station.
The fueling station was as boring as could be expected from a place with more people than machinery. The silent door opened on it’s hinges and I stepped in to find an elderly gentleman in grey fatigues reading a datapad, presumably a gearhead’s guide to making a sublight speed driver in your own home. I didn’t notice how quiet it was until I took the first step inside and heard my boot click off the linoleum and my heart beating slowly.
“Hello?” My voice sounded extremely loud in the confined space and made the man bounce with the look of one who just heard a gunshot.
“Oh my goodness. You scared me!” He held his chest in a comic’s representation of a heart attack and wheezed out a friendly laugh. “How can I help you?” He asked, returning his hand to his side and setting the datapad on the counter.
I took a few more steps in and closed the door behind me.
“Yeah. I need you to fill up the auxiliary and main fuel tanks on the cargo ship in hanger 7B.” He nodded and typed some things into the computer terminal on the counter. His typing stopped dead as he looked up at me warily.
“I’m afraid I can’t touch that one. Says here it’s being searched by the officials.”
I looked from him to the terminal and sprinted out the door, back the way I came and found myself back in the main lobby in a matter of minutes. Just as would be expected, there were two police officers standing on either side of the corridor where the vessel was docked.
Showing my badge to the officers as I approached, they tensed up.
“I’m the security chief of this ship, so if you would kindly tell me why the thing is being searched, that would be great.” My voice had more annoyance in it than I wanted but it got results.
The one officer on the left stepped forward and investigated my badge.
“You are harboring a criminal on this vessel, sir. Please wait while he is found and detained.”
After a short dispute with the police officers, I decided I might as well pull my rank, and try to see if they would take the bluff. If they didn’t take the piss, I’d have to resort to violence or bothersome arguing. Both alternatives would send me bottom up in a worse spot than this simple verbal fencing.
They did indeed take the bluff, thinking I had some sort of control over them, and reluctantly let me walk past to the docked cargo ship. Not the brightest of human specimens, I thought.
There was a huge commotion at the end of the corridor. It appeared as though there was a riot going on, with a vast amount of miners shouting and raising their fists in the air, and a large amount of policemen, holding them back as passively as possible with firearms and shock batons.
I hurried my pace and soon found myself under the glare of scores of miners. I tried shouting over the noise at everyone and anyone.
“Hey! Calm down!” Though my voice had no real affect on the crowd of angry men, a gunshot from behind me quieted the mob while at the same time making me duck instinctively.
Everyone shut right up and calmed down as a burly individual from the front row held his gut for a minute before hitting the ground with a wet thud. I turned around to see who had committed the murder and found myself looking at a beautiful brown haired women with a very pissed off look on her face. Oddly enough, the angry look didn’t appear to be an anomaly, like she was used to being mad at someone all the time.
“Who wants to go to the morgue next?” Her voice was sharp and full of authority, loud enough to be heard by those in the back of the crowd. The crowd didn’t answer, but instead remained attentive to her words. “Nobody? Shame.” She holstered her handgun and stepped up to the crowd. “You will all be processed in due time. There is a criminal in your midst and we hope to find him so that everyone can go back to doing their jobs.”
This was the second time the criminal was mentioned today and I was confused. It must have shown on my face, for when she turned around to speak to me, a look of annoyance marred her looks. “Who are you?”
I straightened up. “I am the security chief of this ship. You said something about a criminal?” She let out a huff of bemusement as a trickle of miners began to flow past us.
“You obviously aren’t doing your job if I’m down here fixing your mess.” The prod at my ability to find a criminal made me blush with an anger only a woman could bring up in me.
“You do realize I could’ve handled it, right?” I snapped back at her with the childish retort, even though I realized I had needed her help.
“You had your chance to handle it before you got here. Now it’s time to let the big dogs take a go. ” My jaw clenched involuntarily.
“Do you even know who you’re looking for?” The question was expected, I noted, as she pulled a datapad from her pocket and brought up a name I was familiar with.
“A certain Zyrasi Heloto. He’s a redhead so he shouldn’t be too hard to find.” She showed me the black and white picture of the criminal. I knew who he was from the murders he committed above Earth, sneaking onto an exploratory ship and killing its crew of twelve, slowly and methodically with a sharp pipe.
“So how are you going to find him? He probably changed his features.” I asked the question skeptically.
“We’ve got his DNA in the system.” She said with confidence, gesturing behind her at the officers taking blood and scanning it on a small device.
