Stars Gods Wolves: Book One: Carrion

by Dan Kirshtein

  From inside the Atticus, Harper sat in his cockpit, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oh, yeah, go ahead; we have enough fuel to make snow angels. Absolutely.” He gave a half-hearted glance to confirm that he hadn’t broadcast that to the whole team. Just above the button to do so, however, he thought he saw something outside the window.

  Blinking, he leaned forward to confirm: he definitely saw something. A figure stood in the snow, about twenty feet from the others. Their visibility was minimal, but he had a better view. Harper nervously flicked the coms switch. “Uh, Captain, how many crewmembers are in the away team?” He spoke cautiously, staring at the humanoid figure that seemed content standing there in the distance, arms at its waist. It was tall and lanky, and it hardly looked dressed for the environment, though all he could see was shadow.

  Nitro’s fingers twitched on his rifle’s body as he counted. “Seven total.” He briefly paused before the thought occurred to him. “Why?” he asked in a firm tone that just barely hid his nerves.

  Harper began counting the others a second time; he was half-certain he was mistaking the figure for one of his team. “Josie’s three o’clock. Twenty feet out. Confirm that’s one of ours?”

  Nitro’s upper lip drew up in one corner. He glanced in the lieutenant’s direction. “Josie, confirm?” He didn’t wait for her to respond; he walked toward her briskly. He couldn’t see her, but given the shepherd protocol, he knew where she would be.

  “Negative,” he heard her respond. Her voice was slow and pensive. “Not one of mine.” The captain quickened his pace. “Hang on…” she trailed off for a moment before continuing. “…What is that?”

  “Boomer, how fast can you get to her?” Nitro was nearly yelling at this point, still unable to get a visual on any of his team.

  “I’m on my way!” Boomer sounded out of breath.

  “All civilians back aboard the Atticus, right fucking now!” The captain was in full sprint, unable to see anything further than a few feet in front of him. “Harper, get ready to—” He was interrupted by Josie’s screaming.

  It wasn’t a painful scream, more one of a surprise, and the sound of rifle fire erupted. Nitro could see her purple plasma flashing in the distance. He could finally make out Boomer’s figure next to him as they ran.

  They arrived to see Josie standing, less than triumphantly, over a body that sizzled from fresh plasma bolts. Her breathing could still be heard over the coms. She turned to see the other two approaching, but her eyes did not leave her attacker for long. “I must’ve emptied half a clip.” She was exasperated. “He just kept coming.”

  Nitro took a moment to run his eyes over his lieutenant, and found no signs of injury. They met eyes and he softly punched her on the shoulder. She nodded to him.

  “What was it?” Gally asked. The three mercenaries stared at the carcass. “Guys?” she asked again.

  “Hell if we know,” Boomer finally answered. “Never seen anything like this.”

  “Fine, I’ll ask, but he’s gonna say no.” Harper was heard, farther from his microphone than usual before coming back to regular volume. “Doctor Collier is, uh, requesting we bring the body aboard for study.”

  Josie shot Boomer a look that was, in turn, shot to the captain. Before Nitro could respond with an “Abso-fuckin-lutely not”, a response given usually only to his fellow mercenaries, he heard Howlette’s voice come over the coms. “I second that request.”

  “Third!” Lee added enthusiastically.

  Josie and Boomer watched Nitro tilt his head back; steam appeared around his helmet as he sighed hard. “Fine,” he finally grunted, exaggerating the first letter.

  The entirety of the trip back, Nitro sat with his rifle in his arms, staring at their new, dead passenger. While he expressed concerns for their safety, he let the doctors examine it on the way back. It had an elongated bottom jaw, lined with teeth the size of fingers. Its oversized arms were hardly muscular, but carried hands twice the size of Humans’, with sharp, jagged nails at the end. Its black, beady eyes stared emptily at the roof of the ship. Blue skin hung off its body, tattered, as if it wasn’t quite finished being put together. Josie had made it clear that the hanging flesh wasn’t part of her handiwork.

