Date point: 4y 10m 1w 2d AV
“How many are after us!?” Captain Williams demanded of his pilot.
Frantically scanning the displays in front of her, Kayla replied loudly, “At least ten or more! Can we call for help from the other team?!”
Alarms were screaming all over the ship, warning them of coil gun fire streaking past them, and becoming more shrill when slaver vessels made strafing runs at them.
“Negative! We’re too far out! The Shasta and the Whitney have only got each other! Options, pilot!?” Williams shouted, forcing back panic as he realized how truly doomed they were.
It was the co-pilot, Ryan, who answered, screaming, “The nebula is our only option! We might be able to shake them in there!”
Looking out the window of the front viewport, all three of them could see the ocean of gas laid out below them, seemingly writhing with movement and color, steadily rising to form a peak of glowing pink gasses, dwarfing the human’s own solar system.
It was the only thing in the area that looked like it might be cover, as flashes of explosions were seen every other second within the ocean of light below them and he didn’t like the idea of finding a supernova down there.
Before caving and giving the order, Captain Williams chanced a second to glance at the readouts in the workstation.
A roiling cloud of ships was harassing both his and his sister ship, as both ship’s security crews fought back desperately with inferior firepower.
The ships were faster than them, and clearly had more experience at this kind of attack. Only clever flying, on Kayla’s part, and blind luck had kept them from being torn in half.
But, luck was running out.
Every few seconds, a coil shot would scream past them, closer than the one that preceded it.
“Take us in!” Williams relented.
Desperation had forced him to escape into an unknown.
The thought that he might be killing his entire crew stabbed through his thoughts.
4y 11m 2w 6d AV
“180 degrees during the day, at sea level. Minus 20 degrees during the night. Gravity is 1.3G’s, with 34 hours in one day. Very few life signs on the surface.” Ted was reading off grimly, still staunchly against traveling down to the planet.
Shrugging slightly, Robert said, “They could still be alive. Their ship could take those temperatures easily.”
Unfazed by Robert’s remark, Ted continued reading, “Ocean acidity levels are twenty times that of Earth. The oceans on this planet are dead. Signs of plant life are not seen under 5000 feet above sea level. Scans of the atmosphere reveal a poisoning of the air, stemming from deep cracks around the main crater.”
Rather more quiet than before, Robert asked, “What kind of poisoning? Is the air still breathable at all?”
Face twitching with annoyance at the question, Ted replied with, “Sulphur levels are rising to amounts that preclude life from forming. Levels near the ocean surface indicate that no life can exist below several thousand feet above sea level, like I’ve already said.”
Tricko listened to the human scientist words with an ever increasing sense of foreboding.
Looking to Frank in undisguised incredulity, he asked, “And you expect us to go down there? You understand that in 180 degree heat, I will literally begin to cook.”
Ignoring the remark, Frank asked Ted, “If this planet is so bad, how can this world be any form of habitable? A class 14 is still ‘livable’ isn’t it?”
A short bark of laughter escaped Ted, who answered, “There are small micro climates of life dotted over the surface, in places that are above the reach of the poisoned atmosphere. Some plant life has survived, and some is even thriving at the highest levels of altitude on the planet. Likely the only remaining fauna is concentrated there.”
Ryst looked out at the brown ball of dust, covered in scars, below them, marveling at how utterly destroyed this world was.
Thinking about going down there scared him. But, he was not going to allow anyone else to know that.
“What are the highest altitudes, then?” Frank asked.
Not even looking at his screens any more, Ted replied dully, “The Mega-Mountain Range that formed on the direct opposite side of the planet from the main crater. Shockwaves from the impact pushed tectonic plates together with force they were never intended to experience. A mountain range the size of the United States formed there. The tallest peak is two times the size of Olympus Mons.”
Whistling, Robert said, “I guess we know where we’re headed.”
4y 10m 1w 2d AV
Clouds of thin pink gasses were breaking all around them as they pushed deeper into the nebula, both human ships flying belly to belly, exposing as much battlespace as possible to their coil guns.
But, they needn’t have bothered.
The ships that had been chasing them had fallen away the moment that they’d passed through the border of the nebula.
Red flags were appearing everywhere in Captain Williams’s mind.
Why did they give up? Is this what they’d wanted? What was waiting for them in here?
