by S D Tanner
The dark sheath on their helmets were covering their faces, so he couldn’t see Rok’s expression. “Fire the KLAW.”
“At what?”
“Anything.”
“Can I shoot you?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Rok raised the KLAW, swinging it inside the harness until it was pointing at the floating city in the distance. Knowing the city was too far away to be hit, Rok fired a short burst from the KLAW. A heavy thudding sound exploded from the gun, hammering away the silence. When the gunfire stopped, he half expected to see birds flying out of the city, but nothing moved other than the dirt shifting in the wind.
He heard a noise to his left and turned toward it. Although it didn’t sound mechanical, it wasn’t a human voice either. It was only when the noise hiccupped before letting out another sob that he realized someone was crying. The sound of weeping echoed from inside a large building, chilling him to the bone. There was something tragic in the cry, like that of a young child unable to find their mother. His first thought was Daisy needed him and he swiftly moved across the road.
The door to the building was long gone, leaving a gaping wound leading into darkness. He felt Judge grab his arm. “Scan first.”
Switching his eye cover to infrared, he peered into the cavern. The child’s sobbing continued echoing around the wide empty space inside the building. Untidy piles of rubble littered the open floor, with chunks of broken concrete studded with twisted metal scattered between them. Another hiccup interrupted the flow of crying and then the sobbing started again. The grayness combined with the desolate weeping turned the barn-sized room into a dank pit of despair.
“Hello?”
The question in his greeting didn’t make the child pause for even a moment. Whereas earlier the pitiful sound had made him feel protective, now it was grating on his nerves like steel on metal.
“Can you see where it’s coming from?”
Judge was leaning forward, peering into the darkness. “No and I’m not buying it either.”
“You think it’s a trap too?”
“Yeah. A kid would have replied, or at least shut up.”
Rok joined them in the doorway, his KLAW aimed at the darkness. “Want me to heat it up a little?”
Hitching again, the sobbing stopped until there was another predictable sad hiccup. He could almost count the number of seconds that would elapse before the wailing restarted. When the sobbing began again like a recording on a loop, his upper lip curled in disgust.
Judge said irritably, “It’s automated.”
“Nasty little trick,” Rok added.
Pissed off in a way he couldn’t explain, he flicked his hand at the darkness. “Light ‘em up!”
While he and Judge stood on either side of the open wall, Rok pounded rounds into the darkness. Gunfire hammered into the floor, ceiling and walls until it drowned out the lying crying. Something about using a frightened child as bait enraged him. When he got his hands on whatever was trying to screw with his head, he would rip it apart.
Just as he was about to tell Rok to cease fire, a smooth arm emerged from the darkness. It moved so fast he almost missed it. A tentacle as thick as his thigh wrapped itself around Rok’s ankle, making him tumble backward, his helmet slamming hard into the sidewalk. The KLAW continued to fire for a moment, spitting bullets wildly, and then Rok was yanked inside the cavernous room.
CHAPTER SIX: For Whom the Dinner Bell Tolls
“Rok!”
He and Judge were on either side of the entrance, using the infrared on their eye cover to peer inside. His voice should have traveled through his mouthpiece, across the invisible sound waves, and into Rok’s ear. All Rok had to do was speak, but he heard nothing.
“Dammit, Rok!”
Bobbing his head from side-to-side as if it could improve his vision, Judge snorted with frustration. “I can’t see him. Why can’t I see him?”
It didn’t make any sense. Rok should have been visible through their eye cover, but all he could see was a grainy darkness. “We have to go in.”
“I know, but forewarned ‘n all that.”
As it turned out, neither of them were going to gain any insight before entering the seemingly empty room. Something flashed across his line of vision and, before he could work out what it was, he was yanked from his feet. He tipped backward and his head slammed into the ground while his gun fired wildly at nothing. After sliding along the floor inside the building, he was flung against the wall opposite the entrance. Upside down, with his feet over his head, he was plastered to the wall like a mosquito on flypaper.
