Kaur continued to speak as a single planet zoomed into view. “We have decided to travel to Masirah. It has been decided amongst those in charge of this effort to move our settlements there.” Kaur reappeared and gave a brief smile. “Good luck, Terran citizen, and we hope to see you soon.” A very brief, unsettling smile flitted across Kaur’s face before the hologram disappeared and the box snapped close.
“Did you get all of that, Wards?” said Dell.
She nodded and said, “They went to a desert planet. It’s livable only if one were to build their habitats underground. It’s too hot to live on the surface.”
Dell shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. That’s where we’re heading next.” He turned to head back to the shuttle.
My HUD lit up. Warnings screamed at me. My suit’s external cameras showed a ball of light flaming into existence, bright enough to cast shadows on the moon’s surface. Smaller lights screamed away from the larger cascading into the moon’s atmosphere.
“No,” yelled Scort.
My stomach sank, and my throat closed up. Sweat beaded on my forehead.
“Alpha come in,” said Dell. “Alpha respond, this is ground party leader.”
Wards grabbed me. We began running in great, suit assisted bounds. At times I couldn’t keep up, and she dragged me until I gained my footing again. Scort and Dell followed behind, still trying to raise the Alpha.
A small communication box popped up in the corner of my HUD. My heart pounded when I saw its occupant.
“Did you think you could get away from me, thieves?” said General Braxa.
Braxa laughed. She ranted and raved until I found a way to mute her and shut off general communication. If I hadn’t been running for my life I’d be thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t still stuck with her.
“The Alpha is gone,” said Dell.
“I can’t raise anyone,” said Scort. “Not picking up any Alpha shuttles or escape pods.”
Our shuttle came into view. My suit’s cameras zoomed and focused on several small ships descending through the atmosphere. Braxa’s landing parties were coming.
A beam of light streaked through the sky. It struck the shuttle. Everything in front of me exploded in a cloud of dirt and fire and metal.
I screamed.
The world around me spun. I saw the sky then the ground then the sky in repeat. Warnings from the suit howled at me. I felt myself striking something then weightlessness and striking something again before I skidded across the ground.
I stopped face down in the dirt. When I tried to push myself up a searing pain coursed through my right arm. I screamed and fell on my side. My suit alerted me to an administering of first aid while walking through the list of injuries I’d sustained. The world began to feel hazy and soft on the edges as the pain disappeared.
I was pulled upright. Dell and Wards looked at me. Their suits were scorched and scarred from shrapnel. Fires burned in the plant life around us.
“The caves,” yelled Dell. He slapped me on the helmet and pointed to a nearby opening before taking off at a run.
I tried to run after him but collapsed with a shout of surprise. My legs felt numb. If I had paid attention to my injury readout I’d know what was wrong. There wasn’t time now.
Wards picked me up and threw me into a fireman’s carry. We bounced along the ground after Dell. I looked behind us for Scort. My suit pinpointed him. He was pinned to a tree with enough shrapnel protruding from him to make his corpse look like a pin cushion. I didn’t feel anything.
The darkness of the cave enveloped us. Wards continued farther into the tunnels after Dell. They moved like they knew where they were going.
The silence got to me after we had been moving through the darkness for what seemed like too long. “Where are we going?” My words came out slurred, and I realized I’d been drooling for a while now based on the size of puddle forming in my helmet.
“Around,” said Dell. “They’re going to land by our wreckage. They’re going to send out several search parties of three each to look for us. They’re going to leave one party at the wreckage: two outside the shuttle and one in it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s standard Vantagax operating procedure,” said Wards.
I dozed for a bit, woke up and saw we were still in the tunnels. “How do you know these tunnels?” I slurred. I couldn’t remember if I’d asked them about the tunnels before or just thought about it.
“Mapped out,” said Dell. “When we found your monument we made a search of the moon. Some drones mapped out these cave systems.”
I awoke, sitting on the ground, propped up against the cave wall. Light streamed through a cave opening and hurt my eyes. I tried to block it with my hand but the effort was too much, and I did nothing.
Dell and Wards either conversed on a private frequency or at some point I’d muted them. I didn’t bother to investigate. Staying awake was enough of a battle.
Dell kneeled down, put a gun in my hand and patted my helmet. I was sure he spoke to me, but I didn’t hear him. Perhaps he forgot to switch frequencies.
They jogged off in opposite directions and disappeared into the undergrowth. I sighed and looked at the gun in my hand. In my early twenties I’d gone to shooting ranges a couple of times with my friends, but firearms had never been my thing. In theory I knew how to fire it as it looked like any gun I’d seen at the shooting range, but I was in no condition to use it. It felt too heavy to lift and looked too large to hold.
As I contemplated the gun and how best to broach the subject of thanking Dell for the opportunity when he got back, something rustled in the bushes near me. I held my breath forgetting that whatever it was couldn’t hear me breathing. It moved closer, at a slow, deliberate pace, footfalls occurring at almost identical intervals. I gripped the gun tight and lifted it.
