Date point: 4y 10m 1w 3d AV
Jennings’s first instinct was to take charge of the situation, and to ensure the survival of the only other person he’d met on this hellish burnt rock of a planet.
The problem with this instinct was that Kayla Richardson was possibly the most stubborn person that he had ever met.
Barely after getting to his feet, still shaking at the knees, Jennings looked up to see that she was already walking away from him, heading in the direction of a glade of stunted trees, sitting at the base of a large grouping of hills.
Indignant, he began stumbling towards her and shouted, “Hey! Wait up!”
Turning quickly, she glared at him and hissed, “Quiet! Or do you want to lead them straight to us again? There are tunnels all over this valley. We need to get to higher ground. We can talk then.”
Furrowing his brow at being given orders, but cowed by her words, he cast a glance at the canyon that she had just rescued him from and then hurried to catch up to her.
Grumbling to himself, he fell into step behind her, eyes darting in all directions, looking for any signs of movement. Walking behind her, he noticed that the water jug clipped to her backpack was nearly empty. Thinking of the horrendous heat he’d dealt with earlier, very different from the current temperature of twilight, he thought that she must have been rationing the last of it and wondered when was the last time she’d had anything to drink.
Swinging his own pack forward on one of his arms, he reached inside and grabbed the nearly full jug of his own water. Quickening his pace slightly, Jennings tapped her on the shoulder.
Whipping around and glaring daggers at him, Kayla’s eyes snapped onto the water jug he was holding out to her. After a half second’s hesitation, she snatched it from him and took a greedy mouthful, but screwed the cap back on after one gulp and threw it back to him.
Her expression moderately softened, she turned away again and continued walking without comment.
Slightly amused, Jennings fell back into step.
Allowing himself to turn his brain off for a moment, something he’d not been able to do since waking up in his crashed life-pod, he began to scan the surrounding area for movement again, while trying to remember everything he could about Kayla.
Firstly, she was a bitch.
She’d made it perfectly clear, when she’d met the other crew members on board the Whitney, that she was the best pilot any of them had met, and that she was there to work, not to make friends.
Jennings was a bit more relaxed towards people than that, and had figured she put up a hard exterior in an, admittedly effective, attempt to be taken seriously.
He knew for certain that the now deceased Captain Bryson, his commander on the security team, hadn’t thought much of her at first glance, but had changed his tune after working with her.
Captain Bryson’s first glance had consisted of a twenty-six year old woman with black hair, standing at a towering five feet and two inches. Musing on this, it wasn’t so surprising that she was so prickly, being in a career field dominated by men.
Beyond her impressive credentials of being one of the youngest air force pilots in a decade upon her graduation from flight school, Jennings didn’t know much about her, other than that her work ethic was superb. Otherwise, she stayed in her quarters mostly.
The few personal interactions he’d had with her had been brief, and not all together the friendliest.
Still, she was the only other person for god knew how far, and he was going to have to work with her whether he liked it or not.
They were walking through the glade of trees they’d been headed towards, surrounded by sparse grass and soft soil. They were nearly through the trees, and just about to start climbing the hills, when a creature about the size of a mouse, with an odd number of legs and resembling a furry insect crossed their path about five feet in front of them.
Kayla stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of it, and began to take an apprehensive step back from it.
Jennings, trusting her caution, but unsure what the fuss was about, noted that this little creature was the first actual animal, other than the things that tried to kill him earlier, that he had seen since landing.
Speaking to herself, Jennings heard Kayla say softly, “Where there’s one…”
Silently they watched the little creature scuttle across the ground, pushing its way through scraggly grass.
Jennings was just about to ask what the hell they were doing, when an abomination of a creature opened its trapdoor and struck the small creature like lightning, capturing it in its pincers.
With a body the size of a football, sporting a dull brown carapace, it was disgusting in its obviously unnatural asymmetry. In the few seconds that it was above ground, he saw that it had far too many legs, but they were not apportioned appropriately, with a large grouping of small and malformed limbs on one side and two longer and more powerful legs on the other.
Even worse than its legs, however, were it eyes. Dozens of eyes, attached to the end of stalks atop the creature’s head, all moving independently of each other, resulting a writhing mass of wriggling worm-like appendages. Thankfully paying the two humans no attention, and wobbling unsteadily on its uneven legs, it dragged its dinner back into its burrow and disappeared.