  While the other doctors were inquisitive, studious, Martin stood in the back, looking at the others and their newfound experiment. He felt distant from them, from everyone. And watching the other scientists huddle around the carcass like hyenas, he was glad for it. If there were two things he learned in his time as a prisoner, they were patience and self-control.

  He ran a hand over his half-tanned face; he still wasn’t used to not having the beard. But his glassy blue eyes stared at the creature with purpose. As a general rule, science was easy to understand. It had rules, math, and hypotheticals for anything the former two things couldn’t answer. It was like law; most things were already established and well recorded. But biology, the doctor had discovered, always had a way of sneaking up on you. It didn’t happen often—probably two or three times within Martin’s lifetime—but biology would, every so often, throw a curveball.

  Interjection:

  The second war that was mentioned in Gally’s report was the war between the Heruleans and the Humans. The Heruleans, at the time, were a very densely packed people. They hadn’t colonized many planets, but their home planet (Sabile) is about as large as Jupiter (of the Milky Way galaxy, not the other one), and it was packed to the gills with them.

  Humans, at the time, had done the opposite and spent as many resources as possible trying to colonize as many planets as possible, with marginal success.

  The Heruleans saw this as sacrilege. Planets were sacred to them, their resources precious. They viewed Humanity as a plague, going from planet to planet, and influencing one ecosystem after another, with no end in sight. So, the Herulean fleet made its way across several solar systems, eradicating as many Human settlements as they could find along the way.

  The Human colonies fought to the last man to whittle down the massive fleet as much as they could, but a good chunk of it was still hurtling toward Earth. The Heruleans seemed hell-bent on wiping Humanity from existence. It was all they talked about.

  Truth be told, they got rather close to doing it. A few Humans had decided that there was no reasoning with these creatures, and they concluded that biological warfare was the only way to stop them.

  Well, a Human couldn’t exactly walk onto the planet and open a can of planet-be-gone. The can would have to be placed on something and then delivered to the planet somehow.

  Sabile’s proximity station had been sabotaged. The station was made to look as if it was knocked off course; in fact, it had been driven directly into a collision course with Sabile. On this particular proximity station was the Carbonic Mutator, developed by Doctor Martin Collier, before he had the thousand-yard stare: a device that was capable of identifying a planet’s climate, ozone, and weather patterns. It would then turn all of those things upside down.

  Starting with the crash site, and eventually swallowing the entire planet, Sabile’s usual warm, rocky, beach-like atmosphere suddenly turned volatile. Despite their proximity to Earth, and their imminent victory, the Herulean fleet was called back to help relief efforts during what they thought, at the time, to be the worst natural disaster in recorded history.

  The few Heruleans left alive colonized a nearby rocky dwarf planet and named it Heru. Leaving their homeworld, however, was an affront to their religion. They were devastated, both in numbers and in honor. It was during this mass transit that they discovered their recent apocalypse had not been an accident. So, while they were working out the terms of their surrender to the Human colonies, they plucked Doctor Collier from his colony on Maxia and sentenced him to the worst punishment they could imagine.

  Sabile:

  Survival Bunker: ten feet below the capital city of Ba’na

  Ula Nethos was a girl of ten years. Her blue, woven hair, her mother would tell her, was t
he longest of any girl’s on the planet. She played with the end of one of her many braids as she read her favorite book. She could hear her mother shuffling around in the kitchen. The smell of doing the best one can with preserved vegetables permeated the cozy bunker.

  The hard floors were covered in a fine carpet, the walls covered with family drawings and photos. Ula would never realize it, but Herulean life had grown quite parallel to Human life. Even the decor was similar, probably because their bodies were built so similarly. Her mother, Jae, had done her best to make the most of what was essentially a small apartment with no windows. It had shown that she wanted her daughter to grow up and hardly ever realize that the world had, in fact, ended.

  Sure, she’d known sunny days, though she could hardly remember them. And, yes, she knew just how wretched outdoor life had become, but her parents always seemed to distract her from the hard truth of it. Not that she was easy to distract; they were just very practiced at it. But books always held her interest, so her father would always come back with one.