The lightness of it surprised me, and I swung it too far. The momentum caused me to fall onto my side into the dirt. I lay there for a few moments listening to my heart beat. The rustling continued and a burst of adrenaline coursed through me. I pushed myself upright. My muscles strained, and I fought against passing out. Darkness hovered at the edge of my vision, but I forced it away and got myself upright once more.
I willed myself to concentrate through my foggy dream. It seemed like my vision became clearer and my sense of hearing more heightened. Each step echoed in my mind. Each blade of grass rustling, each branch pushed out of the way gave off subtle clues to the whereabouts of the noise maker. I felt ready.
The bushes parted. The barrel of a gun poked out and moved back and forth. The barrel grew longer then shorter. It expanded and contracted. Next came a single booted foot that looked like it was thirty stories tall. More of the gun followed. A beak attached to a feathered face that swirled and dripped began to materialize from the shadows.
I screamed and fire my gun twice. Adrenaline cascaded through me. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. I fired three more times into the underbrush.
Nothing moved in front of me. I wasn’t sure if I’d hit my target or if they ran away. My only military training came in the form of war movies. In them the hero continued to move so that the enemy wasn’t able to get a bead on where they were firing from, so I tried to crawl away from my resting spot and get in a new position.
I fell on my side and tried to use my good arm to pull myself forward. My legs were numb, but I found I could still move them if I concentrated on the action. It seemed like a good idea to get into the underbrush. I told myself whoever was out there would be expecting me to hide in the cave where it was dark.
The distance between me and the underbrush expanded and the forest edge pulled away from me. I looked back at the way we came. The mouth of the cave grew fangs and scowled. It reared above me ready to chomp down if I were to crawl back inside. I couldn’t decide what to do as both options seemed daunting.
Sweat rolled down my face. It itched, and I had no way to scratch it while in the suit yet I
still brought my hand up and scratched at my faceplate. My arm started to throb with a dull pain as did my right hip. Each breath caused me to moan in pain.
My suit alerted me to another administration of first aid. The world took on a soft glow once more, and my pain subsided. I found the confidence to continue forward into the underbrush. I pulled myself forward, and I dozed.
I awoke and panicked. Something wasn’t right. My arms and legs wouldn’t move. I could move my head around, wiggle my fingers and toes and shimmy a little bit.
The world came into focus as my mental fog cleared, and I realized I was on another ship. It was more cramped than the Confederacy shuttle but taller. Dell stood in front of me with his hands wrapped around the neck of a terrified looking Vantagax. Wards sat in front of a console. The view screens in front showed nothing but stars.
I looked down at my body trying to figure out why I still couldn’t move. Belts crisscrossed my midsection and connected in a five point harness. Straining against them hurt. My wrists were strapped down to the seat’s armrest. I assumed my legs were the same.
“I don’t think they’ll be following us,” said the Vantagax.
“Why am I tied up?” I said. The soft edges of the world had disappeared. The lights didn’t glow with fuzzy edges; they pierced and hurt my eyes. My pain from the injuries was there, but I didn’t recognize it unless I concentrated on it or moved around too much. However, with each passing minute I could feel it welling up more and more.
Wards looked over her shoulder and said, “You’re awake. We had to strap you in because you were unconscious.” She whipped her hands and head back and forth. “You were like a rag doll. Couldn’t have you rolling around the cabin.”
“It seems your suit figured out the correct dosages to give you,” said Dell as he stared at something on the console. The Vantagax moved then chirped when Dell tightened his grip. “I think you might be able to actually function now.”
“Unidentified Vantagax vessel,” said an unknown voice. It piped into my suit which identified it as Confederate Star Ship Omanix, corvette class. “You are within a Confederate controlled system. Exit the system or face retaliatory action.”
“C.S.S. Omanix,” said Wards, “we have transmitted our credentials. Permission to come aboard requested.”
The instructions from the Omanix droned. My suit pinged that it had administered another round of first aid. My eyelids felt heavy, and my head drooped. A warning that something was running low popped up, but I didn’t notice what it was before I dozed off again.
I awoke to Wards standing over me. My suit had been removed, and I rested naked in a box with no lid. It was about the same size and shape of my cryo-chamber. Another Planarium looked at a tablet then at me, made some notes and walked out of view.
“Where am I?” I said. A tentative test of my right arm provided no pain. Breathing in felt normal. I must have been in some kind of medical chamber.
Wards stood with her mouth slightly open. Her tongue hung out a little bit to the left and said, “Good to see you’re awake.”
I squinted at her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yes.” Her tongue hung out a little more.
I took her actions to be analogous to being happy. Maybe the tongue thing was a smile. It was hard to guess as I’d only seen her, or any of the Planarium, in a serious mood. “Where are we?” I said.
“You are on the Omanix,” said an unfamiliar voice that resonated with a deep bass.
I pushed myself into a sitting position in my chamber and turned to the new speaker. Flashbacks of trips to the zoo played in my mind. A ten foot tall bear-like creature stood on the other side of the room. It was crammed into a military uniform with brown hair tufting out of any opening it could find. With hands behind its back, chest puffed out, and wide stance, it intimidated me with little effort.
“I am Corvette Captain Baron,” said the bear with a gentle decline of its head in my direction. It moved with a thundering grace to a chair near my chamber and sat down.
