“This one’s been here for over a month now. It doesn’t take long for them to get used to where the food’s coming from.”
A rubber tube with a teat on the end hung from the lid. The infant was suckling on it, its wide eyes staring up, unblinking and vacant.
A quick scan showed Marlaac that all of the babies were laying on their backs in the boxes. There wasn’t room for them to do anything else. Some were suckling, some were crying, and many were simply staring. Some of the babies lay in pools of their own waste and barely moved.
“They’re a curious species,” Lord Scartoo said. “They seem incredibly vulnerable. Look at the gunk coming out of that one’s nose. They get diseases and viruses easily. How any of them live past a few months is a mystery.”
The words came out before Marlaac had time to stop them. “Shouldn’t they still be with their mothers?”
Lord Scartoo didn’t reply.
The same deterioration progressed along the room. Toward the end, the babies were fat and pale. Covered in dark red and festering wounds, they barely moved beyond chewing their own tongues. Some of them had taken to the task with such gusto, blood leaked from the sides of their mouths as a scarlet goo. Regardless of this, they continued chewing.
Marlaac pulled hard on his dad’s thick arm and waited for him to look down. “Why are you doing this, Dad? There must be another way.”
“We’re doing what’s necessary. This is phase one. This is the best way to take over a planet. You need to understand this. When you apprentice with me, you’ll be helping me implement phase one.”
“But it doesn’t seem right.”
Lord Scartoo sighed. Had anyone else have pushed him this hard, they would have been knocked to the floor by now. Instead, Lord Scartoo dropped down into a hunch and put his hands on his son’s shoulders. “This is why we don’t concern ourselves with their feelings. We don’t know what they feel or what their reactions mean. To us, their cries and behavior look like distress, but we just don’t know. Do they even understand distress? Because we can’t communicate with them, we need to stay focused on phase one. It’s all we can do.”
Marlaac’s breath ran away with him as he looked from one of his father’s dark eyes to the other. His dad wasn’t a bad person. He knew he wasn’t, but how did he do what he did? He didn’t say anything.
When Lord Scartoo stood up again, Marlaac followed him over to the next door.
Just before opening the door, Marlaac’s father dropped one of his heavy arms around his shoulder again. “You’ve been really brave today. Seeing how phase one is executed is a difficult thing to witness but necessary for when you start working with me. You should just walk through this room and don’t look at what’s going on. You’ve seen enough for today.”
Marlaac’s mouth turned dry and his hearts hammered. What was beyond the doors? If his dad was saying he shouldn’t look, it was obviously bad. Marlaac took a deep breath and nodded, a waver running through his voice. “Okay, Dad.”
Once they were inside, Lord Scartoo pointed at the other end of the room. “Just focus down there, okay?” It was hard to hear him over the screams of children.
The activity in his peripheral vision fought for his attention, but Marlaac did as he was instructed and looked at the white doors at the end of the room.
Focusing on the sting spreading across the soles of his feet, Marlaac ignored what was going on around him. The smell was different again in this room. Thick, like in the other room, and it added to the heat, but it had a metallic quality to it that drove a deep unease through Marlaac’s body.
Although he wasn’t looking, Marlaac was aware that the room wasn’t lined with cages like the others. Instead, something hung from the ceiling down either side.
When his dad sped up, Marlaac did the same, more pain igniting in his feet because of the rough floor. What he’d give stand in a fresh bog right now.
Scartoo glanced behind and sped up again. Surely, this was on purpose. He must have known Marlaac was struggling to keep pace, and it was the best way to keep him focused on walking and not looking to either side. Was it really that bad? Worse than what he’d already seen?
Once they were halfway across the room, the sound became almost unbearable. The demented wails of infants bombarded Marlaac from either side. Whether the Andredians understood them or not, it was clear this species was suffering. How could they ignore that?
When they reached the double doors at the end, Marlaac watched his dad struggle with the door handle. When he finally managed to open it, he pulled the door wide for his son to step through.
And that’s what Marlaac should have done.
Instead, he looked back.
Down either side of this room were hooks hanging from the ceiling. Human babies had their ankles bound and were suspended, upside down, from the hooks. An Andredian stood at the end of each line, a long and bloody knife in hand.
Although his dad tugged his arm, Marlaac shrugged him off and watched one of the Andredians approach a baby on a hook. He raised the knife, clenched his jaw, and swiped it across the baby’s throat. A curtain of blood fell to the floor with a whoosh!
Before he could watch any more, his dad dragged him through to the next room.
Marlaac chased his rapid breaths as he watched his dad close the double doors behind them.
“It’s not easy to see, is it? Phase one can be brutal, and this was a particularly hard one to witness. It was why I wanted you to see it. I want you to be prepared for what we have to do.”
“But…” Marlaac said before losing his breath. “But why? Why are you doing this?”