  He’d spend his days with her brother, out in the wilderness scavenging the city’s remains. They’d come back with all sorts of things. Mostly food, clothes, and survival stuff; but every day, they’d bring her back something special. Today, they were late.

  Jae looked at the clock again, cutting a sigh short as she tried not to arouse suspicion from her daughter, but it was enough to make her daughter look up from her book. She looked back at her daughter with a comforting smile that didn’t fully reach her eyes. Without provocation, she insisted, “Know what I think?”

  Ula loved those kinds of questions; they inspired curiosity and wonder within her. She scrunched forward, dropping her book onto her chest. “What?”

  “I think,” Jae jutted out a hip and put on her inquisitive face for her daughter. She knew that if she was animated enough, she would not only capture the girl’s attention, but also steer her mind away from darker thoughts. “They found something special and are taking so long because it’s a surprise,” she lied.

  “Surprises don’t take this long.”

  It took a moment, but Jae finally thought of a response. “Heavy surprises do.”

  Ula huffed and looked at the door. Just then, she heard a familiar clang. The door was about to be opened. The two rushed to it in anticipation. But Jae heard her husband’s voice behind the door, groaning. After the many years, she knew that groan: her husband was in pain. She’d never heard it quite so severe, however. Her lower lip dropped before the door opened.

  The vault door swung open, finally, revealing a young boy who had grown very tired after dragging his gravely wounded father through the snow and debris. The boy, Ain, was covered in his father’s purple blood. “Mom,” he pleaded as he gave his father one last drag into the bunker.

  “Ula, honey! Into the corner! Close your eyes!”

  The girl obeyed, horrified.

  Bale groaned again, his face nearly white from pain and blood loss. His open jacket revealed a torn-open midsection that was spilling purple blood everywhere.

  Jae’s jaw dropped. She pulled her husband up to the couch, and they rested him there. Ain dashed off to find bandages.

  Bale’s voice was faint, gurgling. “Found him at the entrance. Would’ve killed him if–” Ula opened her eyes, briefly, to see her father cough up blood.

  Jae, tears in her eyes, shushed her husband before Ain ran back to the room. Finding no bandages big enough, he simply grabbed the entire first-aid box and handed it to her. She had no medical experience; she just did her best to put pressure on the wound, covering it with bandages and towels and gauze. The revealed wound was just too big. Her hands, covered in purple, trembled against him.

  Bale shook his head. “I’m so sorry,” he muttered through a frown and glazed eyes. Jae shook her head, now sobbing, as she looked into her husband’s eyes. “I couldn’t.”

  Ain went to close the door, looking down and seeing the trail of purple that led to it. As the boy grappled the large, rolling door, he glanced up. He watched four black figures standing in the gray snow.

  The boy’s tired face dropped to despair as he rushed to close the door. Had he not been so exhausted, he probably would have closed it faster. But the adrenaline had worn off long ago. The figures did not run, for they would not long suffer a closed vault door. The door clanged shut, and Ain ran to his sister.

  Ula asked questions, as she always did, as she was carried away from her dying father. Ain could hear the beasts from the other side of the door, heard metal crunching. The boy rushed into the bedroom and opened a small hatch on the floor. “Shut up,” he told her, choking on his own fear. “You shut up and you stay shut up, okay?” He rushed, but made sure she understood.

  The hatch was not large. It was just small enough for a girl of ten to fit inside, and it was just remote enough that there was a chance the monsters wouldn’t find it. “You’re gonna hear noises.” He was out of breath, somehow still able to shudder. “Horrible noises.” He slid the girl into the compartment and gave her a key. “But you don’t come out until it’s all quiet, you understand?”

  She looked at him, tears in her eyes, key in hand, helpless. They knew it was the last time they’d see each other.

  “You understand!”

  “I’m shut up!” she replied, tears in her eyes. She was so small in that little compartment, so alone.