“Judge? Rok?”
All he’d done was try to help a sobbing child, but now he was hanging in the air with his boots above his head. His visor was telling him nothing useful, and all he could see was a grainy emptiness, but he knew that wasn’t right. The communications gear was built into the metal mask covering half his face, and he was sure it was working, meaning something inside the room was interfering with the signal. Stretching his fingers widely, he felt resistance, as if he were moving them inside a thick glue. His right hand was still wrapped around the barrel of his gun and he pulled the trigger. Bullets bucked from the barrel, but nothing else happened, suggesting the glue had absorbed the impact of the rounds.
Buried inside the wall, he wriggled his entire body trying to find a weakness to exploit. “Cogless, where am I?”
“You are being held by a venator hunter.”
“A what?”
“Venator hunters are trappers.”
“What does that mean?”
“A quaesitor hunter seeks their prey. A venator hunter draws their prey to them.”
“What does it want?”
“Hunters absorb their prey.”
His voice was thick with disgust. “Is it eating me?”
“You are a Defensor. You are not food.”
Something bulged into his spine, propelling him forward and through the entrance to the room. It appeared the hunter had agreed with Cogless and he wasn’t to its taste. He slammed into the broken asphalt outside the building, skidding on his back until he hit a twisted piece of metal that might have once been a car. Judge slid past him on his belly and rammed headfirst into a crumbling piece of curb, sending a spray of dirt and concrete into the air. Rok was sliding on his back toward the same curb and his knees crumpled on impact.
Scrambling to his feet, Rok filled his earpiece with cursing. “Son of a bitch!”
Judge was also climbing to his feet, his gun pointed toward the entrance to the building. He was less concerned about Rok and Judge as he was the rumbling under his back. Rolling to his knees and then onto his feet, the ground was shuddering, seeming ready to explode.
“What the hell…”
His question was drowned under the sound of tearing metal. What he’d assumed was a building now moved, and concrete shattered onto the already torn asphalt. Retreating until his back was against a wall on the other side of the road, he was too shocked to even raise his gun.
A thick, white tentacle flicked out from the collapsing entranceway. Another followed the first until four limbs at least fifteen feet long licked their way out of the darkness. The ends were thinner than the rest of the limb, and they moved like fingers along the asphalt. Finding holes on the ground, each finger pushed in and dug deep. More of the entrance way collapsed as a round eight-foot wide head pushed its way through it. The building was giving birth to a monster. A smooth face appeared and its glossy black eyes surveyed the road. Beneath the eyes was a thin opening he assumed was its mouth. The lips parted and a pale colored tongue slithered out as if were tasting the air.
More of the monster’s body followed the head, revealing it had no neck below the mouth. Seeming to narrow as it squeezed through the entrance to the building, the head and body became rounded once it was outside. The first four tentacles were followed by another four until he counted
eight long limbs. It propped itself up on four of the tentacles, using them like legs as it rose to its full height of twenty feet. While it towered over them, its mouth dropped opened and it let out what sounded like a wet belch. Cogless had called it a venator hunter, but he thought it looked like a glossy marshmallow on matching thick legs.
Whatever the monster was, just as Cogless had predicted, it had no interest in them. Turning away from where they were staring up at it, the long tentacles balanced the body as it stretched and undulated. The structure of the creature seemed fluid so that bits of it bulged while it wobbled along the road. Almost as if to mock them, the venator began to sob and cry, but now it was outside the noise was more like that of a wailing cat. Its structure was so pliable, he understood how it must have flattened itself against the walls inside the building.
Although Rok had been angry, now he sounded confused. “What the hell was that?”
“Squid?” Judge replied, but he didn’t sound confident.
“If I shoot it, do I get calamari?”
He raised his hand, hoping Rok would do as he was told for once. “Don’t shoot it.”
“Why not?”
“Cogless says it’s a venator hunter.”