“Kayla, make us as silent as possible. No mistakes. Something is wrong.” Williams whispered in the silence of the now quiet flight deck.
Feeling the same sense of unease, Kayla did as she was told, relaying the orders to the Shasta, flying beneath them.
Lights turned off, life support was set to minimum, and indicators flashed telling the crew to buckle in before the gravity turned off as well.
“The engines too, pilot.” Williams said.
Ryan protested, saying they wouldn’t be able to steer with the engines silent, but Kayla obeyed before Ryan could finish his sentence.
Continuing to whisper, Williams said, “Drop a beacon, and set it to exit the nebula and begin broadcasting after the enemy ships have gone from the system. I want it to tell the other two ships in this sector what’s happened. Just in case.”
Afraid to break the silence that began to stretch within the flight deck, Kayla’s voice was shaky as she asked, “In case of what?”
“What was that!?” Ryan hissed, his blood turning to ice.
All three people on board the deck went silent as the grave, as they looked out the front viewport.
A shadow crossed in front of their ship and, for a half-second, a glimmer of copper was visible.
“Kayla, get that beacon ready right now.” Williams said, lips barely moving with how quietly he was speaking.
Working quickly, Kayla did as she was told, activating only enough systems to do the job.
Just as the beacon was ready for deployment, Dr. Bakr opened the door to the room, making all three occupants nearly jump out of their seat restraints.
Relying on implants, as the ship’s translating computers were shut down, Bakr asked in nervous Arabic, “What is going on? We are all very terrified back here. Are we safe? Did we escape?”
Only Ryan had a translation implant, who hissed, “Get back to your seat! It isn’t s-”
Intense and blindingly white lightning erupted outside the viewport, and suddenly the monsters were upon them.
Large coppery creatures, with many limbs, were swarming around them, materializing from out of the mist. Heavy impacts could be heard all around the ship, and a large dent formed in the ceiling of the flight deck as another copper monster slammed into them.
“DROP THE BEACON AND GO! BRYSON, JENNINGS, FORESTER, TRY TO USE THE GUNS TO SHAKE THEM OFF!” Captain Williams screamed.
Kayla had already punched the ship forward, shaking several creatures off on her own.
Beacon away, she only had one job.
Survive the lightning.
Crisscrossing everywhere in front of her, a web of deadly light surrounded them, pulsating with each fresh wave of power.
Diving from opening to opening, she steered clear of death by millimeters as previously open paths kept closing themselves off with a new arc of lightning.
The Whitney’s security detail, Captain Bryson, and his two men, were throwing every coil gun, kinetic weapon and plasma cannon they had at the creatures with abandon, accidentally scoring deep marks into the hull, in order to uproot the snake-like monsters.
But, it was a quickly losing battle.
The creatures were tearing through the hull with plasma cutters mounted to what passed for mouths. Then, using their many limbs, they were widening gaps in the metal and trying to dig into the ship. More were landing with every passing moment, and everyone on board knew that death was imminent.
They couldn’t even tell what was happening with the Shasta any more, and had no idea if they were even still alive.
“I’m sorry everyone. We’re dead.” Captain Williams said, miserably.
Alarms screeched as the cargo bay was exposed to hard vacuum.
4y 11m 2w 6d AV
“Alright, we have to be smart about this. We are not here to sight-see. We’ve come to identify a crash site, if there is one, and collect either the survivors or their bodies. We also have to remove all the hard drives from the wreckage along with the Black Box.” Frank said, reiterating the plan they’d decided on.
Standing in the cargo bay, the whole crew seemed to be gearing up to go to war.
Ryst and Tricko certainly seemed to be of that mind, as they carried multiple weapons on their extreme survival suits. Outfitted with two pulse pistols each, the smallest pulse rifles they possessed, and two fusion blades each, they wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Sci-Fi action movie.
Robert’s face was carved of stone as he buckled his T.A.S.E.R. to his hip, not looking at any of the others.
Thinking over what they were about to do, he wrestled with his thoughts and concerns, worried that his weapon wouldn’t be of any lethal use against a deathworld species.
Steeling himself, and taking a quick breath, he shoved aside his feelings about the origins of his own Fusion Sword and retreated to his room to grab it.
Returning after a few seconds, both Tricko and Ryst watched Robert improvise a sling for it and strap it to his back.
If they either recognized or disapproved of the slaver weapon, they made no mention of it.
