by Joshua James
Gotcha! It was outside, on the unprotected lunar surface. There was nothing else it could be.
With his newly acquired map, Sydal was ready to move on. He walked over to the window to take a good look at what was out there and see if there access to the sewers, which he did indeed find. But he also saw something so much worse.
When he first looked out the window, Sydal only saw a pool of questionable water. It was just a glance as he moved on to a more important task. Now that the task was completed he realized that true horror, beyond anything he’d seen at that point, was waiting for him.
At first Sydal had figured the smell that wafted pungently in the air in the water treatment plant was the result of the dead bodies in the control room. While they no doubt contributed to the awful odor, they were just a drop in the bucket of the corpses on site.
How could…who could do…?
Sydal looked on in stupefied awe at the bodies floating in the pool outside the control room. He stared at the pile of bodies right behind it, maybe a hundred, couple hundred large. There was so much blood, dried and still wet, that he thought the floor outside was painted crimson.
Sydal slowly made his way out of the water treatment plant control room, out into the open space, where the pool and the pile of corpses were. After almost throwing up from the grotesque smell, he hid his nose under the collar of his shirt. It barely helped, probably more mentally than physically.
When he reached the pool, Sydal looked inside. The bloated remains of a mother clutching her baby floated by. He couldn’t hold it in anymore. He vomited into the pool and braced himself on the lip.
Sydal started shaking and had to fight to control himself. It wasn’t just seeing the dead, bloated mother and child in the pool of water. Everything he’d been through up to that point, how much his life had changed for the tragic in the last few weeks, months, the reality of it caught up with him. His family was gone. His wife was dead, his son probably deceased as well. All that was left was him and the tumor in his brain that wasn’t growing fast enough.
The last time Sydal had had a really good deep cry was too far back for him to remember. Yes, he’d cried when his Maria had died, but he’d been so preoccupied trying to comfort and save Matthew that he couldn’t let it all out.
Get hold of yourself, Rowan! You need to be strong for Matthew! He still might be out there just waiting for his daddy to save him.
Sydal managed to compose himself. He stared at the pile of dead bodies on the other side of the pool. It was a strange thought, but it bothered him that there were no bugs, no flies buzzing around them. There weren’t buzzards flying overhead, ready to pick the meat from the bones. All that death, it was one hundred percent a waste.
Just as Sydal reached the pile of dead bodies, which he needed to pass to continue, he heard footsteps and the clanging of metal. Not wanting to be detected, and end up bolstering a layer of stacked dead, he ducked behind said pile and hoped that whoever was coming through stuck to the other side.
“Why do they always give us these shitty jobs? We’re the ones who called the Saviors here in the first place. If it wasn’t for us, none of this would’ve have been possible, you know?”
When he heard the voice, Sydal peeked around the side of the pile of bodies and saw three men clad in hazmat suits. All three had hand-held rifle-sized flamethrowers, with tanks of super-compressed flammable gas attached where magazines would go.
“Not sure that was a great idea, Sam,” said another one of them.
“You having doubts?” asked the third man, not happy with what he’d just heard.
“No, brother. But I’d rather not have to roast a whole bunch of dead bodies.”
Cultists…good.
While there might have been a little bit of guilt in killing UEF soldiers, Sydal felt no pity or regret at killing a cultist. They’d started this. Justice was for them inside the detective’s gun, waiting to be unleashed.
One of the cultists didn’t feel like chit-chat, and fired his flamethrower at the pile of bodies. Though not as big and intimidating as a stream that came from old-school backpack-mounted flamethrowers, the ones they were armed with were efficient and burned hotter. The pile almost immediately caught fire.
Sydal, much like when he was trapped in the bus earlier, needed to move. He popped up and, without hesitation or a wasted shot, placed a bullet in two of the cultists’ foreheads before they even realized he was there. The third one wanted a fight, though. He shot the flamethrower at Sydal, forcing him to into cover.
