Future Winds (10 page)

“Told ya,” Kaito whimpered.

“If you want to be afraid of some bats, maybe you shouldn’t have signed up for traveling to an unknown fucking planet. Hell, you could have ventured to Australia for big, scary bats,” Leon threatened and blustered.

Kaito was obviously terrified of the things and rightfully so. They definitely gave Tyler the creeps. While the bats native to the country of Australia back on earth were indeed big, they were infants compared to these monstrosities that hung suspended above. But in the end he figured it best to stay quiet from here on as Leon was clearly getting annoyed.

“Alright Aries, start with the laser scan first. Then we will move on to sonar,” Leon instructed Tyler’s bot.

The drone flew up to the center of the large cavern room and began projecting small red lasers in every direction. As they moved throughout and forward, the strings of light lit up more of the bats--each one seemingly bigger than the last. No sign of the bugs that attacked the night before. Tyler couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched as the three of them and the two drones continued on deeper into the unknown.

Random pockets of a thick, tall, red, grassy-looking type of plant swayed back and forth. The air had a draft, but not so much that these plants should be flowing in the manner that they were. Tyler reached out and touched one. It quickly wrapped gently around his hand. It didn’t seem to be any type of threat, but it was strange to say the least. One of the brown, spikey lizards he had seen the day before out in the sun was on the wall behind some of the brush. Tyler touching the plant frightened the lizard and it ran fast down the wall towards Kaito.

A bat above silently swoop down and Kaito, for a moment, lost it. “Oh, fuck!” he screamed as he raised his weapon into the air to annihilate the bat that dove down towards his head.

Leon spun around, his flashlights lit up Kaito and his surroundings.

Tyler jumped towards Kaito, swatting his rifle off to the side so that it pointed to the ground as the bat latched on to the lizard and dragged it up into the air and off into the darkness.

“Relax man, it wasn’t going for you,” Tyler comforted. “Besides, if it were, Libra would have blocked it and probably fried the damn thing.”

Kaito was breathing heavy. He shouldn’t have yelled, they were supposed to be quite after all and his drone Libra was literally one of the best defensive units ever created. It was simply a ball of energy that could absorb damage and was capable of frying just about anything it touched to a crisp. Tyler figured if Aries were equipped with Libra’s defensive tech, he himself wouldn’t be afraid of much of anything this planet had to offer, but she was not.

Leon became even more irritated and just continued on ahead.

For a guy always so calm, cool, and calculated, Leon was totally on edge. The vice admiral must have really dug her claws into him,
Tyler thought.

***

Ness was unsure how long he had been digging. At some point in the day his brain just clicked into automatic mode. Tired, with no sweat left in his body to perspire out, the crew continued on, running off stimpacks and their canteens of water: which were consumed and empty almost as soon as they were seldom allowed to fill them up.

He would glance over his shoulder every thrust of his shovel to see one mech patting down the earth, making the section they dug out smooth and flat while a second one mixed cement and began to pour it in. Another crew, from another block, smoothed out the cement foundation.

What I would give to be in that block
, Ness thought. Though if he were, he would not be able to watch over his younger brother who was still back at the ship doped up on painkillers for the day. Lucas was scheduled to rejoin the others in work tomorrow. Until then Ness couldn’t help but feel envious of anyone who didn’t have to be out in this heat swinging at the dirt for however long he consecutively had.

Completion was in grasp as they approach the end of their designated day one zone. Ahead a crew lay asphalt roadways interconnecting the multiple construction sites while another one assembled large metallic pillars with strange flat angular roofing. A pillar was placed at each end of every rectangular dig zone. Ness assumed the pillars were the basin to defensive magnetic shielding. When activated they would project a transparent shield around the buildings, protecting them from the firestorms or any other incoming harmful assault for that matter.

Just a couple more hours and he would be done for the day. His crew would be the first to complete their task and he was kind of proud of that. Not that there was any comradery to be found. Everyone working was too exhausted and afraid to engage in any form of conversation. They just kept digging.

The ground began to gently shake and Ness felt his stomach drop into his feet.

