Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1)

by Stephen Landry

  After three hundred years those letters had been analyzed, recon figured, meditated on, etc. Everyone believed it was short for seven or the beginning of some kind of code. Eventually it became a name, a word and nothing more picked by a pair of human lovers living on an alien colony, the planet Errikus. It was to be the name of their son. A child born with the gene that would allow him to become one of the few users and one of the several thousand post-humans living aboard the Erebus…

  That child from Errikus would grow and witness the life and death of thousands. So you have read this far. Welcome to my world. This child, he would witness the end of the world through the eyes of a father, a mother, a child, a stranger. He had been a repairman, a soldier, a lover, a farmer. From within the nexus that child even saw the death of Ren Kiryu as well as the life of Devon Cross and several others that history will never forget.

  I am that child.

  I am Sev.

  Child of Errikus

  …And I am going to change the future. My story begins just as I said. I was born on an alien world not on a ship. I was one of the lucky few. It had been three hundred years since we fled Earth. To tell my story properly I need to start where I remember clearly. The planet I was born on was called Errikus. It had one massive city - an alien trading colony. It is where I grew up and where I made my first memories long before I became a ‘user,’ and before I became a soldier fighting against the Skrav on our journey to Eden. Errikus, my childhood home, an alien world like no other, a home that fills me with happy thoughts and scars that will forever be etched into the back of my mind and this was all long before my life went to hell.

  Child drawings hung on the wall in the schoolyard. They stood eighteen by twenty four inches a mix of crayons, acrylics, and chalk. Each drawing was a rocket or spaceship as only a child could imagine. Starships that would touch stars or fly through clouds. Each drawing was a story, an idea, almost like a one page comic created by a kid that showed how they saw the future as it quickly approached. My drawing was giant rectangle. On the rectangle I tried to include as many small details as possible combining different shades of chalk to create shadows and depth. I wasn’t half bad for a young kid. In some spots you could see little air hatches, turrets, even people crawling along the sides of the ship. I used red acrylic for the fire that came out the bottom and blue for the immer that I imagined at the top. My mother loved it. I can still remember her smile as I first showed it to her. Before it was hanging in the schoolyard she had hung it on the fridge in our quarters. For some reason there seemed no better place.

  Our colony, Errikus had seen it’s fair share of ships come and go, our city was for the most part a port sitting on the edge of uncharted territory. Errikus main export was an exotic herb (an aphrodisiac) made from the marrow of creatures known as ‘Lahna’ (translated as I have always come to know them, hellbeasts). The pieces of art that hung around me were special; created by humans celebrating the return of our three great ships set to arrive in a little over one week’s time.

  I was born on Errikus just like I said but it wasn’t my “real’’ home. My real home, like the other human children, was one of the three ships. Errikus wasn’t a place that I belonged and I had spent my life being told that. We were fourteen years old when it had come our time to leave. The Erebus (and the other two) had gone on a short journey to visit a world called Epsilon Eridani. It was a binary star system full of gas giants that would put anything near us (or near the “old” us) to shame. Errikus was a border world, on the edge of charted space (and charted immer) and had gone to Epsilon Eridani to trade with a cybernetic race called the Arr7. The Arr7 were a race of sentient machines that looked like old Earth Spiders with human torsos and rectangular heads. Their upgrades included solar sails and equipment that would both guide us and help us map our route through the uncharted region of space and immer. I was amazed by the immer as a child, a dimension that stood on top of our own, it was exciting, the idea of exploring it seemed like the adventure of a lifetime.

  As a child reading about the immer I was fascinated to learn that when it was first discovered some had wanted to call it hyperspace but it was so unlike space those that had discovered it decided that would only lessen what it actual was. It was then decided that it would be a called “the Aether” which over time got shortened to immer. Those that crossed the immer in the early days were called ‘immersers’ but now everyone that travels in space is like that so the term stopped being used. Either way we had no choice but to go, it was better to be excited to leave then sad to stay.

  Humans for the most part were feared throughout the galaxy. Even on this backwater world the other species treated us with respect but would whisper of our savagery. At night I could hear it sung in alien tongue from closed bars and windows, “The Cries of Deimos,” a song about a man murdering his wife before the Skrav could carry her away. It was a song that they sang about us in private, a song that they sang to frighten children and teach them to be wary trusting species that were different then their own and most of all to teach them of the dangerous Skrav. Most aliens called us human but they also called us the Terran or Ter. I heard plenty of people say that our name meant terror in some alien languages or was used as a synonym in others.

  What made us feared wasn’t just our violent nature; we were the only species in the galaxy (at least living) that challenged the Skrav. For hundreds of years we had been at war. Any planet caught harboring humans was considered contaminated. The Skrav would turn civilized worlds into deserts in mere hours just for harboring us for a day. The Skrav called us a plague, a parasite; as far as they were concerned we were a blight on the universe and we had to be eliminated. As far as we were concerned the Skrav were the true embodiment of childhood fear, they were the blight - to speak of the Skrav was to talk about terror. They were the ones who should have had songs sung made about them only everyone was too afraid.