“You son of a bitch!” the cultist screamed in the high voice of a young teen.
“You should be happy!” Sydal yelled back. “Hell, thanking me! I sent them to the Abyss!” He wasn’t sure if antagonizing the kid was such a good idea, but this was no soldier and he was hoping to goad him into losing his cool.
“And you’ll be joining them,” the cultist screamed as he turned the corner of the corpse pile where Sydal had run and fired his flamethrower blindly. But Sydal had already scrambled up the pile, then jumped off straight towards him.
The man didn’t have the chance to react. Instead, he just looked on wide-eyed as one of the corpses leaped off the top of a pile and tackled him into the pool, filled with more bodies. He tried to recover, to get back on the offensive, but he dropped his flamethrower upon impact and was disoriented underwater.
Sydal wasn’t at all disoriented. Plus he was still armed, though he had no plans on shooting the cultist. There had to be punishment for what was being done on the moon. Unfortunately for the man in the hazmat suit, it was going to start with him. He wasn’t as young as Sydal had thought from the voice, but he was still young. Early twenties, probably, and now he looked scared.
With the cultist by the throat, Sydal lifted his head up out of the water and pinned the man against the side of the pool. Rage gave birth to almost superhuman strength as he held him there with one arm and brutally pistol-whipped him in the face with the other. Meant to keep out germs, not protect from blunt trauma, the cultist’s mask cracked after the first blow and completely gave way after the second, sending shards of hard, broken plastic into his face.
“You. Sick. Bastards!” In between each blow, Sydal yelled at the cultist in his clutches. “Why? Why? Why? Why?”
Pieces of plastic, skull, blood and brain went everywhere as the detective kept swinging until he was out of breath.
Sydal finally stopped pounding the cultist’s face into hamburger and looked around in a daze. All he could hear was sloshing water and his own heavy breathing. The red filter of rage and hatred started to dissipate as he returned to his normal self.
They hate heat. Of course they can’t do this themselves. Better make sure I bring those with me.
Sydal climbed out of the pool full of corpses. He calmly picked up two of the flamethrowers. Each had straps that he put over his shoulder, the two forming an “X” on his chest. Before leaving, he finished the job the cultists started. If they weren’t going to get the dignity of a grave, at least they wouldn’t be left to rot.
Armed with three flamethrowers and a map of the lunar sewer system, Sydal moved on. On the other side of the burning pile of corpses, he found where the cultists came from, and a path underground. He took a deep breath. It was time to go even deeper.
Eight
Diplomacy
Chevenko sat behind his desk in his office in Europa base and ran his hand through his thinning hair. He went through his HUD, going over his base’s provisions, defenses, manpower, and what they were facing just outside the nearby mountains. It wasn’t his first time on Jupiter’s moon, but it was his first time in charge of its defense.
After the attacks on Vassar-1, the UEF had gone into panic mode. Yes, they had the upper hand as far as resources, money, and ships went, but they weren’t ready for an all-out assault, the likes of which hadn’t been experienced since the beginning of the Universal Civil War. So naturally, they’d sent the most experienced and
capable high-ranking officer available. Unfortunately for Chevenko, that was him.
He saw a video call coming in. It was from Lt. Isaiah—his right-hand man for years, who served as an aide-de-camp—just outside his office.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” There was a fair bit of nastiness in Chevenko’s voice. He felt much more comfortable on a ship in space than defending a base. And the last man in his position, a general arrested and court-martialed for alleged cooperation with the enemy, had left Europa base in disarray.
“Your uninvited guests have arrived, sir. Should I have them sent in?”
“Yes, please, thank you, Lieutenant.”
Chevenko didn’t even look up when the doors to his office opened. He didn’t look at his two guests or the soldiers that escorted them in. Instead, he was studying the holographic map of the land around the base, trying to figure out what to do and where to go if the nearby fleet routed them in the battle surely to come. They’d pushed them off for the moment, but that was only because Thorne wanted overwhelming odds.