  He smiled through tears as he leaned back to look at her; he’d never before been as proud of her as he was at that moment. “Good girl.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “With my love.” It was their version of “I love you”, and she would have answered it, had she not also been crying. Her trembling lip was the last thing he saw as he closed the hatch. After it locked, she did indeed hear the noises. Horrible noises.

  4

  Maxia. Now, that was an experience. We had orders to go and pick up Collier and bring him to Heru for processing. The Human colony there was kind of like a small town: a lot of brown huts and stuff, not really settled in. It was really disgusting. Like, we’ve hit Human colonies before, but we never actually saw the villages up close like that.

  Anyway, we land on their docks and we come up on them. We’re in full armor, carrying rifles, looking like tough bastards. And this whole crowd comes up to meet us: men, women, and children. Me and the boys were not prepped for this. We were expecting one guy, but this crowd comes up, and they’re quiet. Real quiet. I’m thinkin’ we got a fight on our hands. Orders are orders, though, you know? We gotta get this guy, even if we gotta go through them. So I’m, like, lookin’ around, yanno? I’m getting ready.

  But then they make room for Collier to come through, and he just walks up to us. And he’s got this woman on his arm. And he’s crying, and she’s crying. And that’s when I realized they weren’t there to fight us. They were saying goodbye to him!

  A fuckin’ war criminal getting a send-off like that.

  Can you fuckin’ imagine?

  Meeting Transcript: Former Warriors Support Group

  Sabile

  June 8th, 2311

  Sabile:

  Research Station 2

  It very well should have been the middle of the night, but time had proven to be an abstract thing when one travels from planet to planet. So, during what was considered to be the middle of the night on Sabile, a slight clamor was heard in the station’s kitchen. Josie was on all fours, waist deep in the bottom cabinets, scavenging as if it were one of her missions.

  The determination of the military mindset had become habitual to her, as did the joy in finding what she was looking for. “Yes!” She heard her own whisper bounce back at her among the pots and pans. She slowly crawled backward, carefully extracting a teapot while trying not to make much more noise.

  A short time later, Josie stood, drowsily, in the doorway of the lab. She was in her pajamas, which was just a T-shirt and shorts, and she sipped her tea as if it was the triumph of an age.

  She watched M
artin sit at the slab, the monstrous carcass splayed out upon it. She’d killed many things before, and she’d seen many more bodies. But the memories of this encounter gave her pause when she noticed the creature. So she turned her attention to Martin and tried to start a conversation. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

  The doctor rubbed his eyes and scribbled notes onto a tablet. She’d never seen someone write so fast, and she tried not to notice the large bandage wrapped around most of his thumb.

  Martin didn’t look up from the beast. “Had five years to sleep in that cell.” His voice was like an old car engine that finally turned over. She watched him pause before looking up at her. It wasn’t the way a normal person looks at someone; it was more encompassing, more all-over. While at first it seemed flirtatious, Josie realized it was something quite different. His eyes passed over her as if he were looking at a landscape, not a face. Then, his brow furrowed, and he looked frustrated with himself before he looked back at the creature. He pointed at it and disgruntledly picked up a set of tweezers. “Also learning about our new friends here.”

  The mercenary’s head cocked. “Plural? You think there are more of them?”

  Martin barely looked up from the beast, his lip curling up as he spoke and worked at the same time. “Of course. Biologically speaking, monsters certainly do exist, but there is no such thing as a monster.”

  Josie nodded uneasily. She tried to brush off the awkwardness and change the subject. “Yeah. Sorry I had to rough him up a bit.”

  Martin’s face softened, remembering how others described him as arrogant or pompous. After hearing himself speak, he was starting to see why. “Trust me; I’d prefer your health to his.” He still wasn’t looking at her. His tone softened as he picked at a piece of flesh with the tweezers and examined it.

  The doctor stood up from his chair and put the piece of flesh into what looked to Josie like a big microwave. He typed some numbers into his tablet, and the machine began to hum. Light passed through the piece of flesh, and numbers appeared on the tablet. They ran from one thousand and dropped very quickly.