Closing the lid of its hole, the top cover blended perfectly into the landscape.
Softly, he heard Kayla finish the statement, “…there’s the other.”
Turning to Jennings, she motioned for him to turn around, quietly whispering, “Step exactly into our own tracks and follow them out of the trees. We’ll go around.”
Still standing in horror of what he had just witnessed, and forcing back a dry heave at the sight of the disgusting creature, he jolted back into awareness and turned very carefully around, looking for his own exact footprints. Between being torn apart by a horde of monsters, and being bitten by a creature like that and suffering whatever death its venom had in store, he wasn’t sure which option was less appealing.
Kayla following his lead now, they followed their path through the trees, taking twice as long as when they’d entered the glade.
Once free of the trees, Kayla again took charge without saying a word, and began leading them around the glade and up the hill.
Several times he thought of attempting to ask where they were going, but if more surprises like that were hiding, he decided that he’d rather stay on the good side of the person who knew about them.
Climbing higher into the hills, they both soon began panting in the thin and foul smelling air, trying to keep a good pace.
Eventually they crested a hill, and Kayla pointed to an outcropping of boulders a quarter of the way down, which overlooked a large valley that gave off a distinct hostility to life. With no grass or trees at all, it was possible to see a rough line in the surrounding hills where all of the vegetation simply…stopped.
Seemingly more relaxed now, Kayla said, “Come on, we’ll be safe here as long as we don’t get into any shouting matches.”
Leading him into the outcropping of rocks, he saw an overhang with an opening beneath it, which Kayla slipped into.
Following her lead he found himself in a very small cave, big enough for Kayla to stand in, but forcing him to bend at the neck. Small enough to be cramped for even one person, Jennings was forced to stand uncomfortably close to Kayla after getting inside.
Dropping her pack, Kayla sat down and leaned against it, closing her eyes.
Again following her lead, he laid down and stretched out the best he could, trying to ignore the fact that he was forced to lay directly next to her, saying, “Thanks. I think I’d have died at least twice over without you.”
Kayla, who gave no acknowledgment to their close proximity, and without opening her eyes, said, “Damn right you would’ve. I thought you CAG guys knew how to survive in the rough?”
Incredulous, and a little more than indignant, he retorted, “The rough? It was 135 degrees earlier today, I was chased and nearly eaten by a horde of mutant monsters, and then saw a mutant spider nightmare eat a cute and fuzzy little bug that for all i know shoots fucking laser beams from its asshole! And all of that was after crashing in a spaceship on an unexplored, unknown planet, after our ship was torn apart by fucking robotic snakes! They didn’t really cover this in SERE school!”
Giving a small chuckle and ignoring his anger completely, Kayla replied, “The critters here are pretty nasty, I’ll give you that. As for the locals…” her expression darkened, “They’re even nastier… Everything else you mentioned, those copper snakes and the unknown planet issue, doesn’t really matter at the moment.”
With no real response to this, Jennings remained silent, unsure of how to continue the conversation, or if he even wanted to. But, then he remembered something.
“How the hell did you find me?” he asked.
Leaning up and reaching into her pack, Kayla threw him the data pad that came paired with her distress beacon.
“I picked up your crash site with this. Didn’t find you there, so I started looking for you. Your tracks led to a canyon, but I didn’t want to follow you in there, in case I found the things you ended up being almost eaten by. In the end, I climbed the hills around it, following the canyon along the surface, looking for you.” she explained.
Abruptly, Kayla said, “Get some sleep. Right now during twilight, and daybreak as well, are your best chances for a comfortable nap. We’re leaving a few hours after dark falls to search for more survivors and crash sites.”
Still slightly disgruntled at being ordered around, he bit back his retort due to the fact that she wanted to do the same thing that he did.
Using his bag as a pillow and putting his back to Kayla, Jennings quickly drifted off to sleep, thoughts and worries raging through his head, hoping he would be lucky enough that the mutant spider creature would not intrude on his dreams.
A few minutes later, and with Jennings breathing evening out as he fell asleep, Kayla heard a distant rumbling.
