by J. N. Chaney
“Hey, watch out!” I shouted, already lifting my blaster to take aim at whatever the thing was behind her.
In the space of a heartbeat, a creature that resembled a giant snake with a mouth full of sharp teeth and spines coming out of the sides of its head reared up behind Ira.
The creature was so long in length, what I had seen behind Meenaz was actually the middle of its body. Its serpentine head came up towering over Ira as it struck out with vicious intent.
The creature had to be twelve meters in length, probably even more. It was as thick as my torso with blackish-brown scales covering it from head to tail.
“What the f—”
The alien snake creature came down on Ira as we opened fire, taking half of Ira’s body from the head down in one vicious bite. Meenaz roared in a mix of fear and hate at the creature.
I gritted my teeth, aiming at the thing’s body, and let loose with a volley of red blaster rounds.
The jungle exploded with ear-shattering sounds of our rifles going off in unison.
Pulling the trigger, I aimed for the section of the creature on the ground beside Ira. I didn’t trust my marksman skills enough to try and take it in the head without hitting Ira himself.
Meenaz and Boss Creed seemed more comfortable as rounds hit the alien animal in its skull and neck area, flinging its dark scales and blood in every direction.
Ira screamed from inside the snake’s gullet, and then it was over. Within the space of a few seconds of firing, the snake creature slumped dead.
As soon as the monster went down, we ran to Ira.
The carcass of the alien monster was still over him. If I thought for a minute about what I was doing, I might not have the courage to pull the creature off Ira. I couldn’t allow myself to stop to think about how gruesome the act was or what I might find.
Boss Creed and I slumped to the ground, grabbing at the burn holes in the creature’s head and neck. We forced the jaws open and struggled to pull it up and off Ira’s still body.
Mutt was still barking like a maniac. I couldn’t blame him. I wanted to yell in anger and frustration at the moment too.
“Meenaz, Meenaz!” Boss Creed screamed at the woman. “Snap out of it and help us.”
Meenaz swallowed hard. She looked like she was in some kind of daze.
“O-okay,” she muttered, then nodded briefly as she finally moved to help.
As one, we pulled the head and neck section of the snake off of Ira. There was so much of the dark alien blood covering him, I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
I couldn’t believe it, but when we pulled the impossibly heavy monster’s head off, Ira was still alive and breathing.
Boss Creed went to work on the med kit he carried on his back, ripping open the zippers. I grabbed Ira’s groping hand, trying to steady him as he lay there shaking.
The snake had sunk its fangs deep into Ira’s chest bones, breaking his sternum and ribs. I wasn’t a doctor, but years of being around injuries had taught me a few things. Ira was losing blood, and I suspected he probably wasn’t going to make it. Red poured from the open wounds across his chest like water from a broken pipe.
“Are—are we—I—” Ira said in short, painful pulls of air.
“Hey, I’m here, buddy,” I said, grabbing his hand.
Meenaz fell to her knees. She placed Ira’s head in her lap and grabbed his other hand. Tears were already in her eyes.
Boss Creed had taken out a Heal Aid from the pack. He started scanning Ira’s wounds with it. We all knew what was happening, but no one had the heart to say it. Not even a full staff at a hospital with all their equipment and doctorate degrees could save Ira now.
“I—I just want to—I just want to—go home,” Ira said, still quivering. “I just want to—go home.”
“I know,” I said, gripping his hand tighter. “I know. We’re going to get you home. You hear me? We’re going to get you home.”
“Promise—promise me,” Ira said, moving his eyes from the sky above to meet my own.
“I promise,” I said. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep that promise, but I wasn’t about to sit here and deny him what he wanted to hear. I wasn’t going to tell him I had no idea if any of us were ever going to get off this rock.
Ira let out a final, slow breath from his lips.
And then he was gone.
The Heal Aid in Boss Creed’s hand came with a readout. A syringe extended from the device filled with what I could only guess were pain Inhibitors and something to stop the bleeding.
“Here we go, Ira,” Boss Creed pressed the syringe into Ira’s left arm. “Hang on. Hold on!”
Meenaz was rocking back and forth, crying. She still held Ira’s head in her lap. His unseeing eyes were open.
Mutt’s barks turned into whines.
I released Ira’s hand and moved my fingers to close his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Boss Creed snarled in anger. “I can save him. I just injected him. The meds are going to kick in.”
“He’s gone,” I said, rising to my feet. “Let it go, he’s gone.”
“No.” Boss Creed shook his head. The big man sat back on his heels, looking at the mess of the corpse that had once been Ira.
Meenaz rose to her feet, grabbing her blaster.
“I hate this place!” she roared, free of all reason. She raised her blaster at the corpse of the alien snake and laid into it with round after round of red blaster fire. With each round placed, she obliterated a new section of the monster.
“Meenaz,” Boss Creed said, rising to his feet.
She didn’t answer. Instead, she kept pumping rounds into the mutilated alien corpse, eviscerating it beyond recognition.
The noises reverberated into the interior of the jungle like deep drum rolls.