“And what’s that when it’s at home?” Judge asked skeptically.
“I don’t know, but it eats its prey.”
“I’m so gonna shoot that thing,” Rok said, raising his KLAW at the departing venator.
Placing his gloved hand on the barrel of the KLAW, he pushed it down. “No, you’re not. It doesn’t think we’re food, so it’s not a threat. Don’t waste ammo.”
“Why aren’t we food?” Judge asked.
He sniffed, turning away from the sight of the venator now rumbling in the distance. “Guess it doesn’t like carrion.”
Staring at the ruined buildings on either side of what had once been a road, it was clear the home he only vaguely remembered was long gone. Much had changed in the three hundred years they’d been dead. The cities were as good as lost and new ones floated above the land. Creatures of a type he’d never seen before roamed the ruins as if they were its new masters.
The tone of his voice echoed the hollowness inside his head. “We lost.”
“To calamari,” Rok added, but he didn’t sound amused.
“Where did that thing come from?” Judge asked.
It was a good question. The aliens had advanced technology, so maybe they attacked from space, but why had they picked Earth? Was the blue planet so rare a find they just had to have it? Judging by their own dead state and the identical human clones they’d seen on the ship, the aliens were using humans like cattle. The realization made him smile. If the venators were hunting inside the city, then there had to be people nearby.
“This is good.”
Rok turned to look at him and, although his was face shielded beneath his faceplate, he could tell he was surprised. “How do you figure that?”
Judge slapped Rok’s shoulder hard. “Tag’s right. This is good.”
Before they had time to explain the obvious, the answer spoke for itself. A bullet hit his chest plate, forcing him to step backward. More bullets followed the first, and he ducked behind the rusted skeleton of a vehicle. Gunfire was coming from every direction, including above their heads. Each one was hitting home and he heard Rok grunt in pain. Their armor would defend them from bullets, but a light on his eye cover was blinking rapidly, indicating there were RPGs nearby.
He rose from his haunches and, letting his gun swing by his side, he put his hands in the air. “Rok. Judge. Surrender.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Enemy Within
Bullets continued spitting toward them, but all they did was hit the ground, causing fragments of the already broken asphalt to fly into the air.
Judge had raised his hands above his head. “You’re a pain in my ass, Tag.”
Looking at Rok, who was also rising to his feet, he jerked his head at him. “Hands up, soldier.”
Slowly lifting his hands into the air, Rok grumbled, “I don’t like working for you.”
The three of them stood in the middle of the destroyed road, their guns hanging idle by their sides, and their hands raised high. Getting into a shoot-out with the people they needed to meet didn’t make sense to him. If the city was infested with venators, it was hardly surprising their welcome wasn’t a warm one. Feeling more than a little stupid, he stood his ground, surrendering to what he assumed were humans. Slowly the sound of gunfire faded away until he could hear voices shouting to one another.
“What are they doing?”
“Fucking Defensors.”
“It’s a trick.”
“Kill ‘em while we still can.”
“They’re already dead.”
“Hold your fire.”
“Don’t waste ammo.”
“They’re armed.”
The last angry comment was enough to draw someone from a building to his left. First the barrel of a gun appeared and then a head wearing a military green headscarf. Only the eyes covered in dark glasses suggested the face was human. The man had no helmet and his chest was protected by a black bulletproof vest, but otherwise he wore no armor. Although the gun wasn’t one he recognized, it was no match for his own, much less Rok’s KLAW. All the shooters had on their side were numbers, but given his squad were already dead, that wouldn’t have been enough to save them had he chosen to fight.
With the gun still trained on his face, the man slowly inched his way toward him. “What do you want?”
“To talk.”
“About what?”
Keeping his hands high, he vaguely waved at the city around him. “What happened here?”
The contempt in the man’s voice was tinged with bitterness. “You know what happened, asshole.”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
A woman’s voice howled at him from one of the buildings. “You’re a lying, son of a bitch! You did this!”
