by Christi Smit
Rivers took another step closer. This time he used both his hands to explain to the nervous Lancer what he wanted him to do. His gestures were accompanied by his customary ancestral swearing. “It’s a sling so you can carry the bitch better, not a piece of female clothing. Got it?”
“Yes sir,” Jay replied, his voice soft and low like a teenager’s.
Rivers turned, shaking his head as he took his place next to Christian again. “Where were we?” he asked the rookie Titan.
Christian smiled at the exchange between two people who were quickly becoming his favourites. “Nightmares,” was all Christian said.
“Ah yes,” Rivers sighed, as if what he was about to say was very difficult for him. “Many years ago, and don’t ask me how many, I was stationed at an intelligence relay station inside the dead zone. This was long before I volunteered for the Titan project. I was a young, piss-for-brains private, too curious for his own good.” Rivers paused for a moment, his eyes shifted to the decking of the firing range. “I remember one night in particular, images came pouring in from a probe sent to scout the dead zone around Angelicas. The probe had passed by the planet close enough to capture images of the surface, close enough to see through the areas with thinner cloud cover. The things I saw that night, things I had to record and report back to my commander, still haunts me.”
“What did you see?” Christian asked before he realized it was a sensitive subject.
“Death,” Rivers said without hesitation. “I saw a city of death, ruins of a once great world being consumed by sand. The worst was when we looked closer at those images and saw what was inside the decaying city.”
“What?” Christian asked again.
“Bones, vast piles of them, and not just scattered randomly. No, they were piled up as a wild animal would pile up its kills in its lair. The images were classified as top secret almost immediately, and then they were buried under mountains of bureaucratic bullshit. No-one, except the people on duty that night, and the commanders of that sector, ever saw those images. I image that planet looks even more horrific these days. Who knows what is going on there and what is still alive on that husk of a world.”
Christian chose not to say anything, leaving the veteran Titan to let the moment pass without adding more pain with unneeded questions.
Rivers shifted and chuckled as his eyes cleared up from the pain buried deep within the old Wolf. “You are the only one I ever told that story to.”
“I am honoured. Thank you,” Christian replied.
“You should be.” Rivers started walking forward again. “Enough grab-ass for now, let’s get to firing my baby.”
Christian smiled at Rivers and followed him, both of them stopping a few feet away from the waiting Lancer.
Jay had connected the rifle to his helmet and fastened the sling correctly to the rifle. Hopefully Rivers would not yell at him again. Jay wore his segmented Lancer armour, the emerald green replaced by a matt-grey, non-reflective coating. His visor had been replaced with the same mirror-finish visors the Titans had.
Christian looked at the ex-Lancer, recalling the conversation Locke had with Sabian after waking up from the recovery tanks.
Locke had read Corporal Joshua’s file extensively before meeting with Sabian. The Titan Captain and the Lancer Commander had come to an agreement regarding the young Lancer’s future. He would be assigned to the Wolves, and because of his exemplary service and training records he would be given a chance to prove himself as a Titan scout. A position Locke had created to test the Lancer, a position that never existed before Locke had made the decision to do so. Attaching a regular soldier to a Titan squad was unheard of, but desperate times called for new, and very radical, ideas.
Christian returned his focus back to the Lancer, his eyes stopping to look at the snarling wolf on a field of green painted there the day before on his right bicep. His eyes moved to Jays left armoured bicep and saw the ex-Lancer’s personal insignia. A pair of silver wings encircled a silver sniper’s crosshair, the words Quaerant Corde painted within the crosshair. The words were from an ancient language, long dead to most of humankind. Only used by the military and scholars still aware of its ancient history. Roughly translated the words meant seek the heart, a fitting choice of words for snipers. Christian recognized the insignia almost instantly. It was the insignia given to soldiers that had graduated from the prestigious sniper academies on New Horizon’s largest moon - Aurora.
There was more to the ex-Lancer than Christian had previously thought, and he would be looking at the young soldier’s file the first chance he got.
Jay positioned the rifle on its bi-pod, aiming it down range to a target almost a thousand yards away.
The firing range was an old walkway in the belly of the Hyperion, sealed off by engineers when the Titans came on-board the first time. Gray had allowed the unused walkway to be assigned to the Titans for whatever they needed it for. The Wolves, when they weren’t firing their weapons down it, used it as a training gauntlet to hone their skills with.
Jay inserted Godwaker’s heavy clip and pulled the slide back to ready the rifle. He looked at Rivers and waited for the Titan to give him the go ahead.
Rivers nodded at Jay and Godwaker howled for the first time. The shot could be heard decks above the firing range, causing many sleeping crew members to wake, and a few unlucky ones to shit themselves.
A few corridors away the shot rang inside the recovery tank Nathan was still in. He opened his eyes as the sound of Godwaker’s awakening echoed around him.
The slumbering Titan was finally at full health again, and he wanted to know what he had missed.