“Pleased to meet you Captain Baron,” I said. “I appreciate the help you’ve given us.”
Baron held up their hand. It was the size of my head with claws at least three inches long. “I will dispense with pleasantries. We are headed to your desert planet.”
I looked at Wards and back to Baron. “Thank you.” I ended with a rising inflection, not sure if I should make it a question.
“The Confederate Council has deemed finding your people an urgent matter,” said Baron. “While the war with the Vantagax is occurring the Confederacy cannot spare many resources, but I am proud to have received your signal and will come to your aid.”
“Uhm,” I said, scratching my head. “I don’t understand.” I knew that the search for the Terrans was important but not potentially deciding the outcome of a war important.
“We are at a stalemate with the Vantagax. My superiors think that finding the Terrans may alter the war in our favor,” said Baron.
I opened my mouth without speaking then closed it. All I could think to do was make little mouth farting noises before saying, “I still don’t understand.”
Baron narrowed their eyes. The fur on its face bunched up around its sockets. “A species that can create a fleet with FTL capabilities without outside assistance is one that the Confederacy would like to have on their side.” Baron stood and began pacing back and forth with its hands behind its back. “It shows ingenuity and tenacity. Many species limit themselves to their own system and stagnate until they either die off or are lifted up by a more advanced race, but Terrans,” said Baron, shaking its head, “Terrans did it on their own.”
“Okay,” I said. The Confederacy wanted humans as allies or a think tank or engineers or something for their war against the Vantagax. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I’d been chosen to act as a Representative for Earth when I’d been put into my cryo-chamber. Acting in the interest of the Sol System was supposed to be my job.
My mind raced. Everything since I’d woken up had come at me lightning fast and now it sounded like we were already heading toward this Masirah that Admiral Kaur had talked about. I didn’t have much time to process what had just happened. Perhaps this was what being a soldier in battle was like.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s next?”
Chapter Five
While we had orbited SpaciEm, the desert planet Kaur called Masirah, sensors picked up wreckage beneath the shifting sands near a cave entrance. Baron gave the go ahead to send the Omanix’s small shuttle down to the surface after a sweep of the system. All showed clear, and that was how I ended up running through the equivalent of an oven into the cooling shade of yet another cave system.
It was me, Dell and Wards. Due to the war Baron ran the Omanix with a skeleton crew and didn’t want to send anyone with us, so the shuttle pilot dropped us off and returned to orbit. It didn’t matter that much as the small craft couldn’t land because the sand would have wreaked havoc on its engines anyway.
We flicked our headlamps on and moved farther down the cave away from the searing sunlight. My suit’s cooling system worked overtime to keep me from roasting alive within it. External temperature warnings blared at me until I silenced them. I knew it was hot. I didn’t need my suit telling me that I needed to get out of it.
“Did the sensor pick up any life forms?” I said.
We walked in single file with Wards leading. The light from the cave entrance had dissipated. The only source of illumination came from our headlamps. I could feel the ground angling down, heading into the heart of SpaciEm.
“No,” said Dell, “but these cave systems go deep into the planet. They might be down so far that the Omanix couldn’t pick them up.”
“What about the wreckage?” I said. “It couldn’t have been the whole fleet. There was barely enough to be one ship.”
Dell shrugged and said, “Scans were inconclusive as to hull outline.”
Wards held her han
d up, and we stopped behind her. She pointed down to a spot in front of her. It was a staircase carved into the stone. An indentation of wear marks went down the middle. A smooth and shiny handrail, carved out of the side of the cave wall, gleamed in the light from our headlamps. The opposite side of the staircase dropped away into nothingness so deep that our lights couldn’t penetrate the darkness and see the bottom.
“Either geology works in strange and mysterious ways or we found something,” said Wards. She hissed in laughter.
“Can’t raise the Omanix,” said Dell. “We’ll continue on.”
Wards nodded, and we started down the staircase. I hugged the wall and took a nervous gulp. The last time we couldn’t raise a ship it had been blown out of the sky. I tried to keep my voice calm and level as I spoke. “Do you think they were attacked?”
“No,” said Dell. He patted the cave wall as we continued down. “Interference.”
“Yeah,” said Wards. “Don’t worry. They’re probably bored to death because we’re the ones having an adventure.”
“A mission,” said Dell. “We’re not here to have fun.”
Wards gave a small shrug and continued down the staircase.
Dell’s words barely registered because I was focused on the walls and stairs. At the top the stairs were cut out of the living stone in near perfect precision. As we continued down they became more and more uneven. Some were less wide while others weren’t level or had differing heights from step to step.
Where we had started the walls had been smooth as if buffed and sanded, but now they were rough. There were symbols carved into them that I didn’t recognize but looked vaguely like hieroglyphics. As we moved further the carvings migrated onto the stairs in addition to the walls.
I didn’t know if Wards and Dell saw the carvings or even cared. Wards’ headlamps focused straight ahead the entire time we walked. Dell’s lights moved about, all over, never staying in one place very long. Whenever Dell swung his lights around quicker than I expected I jumped. The environment was perfect for something to come flying out of the darkness and attack.
The Terran Representative Page 3