“Meenaz!” Boss Creed yelled again. This time, he placed a hand on her shoulder. Meenaz finally stopped, but it wasn’t because of Boss Creed’s shout. A roar came from deep within the lush jungle so loud, it drowned out the sounds of the blaster.
2
I was still trying to get over what just happened to Ira when the thought struck me that there was something else more menacing on the way.
We all looked toward where the sound was emanating. The roar came again, a sound unlike anything I had ever heard. The animals in the jungle that had been chirping or squawking before silenced or maybe they were all smarter than we were and had already fled.
“We should get going,” I said. “We should get going, right now.”
Boss Creed scooped up Ira’s smaller frame and swung him across his shoulders. As one, we began to run back the way we came. As I turned to go, I caught sight of something large in the jungle. A tree crashed as the trunk splintered. Roots ripped upward as another tree was overturned.
Get moving, you idiot, I told myself. Get moving, if you want to live.
“Come on, Mutt,” I said as I turned to run. “Let’s go, boy.”
The dog didn’t need to be told twice. He turned and retreated along with us, back outside of the jungle’s depths. The ground shook beneath our feet as some impossibly large creature made its way in our direction.
My heart pounded in my ears as loud as the blaster fire Meenaz used on the alien snake. I forced my legs to run faster. My arms pumped on either side of my torso.
We broke through the jungle tree line a few minutes later. Boss Creed panted hard as he carried the extra weight of Ira on his shoulders.
We reached the open grassy field in front of us and kept going. Whether the beast chasing us lost our scent, decided to stay in the jungle, or something else, it stopped.
Boss Creed wasn’t the type of man to ask for help, even when it was clear he needed it. Ira was just a kid. He couldn’t have weighed more than a buck fifty, but I could see the toll it was taking on the larger man.
“I’ll take Ira for a bit,” I volunteered.
Boss Creed looked at me for a moment as if he were going
to refuse the offer. Then he rethought his answer and nodded. He transferred Ira over to my shoulder with all the care as if he were transporting a newborn baby.
I could see everything in his eyes he wasn’t saying. Boss Creed had been in charge of his expedition to the north. He blamed himself for Ira’s death.
I wanted to console him, but I didn’t have the words. I wasn’t exactly the nurturing type myself. Heck, I just straight-faced lied to a dying man that we would get him home.
We walked the rest of the way back to the Orion in silence. Meenaz kept her eyes on the ground in front of her. Boss Creed took the lead again. Mutt kept pace by my side, looking at me and Ira’s body over my shoulder in turn with sad, soft whines.
Ira’s blood and the blood of the snake creature he still carried on him soaked into my clothes. I ignored it and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
The smart pad used to communicate with the Orion was destroyed in the attack. We had no way of reaching them now. Halfway back to the Orion, we caught sight of figures moving toward us on the horizon.
I recognized three of the four figures. Stacy, Ricky, Doctor Allbright, and a tall man I hadn’t seen before. They all came toward us at a jog.
All of them besides Doctor Allbright had blasters in their hands.
“What, what happened?” Stacy asked as they ran the rest of the way to meet us.
Doctor Allbright immediately came to my side to look at Ira.
I shook my head at her, gently placing Ira on the ground.
“We were attacked in the jungle by a creature that looked like some kind of giant snake,” Boss Creed answered. “It got Ira before any of us could stop it.”
Ricky walked over, checking me for wounds. There was a concerned look on his face.
“No one else got hurt,” I told him, rising to my feet again.
I caught Stacy’s eye and gave her a sad smile.
She returned my look with a nod.
“How did the creature get the drop on you?” the one man in the group I didn’t recognize asked. He spoke with the authority of someone who was used to being obeyed. “Why weren’t you better prepared?”
I knew his type. I already didn’t like him. He had the same look in his eye I’d seen so many times before from trainers at the gym. It was the look that weighed you and passed judgment even before you opened your mouth.
“It’s my fault,” Boss Creed said, shaking his head. “I didn’t see it.”
“None of us could have seen it,” I added. “How are we supposed to see creatures that blend into the jungle interior that we don’t even know exist in the first place? How can we prepare for that?”
“We’ll get a full report from you once we get back to the safety of the Orion,” the man said, already turning to go.
I stood stunned for a minute. I was about to open my mouth and lay into the guy. Tell him we just lost a man not far out from being a kid, when Meenaz did it for me.
“While you’re worried about your report, we’ll be burying Ira,” Meenaz nearly screamed. “That was his name, by the way. You don’t look like you even care, but that’s his name.”
The man stopped and turned toward Meenaz. A predator’s grin crossed his lips. I looked at him this time, really looked at him. He was taller than me. His arms were slender but muscular. If I had to guess, he was somewhere in his mid-forties. A shock of grey and white hair rested on his head.
“I care more than you know, Meenaz Grey,” he said with the same dangerous look in his eye. “I cared for Civil Authority Officer Ira Stone as much as anyone. But he’s dead now. He’s gone, and there’s not a thing we can do about that. What I can do is debrief you. We can learn from this and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now control your emotions, channel your aggression, and let’s get back to the Orion.”
The man didn’t wait to see if his words would be obeyed. He made a tight turn and walked back to the ship.