Another attack
, he thought. He wasn’t the only one to panic. Everyone around him stopped digging. Some even held their shovels as to use them as a weapon, to spear and swing at whatever was about to erupt from the ground.

Ness clenched his fingers so tightly around the handle of his shovel, he felt as though they were going to snap right off. He wasn’t going to die in this pit today. He would decapitate every last one.

“Get back to work you pussies,” a guard called down, “It’s just the warp gate,” he taunted with a scowl.

Ness felt stupid. The looks on the workers around him were similar in their embarrassment, but Ness figured it was for damn good reason that they be afraid of the soil beneath their feet to abruptly start shaking.

Even being a mile away, they could hear the warp gate begin to scream and howl up into the sky as the ground continued to rumble. It looked like it could explode at any minute and vaporize them all as its hum screeched louder and louder for about ten minutes and then, it just stopped altogether.

Up in the sky silently floating was a carrier, the second one to arrive. It sat there motionless for about five minutes before descending down behind New Horizon.

That’s kind of exciting,
Ness thought.
One step closer to having a city with people, and friends, and food.

***

Aisha spent the day regaining her strength in a recovery medical bay after her night of being under surgery. All afternoon she forced her brain to accept the fact that her new arm was here to stay. She didn’t dislike the new addition but it was a radical change that she would have to embrace and get used too.

Restless to get back to work, she hopped out of bed and walked over to a pile of fresh clothes resting atop her armor and sword--all of which was set aside for her for when she was feeling a hundred percent. She was forced to drag along tubing that fed nanobots into her spine to travel up her body, fight infection and repair tissue.

“Looks like you are doing well,” said the voice of her female doctor who entered the room unnoticed. “You know you are supposed to be resting. You do not want to push yourself too far this early on and risk your body rejecting its latest addition.”

“I feel fine though and the more I use it, the more natural it feels.”

Aisha picked up the clothing from the table with her dominant organic arm and used her artificial one to unbutton the uniform with precision.

“Very well done, I didn’t think you would be capable of the precise stuff for a few days at least...”

Aisha’s brain felt as though it was going to explode from her skull with the amount of focus she had to muster and strain to perform the task correctly. She didn’t want to admit it and risk having to stay in the chamber any longer than she had already. Being bedridden was worse than dying to her. She had to get out and do
something
, anything.

Observing her struggle to put the uniform on over the tubing that fed into the basin of her spine, the doctor forced a smile. “What are you going to do? wheel that nano injection machine out of here with you too?” The doctor approached the girl and put a warm hand on her back. “This is going to feel,” she paused, “strange.” One after another, she quickly and painlessly pulled the long needles that ran the piping into Aisha’s backside out. They disconnected with a sliding motion that felt cold and hollow. The doctor was right, nothing could prepare her for the odd feeling of something being removed from within her spine.

“What about the bots?” Aisha asked, troubled, as she realized any that were injected now had no way out.

“They are designed to dissolve in a matter of hours when their source of entrance is disconnected,” the doctor comforted.

Aisha fixed her armor over her clothing, it was much easier than buttoning her shirt, and when she was done she looked in the mirror and smiled in triumph for what she had accomplished.

Today I managed to dress myself a day after cutting my own arm off
, she thought cheerfully. This was the first time she had looked at herself with the outside perspective a mirror provided and, in doing so, she noticed that her hair was shorter. She had been so preoccupied with her arm she hadn’t even noticed until now the haircut she was given while under surgery.
Must of had to shorten it to make the procedure easier and more sanitary,
she figured as she toyed with the short, choppy brown do,
I kind of like it though.
She looked back over to the table where her sword sat in its sheath and picked it up with her right hand.

“I am told you are naturally dominant in your right hand. You are lucky you didn’t lose the arm you swing that thing with,” the doctor said with a wide smile.

She is right
, Aisha thought.
I can’t fire a gun accurately to save my own life, let alone defend anyone else's.

“While I would like to see you rest a bit more, it is clear those are not your intentions. So when you are ready, the vice admiral requested you see her. She will be surprised to see you so soon, I am sure. I told her you wouldn’t be ready to return to work for a few days.”