Furrowing her brow, she craned her neck to peer through the opening that led outside.
Through a small gap in the rocks, she could see what looked like distant clouds, peeking just over the horizon.
Aw shit. There’s no way that’s going to be fun to deal with.
Long out of ammo for his T.A.S.E.R., and fighting alongside the Security Team members, Forester and Captain Wilson Durant, Captain Williams was engaging in hand to hand combat with unknown humanoid creatures, with leathery carapace skin and mad eyes, who were hellbent on eating him and his fellows.
Behind the three men, further along the tunnel that they had taken refuge in, Nick Carlson and Desmond Jackson were stabbing frantically at the soft sandstone roof with the knives from their survival packs, trying to dislodge a massive boulder that had fractured from the ceiling of the tunnel.
As each strike of their knives blunted their tips even further, chips of rock fell away from the wall at the points where the massive boulder was being held up by the surrounding tunnel.
Covered in scratches, and bleeding from a deep cut along his jawline, Williams was taking his turn dealing with the brunt of the attack from the creatures, which they had bottlenecked in a narrow point of the tunnel, forcing the creatures to come at them one at a time, as well as climb over the others that had fallen before them.
Fighting one on one, and doing everything he could to keep one hand wrapped around the creature’s throat in order to keep its jaws far away from him, they scuffled back and forth. Behind him, Forester and Captain Durant stood to Williams’s left and right, panting heavily, Durant’s knife and Forester’s tomahawk raised and ready to strike at the first opening.
Initially, this arrangement had been easy, to the point of overly simplistic, given that the creatures were a good deal weaker than any of the humans they were trying to eat, but this advantage was slowly abandoning the humans as they were overwhelmed through sheer numbers.
Funneling into the cave opening, a large crowd of the monsters presented an unending wave of hungry mouths and fetid breath. Clamoring endlessly and giving out horrible shrieks that chilled the bone, they all pushed against each other, forcing them all forward until the wave of bodies broke against the human wall facing them.
Even worse than the endless fighting, the bodies had begun to pile up as the death toll mounted, and began to force the humans back as corpses took up more and more space for solid footing.
Breathing a sigh of relief as Forester slammed the axe edge of his tomahawk into the side of the monster that he struggled with, making it shriek and go rigid, then falling limply to the ground, Williams shoved the next advancing challenger back before allowing Durant to take his place.
As Durant lunged, he reached for the throat of the creature that was getting back to its feet and tried to stab it in the chest with his other hand, but failed as it grabbed his wrist with both hands, snarling as Durant’s grip closed around its throat. Rapidly snapping its jaws, it strained to get its mouth close to any part of Durant it could reach, determined for a bite of flesh.
Fear and panic boiling in his veins, Forester looked back at the two men chipping away at the walls, just as a loud crumbling noise echoed through the tunnel as the massive boulder shifted at last.
Slowly, it began to slip, rocking back and forth as the two men dropped their knives and began throwing their whole weight behind shifting it further.
Face red, covered in sweat and panting, Carlson shouted at the three fighters, “It’s coming down! Get back here now!”
Hearing the relieved warning, Durant allowed the creature that he was wrestling to push him back, closer towards the two men standing behind him. Understanding his silent request they both stabbed the creature in the left and right sides.
Without a word spoken between them, they turned and sprinted for their lives the length between them and the boulder, pursued closely by the shrieking monstrosities behind them.
As they passed under the boulder, Carlson and Jackson gave a last mighty heave as they rocked the boulder, finally dislodging it.
Half a second before it came crashing down, one of the creatures dived at Jackson, landing on its stomach and grabbing his leg, sinking its teeth into his shin.
The boulder slammed down on top of the creature, leaving its upper half exposed, its jaws still latched onto Jackson’s leg. Smaller rocks tumbled down from the newly exposed tunnel ceiling, further filling the gap between the boulder and the ceiling, shielding the humans from their attackers.
Darkness fell on the men, Jackson howling in agony as he tried to free his leg from the dead monster.
Continued shrieking wafted through the small gaps around the boulder that still had light shining through to the other side of the tunnel. Claws scrabbled to remove the debris, but failed to do so, and after the tensest thirty seconds of the men’s lives, the shrieking stopped.