Chapter Five.One
Safety
“Only fools would think that there is still such a thing as true safety. We hide behind walls, and inside giant vessels, burrowing deeper and deeper behind false securities. We add layers of armour to our soldiers, yet they are still slain without much resistance. We build what we hope are impregnable fortresses and bunkers to hide in, but somehow the enemy still infiltrates our defences with relative ease. It is time our ignorant race realized that we are all doomed. There is nowhere we can hide where the Beast won’t find us and consume us until we are nothing but dust and memories. It is time we stop lying to ourselves about a future we will never see. Instead of cowering in the dark, waiting to die, we should embrace our ultimate destruction, facing it with our shoulders back and our heads raised high. Oblivion’s gaze has fallen on humankind and it is time we stared back into the nothingness beyond.”
-Excerpt from The Book of Oblivion, Church of Oblivion - Sect reported as destroyed after the Massacre of Koraan, 2530 - 21 ASD
Jessica felt a hand brush against her cheek, followed by a wet cloth being placed on her forehead. She opened her eyes slowly. Her eyes struggled to focus at first, but after a few moments her vision cleared to reveal a dimly lit room, lined with steel shelves full of canned goods and other survival items.
Tristan looked down at Jessica, smiling as her sister finally woke up. It had been many days since she had lost consciousness. Tristan had never left her side, choosing to stay with her until she woke up. She curled up next to her big sister at night to sleep, keeping them both warm in the cold room.
Jessica tried to speak but her throat was too dry to get a word out. Instead she moved to sit against the wall her head was resting against.
“Don’t move yet,” her sister said. “Move too quickly and you might pass out again. Don’t you remember what father taught us?”
Jessica stopped moving and conceded her sister’s question, nodding to the little dwarf as she lay back down on what felt like a steel plate beneath her. Her body was going to hurt, and her back probably most of all from the uncomfortable furnishings.
Tristan saw her sister grimace as she felt beneath her with her hands. “It is the best we could do. This place was built for only one person, so there weren’t many things to lay you down on.”
“It’s
OK. The pain is worth it if we are safe,” Jessica replied with a rasping voice, swallowing the razors in her throat down.
Tristan lifted a cup full of cold water to her sister’s lips, helping her sip on the miraculous fluid slowly. “Uncle Nash has been very kind to all three of us, even you while you were out cold. He gave us his daughter’s clothes to wear. They don’t fit very well but at least we don’t smell like feet anymore.” Tristan giggled before placing the cup back down on the floor. Her mood changed almost immediately as soon as the cup touched the floor. She looked at her big sister with watery eyes and an angry look on her face. “Don’t ever scare me like that again, OK?” she said, grabbing and hugging her sister without waiting for an answer.
Jessica hugged back before speaking. “I won’t. I guess I was too exhausted. I am glad we made it here.”
“We are safe, for now anyways. Uncle Nash says nobody knows about this place, except us. All of the walls are sound proof, the power is off grid and the water supply is completely independent from the city’s utilities, so we are almost invisible to the outside world.”
“Uncle Nash?” Jessica asked. She was curious why Tristan called him that.
“He told me to call him that. He said we were family, and we should not be so formal around each other. You have a problem with that?” Tristan tilted her head to the side as she waited for her sister’s reply.
“No. No problem,” Jessica replied.
“Good,” a voice said from the doorway that had opened between two shelves close to Jessica’s feet. “I wouldn’t want to kick you so soon after waking up.” The man called Nash smiled through his thick beard. He grabbed something from the shelf beside him and bit down on what looked like old rubber, chewing it as he spoke again. “When you are ready, the brainy bastard that was with you requests a word.” Nash jabbed a thumb to the room behind him and turned to leave. He stopped to speak again. “After that we can discuss our current situation in great detail.”
Jessica just sighed, she knew what the old man meant, and she was not looking forward to that conversation at all. More bad news would not help, but there was probably no more good news to go around anyways.
“I will go get Sam. Try and sit up,” Tristan said.
Jessica nodded and shifted her hands to her side to help support her weight. The sharp pain in her back reminded her how weak her body had become since she had lost consciousness. She managed to move enough to sit upright against the cold wall above her makeshift bed.
She heard Tristan speaking to Sam in the room beyond the open door. Jessica reached for the cup of cold water, lifting it to her face. She hesitated for a moment before taking another sip.
Her mind wandered to Christian, and her heart sank as she realized she might never see him again.
The rest of the bunker was just as dimly lit as the storage room. It was half the size of a low-income apartment, with even less furniture. How four people would survive here for long was beyond comprehension to Jessica. Being in such a confined space for so long would decrease everyone’s annoyance tolerances.
Jessica chose to not think on that problem just yet. Instead, she walked to where Nash was seated. The old man was calibrating radio equipment that looked older than he was. “Sam says you have an emergency beacon,” Jessica stated instead of asking.
“That I do my dear. It hasn’t worked for years, but your brainy friend can have a look at it if he wants, there are no spare parts in here, so he is probably going to waste his time.” Nash did not get up from his seat in front of his radio equipment, his focus was on finding anyone still broadcasting.
“Did you get anything on that rusty radio of yours?” Jessica asked.
Sam shuffled past her while talking to himself, carrying the broken beacon in his oil-stained hands. He yelled at Tristan to bring him a set of his tools from his many hidden pouches within his worn-out jacket.