She wants to see me
?
But why?
Aisha wondered as she unsheathed her blade to inspect it for the first time since yesterday's gruesome fight.

There was dry blood all over its long, curvy body. Constructed with rare metals not of earth, it was as close to being unbreakable as any blade ever constructed by man and guaranteed to never lose its sharp edges. It was light, quick through the air and all too devastating against the flesh of man. It held true even against those bugs in the conflict that served to cake the blade in blood. The blade was her companion in the thick of it all, and was a marvelous weapon indeed.

And to think I never gave you a name
, she thought.

Her eyes scanned the room and her attention was caught by the table furthest from where she stood where the fragments of her dead drone still sat scattered about.

“I shall call you, Havoc,” she whispered to the blade, “And together, we shall avenge our old friend.”

Leon glared down into the darkness of the tunnel ahead as Aries continued her scan. Her red lasers lit up various portions of the walls. Even the cracks and crevices of the cavern were absorbed into a master file that mapped out every detail of the cave they continued to explore.

The three men and two bots had gone deep enough in that they could no longer see the entrance. So far they had only seen giant lizards and bats that mostly kept to themselves. This was okay with Leon, though part of him would love nothing more than to massacre more of those locust and their maggot looking friends. Keeping what was left of his squad safe in this dark and morbid place felt light years more important.

So far so good,
he thought.

Aries’ lasers would occasionally illuminate the men's faces: Kaito had a permanent look of concern and Tyler a look of wonder. Leon’s own face harbored a scowl. His bushy brows slanted above his eyes which squinted in an attempt to make out every shadow off in the distance.

He rubbed his forehead with his wrist in an attempt to comfort the splitting headache that had suddenly set in. The hair on his upper lip felt wet, he dabbed it with his forearm and looked down in the darkness. Blood. His nose was dripping a good amount.

“Tyler take the lead,” Leon said as he holstered his pistols and plugged the oozing faucet of blood with his gloves.

“Are you ok?” Kaito gasped.

“Just keep moving,” Leon barked.

The men silently continued forward into unchartered territory. They walked for another fifteen minutes straining to make out silhouettes. Their flashlights would dismantle the unknown into nothingness, yet spark more shadows in other directions. If fear were the battle, they were losing the war.

Aries broke their silence, “The tunnel ahead breaks into three separate paths.”

“Stop your laser scanning and begin sonar pings,” Leon commanded.

The three men stopped walking as the drone quickly followed orders. It pinged ahead using sonar to generate a rough idea of what was further down each tunnel.

“I am detecting a large opening a quarter mile ahead via the far right most tunnel.”

“Is it an exit to the surface?” Leon asked. If so, then they had failed in accomplishing what they set out to do. Exploring and generating a map of a cave filled with bats and lizards was far from the objective of discovering the hideaway of the creatures that attacked New Horizon the night before.

“No, we are a little over two and a half miles underground. It seems to be an opening that leads into a very large chamber.”

LED lights along Aries’ front side began to strobe as they changed from their typical blue hue to a red color that indicated her processing power was being bogged down. She was dedicating more CPU power and memory to the sonar pings to get a better idea as to what lay ahead.

“It is an enormous chamber,” she informed, “perhaps multiple miles in width. I will not be able to get an accurate layout due to its size, but there does seem to be a lot of alien activity.”

“This is it. We actually found it,” Tyler said with enthusiasm.

“We have to get eyes on it one way or another,” Leon said softly.

It was a truth none of them wanted to hear.

“If we call in the bombing of this cave and it proves to be nothing more than an ecosystem of plants and animals, then we will find ourselves in a world of trouble. The vice admiral will be the least of our worries compared to the crucifixion the political bureaucrats will sentence us too. Not to mention setting off bombs underground would be a sure fire way to piss off those giant bugs and provoke a second attack. We must be sure this is their home before we call it in.”

Aries disengaged her sonar pings and descended to the ground for a minute to recharge her power core.