With his memory so deeply damaged, there was a chance the woman was telling the truth. He’d been used to defend the aliens on the Prognatus, so who knew what else he’d been programmed to do? Had he and other Defensors like him destroyed the cities? Was that something else Lunar Horizon used them to do? Were they been programmed to take down their own people?
Unable to deny her accusation, all he could do was tell them what he knew. “They damaged my memory.” He looked across the road to where the woman’s voice had sounded, suddenly painfully aware the city did look war torn. “If I did this, then I’m sorry.”
Silence greeted his apology, and then another voice called out from a building. “What sort of trick is this?”
Underneath the contempt in the man’s tone was fear, which he suspected was justified. A nagging guilt clawed at him. There was a chance the man was right and they were used to hunt humans. “No trick. I woke up on a spaceship with half a million sleepers. They were being used to grow aliens.”
The man who had come from the building advanced no closer, but he slowly lowered his gun. “You were on an ark?”
A smaller figure wearing a brilliant red bandanna appeared in a doorway to his right. With her gun trained on his face, the woman walked toward him. “What do you mean the sleepers were being used?”
Allowing his hands to drop until they were by his side, he nodded at the woman. “There were three arks, but we lost two killing the aliens onboard.”
“What happened to the third one?”
“It’s ours now.”
“It always was yours.” When he didn’t speak, the woman flicked her head at him. “What happened to the sleepers?”
“The sleepers on the other two arks are dead.”
Pulling the bandanna away from her mouth, a cynical smirk flickered across her mouth. “Which ark survived?”
“Ark Extrema.” Flicking up the black faceplate on his helmet, he narrowed his eyes at the woman. “What do y
ou know about the arks?”
The man looked along the street, clearly worried. “Not here. It’s not safe.”
Tugging the bandanna over her mouth again, the woman gave a sharp nod. “Follow us.”
They moved swiftly across the road and entered a door to what must have once been a tall building. Making their way across the open area he assumed would have been the foyer, they left the building through the back entrance. Crouching over a manhole in the middle of the narrow road between the buildings, the man pulled up the cover. Without bothering to explain what he was doing, he climbed into the hole. The woman followed him, only hesitating briefly to wave them toward her.
“Last man puts the cover back.”
The hole led to a wide, six-foot high tunnel. If the city had been occupied, then it would have been wet and no doubt stank, but instead it was quiet and dry. The man had a small light in his hand glowing faintly in the darkness.
Raising her finger to where her lips were under the bandanna, the woman said softly, “Move quietly. No talking. Hunters are sensitive to vibration.”
“Why aren’t they top side.”
“They go where their prey is.”
The tunnel was dry and empty, so every sound they made echoed ahead and behind them. He held onto the straps on his gun, hoping to muffle the sound. Clearly familiar with the route, the man and woman trudged silently ahead.
“What’s going on?” Rok whispered hoarsely.
Shaking his head at Rok, he continued at the steady clip set by the man and woman. He had no idea where they were going, except perhaps toward the answers he needed. The woman had known about the arks, seeming interested in what had happened to them. With nothing left to lose, not even his life, he was prepared to follow her if only to find out what she knew. After walking half a mile, the tunnel opened to an intersection with a platform on one side, where a door had been hidden within the gray and stained walls
Tapping it lightly, the man stepped back when it opened. Behind the door was another tunnel, only this one was narrower and not lined with concrete. Shored up with pieces of wood and metal, it appeared to have been hastily built. Forced to bend low, his wide shoulders scraped against the sides so that loose dirt dribbled down the walls. At the end of the corridor was a wooden partition, and behind it was another much wider tunnel. Unlike the tunnels before, this one was the size of a ballroom. Each end had been blocked by debris, turning the tunnel into a large room, where at least fifty people were sitting or standing. Every ten feet had a gloomy lantern that reflected against the faces of the people huddled around it.