I didn’t disagree with him, but this soft side of me that was beginning to grow felt for Meenaz. I knew what she was going through. Not everyone was an apathetic son of a gun like this character barking orders and me. Part of me hated him for seeing what he did to Meenaz.
She slumped forward, tears still streaming down her face. Ricky and Doctor Allbright went to her before anyone else did. I could hear their words as they placed their arms around her.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Doctor Allbright said.
“Let’s get you back home,” Ricky said.
Boss Creed picked up Ira once more. This time, he held the kid in his arms like he would a sleeping child and slowly moved on.
I found myself walking side by side with Stacy. Her gait matched mine perfectly. I could tell she wanted to ask how I was but waited until I broke the silence.
“Who’s that guy?” I asked, motioning with my chin to the man now leading our group. “He walks like a suit and talks like someone who’s been in the military.”
“Captain Ezra Harold,” Stacy said without a hint of joy in her voice. “He’s the highest-ranking Civil Authority Officer that made it through the crash. He’s organizing the rest of the Civil Authority Officers now. I don’t know him, well, except for the fact that he has a reputation as a hard-nosed suit.”
“You don’t say,” I said, still figuring out how I felt about him.
“Give him a shot,” Stacy said. “We’re all trying to figure this out.”
I just nodded as we moved forward. What remained of the Orion loomed in front of us. Half of the moon-shaped ship, from the middle up, was what remained of mankind’s greatest achievement to date.
The Orion was one of twelve seed ships destined to bring Transients to new worlds ripe for colonization. Only one thing. Our ship was sabotaged by an insane group of cult members calling themselves Disciples.
When we crashed, the Orion’s captain stayed onboard to land the ship on the planet. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have anything of the Orion left. Escape ships and pods ejected from the Orion before impact. Survivors were scattered around this god-forsaken planet.
Our group walked the rest of the way to the ship in silence. When we got close enough for the guards at the perimeter to see us, Stacy started the conversation again.
“Arun wants to hold a meeting. She wants you to be there,” Stacy said, waiting to see what my response would be.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked.
“You always have a choice, Dean,” Stacy said.
I remained quiet for a minute. My eyes traveled over to where Boss Creed carried the kid in his arms, then to the group of surviving colonists around the Orion carrying out their daily tasks.
Some worked on building a massive wall around the perimeter of the open Orion hull, others ran errands to and from the ship.
Most of these people weren’t survivors. They hadn’t been hardened by the world yet. They were colonists, families, too young and too old to be a part of this. The middle-aged adults did the best they could. We understood we had all stepped in it together.
“Yeah, I’ll come,” I said.
3
The Orion lay cracked open like some gigantic metal egg. It lay on its side, never to rise again. The room I found myself in was the bridge of the ship. It had been repurposed and set up to be a kind of meeting room. The entire level now rested on its side with the massive screen of the ship pressed against the ground.
It was strange to traverse the room as it was. We walked on what used to be the wall as our ground and what used to be the floor was now our left-hand wall.
I was the last one to enter through the elevator shaft. Arun, Iris, Stacy, Captain Harold, and Doctor Wong were all there already, discussing our next plan of action.
They stood around a portable holo table. Everyone greeted me with smiles and hellos, except for Captain Harold, who gave me a single hard nod. It didn’t bother me. This guy didn’t know me from Adam.
“It’s been three days since we’ve lan
ded and what do we have to show for it?” Captain Harold picked up the conversation once more. “I need more resources to build the wall around the open section of the Orion. First and foremost, we need protection, then we can go about on expedition missions to explore and aid other possible survivors.”
“We can certainly discuss that option,” Arun said in her always-diplomatic way of speaking.
I had only seen the Eternal lose her cool once before when we were interrogating a Disciple saboteur on board the Orion. Right now, she was back to her normal composed self, clean grey uniform, white hair pushed back behind her white ears. Her bright blue eyes looked down at the circular holo table in front of us.
“Before we go on to make decisions on what to do next and where to go from here, I’d like Iris to give us an update on the current situation of our resources,” Arun said, looking from the holo table to the Cognitive that stood with us.
Iris looked like Arun herself, short hair with white skin and a grey uniform of her own. Despite this, you could immediately tell she was different. A faint blue glow wafted off her, clearly calling out her artificial intelligence origin.
“In the last few days since our crash, all of our efforts have been in getting our water and food supply up and working again. Shelter hasn’t been a problem since we are able to use the Orion as our home. We’ve also been able to construct tents in the area right outside the Orion. Some of the colonists prefer to live there instead of in a room turned on its side. Although I would like to bring up a plan in our future that would see the Orion righted once more,” Iris said, waving her hand over the holo display as she spoke. Green holographic images popped up, showing us 3D pictures of the Orion. “Communication with Earth is hindered at the moment. That entire floor of the Orion was destroyed in the crash as well as our supply level.”
“So, there’s no way to call home with what we have now?” Doctor Wong asked. The shorter man with glasses was in charge of the technology department on the Orion. He tapped his right pointer finger on his chin as he spoke. “Iris, what do your scanners tell you?”