“We have two ways of doing this,” Leon continue. “Option A, we continue down in and check it out for ourselves or Option B we send Aries the rest of the way to confirm. She is linked into Tyler’s nervous system, so he can see through her as long as they do not get too far apart. What do you guys think?”

Leon knew the answers both men would give before he asked the question. Tyler would not want to gamble with the life of his drone, while Kaito would rather that than bet with all of their own lives.

Sure enough after five minutes of debate, the decision was a stalemate. Leon expected this and turned to the drone and asked, “What's your call Aries?”

He also knew what she would say. Lacking emotions, robots had a sense of fearless heroism about themselves and Aries was not one to shy away from risk of death.

“Yes, I am ok with that,” she agreed.

Sometimes that is how you lead
, Leon thought.

This was an early lesson he had learned back in his training: to know who you are working with and how to set them up at times to do what you want them to do without them realizing that you had decided their fate already.

“That’s bullshit,” Tyler complained in losing the argument. “The entire reason we are down here is because you said we couldn’t risk losing any more drones.”

“And I meant what I said when I said it,” Leon defended as he began stroking his beard. “But I don’t see much risk in sending her the rest of the way to get eyes on a target on our behalf. What would be more dangerous is for us all to approach the chamber. If we did that, surely we would get caught. She can get in and out quickly and quietly. Different circumstances call for different actions.”

Shaking his head, Tyler slung his rifle around his back and took a deep breath. “I haven’t done this in a while,” he added as he closed his eyes.

“It’s ok. She will do all the work, just relax and observe. Aries, be sure to stay up and out of sight,” Leon said putting a hand on Tyler. “Grab hold of his other side, Kaito, so he doesn’t fall down.”

Aries drifted off into the darkness as Tyler let out a gasp, opening his eyes. They were purely white, rolled back into his skull. His vision was no longer his own, but entirely through hers.

Usually major advancements in the fields of science and technology were fueled by military research. Human history had always reflected that statement in a truthful manner. Their desires to kill one another always was one of the most powerful fuels man had stored within, but sometimes, good things were developed by good people.

A Swedish chemist named Alfred Nobel in 1867 invented dynamite. Originally designed as a solution to use nitroglycerin in a safe manner for mining and construction, Nobel actually feared his legacy would be left tarnished in the history books as that of an enabler of human atrocities, for mankind would, and did use his invention to kill one another. In his dying will, he set up a prize fund called The Nobel Prize, to give praise to inventors and contributors of greatness, in an attempt to keep the spotlight focused in a positive manner.

In the year 2045, a Russian man by the name of Vladimir Karkorov took ophthalmology to a whole other level when he figured out how to counter human born blindness via fusing a human’s eyesight with the cam feed of robotics. Eventually Karkorov won a Nobel Peace Prize for his works, but much like Alfred Nobel, Karkorov’s invention was gulped up by the armies of the world for use in warfare. What Tyler and Aries were doing was an example of Karkorov’s invention. An invention now actively used in the fields of warfare.

Impressive stuff,
Leon thought.

“How you doing, pal?” Kaito asked, breaking the moment of silence.

“Good. She has her night vision active and is approaching the opening. It seems very bright and obscure though. Aries turn off your night vision,” he paused “Yea, that’s better. There is natural light in the opening. She is slowing down now as she gets closer... be careful.” He hesitated again, watching as his vision led him closer to the opening with eyes that were not his by birthright. “Ok. She is at the entrance. Wow,” he said with a dramatic pause, “It’s an entire city! There are pillars of fire scattered about for lighting and hundreds, if not thousands, of buildings. This is incredible.”

“The bugs?” Leon pressed.

“Yes, they are everywhere. It’s a metropolis,” Tyler said amazed by what he was seeing.

“Good, get her out of there quick. We are going to cleanse that entire city by fire.” 

***

Kio-Kai entered a bar nestled deep in the city of Val-Muel with the help of Lai-Kai. 

He could flutter his wings, but walking on his legs was shaky and unpredictably difficult. He was injured. The two of them found seats in the crowded establishment and ordered drinks. A twitcher drone approached them each a stone chalice of icor, a mixture of lifeblood and a ground-up, intoxicating herb called leach.