Silence filled the tunnel as each man stared through the faint light, gazing at the boulder that separated them from death. After perhaps a minute of unbroken silence, apart from their own heavy breathing, they heard odd scuffling noises and low growling coming from the other side.
Glancing at the others for a moment, Williams took a hesitant step forward, peering through one of the largest openings.
“…they’re eating the bodies…” he whispered, feeling a shiver run down his spine.
Trying to put the image of the cannibalistic feast from his mind, and not entirely succeeding, Williams turned to the other men who were now trapped in a tunnel that may as well have led to Narnia for all they knew.
Leaning against the wall, Jackson was groaning as he rolled up the pant leg of his uniform, exposing the teeth marks on his leg, while Forester shined a light on the wound and inspected it, who then whistled and then cursed softly.
Further down the tunnel, Durant was pulling his own head lamp out of his pack and, after turning it on, shined it farther down into the darkness, but failed to see an end to the cavern.
“The wound isn’t deep, but it’s wide. Those things have got big mouths, and lots of teeth. I get the feeling that infection is going to be a problem.” Forester said, speaking to no one in particular.
Looking at Jackson, Williams asked, “Can you walk?”
Grimacing, and accepting a helping hand from Forester back to his feet, he gingerly tested his leg, gradually putting more weight on it, until he stood evenly.
“I think I’m good… But can we seriously talk about what the fuck just happened? Like, really?” Jackson replied, his whole body beginning to shake from the aftermath of adrenaline coursing through his system.
Glancing back at the creature that had bitten him, he examined its face, eyes still wide with madness, scars crisscrossing its face where claws had raked across it in earlier years.
Looking at Jackson, who still had blood dripping down his leg, a flurry of images passed through Captain Williams’s mind.
Memories of being tossed around, landing in a twisted heap of steel that had once been a lifepod, smashed to bits in the debris field in the atmosphere and skidding several hundred meters as it came crashing down during his landing. Exiting his pod to find himself in a frozen nightmare of a night, eyes watering at the foul stench of sulphur pervading the air around him.
Emerging from his pod, he’d made a quick recon around his crash site, checking to see that he was alone, the set about tearing his pod apart, looking for anything that might be of any use. At last, he found the datapad, which he used to quickly locate the crash sites of four others that were close by.
Forester and Captain Durant had similar thoughts as him, leaving the relative safety of their crash sites and running into Williams at the first of the other pods he’d traveled to, finding Jackson hiding out in his ship, trying to stay warm and hide from the wind in the dented and ruined scrap of his lifepod.
Coaxing the terrified botanist out of the now useless craft, they’d convinced him that staying with a ship that had just come screaming out of the sky and crashing, with shockwaves loud enough to be heard from several miles away, was beyond foolish.
Wrapping themselves in emergency reflective blankets, they’d set off towards the furthest crash site, after Durant and Forester had shown Williams on their own data pads which pods had been theirs.
Truding along, going up and down several hills, they’d eventually come upon Carlson’s ship, but were thoroughly surprised and excited to see lights shining from it. Hopeful of finding an intact ship, capable of enabling their escape, and swift rescue of any other survivors, they’d run down to it, but had slowed quickly and felt their hearts sink.
The view screen had shattered, the hull was torn, and the engines were obviously ruined. Carlson, being one of the co-pilots, knew enough about the life pod to reroute and restore power, and had been attempting to erect a kinetic barrier around the ship in an effort to prevent the elements from killing him.
Carlson had only recently given up on this idea, as all the kinetic field generators had been too badly damaged to do anything more than flicker and die after a few seconds of sustained power.
Thoroughly relieved to see other survivors, Carlson had run out to meet them, seeing their disappointed expressions.
Dismayed when Carlson had explained the situation, all eyes had turned to Williams, their ship Captain and Commander of the whole expedition group.
Unsure of what to do next, Williams had asked lamely, “Is there anything still working on this heap?”
Shrugging, Carlson had replied, “Stasis field is dead. Control panel is dead. Engines are dead. Could probably get the gravity plates to work. They might be able to make it hover, but it sure as shit won’t be flying anywhere.”
Sighing, Williams said, “Just leave it for now. Let’s try and find somewhere to get out of this wind.” His teeth chattering, and pulling his thin plastic blanket around himself tighter, he picked a random direction and began walking.