  Errikus might have been a backwater world but it was still full of hundreds of spiraling towers, rivers, and home to many different species and hundreds of different lifeforms (most of which were the wildlife that lived outside the city walls). Some of these species we even considered our allies. The ones that stand out in my mind, or at least the ones that I can name, are the tall and grey Eek, the short and fuzzy Pok, the Arr7, the duck-faced Myra, and the batl-like Kir. The city ran for miles surrounding rivers and atriums. Some areas rose far above were the eye could see covering hills and creating shadows on slums and ghettos. Homes were placed on top of one another or etched into the sides of rocks. The sky was full of paper-thin birds and triangular beasts that floated through the air like flying manta rays. Massive ships would stretch and block out the horizon came and went from the ports that made up most of the inner city. A massive wall stretched all around us protecting us from the wild outside. It also separated us from the air in which we couldn’t breath. Even close to the outskirts we had to be weary or wear breathers. Inside the city organic vines ran through the streets and sides of houses purifying the air while massive plumes of gas poured out into the sky from oxygen factories. The wall was the line between life and death.

  The best part of Errikus was of course my family. My father had died when I was young just before I was born. Killed by a hellbeast that came through the wall. From what I had been told he was a valiant man, honorable and well respected and liked by everyone. He had protected the city with his life joining the guard that hunted it down after it slaughtered several Eek and Pok. I still had my mother but my family wasn’t just my blood; my family were my friends: Hayden, Aira, and Dom.

  Aira and Dom belonged to the Aelita crew and Hayden, well he was a member of the Erebus crew like me but unlike me Hayden was a Drok (yes, one of my best friends was an alien. Get over it.). The Drok were kind of like our brothers-in-arms, an endangered species (our fault) that were so similar to us it was almost impossible to tell humans and Drok apart. Two hundred years ago before any of us were born ‘the Trintiy’
stumbled upon a world filled with a human-like species. We thought for a moment that maybe we could breed with them (we couldn’t - at least not without a few altercations). The only real difference between our species and their own was that the Drok had yellow eyes and their blood was darker then ours. Some had red skin pigment but for the most part they were just like us. The Drok were also one of the first alien civilizations (aside from the Skrav) that we encountered in deep space. Primitive warriors when we first met them we spent two years learning one anthers language developing communication and networking with them. In less time then you would imagine we became allies. Imagine in the conquerers that came from Europe had become best friends with the Indians.

  That bond cost the Drok dearly. Like the times before the Skrav caught up to us and we fled taking several hundred Drok with us. We have no idea if there world was destroyed or not but from what we have heard from others is that that area of space has been swept clean of biological life. Hayden was born on Errikus like myself. One of the few Drok children that joined us on our crusade through the stars.

  Education on Errikus started at age three. Though most everything before handing my mother my drawing feels like a blur. Even many of the events that came after feel blurry. I do remember the lessens I had been taught. The history of Earth. The ancient empires that ruled, the different periods that we went through (Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian, Industrial, the rise and fall of superpowers and nations, the world wars, the resource wars, the rise of the space age, the destruction of our sun which became known as ‘the collapse’, the lost colonies, planets of the dead, etc). By seven we had become experts in all of these subjects and began training in combat simulations, virtual reality simulations, kendo, and mathematics. We were taught how once the human race had been made up of different skin colors, eye colors, and hair. We were taught how living in space had changed us how with the help of genetic engineering we had adapted to live in starships. Our stomachs were smaller, we required less food, our lungs could hold more oxygen, our muscles stronger from artificial gravity (the constant turning of our ships and the gravity of worlds in which we temporarily inhabit), and we were more resilient to toxins and disease thanks to implants given to us at birth. We were still human only still… we were something more.

  The journey to Eden was all anyone ever talked about, “Eden this, Eden that”. Once it was a myth. Humanity drifted in space so long the Erebus and Tritan disabled from a battle with the Skrav. It was a ‘user’ on the Aelita that had a vision of our paradise and helped inspire everyone to continue on our way. Whatever this ‘Eden’ was no one actually knew for certain, that information was a private and could only be accessed by elders. You would think that someone would have kept such important details where everyone could see but all we knew was what had been taught to us in school. It was a destiny I like everyone around me had been born for. Maybe it was more like a ‘sin’. Sin that was hardcoded into our DNA. The journey to ‘Eden’ was a burden, the ‘sins’ of the father passed down generation after generation. Priests and scientists debated and elders and captains meditated for hours arguing over what this journey meant, whether there was any point to it at all. What are we without purpose? In the end the opinion of one man could do very little to sway anyone. We had already been on the run for so long it didn’t matter. If there was any reason for this other then habit it had been lost. Many speculated ‘Eden’ had been the source of the nexus. They believed this ‘Eden’ was leftover from the creation of our galaxy - a divine passageway to the heart of God. Others said it was a doorway to another world. They believed the nexus was a small veil covering the face of god, a keyhole. They taught us all this and more by the time we were nine. It was all theory.