Ted, on the other hand, demanded Frank’s shotgun, if he was to set foot on the planet.
After several minutes argument, Frank had caved, under the condition that Ted learned proper use and safety of it.
The mood on the ship was not good as they all stood, prepared for battle.
A battle, not against an enemy, but with nature itself.
“Alright, there are some things you should know about the things we might find on a world like this.” Ted suddenly said, slightly pale and sweating in the chilly cargo bay.
Turning to him, they gave him their undivided attention, trusting that he knew what he was talking about.
Hesitating at their concentration, he began, “A world like this, by any means, has very little food for anything to eat. We will likely be walking into one of the most dangerous areas in the galaxy. That means several things for us. The first being, we will likely be the largest creatures here.”
“That’s good, right?” Ryst asked.
Continuing, Ted answered, “Yes and no. Yes, as we will likely to be able to overpower anything that comes our way, as long as we see it coming. The no part comes from the possible attributes of the small animals. It is possible that life on this planet has recently evolved under the fact that when food does come near it, it cannot afford to let it get away. And that, means venom and fangs. Very powerful venom and fangs.”
Everyone in the cargo bay was looking at Ted still, going over the implications in their head.
“But,” Tricko replied, “we have survival suits. Surely they wouldn’t be able to bite through the protective layers, right?”
Ted became suddenly flustered as he said, “No. Stop with that line of thinking. We are going to the most dangerous planet that has ever been discovered! I cannot begin to truly imagine what is waiting for us down there. There could be animals the size of dinosaurs! The plant life could be mobile and carnivorous! For fucks sake, I couldn’t even tell you if there will be forms of life that will be analogous to anything else in the known galaxy! You cannot assume anything on this world! That is the reason I don’t want to go down there!”
Frank protested, saying, “But, you just told us we’ll probably be the biggest things down there! And to watch out for small creatures! So you must know some things!”
Frustration boiling over, Ted began pacing and muttering.
“I told you what I think might be waiting, given the information I have. But, this planet is a complete wild card. We shouldn’t treat this like a dangerous ‘go-fetch mission’, Frank. We should treat it like a raid on an enemy base, with weapons up and ready at all times.” The pacing man replied, still obviously agitated.
Standing in the cargo bay, all members of the crew were beginning to finally grasp what the scientist was saying.
And why he was scared.
4y 10m 1w 2d AV
Against all reason and logic, the crew of the Whitney were still alive, and still fighting.
From nowhere, the Shasta had swooped down, miraculously unhindered by the creatures, guns blazing.
Too scared to use coil guns on their own sister ship, every kinetic weapon, meant for ground infantry, was firing as quickly as possible on the ship below them, trying to tear the creatures off.
For the briefest of moments, too quick for any of the humans to register, the entire cloud of creatures, surrounding them for miles in every direction, flinched at the intrusion.
Under the combined weight of both ships, one firing everything it had, the other trying not to tear their friends apart, they began to rip the monsters off faster than they could reattach.
On board the Shasta, silence gripped everyone on board except the Captain as he relayed orders to his crew.
Captain James Rickard sat in the commander’s chair behind his two pilots, calling priority targets to his three gunners.
His own pilots, Bryant and Carlson, needed no instruction, as they were performing acrobatics that few could have replicated, keeping the other ship in range, and following the path it took to avoid being fried by lightning.
As he shouted to bring down the copper creature that was trying to widen the gap in the hull of the Whitney, he frantically tried to make sense of what was happening, and simply couldn’t get there.
What were these things? Why did they attack in the first place? Most curiously, why did they attack only one ship?
Answers weren’t forthcoming but, a second later, it no longer mattered.
Both ships were now under attack, the swarm seeming to double in size, and impacts were heard all over the ship. But, at the same time, something miraculous, enough to bring everyone to a stop for a solitary moment, happened.
The thickening clouds of gas parted before them, exposing a vast bubble of clear space, like breaking the surface of the ocean and breathing in clean air.
Only then did both ships truly see what was happening.
Thousands of the creatures surrounded them, swarming like a hive of bees and arcing electricity between themselves.
It was completely futile.
FTL travel was impossible, as they’d slam into the nearest snakelike creature instantly, and escape at sub FTL speeds was laughable.