“Well, sounds like you’ve got this under control. Now, if you could allow the ship to refuel, that’d be nice.” She turned back around from watching the flow of people from the vessel, and looked at me with her brown eyes.
“I’m sorry, but until we find this guy, your ship is getting detained and staying right here. The crew is still onboard-” A voice coming from her earpiece interrupted her.
Without saying a word of departure, she walked past me, ignoring the line of miners to her left. I watched her go, entranced by her swaying hips in the tight grey uniform.
I looked back at the trickle of people leaving the ship, and at the officers setting up yellow tape around the corpse of the one miner. I don’t think I’m getting paid until they find Zyrasi.
I walked back to the small township that contained the spaceport lobby. Finding a bar shouldn’t be too hard. I looked down the well lit street to see a bright green neon sign reading “Pub” staring back at me.
Entering the bar had no fee but everything on the menu was costly to anyone who was in the marginal range of a miner’s pay grade. Cheap grain alcohol and sandwiches covered the hanging menu, nothing over six credits. Must be a piss poor job digging rock up all day to get paid a few credits and sent home with a sore back, I thought with a smirk.
It didn’t look like the pilot was buying the beers like he joked about so I decided to grab a glass of whiskey, on the rocks, I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. There was some mysterious string of murders being investigated on the day old news feed. They were brutal and were happening in another domed community on the other side of the asteroid. The crime scene was messy and violent, strewn with sawn off limbs and disemboweled halves of corpses.
My own living bowels started to get to me so I made my way through the crowded pub and went to the restroom that had a plastic man on the door. It was grimy and filled with and kinds of scrawlings, from the age old pun “The joke is in your hands.” found in such establishments, to the phone number of some unlucky guy who was going to get a lot of phone calls asking for a good time.
There was no way I’d use the toilets here if they were as dirty as the room, but I predicted they were even less sanitary.
I left the restroom and sat down at the bar table, catching the eye of a cheap floozy, who smiled and waved sheepishly. Not tonight, I thought bitterly. The only thing I’m leaving with is a sideways walk and a song on my lips.
I was just about to order another glass, when the manager started yelling at everyone to get out. Something about an attack somewhere in our dome and martial law soon to befall the population. The wide room cleared out slowly but with a loud retort of remarks coming from the customers. I stood, ready to leave the bar but everyone else didn’t seem to take him seriously, and they stood around aimlessly or sat sipping their drinks and laughing. He yelled again and started shoving people out, not even bothering to take the drinks from their hands.
Confused, and drunken patrons left the bar grumbling about drinks left behind, gambling bets unpaid, and cheap prostitutes untaken. The street cleared quicker than the bar, leaving me alone and feeling a gnawing chill creep up my spine. Since when did bars close at 19:00? I guess he was serious about the martial law thing.
A shudder ran through my body, either from the cold or from the thought of martial law and it’s harsh effects on me.
I tried to ignore the shudder in my bones and saw a sign down the dark street that advertised “Motel” in dim blue fluorescent. It looks like as good a place as any to take a load off.
Chapter One
A loud noise awoke me from my troubled slumber. I sat up from the sweat soaked sheets and looked at the door, a concerned expression crossing my face.
The nightmare that was filling my head, was almost as bad as the sight of the titanium alloy door crumpling inward. The material was a recently created mixture of several tons of metal melted together to make a tough metal that tanks were primarily crafted out of. And this tough material was crumpling inward like an aluminum can!
All I could do was sit, naked and weaponless, and watch as a small rent appeared in the center of the door. A glowing, serpentine eye stared back at me, full of malice and the intent to murder.
The eye disappeared and a final blow made the rent turn into a gaping hole. A large black shape, several feet taller than a man, flowed into the room with a liquid-like grace.
It stood there, menacingly and a puff of steam came from beneath the pair of glowing xanthous eyes. I felt a tremor in my bowels and a cold hand grip my guts. My bladder threatened to release before a voice called down the hall.
“Get back here you big green freak!” A burst of loud popping noises followed the call, deafening me and making a loud ringing flood my senses. I identified them as gun shots.
The creature grumbled its annoyance and turned around, with the same fluidity of a snake moving through sand. I was trying to get my body to respond when another silhouette, smaller than the nightmare thing, rounded the doorway and pointed it’s arm at the larger one. Another bright burst of gun shots brought the giant shadow to a crumpled heap.