“Sir, former Lieutenant Commander Ben Saito and Senator LeFleur from the AIC Senate,” said one of the soldiers that had escorted Ben and his yellow-eyed alien friend to Chevenko’s office.
Chevenko barely listened as he stood up. Then he looked at his guests and could hardly believe his eyes. What was Ben Saito, a boy he’d watched grow up, son of one of his best friends, doing on Europa? He wasn’t in the military anymore. An even bigger mystery: what was an AIC senator doing here in his office, on the eve of a fight?
“Ben,” greeted Chevenko. He shook Ben’s artificial hand. “Good to see you.”
“Good to see you as well, Admiral. Nice digs you got here. Always wondered how nice an admiral’s quarters were,” answered Ben as he shook the admiral’s hand.
“Well, now you know. Funny seeing you here.”
“It’s a long story. One I’ll tell you, but first—”
LeFleur cut Ben off. “You need to stand down,” he said directly.
Chevenko raised one eyebrow. “Come again?”
Ben looked down and shook his head.
“You need to stand down. There’s a more important fight than this that you and your men are needed for.”
“That so? What fight would that be?”
“The one against the real enemy that plans on invading your planet.”
Chevenko nodded his head. Then he turned to Ben. “What the hell is this? What are you doing here? What are you doing here with him?”
“He’s…he’s telling the truth. Remember way back before I left the service, I tried to tell you about the Atlas flying into a trap?”
“I do.”
“Turns out I was right. Turns out that my father flew that dreadnaught into a trap, but not into one set by the rebels. No, it was something else, an enemy that none of us knew about.”
“What enemy? Pirates? Raiders?”
“An alien threat.” Ben cringed inside, waiting to see and hear Chevenko’s reaction. They’d already done this song and dance back on Earth, before this had all gotten out of hand. Chevenko had thought he was crazy then, and it was clear his opinion hadn’t changed.
“Aliens? Need I remind you, Ben, that over the last couple of hundred years, as man has stretched out into farthest corners of space, we haven’t once run into any intelligent alien species? Now you’re telling me that there’s one out there that was smart enough to set a trap and what…steal AIC ships to take out the Atlas?”
“No, yes, and no. It’s…yes, I know that no one has ever reported running into an intelligent alien species, but we all knew there had to—”
“Sorry to cut you off again, Ben Saito. But sometimes it is better to see it rather than explain it,” LeFleur said.
“What are you doing?” asked Chevenko, as he was only a couple feet away from the senator.
LeFleur smiled. Then he started to change. Right in front of one of the highest-ranking military officers in the whole of the UEF, the alien changed its form. Having never seen anything even remotely like it before in his life, Chevenko was stunned into silence.
Chevenko questioned his sanity as he stared face-to-face at himself. He took a couple of steps back and stumbled over his own coffee table. All the while, he kept his eyes on the shapeshifting alien that looked exactly like him, even down to the small, barely-noticeable scar near his temple.
“What is this?” Chevenko tried his best to hide it, but he was shaking. Not out of fear, but the shock of what he saw unloaded adrenaline in his body, and his fight reflex was activated.
Ben walked over and stood above the admiral. He held out his hand for him to take, which the older officer did. Once back up to his feet, still staring at the fake version of himself, he straightened his uniform and tried to stay composed.
“Like I said, aliens,” said Ben.
“This is one of them? One of these aliens you say are going to invade Earth?”
“Well, it is an alien, but one of the good ones.”
“If the fight is on Earth, why are you here?” Chevenko asked.
“Because if the UEF and AIC don’t join forces and race back to Earth, there’s not going to be a home to go to,” explained Ben.
“And you were hoping that since we knew each other, I’d be more receptive to your pleas for unity?” Even though he talked to Ben, Chevenko’s eyes were on the fake version of himself.
“Something like that, yeah. Plus, there’s one other thing.”
“Of course there is. What is it, Ben?”