“How you feeling?” Lai-Kai asked as she took a swig of her drink.

Kio-Kai’s antennas and eyes both drooped in exhaustion. He had lead the assault the night before against the humans as instructed by Naberius and, in doing so, had collected a variety of minor scrapes and wounds as well as one slightly more pressing in concern. His legs had been bashed in and broken by the brute he helped wrestle to the ground and capture.

He took a sip of the icor and could feel the healing properties of the lifeblood get straight to work in repairing his injuries, while the numbing qualities of the leach soothed his aches.

“I will be fine,” Kio-Kai said.

“I thought the assault would be easier,” she said as she downed more of the icor and ordered another round for them. “I mean, we executed the plan well, but when we mapped everything out and went over it,” she paused, “I don’t know. It just sounded like it was going to be an easy win.”

“Yea, that’s how it goes. The plan always sounds better than the resolve,” he said sipping his second drink. “We suffered a lot of casualties, but we accomplished what we set out to do, I guess.”

Lai-Kai tapped all six fingers of her left hand on the table. “There is no way we could have known they used projectile weapons...I mean the one you found and captured yesterday morning, did it have weapons?”

“No, it was already injured and an easy, quick kill.”

The two finished their drinks and ordered a third round. At this rate they would be drunk by high noon, but that was the plan: a day of drinking in an attempt to self-justify their actions of the day prior.

A familiar hunter approached the two. He was much darker in color compared to Kio-Kai and had a beard of spikes that hung from the sides of his cheeks down past the base of his chin. “Kio-Kai and Lai-Kai? I haven't seen you two since we were little larva in the spawning pools.”

It was a common expression in Vai-Zik society, though not technically correct. Jek-Xio was approximately the same age as the two of them, but he wasn’t born of the same queen thus hadn’t spawned in the same pools of creation. Not to mention that the last time the three collectively saw each other was two or three years back when a couple dozen members of their two clans were assigned the tedious mission of eradicating a stone giant intruder from an early Vai-Zik expansion settlement to the north.

“Hey Jek-Xio. Yea, it’s been awhile. How is Saf-Xio?” Lai-Kai asked of a member who had his entire body from the stomach down severed off on the mission they partook in together years back.

“Yea, he is doing well. Not only did the bastard live, he regrew his abdomen and legs. He is getting better every day in strengthening them too. I will never forget that mission and we never did kill that damn stone giant,” he said with a laugh.

“Yea well, we were supposed to get rid of it and we did. One does not simply kill a rock giant,” Lai-Kai giggled.

“Yea... for peaceful nomads that damned thing sure has killed a lot of Vai-Zik,” Jek-Xio said with a frown. “Anyway what brings you guys to Val-Muel?”

“We just got back from an overlord operation to capture an alien species,” Lai-Kai said with just enough sarcasm to make it sound unbelievable.

Jek-Xio laughed, “You take your orders from the overlords now? Does that mean you have become a queen already?”

Kio-Kai fired his eyes up from the table over into Lai-Kai’s. He was not so sure that they should be telling others about the communication or commandments they had received from Naberius. Hell, he didn’t know much of what she or he were supposed to do about the whole ordeal, period. They were so quick to abide and resolve that which was requested of them, that they never stopped to think about the consequences let alone question the end result.

Such is loyalty
, Kio-Kai thought.

Though Naberius's legion of overlords, or daemons as he called them, were secretive, the Vai-Zik bore no secrets, and so, Lai-Kai did not care to begin doing so today.

“Yea, strange little squishy creatures, sacks of flesh, meat, and bone. They seem to be pretty far technologically advanced--which I suppose is to compensate for just how damn hideous and weak they are,” Lai-Kai continued. “They landed to the west. We managed to harvested a bunch and even brought one back alive.”

Registering that she was being earnest, Jek-Xio couldn’t help but confirm his realization out loud. “Wait, you are being serious?” He pulled up a stool from another table and took a seat between them to listen to her story of the assault.