Eventually, after Durant had convinced Carlson to leave his pod behind, they’d traveled until they’d found a cliff face, extending up several hundred feet, with smatterings of boulders littered around the floor at the base of the cliff.
Searching until they found something suitable, they’d settled into a grouping of boulders that towered above them, forming a half circle that conveniently blocked the worst of the wind, and taking the most bitter bite out of the cold. Carlson had begun gathering thin twigs and branches for a fire, but Captain Durant had immediately put an end to that idea.
“Lighting a fire in an unknown hostile location?! You may as well climb up on the nearest boulder and shout ‘Eat me! Eat me!’ until something obliges you.” he’d snorted, grabbing the sticks from Carlson’s hand and throwing them hard over a boulder.
Grumbling about how he’d only been trying to help, Carlson had sat down next to Forester.
Crouching close together, they’d begun discussing their options, none of which seemed at all encouraging. Eventually, as Williams and Durant still muttered to each other, trying to come up with a plan for survival, the others had begun falling asleep as exhaustion did its work, in spite of the cold.
After everyone else was sound asleep, Durant asked, “This world is deserted. Did you get a good look at the planet before we crashed into it? It looked like it had been bombed into oblivion.”
Grunting, Williams replied, “I saw.”
Leaning back on a rock, Durant murmured, “I wonder why those snakes only killed some of us. And, I wonder who made them.”
Both men pondered this, and after giving a few lame ideas, they were forced to conclude that it didn’t make any kind of sense, and they both dropped the matter.
Glancing at the three sleeping men, Williams said, “Get some sleep Durant. I’ll take first watch.”
Taking turns to watch over the others, they all slept in bitter cold and discomfort, forced to curl up into fetal positions in order to keep their whole bodies under their reflective blankets.
But, it was when morning had come that the real problems began.
Forcing himself back to the present, Williams said harshly, “What’s there to discuss!? We’re not alone, the inhabitants are hungry, and they chased us until we ran into a cave that may or may not even have an exit! I’m more interested in finding out if we can get out of here, instead of talking about how awful those things are. Come on, get ready to move out!”
With a stricken face, Jackson cast his eyes to the ground, and Williams felt a small tinge of guilt. He’d not meant to sound so angry, but they didn’t have time to talk further, and he didn’t apologize as he walked towards Durant who was still looking down the passage, trying to discern where it led.
“What do you think?” he asked, causing Durant to glance back at him.
Captain Durant, a tall and pale man, who had been a bonafide mercenary before entering Moses Byron’s employ, seemed apprehensive. Turning back to gaze down the tunnel, he replied, “I think… that we shouldn’t be here. This is not a place we should stay for long.”
Ripping noises had begun sounding from behind them, the sound of flesh being torn from bones as the creatures set into their meals with earnest.
Heartily agreeing with Durant’s sentiment, Williams glanced behind them.
All of the men were on their feet, still recovering from the ordeal that they’d just endured, but looked determined at least to put distance between themselves and the ripping noises that wafted through the barrier that they had worked so hard to create.
Forcing back his own apprehension, and giving a brave attempt at forming a facial expression that gave off the impression of confidence, he said, “Alright gentlemen, I won’t lie to your faces. Things are bad. But, as long as we work together, we stand a chance of surviving. I hope that it goes without saying, but you need to understand that if Captain Durant or I tell you to do something, we need to be sure that you’ll do as we say. Is that clear?”
Grunting a quick assent, Forester nodded. Being former Marine Recon, the arrangement went without saying. The other two however, were not military, and took a second to give their own agreement.
After a pause Carlson said, “I get it. As long as it’s you giving the orders Captain. Let’s get on with it then.”
Jackson was last to agree, just giving a nod and saying, “I understand.” But, Williams sensed resentment coming from the scientist, and recalled his harsh words earlier, deciding that he should apologize to the still gently bleeding man sometime soon, to prevent confrontations down the road.
Stepping forward, Captain Durant said, “Alright, we leave in three minutes. Tell me what each of you have in your packs so that we can go over supplies.”