The lights flooded the room and blinded me. In the doorway stood a scrawny man wielding a submachine gun. His eyes held the same malice as the beast’s, but with lanky human features making the malice seem less murderous towards me.
He focused on me, the anger leaving his taut face for the moment.
“Oh hell, are you alright?” The question hit my frozen mind with a wave of heat and compassion. My body started to respond, first with my voice, then with my legs jumping out of the bed and standing shakily on the carpet.
“F-far from it. What is that thing?” The voice sounded like mine but it was distant.
He said something, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the giant corpse occupying the center of the room. I refuse to believe what my traitorous eyes are seeing. This green lizard thing just bashed in my door and almost eviscerated me.
“What?” I looked over at him. He walked up to me and rested a hand on my shoulder.
“No idea. Do you have a weapon?” He asked slowly. A small chuckle escaped from me, sounding dismayed. I shook my head and continued staring at the monstrous corpse.
It was covered in green scales, and was peppered with red holes, draining blood onto the already crimson carpet. It’s body was human looking with the two arms and two legs covered in relaxed, but well defined muscle attached to a torso. It was as wide as the doorway, and almost twice as tall as a man. The beast had three fingers, each ending in a long greyish nail that looked as sharp as a scalpel. The wide green head had a small ear hole on each side. The two eyes were closed, looking fleshy and soft on the corpse. It’s maw was sticking out of the front of it’s skull at a slight distance, giving it a dinosaur look.
It tensed up and released a death moan, causing the man and I to jump, startled. He kept his distance from it and blasted another volley of 5mm rounds into it’s massive skull.
“They just don’t like staying down, do they?” He asked sarcastically.
I looked up at him, “They?” My voice was a bit higher pitched than what I would've preferred. He nodded a grim reply to my question and gestured to the steel wardrobe.
“Get dressed and find a gun.” Now that he mentioned it, getting dressed did sound like a good idea.
Slipping into my tight fitting security outfit, I cursed my job for not giving me a firearm to have on company orders. The thought of a weapon never crossed my mind for me to buy one with my own funds.
The guy waited for me outside my room and looked over as I exited.
“Ready?” He asked impatiently.
I nodded and we set off down the hallway. At the end of it was a set of stairs and a lot of gunfire.
The lobby was complete havoc, the hulking lizard beasts hiding behind anything they could, blocking the doorway to salvation. A few humans were also utilizing random strong points for cover, trading projectiles with the aliens, who were throwing anything heavy or sharp.
There were only a few firearms passed between the human side, and they were in constant use. There was a single pistol firing from the alien side. It’s wielder was sitting behind a wide pillar, ducking out and blasting pink spray from anyone who wasn’t behind cover in time. Its odd three fingered grip on the sidearm would've been comical had it not been using it on the only protection I had between me and it.
I was glancing from behind the wall at the top of the stairs leading to the rooms, trying to stay hidden from the skirmish below me but my has-been savior jumped out of cover and started gaining aggro firing his weapon on full-auto, screaming a war cry at the creatures.
A massive green arm flashed around the corner of a hallway on the first floor, and from it came a large chunk of concrete.
The projectile was aimed at my gun crazed accomplice, but it went wide and flew directly at my unprotected face. I couldn't duck back in time, and paid for it with blood. My cheek split open, as I fell backwards from the force of the blow. The wound throbbed painfully as blood spit onto the tiled floor.
Standing up, I held my cheek to stop the blood from flowing freely. I took another glance around the corner just in time to see the knapper beast fly backwards as it was hit with a shotgun blast, orange and red insides splattering the window behind it. Serves it right for making me bleed.
Red and blue lights strobed against the windows, accompanied by loud sirens.
A few harsh, combat heated minutes ticked by and the front doors crashed inward. Heavily armed police officers stormed inside. A surprised demeanor washed over the alien's ranks a moment before they died in a blaze of gunfire. The large shotguns and slender machine guns of the armored police unit proved much more effective on the beasts than the remnants of the motel staff and the patron’s weaponry.
I decided it was time to leave when the police fired on the cheering humans as well.
They didn't even fight back, too shocked or too stupid to put up any resistance. Running back down the hallway, away from the lobby, I climbed through the hole in my room’s door. The stench of dead reptile accompanied by the acrid smell of congealed blood, caught me off guard, causing my gag reflex to kick in and my hand to cover my nose instantly.