  Nobody knew why touching the nexus showed us visions - realities that mirrored the past, present, and future. Nobody knew if these visions really had any meaning aside from preventing the first invasion and leading to ‘the collapse’. We only knew for certain that the future could be changed but who was to say we weren’t actually puppets inside someone kind of game. Maybe the nexus was a keyhole or a doorway - both of those allowed someone to look both ways. Maybe it was something more. It no longer mattered. I stopped caring. To me being a ‘user’ was nothing more then a chore and I just wanted to see the stars.

  The Undertow

  …The second worst moment of my life. I was always picked on when I was young I was nicknamed ‘bones’ and called ‘weak one’. Other kids were stronger, faster, smarter, and they said I was nothing but a tool. My mother told me they had just been jealous because I was going to be a ‘user’ and they would be soldiers or repairmen. My mother told me they were jealous because I was special. That didn’t matter. It didn’t stop the hurt, the pain I felt wishing I could fit in. I was seven when I fought back. A kid twice my size that had always made fun of me and taunted me was picking on a girl. She was only half our age. I was use to the bullying

  - I could take it - but not her. I was in fact proud of how I was able to take it day after day. In a way I felt like that had made me special. They needed me because they were weak and I was strong.

  He had gone too far. This was different. When he began picking on her he crossed a line. I could feel the anger inside me building. It was the last straw. The thin ice I had been walking on throughout my life had finally broken. I attacked him planting my fist into his jaw. Before I knew it I had scraped a piece of skin off his face with my nails. He grabbed me bent my arm around my back pushed his weight against my spine. It was over before it began. Who the hell did I think I was trying to fight such a monster? I never stood a chance. He had won the fight but he didn’t stop - he was going to break my arm.

  I could feel my shoulder popping out of place. All around us a group of students had gathered. No one was screaming out to stop him. I think a few had run away to find a teacher but for the most part we were alone. They watched as helpless as I was. I could feel the bone in my arm about to break. I was crying when a figure appeared, grabbed him from behind and forced him to let me go. The figure pressed on the bullies arm, breaking it (just as the bully had tried to do to me) and forced him to submit. When it was all over the crowd dissipated, the bully ran off and the young man introduced himself to me as Dom.

  I had seen him around. I had always kept to myself though and had never made many friends. I continued to keep to myself for days after that but Dom continuously checked in on me. He was a year older then me though he was much larger then I was. He said he use to be small like I was but one of his friends, a Drok named Hayden had taught him self-defense and helped him get stronger. He said that Hayden had done the same thing for him once and that he was now paying it forward. It wasn’t long before the two of us became close friends. The first person Dom introduced me to was a girl named Aira. She was gorgeous. She had long black hair that curled at the ends. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. She had seen what was happening to me and had actually been the one to find Dom and ask him to save me. That fight changed my entire life. Before the week was out no one was calling me ‘bones’ or ‘weak’ anymore.

  Hayden, Dom, Aira, and I all lived close by one another under a small group of guardians. Though there were few guardians there were hundreds of children. Each guardian watched over and taught ten of us. For fourteen years we grew up together. Since age seven we became close friends. Our home was called various things; some called it a nursery, or even ‘the’ nursery. Truly it was more a school or camp then anything else. We didn’t spend all our time there. We still had homes in our parent’s quarters. Most children though didn’t get to see their parents much but we were all taken care of by the best guardians around. I would know, my mother was one of them. The parents of the other children each worked jobs in the city, all for the greater good I suppose. Some parents like Dom’s and Hayden’s were engineers. Other parents were teachers, scientists, tradesmen, and service workers. The guardians that looked after us were strong and
tough and like my mom also sweet and caring. I guess I could be biased about this but I am pretty sure that she had been everyone’s favorite. Our school was located just outside the inner city. We were close enough that we were protected by any hellbeast and wildlife and far enough that we had red trees we could climb and clean rivers and woods we could play in. Playing outside. It was always a risk. The danger of being swept away in a river or falling into a ‘cold spot’ in which you couldn’t breath was always present. We were allowed to explore the city by ourselves but we were always told to stay within a few miles of home. We were always exploring the world around us and visiting the inner city and ports just to see the strange new aliens that showed up day after day. It was nice living on a port, it seemed everyday held something new. We would watch from docks and bridges as ships docked or appeared out of thin air. Most of the docking was automated so there was never any risk of ships appearing too close. Some exotic ships we imagined traveled here across dimensions, going from one spiral arm of the galaxy to another. The aliens on board those ships thousands of years old sleeping the ‘deep sleep’ waiting to trade for ‘lahne’ and other items.

  We heard plenty of horror stories at the docks as well. Stories about the Skrav. The Skrav had decimated hundreds of worlds and committed genocide all across the galaxy. It was almost a relief to think that it wasn’t just humans they didn’t like. Most of the ships that came were simple trade vessels programmed to fly trade routes. All anyone needed was some basic math and a star chart to know where they wanted to go. The Erebus, Aelita, and Tritan were the same. When they came they would appear out of thin air like some cheap magic parlor trick, it would wow the masses but it was all just the push of a button. No. It was more then that. It was hundreds of years of technological innovation. Even if we hadn’t stolen tech from the Skrav we would have found a way.