“This is what phase one is. We’ve been doing it for millennia. It works.”
“Surely, there’s been a mistake on Earth though? This can’t be right. How can we do this to them?”
Lord Scartoo stepped forward and pulled his son into his hard chest. He stroked the side of his face with his large hands. “You have to trust me, son. We’ve been studying Earth for decades, trying to understand how its delicate ecosystem works.” He pulled away and led his son down the short corridor.
“Humans are the dominant life form. Phase one is about us taking over from the dominant life form and placing ourselves at the top of the food chain.”
Arriving at a single door this time, Lord Scartoo pushed it open.
Marlaac’s hearts sank when he looked into the next room.
“Again,” Lord Scartoo said, “we don’t try to understand their feelings; we simply observe and replicate their behavior. What they’ve taught us is an incredibly efficient way of processing the life forms below them on the food chain and turning them into a source of sustenance. You’ve seen how much bigger I am. It’s because we’ve taken their practices and applied them. All we’ve done is pushed them down a link on their food chain.”
The hall was full of Andredians. Some were sitting at long benches, some were standing in line with dinner plates in their hands. Chatter filled the air as if what they were doing was the most normal thing in the world.
At the front of the line, Andredian servers placed meat onto each dinner plate, and each Andredian was handed a glass of white liquid to go with it. It was the same white liquid that the machine was removing from the women. Behind the servers was an Andredian with a huge knife. He was cutting chunks off a recently slaughtered baby quickly enough for the servers to keep filling the plates.
“So this is about turning the humans into food?” Marlaac asked.
“This is about following their practices. They create sustenance in many different ways. This is one of the practices we found in this area. This is what they were doing before we arrived. The animals they did it to were much larger, but fortunately, there are many more humans than cows.”
“Surely, there must be a better way? A kinder way?”
Lord Scartoo nodded. “I’m sure there is, but that’s not the point of phase one. Once we start moving into phase two, we may find a better way, but
we can’t afford to make too many changes too soon. We have to adhere to how the planet worked before we turned up. It’s the best way to preserve the ecosystem’s balance. There have been too many missions we’ve had to abandon because of impatience on our part. We have to play the long game, son.”
Marlaac looked away from his father and watched the Andredians at the long benches. As if driven by a single purpose, they fed on the meat of the humans and drank their juice.
Slack with horror, Marlaac repeated, “There must be a better way.”
Ends.
120 Seconds - A Shadow Order Story
Email: [email protected]
Edited by:
Terri King - http://terri-king.wix.com/editing
And
Pauline Nolet - http://www.paulinenolet.com
Cover Design by Goonwrite.com
120 Seconds
Michael Robertson
© 2017 Michael Robertson
120-Seconds is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
Now. Eleven dead.
“When I say go, you’ll have two minutes, not a second more.” Reyes felt his eyes on her as she spoke, but she ignored him. They had a job to do and he couldn’t help them. As much as that pissed him off, she refused to be his punching bag. Instead, she turned to the gathered Space Marines. Other than her and the WO, there were eight of them in total: two corporals and six Marines. This planet had eaten away at their hierarchy almost as much as it had their resolve. If they didn’t act fast, the warrant officer would die from his septic wound and the rest of them from thirst.
A look at the clock and Reyes drew a calming breath. They had a few more minutes before the one-hundred-and-twenty-second window opened up. Since they’d crashed, she’d spent most of her time looking out of the shuttle at the carnage outside. Still a few minutes before they had to act, she returned to what she knew.
The door on their crashed shuttle had just one window. About fifteen centimetres square, it gave them a restricted view of the world outside. A restricted view of the ten to fifteen creatures waiting to tear them apart.
A hard squint because of the bright sun, Reyes took them in. She shuddered. Horrible bastards. It didn’t matter how many times she looked at them, the gruesome things always made her skin crawl. She’d seen what they were capable of.
The tallest of the monsters stood at just over ten feet tall; the smallest still over eight feet. Every one of them dwarfed any human Reyes had ever met. They had hard yellow skin that looked to be made from the same rocks littering their dusty and hot planet.
Each creature had short but thick legs and they walked slowly, clearly conserving their energy in the heat. There might have only been ten to fifteen at that point, but Reyes would be a fool to think no more would come. From what she’d seen, once they smelled prey, the beasts would turn up in droves. That was what they had to plan for.
Reyes couldn’t work out what they wanted though. They communicated in a series of roars and snarls, and after killing the Commandos they’d already attacked, they did nothing else with them. It would have been easier to understand if they’d eaten them.
A look at the clock—only a couple of minutes before they needed to act.
Reyes looked at the bodies on the ground outside, the ones who hadn’t made it back. Jones, their platoon sergeant, lay the farthest away, about one hundred and fifty metres from them. Henry, their sergeant; Rousseau, their corporal; and all the Marines—Martins, Adoteng, Campbell, McTavish, Finnegan, Carlile, Smith, and Huat—lay scattered around in the yellow sand outside—all dead.