I looked over the room, trying to find a heavy object to smash out the glass window. Finding no such thing, I decided to just jump into it and see if that worked.
As it turns out, I ended up shattering the window in one bone jarring blow. I plunged harshly to the floor, landing on my dominant, right shoulder. A sharp pain flooded my senses, making coherent thought next to impossible.
It took several, precious seconds before the pain became bearable enough to stand up and many more seconds to squelch the pain enough to walk.
The streets were barren, fires lighting up the night in place of street lights. I looked around. Where are the street lights anyway? A few were lit but several were missing for some reason.
A sonic boom above me caught my attention. I looked up in time to see a ship through the massive plastic dome, the engines sputtering as it flew away from the orbital docking arm. A few seconds later they died out, leaving the ship to fall towards the massive asteroid’s surface.
I blinked in shocked astonishment when it hit the ground, leaving a trail of metal. I watched the ship’s hull buckle and roll across the rocky terrain. A collective howl sounded throughout the dying city. The victorious scream didn’t sound human. It sounded reedy and high pitched, like an insect or a bird.
I shuddered and looked back up at the docking arm, connected to the asteroid by several anchored corridors, one of them being the one that I had entered the settlement in. There were a handful of ships still docked at it. One of the dark shapes had to be my ride off this doomed rock.
Making my way towards the building that served as a starport, I noticed there were no people. Anywhere. The creeping silence made my instinct kick in, causing an undying need to get off the street to block any rational thought. I heard some chittering noises around the corner and ducked into a jewelry store noisily. The lights were off, so that was a plus, and no alarms went off that I could discern at the immediate area. Something that did strike me as alarming, was the barrel of a large rifle pointing at my face.
“Come in slow and easy.” The voice wheezed slowly and quietly. “No need to make a scene for the beasties to pick up on.”
I heard the creatures round the corner, smashing a car, or rather a small vehicle made of steel pipes and rubber that passes for a car on the outskirts of humanity, and screeching at each other in their insectine language.
Nodding to my unseen attacker and raising my hands slowly, I moved forward to escape the light of the street.
My eyes began to adjust to the dim jewelry store. It was devoid of any rings, watches, necklaces, earrings or other objects commonly sold at these establishments. I was surprisingly calm considering I was in a dark room with a violant man and a gun pointing in my face.
“Tha’s a good boy. Slow and easy.”
“Just throw him back out to the wolves.” The voice sounded strong, smooth, and confident. It came from the darkness.
Fear of death gripped my guts and caused my vision to blur with sudden adrenaline. Just when I thought I’d be fighting a losing battle to keep my right to the hiding spot, a third voice, deep and guttural, rumbled a chastisement, interrupting my thoughts and causing a shudder to pass through my bones.
“You two can’t be this dumb. If we throw him out, they’ll know we’re here.”
The two voices tried to stammer out a response before the creatures outside drew closer to the storefront, shutting them up.
I was herded to the back of the large room, the three men keeping low and quiet.
Using my time wisely, knowing it was running out with every second that ticked away, I studied their bodies for any weaknesses I could use.
The short one with the rifle was old and decrepit. He was a good 4 feet tall, hunched and the weakest physically of them all. His hair was cut too short to have any color, and he moved with a limber gait, which showed his age nicely. Only thing I’d need to worry about was the steel rifle in his white knuckled grip.
The other man, the one that wanted to force me back out onto the dark streets to die, was a few years older than me, 30 maybe, and had hair that wasn’t as close to a buzz cut as the old man was. He had the build of a thug, crouch-walking like an experienced soldier. His shoulders were broad and set back in a confident manner that said he was too full of himself and thought like how he looked. I’d need to worry about him more than the old man, even if he was unarmed, he would put up a fight that might break a few bones and leave me in a bad spot when I left.
I didn’t see the third voice, the grumbling, animalistic one that sounded like a dangerous animal.
Keeping my head facing the door, I scanned the room, trying to find him so I could best assess how to handle him when the shit hit the fan.
My eye caught something, massive and slow, move from the pitch black corner of the room to my right. At first I went pale, my blood freezing in my veins, thinking it was one of the lizard things coming out to kill everyone in the room. The truth of the situation was just as frightening when it was a human.
The third and final man, if he can be called a man, was 8 feet tall but not wide, making him seem awkward and unsettling. His hair was a dull red, signifying he was one of the few redheads left alive in the massive human gene pool. His shoulders were slouched and he moved slowly, much like an elephant. He made no attempt to hide behind the counters like the other two, either too stupid to know to hide, or too uncaring to worry about them.