The lead pilot of both vessels did the same thing without communicating their plan to anyone, and punched it as fast as they could go, deeper into the unnamed star system that they’d found.
Back on the Whitney, Kayla, covered in sweat and shocked they were still alive, shouted, “RYAN, FIND ME SOMEWHERE TO LAND!”
Blindly pushing farther into the system, the ships moved belly to belly again, exposing more battlespace to their weapons, eventually coming so close that they actually crushed several of the creatures between the undersides of the two vessels.
The Whitney had lost pressure in five compartments, and one of the security team, Captain Bryson, had been ejected into space when his battle station had been ripped open.
Shasta still had full pressure, but that wasn’t going to last long.
Seemingly changing tactics, the copper serpents were no longer going for the quick kill. The web of light began to thin, and more of them were landing on the ships, going after engines and trying to sever power conduits.
Both the Whitney and the Shasta lost their FTL drives when lucky shots to power cables overloaded and fried the system. After that, Whitney lost one of their three main kinetic propulsion engines, and the creatures began working on the second.
Suddenly, when hope was truly beginning to die, Ryan screamed, “A PLANET! THERE’S A GARDEN WORLD IN THIS SYSTEM! I’M PUTTING IT ON BOTH SHIP’S NAVIGATION! GO!”
Throwing everything they had into charging forward, both ships launched themselves momentarily out of the cloud of death, but were soon enveloped again. It was like being harried by a swarm of enraged wasps the size of cars.
Still belly to belly, they sped towards the world, and the closer they got, the more frantic the serpents became, beginning to force themselves into the Whitney’s hull, damaging themselves by pushing through openings that were not yet wide enough.
Their situation eventually became untenable, just before they were going to enter the atmosphere of the planet.
Spurred on by the perceived escape of the two ships, the serpents abandoned all thoughts of self preservation and began to kamikaze into them, filling the vessels with the sounds of rending steel and rocking the crew violently.
Captain Williams knew what had to be done, but he first had to find a rendezvous point, if indeed anyone survived this encounter.
He found it with perhaps a minute to spare and blared his words over all frequencies, screaming, “ABANDON SHIP! GET TO THE ESCAPE PODS! ALL PODS HAVE BEEN SET TO LAND IN A MOUNTAIN RANGE UPON THE SURFACE! ABANDON SHIP!”
Several seconds later, the science team’s escaped in their pods, four little ships rocketing away from them before the security and piloting teams did the same.
Both captains were the last one’s off the ships, trying to give the pods cover as they fell to the surface.
It simply wasn’t possible. There were too many.
Realizing that only blind luck would save any of them, Williams jumped out of his own chair and moved as quickly as he could to his own escape pod.
Jettisoning away from his ship, he watched in silent and horrified fascination at the sight of hundreds of the monsters covering his ship, ripping into it with plasma cutters.
But then, something even worse happened.
Every single one of the creatures abandoned their task, and left the two ships as hulking wrecks, slowly drifting down to the same location that the escape pods were now headed.
Instead of finishing off the ships, they came straight at the cluster of life pods.
Without shields, weapons or any other form of defenses, they were as good as dead.
The cloud coming towards him, Williams felt a silent moment of fury at himself for letting this happen. He’d killed himself, his crew and, possibly, any ships that came looking for him. Although, he’d never know the answer to that.
Bracing for the quick and violent death that was soon coming, he hoped that the beacon had been destroyed by the copper serpents.
But, the cloud of monsters broke around his pod, uninterested in him.
Williams blinked stupidly, incapable of understanding.
Then he turned and saw what was happening.
Out of the small view port in the front of his life pod, he saw the cloud split into five swarms. In less than a heartbeat, five explosions lit up the sky of the darkened world below as five of the life pods were destroyed, showing a vast cloud of rock and debris littered above the planet’s atmosphere.
And then, the swarm stopped.
Unbelievably, incomprehensibly, the monsters that had so doggedly tried to kill all of them, became suddenly docile, retracting their many limbs inside the scales of their skin and beginning to glide outwards from the planet, leaving the rest of the humans unharmed.
Not a single soul spoke a word as they watched the serpents leave.
Once his pod had passed below the asteroid filled layers of orbit, Williams allowed himself a shaky and uncomprehending breath.
He had no idea that his troubles were only just starting.
During his time upon the world, he would find himself wishing that he’d been lucky enough to die at the hands of the serpents.