“I need your permission to leave the base.”
“Okay.”
“And I need a bomber.”
Chevenko wiped his eyes. “You need a…why? Why do you need a bomber?”
“I…” Ben didn’t want to tell Chevenko that he knew where on Europa there was an AIC planet-killing weapon, hidden in a valley not too far from here. Mostly because he didn’t want them or anyone to get their hands on it, but also because there was no doubt in his mind that the Shapeless were going to do everything in their power to locate it. And they were probably going to come for it.
“You’re asking me to gift you a multibillion-credit vehicle right before a battle in which we’ll need every ship we can get. You have to at least give me a reason. Something.”
“What is a piece of technology compared to the survival of your species?” asked the alien, still in Chevenko’s form.
Then he changed back to his original form: a short dark-grey alien with glowing yellow eyes. “Trust me, Admiral, you do not want that.”
“What do you know about what I—” Chevenko was cut off by the yellow-eyed alien, who’d quickly rushed over and grabbed his wrist.
Immediately upon being grabbed, Chevenko seized up. His eyes turned white, and he was clearly no longer in the room with them. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the forced mind link.
“Hey, buddy?” Ben looked over towards the weird little alien. “Bud? What are you doing? Is he…oh, is this that mind-linking thing?”
The yellow-eyed alien didn’t answer.
“I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll just take a seat. Is this going to take very long?”
The yellow-eyed alien let go of Chevenko’s arm. The old admiral breathed heavily, putting his hand on his knees after coming out, eyes back to normal but as wide as saucers.
“Admiral? You, uh, you okay?” Ben was going to put his hand on Chevenko’s back to see if he was all right. It was swatted away.
“I’m fine! I…what was that? I saw it all, I saw, oh God, those things are coming for Earth?” Chevenko spoke as if he’d just had a spiritual revelation. In a way, he had.
“I’m sorry, new friend, but that was the quickest way for us to show you. We don’t have much time left,” the yellow-eyed alien apologized.
“How do you know? How much do we have?” asked Chevenko as he stood back up straight.
“Hard to say for sure, but we do not have much time left. They have already
started, are on their way. I can feel it.”
“ ‘We’? You’re joining our fight?” Chevenko was surprised.
“That planet I showed you, new friend? The one overrun and destroyed by the Shapeless? That was my planet. I’m all that’s left of my kind, and I won’t stand by as another species gets wiped out by these foul creatures, plus I have grown to like you humans. Primitive as you may be, you have something that my kind did not.”
“And what’s that?” asked Ben.
“Heart, courage, bravery, the desire to stand up and fight instead of submit. That’s all you need.”
“I’m not one to easily give into rousing speeches or flights of hope…” started Chevenko.
“But…?” Ben couldn’t wait to hear the words.
“But I’m inclined to help you. HUD, transfer pilot authority to Ben Saito, user code,” Chevenko looked at Ben. “What’s your user code?”
“Eight, two, Bravo, Tango, five, Charlie.”
“Transfer pilot authority to eight, two, Bravo, Tango, five, Charlie. I’m giving you what you want, a ship, a bomber. When you get down to the hangar, make sure you let them know that I authorized it, show them the pilot authorization. Go, destroy that weapon.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Ben.
“I have to figure out a way to convince Thorne out there that we’re not looking for a fight. I’ve got to convince him to stand down. Then I have to get him and his fleet to agree to come with us to Earth to kill shapeshifting aliens and stop them from invading our home. I’m not looking forward to any of this.”
“You should take him with you.” Ben put his hand on the yellow-eyed alien’s head. “Maybe not in this form, but if he could convince you of what needs to be done, he might be able to do the same for the others.”
“I would be happy to help.”
Ben knelt down so he was at eye level with the alien. “Thank you, for everything.”
“The planet hasn’t been saved yet, Ben Saito. Hurry!”
“Wait! Ben, before you go.” Chevenko caught Ben before he left his office.