He turned to face me, and I felt even more unsettled by his eyes. They were violet. Bright and full of intelligence and cognitive processes I don’t want to think about, they fit well with his pale face.
Any thought of fighting my way out left me when I realized this was Zyrasi Heloto. The criminal that stowed away on the FS-1224. The criminal that slaughtered the entire crew of the explorer vessel. The criminal that soon would be slaughtering me, using my blood as bait to draw in the lizard beasts so that he could break their necks and use their skulls as soup bowls.
He did the last thing I would ever expect him to do. He crouched down to stare me in the eyes and his voice was soft as he asked me a question a criminal shouldn’t be asking.
“You okay?” There was the same rumbling growl that came out every time he opened his mouth to speak.
I am no fool, I’ve dealt with criminals since I was sixteen and the last thing I wanted to do was respond. I just stared back at him, right in his bright violet eyes, knowing any sign of a response would mean my death.
He sighed, sounding like a great beast that was preparing to wake from it’s slumber, and stood up, his figure silhouetted by the dim light from the street.
I looked around beside me to find a door. An alley sat behind it, additionally my freedom and a use for all this adrenaline in the form of sprinting for my life. I would pray that I don’t catch a bullet in the back but I choose not to accept The Religion.
Quickly looking back, I saw that the green creatures outside were still lingering in front of the jewelry store. The trio of madmen were crouched in the darkness, opting to remain silent rather than fight the handful of killing machines outside.
Now is my chance, I thought as I crawled towards the door on all fours.
The door wasn’t locked but it was poorly greased, creaking in the dead silence and turning all eyes on me. Instead of freezing in the gaze of man and beast alike, I dived out the door and stood up.
The air outside in the dome was cold and light. This is really bad. The dome was leaking it’s carefully processed air into the silent vacuum of space.
I slammed the door shut and ran with all the energy my body could muster. There was an excited howl from the front of the store and glass shattered. Men screamed and several gunshots came from within, followed by several pained inhuman screams.
I ran down the dark alley, panting like I sprinted on the top of a mountain. The air was getting seriously thin. This is a terrible decision to make by whichever side had killed off the air recycler.
My newest and most important objective was to find a hazardous environment suit or vehicle. If aliens were attacking, there had to be some substantial military power trying to take control of the situation. That means that there had to be some extreme condition equipment. Each building had its own oxygen recycle equipment but I couldn’t spent the rest of my few days alive cowering inside of a building waiting for the power to shut off, suffocating me in a steel tomb, or the aliens to come find me and use my shins as toothpicks.
The oxygen regulation building was outside the dome but if I could get there, I might be able to fix whatever mess was killing the already dying city. The controls shouldn’t be hard to use. Unless they were smashed, in which case, the city would be living on oxygen tanks and willpower.
I stepped out of the alley and right into the path of a squad of soldiers. They raised their automatic rifles, surprised, but soon lowered them after they realized I was human and didn’t pose a threat. I was already wincing from my sprained right shoulder and hungry enough that I had pains in my stomach. I wouldn’t be able to fight them if I wanted to.
My bleak state didn’t stop them from being tense, ready to put me down if I showed any signs of breaking the awkward silence. The only thing I could hear was the sound of their suits pumping fresh but stale air into their masks that were sealed tight to their skin.
The suits were the crimson red of the asteroid community’s military. Each planet and community had their own colors and weaponry, depending on the government and economy of the planet or community. These suits were simple but well maintained, no pockmarks or blemishes could be seen in the plastic armor.
Ever since the early 21 century, the invention of a machine that used computer generated blueprints to make a three dimensional object of plastic allowed humanity to create things out of the cheap and tough material. Ever since then, guns, decorations, figures, and anything else a person wanted to make were creatable with the push of a button.
Taking great leaps to better this machine, Gunfry Helson made an industrial version, which made stronger creations at a cheaper cost. The Helson machine has been in use since 2034 and was used by governments and military factions to mass produce weapons, armor, and vehicles.
The brand name could be seen on the inside of the groin of the suits of armor, a degrading place for the now dead man who made the armor a possibility.
One of the suited soldiers stepped forward and addressed me.
“Citizen. Come with us to be questioned and taken to safety.” The words came through the bronze plastic mask as clear as if it wasn’t on his face.