Only three of them still had their original packs, taken from their life pods, as the others had been left behind in the mad dash trying to escape from last nights camp after they’d been set upon by the hungry monsters. Carlson, Forester and Captain Durant all slung off their packs, and the rest of the men emptied large cargo pockets and unclipped several small pouches from their belts.
Between all of them, they had two gallons of water, twelve large granola bars, a few dozen packs of peanuts and various survival tools, such as fire starters, water purification tablets and flashlights. Captain Durant still had his weapon, though it was long since emptied in the earlier fight.
All in all, they had enough supplies to last maybe three days before running out of food, but water was a much more dire issue. Five men would be finished with the water in perhaps a day, especially if the rising heat was anything to measure by, already starting to make the tunnel grow hotter.
Seeing how bad their situation was, Captain Williams hid the dismay he felt and turned towards the long and empty darkness that stretched out before them and said quietly, more to himself than anything, “Alright, let’s go.”
And he walked into the darkness, only twenty feet of the pathway lit by his headlamp.
Jennings was shaken awake hard, and he jerked upwards, arms flying out to grab whatever had woken him, seizing onto Kayla’s arm.
This initial shock at being woken was immediately dispelled by the sound of powerful howling winds ripping through the valley outside.
Sounding scared for the first time, Kayla said, “We have to go. Right now!”
Night had fallen in earnest, and he registered that the temperature had plummeted sharply, realizing that he was freezing.
Outside the cave, Jennings saw what they were facing.
A vast sandstorm was approaching, illuminated in the night by the bright sky, casting hues of pink and purple along a towering cloud of dust that rose into the sky for miles.
Already, dust kicked up by the fierce wind was being shot through the entrance to their shelter, stinging like small needles.
Kayla was buckling on her pack, frantic and panicking in her attempt to secure the clip across her chest.
Adrenaline surging, Jennings shot to his feet, one hand grabbing his own pack and the other grabbing the back of Kayla’s shirt, dragging her towards the exit.
“We have to find better shelter! That storm will strip the skin off of our faces if we’re caught in it!” he shouted, stumbling out of the entrance and feeling the full effects of the bitter wind stinging his face, forcing his eyes to close to slits.
Staggering under the force of the wind, and forced to lean far forward so as not to be bowled over, he placed his pack on the ground. Taking a few precious seconds to dig inside it, he withdrew a pair of tactical shooting goggles, which provided blessed relief to the stinging gale.
Groaning in despair, Kayla shouted, “There’s nowhere to hide! This is the best shelter I’ve found since coming here! The ship I crashed in is too low and we can’t breathe the air there, and yours is too far! We don’t have anywhere to go!”
“What?!” Jennings replied, momentarily taken out of the moment. “There are places where we can’t even breathe here? God damnit, fuck this planet. Fuckin spiders the size of basketballs, murdering robots and big goddamn packs of carnivoro-” but, he broke off, a mad idea forming in one terrifying swoop.
“Kayla!” he shouted, trying to be heard above the screaming wind. “You said we were safe here right?”
Bewildered, she shouted back, “Well we were, idiot! That fuckin wall of death now claims otherwise!”
“No! You know where it’s safe! So that means you know where it isn’t safe, right?!” Jennings said, seeing that the wall of dust was already looming closer. “Where is the nearest tunnel full of monsters?!”
Even in the dim pink light given off by the sky, he saw Kayla’s eyes widen to their largest. She began stammering about how they were almost guaranteed to be walking into death, but Jennings began to shake her and point to the cloud.
“That will tear the flesh from your bones if we do not find one of those tunnels to hide in! We do not have a choice!”
Eyes wide and betraying real terror now, she seemed to be making up her mind about how she wanted to die, glancing between Jennings’s face and the oncoming storm.
Finally, she locked eyes with Jennings and said in a small voice, “Follow me. We’ll probably be dead in twenty minutes, but, follow me.”
And then she turned and ran.
4y 11m 2w 6d AV
The Reclamation came to a soft landing, perhaps twenty yards from the ruined lifepod, half buried in sand.
After several minutes, the airlock opened, revealing its crew who were outfitted for war. If not for the mechanical suit that Frank wore, newly mounted coil guns resting atop each shoulder, they might have looked comical.