Limp and lifeless, their heads had been ripped from their torsos and discarded nearby. Some heads still clung onto their spines; they looked like bloody tails and were now dusted with the fine yellow grains of the planet.
The lazy gait of the creatures responsible could have deceived Reyes had she not seen them at their worst. She might have even taken them to be peaceful. Although, when she looked at their large hands, their powerful arms, their sharp teeth … she probably would have been wary from the start.
Now she’d seen the monsters in battle, Reyes knew they didn’t have any vulnerabilities. Sure, if you shot them in the face, they’d go down, but the second they raised their rocky arms as a shield, none of the blasts from the Marines’ weapons could get through to their faces.
Ninety seconds until they needed to go outside.
Maybe Reyes deluded herself thinking they could get out of there. But they had to try. They couldn’t wait in their crashed shuttle forever. One of the main reasons being they had no water left in what had now turned into a sauna.
The WO and Seven Commandos—all Marines save for the two corporals, Federichi and Peacock—watched Reyes as she turned back to them. When she saw Peacock at the rear, she said, “Are you okay?”
A defensive scowl and he shot back, “I’m fine.”
He sweated like the WO sweated. A clammy look to his pale skin, Peacock seemed far from fine. “You look rough. I think you should sit this one out.”
The other Marines looked at him, which turned Peacock more defensive. “I’m fine, just get on with the briefing, yeah?”
One minute left.
As the leader for the next mission, Federichi stretched across and put a hand on Peacock’s shoulder. “We won’t think any less of you for resting up.”
What had looked like delirium on Peacock’s face vanished and he snapped at Federichi, “Why don’t you do you? I’ll be fine.”
Federichi had every right to feel nervous. The leader came in last. If some of the Commandos were less than one hundred percent, she needed to know. As the only fully fit corporal, she was the one responsible for getting Peacock back safely.
Maybe a more experienced Commando would have challenged it. But Peacock outranked Reyes, and Federichi hadn’t been in their team long enough to tell an equal to stay behind. Maybe she should have.
Reyes looked at the WO to see what he thought, but he offered nothing, so she continued. “The second they drop, the time starts, okay?”
Forty-five seconds.
Another glance outside at the bright sun and Reyes looked back at the timer on the wall. She reached up and put her finger on the button, her palms damp with sweat. “Nearly there.” The temperature gauge jumped up one more degree to forty-nine degrees Celsius. The hottest point came at exactly the same time each day. To the second.
Forty seconds.
One of the beasts—a particularly large one at about nine and a half feet tall—stood right by the door to the ship. When it leaned forward and peered in, its red eye sat just centimetres from Reyes’ face. It accelerated her heart rate and her breaths quickened. Some of the Commandos shuffled back from it.
Federichi moved next to Reyes and stared at the beast. “I wonder why they gave up on trying to break in so quickly.”
Thirty seconds.
“Maybe they were worried they’d hurt themselves trying to bash through the shuttle’s hull,” Reyes said. “They’re smart enough to know we’ll have to leave eventually. They’ve got all the time in the world to wait out there. We’ve got—”
“Two minutes, I know.”
“Hopefully more,” Reyes said and looked up at the bright sky again. “But for now—”
“Two minutes.” Federichi forced a smile at her.
Patel stood next to Federichi
. Reyes pointed at him. “Patel, on the door handle, please; we need these doors opened the second I tell you, okay?”
After he’d moved to the handle, Patel gripped it with both hands, looked back at Reyes, and nodded.
The sun shone brighter than ever and the creatures remained on their feet. Maybe it wouldn’t happen today. But it had happened every other day. Reyes looked at the WO and he continued to scowl at her.
A shake of her head and Reyes looked at the Commandos again. “Right, you lot, make sure you keep your eyes on Federichi. She’s the leader on this one and calls the shots. When she speaks, you listen. You all know what your area is, so get out there, get shit done, and get back, okay?”
“Jesus, rookie, give them a moment to breathe, yeah?” The WO had to pipe up at some point. “You’re not asking them to perform brain surgery. They’re Marines; they know what they’re doing.”
“Maybe you should afford me that same credit.”
The WO didn’t respond.
Ten seconds.
“We only need their torches,” Reyes said. Every dead Marine still wore their flak jackets. The ten-centimetre-square torches remained clipped to their breasts. “Don’t try to get anything else. It’s not important.”
The WO drew a breath to speak and Reyes cut him off. “This is the last two minutes we’ll have. After this we need to take action tonight. The WO needs medical attention and we need water.” The mention of water made her gulp a hot and dry breath.
Reyes looked at the creature outside the door. She stared into its blood-red eyes and watched it blink. “Get ready, Patel.”
The wheel to open the door clicked when Patel put pressure on it.
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