He spoke to me slow, and used working man words, as if I was a simpleton.
“I’m not being detained and I sure as hell am not going anywhere.”
To this day, I have no idea why I said this when all I wanted was to be home in Pennsylvania, sipping fine vodka and watching the military kill off the aliens from the safety and comfort of my couch.
“It wasn’t a request.” His voice was slow and threatening.
The body language of the squad told me that they were ready to take me in by force. They didn’t have the chance though, as one of them hit the ground. I didn’t know why, but I did hear something strange a nanosecond before he died. It sounded like and elderly person ran a marathon and then spit out a marble.
The blood from the wound spattered onto the concrete sidewalk as the men ducked and raised their weapons.
More of the puffing, spitting noises came from all directions, echoing in the dark expanse of the street. The sidewalk exploded in several places, looking like insects were having a war, dust and concrete spurting into the chilled air.
I crouched and looked for the source of the gunfire. There was a slender green reptile leaning out a window down the street from us, in the eighth floor of an apartment building in an intersection. Its yellow eyes glinted above a gray, gnarled object a little longer than my forearm, and looking like a dead tree branch. Gray powder puffed out the end as it fired from the elevated position.
“There!” I pointed and cried out.
“I see him.” A short suited soldier acknowledged my warning and raised his gun at the lizard man firing on us.
Another soldier went down, his shining mask of plastic exploding inward as he crumpled to the ground. Three suited men left before I was defenseless.
Another fell. The remaining pair of soldiers started to run towards the colorless apartment building. I followed, thinking I was safer with them than on my own.
The lithe green reptile in the window continued to fire a few more inaccurate shots before ducking inside as a hail of fire hit the wall around it, punching small holes in the structure and causing a spray of dust and sparks to spit from the steel wall.
The soldiers and I reached the door to the apartment in a matter of seconds, easily covering ground when there was nothing shooting at us.
One of the men kicked in the hinged door with ease, making it look easy even though I know how hard it is. They must have been training when there was no need for an active military force.
We entered the dark building, moving silently. I realized at this time, I should’ve taken a rifle from one of the corpses. I cursed my stupidity even more as a burst of fire came from the end of the hallway, the lack of muzzle flash disorienting my basic knowledge.
We ducked, I opted to lay prone. The faceless soldiers returned fire down the pale, unlit corridor but didn’t hit anything. If they did, the alien sharpshooter was good at biting down a bullet wound so it didn’t make a noise when the lead hit home.
They charged, firing as they ran in a crouched sprint. I remained laying down. One of them stopped firing, his body hitting the ground in two pieces. The other masked trooper looked down, confusion was all he felt a second before his head was removed from his shoulders. The headless body stayed standing, blood spitting up into the air from it’s stump of a neck. The corpse fell, the armor clattering against the tiled floor.
I laid and watched in utter helplessness and watched the soldiers fall. They were at the end of the corridor so there wasn’t a chance in the void I was getting my hands on one of their weapons.
My eyes caught a glimpse of an orange blur, moving fast and then halting in between the dismembered bodies. It’s head looked down at the blood gushing from the mortal wounds on the bodies. The orange shape had the head of a fox. The body was covered in orange hair but was so human it was uncanny. I couldn’t do anything but stare at the creature. At the blood dripping from the blades in it’s hands. The new alien beast wasn’t brutish like the lizards. It was lithe, slender, moved in ways only an animal could pull off.
The other scrawny alien, the lizard, stepped around the corner to study the fresh kills. Luck was on my side, the hallway was dark, the soldiers posed a bigger threat, and I was laying on the ground, all three factors making my detection next to impossible. But I wouldn’t dare move, lest the creatures did figure out there was an entity watching them. They did ,however, grunt at each other. The lizard hissing and the fox man yipping. The fox thing laughed in a feminine way and nodded in my direction.
I held my breath and awaited the lizard’s gun to spit a round at me and burst my skull like an over ripe cantaloupe, but instead, the fox sheathed the blades in its animalistic hands. I hadn’t noticed until it had done so, but it was wearing a belt or a sash around its waist. It proceeded to pull a small box off the belt and hit a button on it. The building shook and the duo of freaks ran back the way they came.
I waited a few moments and got up. Running back down the stairs I hiked up, I was too happy to get away with my life and had forgot to equip a rifle from one of the soldier’s bodies....... |
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