“A few units are still broadcasting, mostly air-units in the last few days. None of them seem to be local units, unit identifiers are all from off-planet. I recognize no-one. The last local unit transmission was three days ago, and their situation sounded grim. Everything went dark after that. These latest transmissions are all on encrypted channels, and that is very worrying,” Nash replied to Jessica’s question.
“It was the same thing when we escaped the facility. There were faces I did not recognize and unit insignias I never saw before, patrolling the streets. I did not stop to ask them where they were from, obviously.” Jessica walked over to the torn couch Sam was sitting on. She sat carefully, her joints and back still hurting from her down-time. “What else do you know?” she asked Nash.
“Nothing good I am afraid. We were caught with our pants down. Santor’s defence forces were either killed by the monsters or these other units destroyed them. They do not sound very friendly to any one on this planet. They have already started bombing key structures across the city, killing everything, including civilians. The shelter two blocks down from this building was hit less than two hours ago, probably nothing but a smoking crater now.” Nash sighed as he finished talking, no doubt because he had known people who would have rushed to that shelter for safety, only to have their lives end in a fiery explosion. It was sad to think that they escaped the claws of one monster, just to perish at the hands of something much more human.
“It is as we all feared. This was planned, and I don’t have to guess who.” Jessica looked at Tristan sitting on the floor a few feet away from her. Her little sister’s expression was blank, staring back without any emotion showing on her face.
“We can worry about that later. We need a plan for right now. We can’t stay here,” Nash said.
Here was the conversation Jessica was not looking forward to; the reality of the situation was going to be very unpleasant. “How long do we have?” she asked.
“If we ration our supplies and change out the air-filters every few days, two weeks, three at the most,” Nash replied.
Jessica relaxed a little. It did not sound so bad - it was more than she had bargained on. “That gives us enough time to call for help,” she paused, thinking of how difficult her last words would be to execute, “somehow,” she added.
“Yes, somehow...” Nash said. He turned back to the radio, speaking as he pulled the headset over his ears again. “We will need to hurry up, when our supplies run out and the time comes to shit or get off the pot, things will get very tense in here.”
Jessica had no doubt about that, but she knew she could not let that happen. She turned her head to look at Sam next to her. He was busy unscrewing the outer casing of the beacon. “What is the prognosis Doctor Sam?” she asked her oldest friend.
Sam laughed softly at her question, never taking his eyes off the thing he was working on as he replied. “Buggered, but that hasn’t stopped me from fixing something before, right?”
“Right,” Jessica replied. She would have to put all of her faith into Sam and his skill at fixing things.
Jessica sat back on the old torn couch, looking at her sister again. She smiled at her and this time Tristan returned the smile, but her face was full of worry.
All Jessica could think of was keeping Tristan safe. The monsters on the planet’s surface, nor the monsters in orbit, will ever get their hands on her little sister. It was her father’s last wish.
No matter what Jessica. Save Tristan.
Chapter Five.Two
Evil
“Every story worthy of legend needs a villain. There is no need to fear the villain that announces his every move. Those weaklings that pretend to be evil are nothing but blemishes on humankind’s troubled history. Fear is an emotion that can be manipulated, and any fool can scare children with stories of monsters hiding under their beds. Evil, on the other hand, creates terror within its victims. True evil is selfish, determined and ruthless, relentless in its pursuit of triumph over whatever it deems beneath it. These masters of evil are the ones that should be feared, working behind the cu
rtains of reality, positioning their chess pieces in the shadows of our civilization. They remain hidden until they are ready to rise into the light. They show no mercy, and offer only one choice to whatever stands in their way - bow in obedience or be ruined in their frightful wake.”
-Name deleted from records, written in blood on the walls of cell twenty-2581B, Facility name withheld, Date unknown
“It couldn’t say any more. It knew only part of its master’s plan,” Locke said to his squad.
The Wolves had gathered in their beloved armoury, everyone except Pyoter was seated, listening to Locke tell them what the AIE known as Artemis had revealed. The story their captain was telling them had silenced all of them as they sat stunned, unable to completely accept the truth behind recent events.
Rivers was the first to speak. “As if the beasts aren’t enough to contend with, we have scum like that eating at our hearts from within.”
Nathan, who had been training since waking up, scoffed as Rivers finished speaking and then spoke. “This should not be anything we haven’t seen or heard of before. People are always trying to kill each other for some reason or another. This time, the reason is just so much more complicated, and bigger than all of us.”
“We don’t know his end-game, we can only guess at what he is planning.” Locke folded his arms, looking at all of the Wolves in turn, even Jay got a full blast of Locke’s piercing stare. Locke nodded before continuing, mostly to himself. “Now for the bad news,” he said without smiling at his own dry joke.
“Great,” Xander blurted out, “I was starting to get bored,” he added sarcastically.
“His position in Earth’s council could complicate things even more. He has enough influence to turn everyone against us. If we move against him, in any way, we will be branded as traitors, rebels to be hunted down and killed for turning our backs on our race.”