Fully powered up, and ready to fire, Frank now wore a sort of visor that projected a HUD over his eyes. Robert had designed it to fit onto his head, and had left the rest to the nanofactory that Ted had procured on Irbzrk.
Tracking his eyes, a reticle darted around the HUD, always followed by the two coil guns, ready to put holes in anything Frank desired. Robert had tried to explain how the visor knew when he wanted to fire, saying that it could pick up brainwaves, but it sounded overly complicated to Frank, and he’d waved the explanation away.
They’d worked for nearly an hour in the cargo bay, doing what Robert had called “mapping the commands so that you don’t accidentally murder everybody.”
Mapping the commands had involved sitting in a chair, thinking the same repetitive commands over and over again, until Frank could reliably perform all of the functions that the coil guns were capable of.
Now, in the face of the most hostile planet ever discovered, Frank scanned the horizon in every direction, alert and ready to shoot first and ask questions later.
In front of him, Ryst and Tricko stood behind Ted and Robert, who were apprehensively stepping out of the ship and onto the sand. Wearing their full EVA suits, Ted took readings of the air, glancing down at his data pad, his eyes frequently flicking back up, looking for movement. His borrowed shotgun was tucked into the crook of his free arm.
“The air is breathable here. But it’ll probably smell terrible. I’d leave the helmets on if I were you.” Ted called to the others, now glancing at the ruined hulk of metal that they had come to inspect.
“That was my plan anyway.” Tricko said, no amusement in his voice.
Still armed to the teeth, Tricko and Ryst were quite possibly taking this mission more seriously than the humans were.
Clad in their survival suits, with thick armored skin, kinetic barriers, gravity generators and robust air filtration, by the standards of Dominion classifications, they may as well have been hermetically sealed walking tanks. But, heeding the warning that Ted had given them, as well as glimpsing the humans own obvious fear, they were prepared to fight for their lives at a moment’s notice. One hand gripping a drawn pulse pistol, they gripped their sheathed fusion blades with the other, fully aware that, at best, pulse pistols would only stun, or worse, annoy the wildlife here.
Robert held no weapons, instead leaving his gun holstered and his sword sheathed on his back. Stepping out with Ted, he immediately felt the gravity rise noticeably as his feet left contact with the floor inside the airlock.
Other than the raised gravity, the surrounding area didn’t seem very different than the Mojave Desert in California. Although, he didn’t have to contend with breathing the air, so his experience was limited.
Scrub brush and short grass surrounded them, with small patches of barren sand and rocky soil dotted about the landscape. Several hills behind the pod led to higher and higher elevations, until they reached the horizon.
Nothing moved around them.
A distinct lack of insects or birds made the the desert howl with silence.
After Tricko and Ryst had taken a few trepidatious steps out from the ship and towards the life pod, Frank took his own first steps onto the ground, trailing his ever present power cable, hooked up to a power terminal in the airlock.
Feeling the same increase in gravity, the suit felt slightly more sluggish than it usually did, which Frank immediately disliked. As well as the suit feeling slower, Frank felt his bones begin to ache as they usually did on Earth.
Together, they moved outwards, starting to surround the pod, inspecting every direction for danger.
At last, they completely surrounded the pod, and Frank moved forward to open the exit hatch. Finding it already unlatched, he swung it wide, prepared to blast anything that came out of it.
Looking inside, his eyes popped, and he reeled back from the pod, cursing and feeling sick.
All four of the crew members behind him pointed their weapons at the opening, shouting at Frank to tell them what he’d seen.
Down on one knee, trying not to overbalance and resisting the urge to vomit at the same time, Frank could only motion with one of his hands for one of them to look inside.
Rob, drawing his fusion sword, moved forward cautiously, peeking around the corner of the opening and peering inside.
His stomach immediately contracted in shock and disgust.
The entire inside of the pod was spattered with dried blood.
It covered the walls and ceiling, smeared handprints and claw marks everywhere. Congealed in a thick tarry film on the floor, the blood had pooled, several centimeters thick.
Bones were scattered everywhere, picked clean of flesh, with a gnawed look to them, marks covering their entire surface. Several weirdly deformed skulls littered the ground, along with oddly proportioned bones that looked as though they might have been alien.
But, the stripped skull and pelvis that lay in the center of the floor were unmistakably human.