Future Winds (7 page)

“Rise my children,”
her speechless voice spoke directly into their minds.

Behind her, in the shadows, stood a creature Kio-Kai had never seen. Much like the overlord at the arena today, only it had skin that was mangled and broken. Fragments of broken bone protruded from its skin as blood and puss slowly oozed from its many wounds.

“I called you down here to meet someone of grave importance,”
Lady Kai continued,
“He is a very old friend and trusted advisor to the hive.”

“Why, hello,” the creature said in a sharp tone as he approached Lai-Kai and kissed her on the hand with his grotesque lips, “My name is Naberius and I am quite excited to have made your acquaintance, little huntress. I have heard much of you, word is you will be a fitting queen someday soon and spawn a clan of your own, Lai-Kai.”

Seemingly overwhelmed with the overall experience before her, she simply responded with a wide-eyed nod.

The pale beast's eyes imprisoned a look of a million years of pain as they slowly drifted over to meet Kio-Kai.

“And you, young hunter. I admit I do not know much about you, up until today, when It seems you brought in quite the catch.”

For the first time, in a long time, Kio-Kai felt tremendous amounts of fear.
How does he know what I brought in?
he thought.
Ah cave whiskers.

All of the major entrances to the interconnected colonies within the Vai-Zik empire, mostly empty caverns, were lined with whiskers: a highly sensitive plant-like fungi that detected, observed, and reported on all activity amongst the clans. Though Kio-Kai never fully understood to whom they might report and of what language they even spoke, he realized that one of many talents and languages the overlords spoke was that of a cave whisker.

How was I supposed to know that thing was an overlord?
he thought,
I have never seen one before.
He tried to justify it in his own head before it could be brought up in the conversation.

“Do you know what it is you caught today, young hunter?” the overlord questioned.

“It is ok, my child. You did not do anything wrong
,” Lady Kai comforted, sensing his sudden overwhelming emotion of fear.

“I did not know until after it was processed,” Kio-Kai admitted.

The creature painfully raised its head up and down in understanding.

Kio-Kai just went ahead and said it, “It was an overlord.”

“No, it was a woman,” Naberius corrected, “From the species of man or, more commonly, they refer to themselves as human beings,”

Naberius’s demeanor coupled with his voice was hypnotizing, thoroughly capturing the attention of Kio-Kai and Lai-Kai in an unbroken level of obedient attention.

“But today at the arena, the man we saw?” Kio-Kai disputed.

“Was a daemon, one of my many followers. They hold various seats of power within your empire to ensure stability and peace within. They look similar to the humans but are very different. They are loyal to our collective cause and prideful natives to our land.”

“Are you an overlord?” Lai-Kai questioned.

The beast’s face twisted and turned. “I have been called that before, among various other things, but I very much prefer Naberius-- that is after all what my father calls me. Now boy, the reason I summoned you two down here is that there are more of the humans, like the one you saw today. Many more. They landed only a short distance off from where you discovered the girl. These aliens that landed on our sacred planet are a very dangerous and a very real threat. Did you know they killed the grinder that processed that girl for you?”

Kio-Kai was quickly overwhelmed with guilt.
They must have followed me to the cave
, he concluded.

“I thought it appropriate to ask that you two be the blades of vengeance for your slain brethren in this matter. The humans made landfall on the outskirts of an entrapment field, so taking them by surprise should be easy. Take two hundred hunters and four dozen grinders, catch the humans off guard, shake them up a bit and bring me their finest warrior.”

Kio-Kai looked over to his queen as if silently asking her if this was what she wanted. She gave him a nod of approval.

“If my queen desires as such, then I submit myself to you,” Kio-Kai said as he kneeled to Naberius. “It will be done,”

Lai-Kai silently followed in the symbolic gesture.

Kio-Kai and Lai-Kai rose to their feet and took leave to carry out the overlord’s commands.

A short, round man waddled into the entrance of block sixty-five calling attention to its inhabitants. “Alright people, we have spent weeks learning our roles and so, by now, should all have a pretty good grasp on what that is and how to do it. If anyone has questions, they can ask me at any time. Please line up in an orderly fashion and follow me. We will be getting right to work.”

The room filled quickly with conversation, speculation, and excitement for the tasks ahead as the workers, mostly young men and women, lined up to the door.

“Looks like we are jumping right in,” Ness pointed out to his little brother. “We just landed less than an hour ago.”

“That’s ok. I have been dying to get out of this stuffy, stinky room anyway,” the smaller boy replied. He put on his backpack as if preparing for the first day of school in a new town.

Everyone in the unit was assigned a ‘day one’ backpack, which was a small black sack that contained a shovel, a wash cloth, a canteen of water, and three stimpacks.

Stimpacks were injections that substituted the need to eat. A small, yet highly concentrated liquid of vitamins, minerals, and energy that could not only sustain a human being in regular functions, but also increase his or her mental and physical output. A human being could survive off of stimpacks alone for almost a full year, at least that was the record set in a scientific study a few years prior. After three hundred and forty-nine days of stimpacks alone, the test subject died of a brain aneurysm. It was concluded that lack of food and nutrients was not the cause of death, but rather the strenuous output on the cerebrum
caused by the concentrated potency of a pure stimpack diet.

The team would be required to work through the first twenty-four hours straight with only a single one-hour break at the eighteen-hour mark.

The crew shuffled out behind the round man who waddled ahead like a duck. They walked through long corridors within the ship, passing other blocks where teams assembled to begin work on whatever tasks and missions they may have been assigned to.

Finally reaching a large blast door, the fat man turned to face his crew. “You guys ready?” he asked with his cheeks rolling up like a soft, squishy dough.

The crowd cheered in excitement. Ness had butterflies in his stomach. This was it--halfway across the galaxy to establish a new world, a new home.

He glanced down towards his younger brother who had his eyes clenched shut. He was gripping the cross he wore around his neck as if someone were about to snatch it away. It was a gift from their mother just before they left. She always was quite religious, though Ness never was. He figured it best not to discredit the symbol that his younger brother wore in comfort--better to just leave him be in peace.

No loving god would ever allow the series of events that plagued the earth to ever happen in the first place,
he thought.

The doors slowly raised, allowing light to shine through into the ship. The crowd covered their eyes in blindness. They had not directly seen a sun in quite some time.

A comforting, warm draft of heat blew in with dust and dirt. They had been in space for a long time and not only was it dark in space, but it was also tremendously cold. So the extreme heat felt incredible to Ness as he regained sight and stepped out into the world. Red mountains in the distance cut into the sky of scattered clouds, crafting a landscape of bright, vibrant colors.

“You smell that?” Ness asked taking in a deep breath.

“Dirt?” his little brother joked.

“No man, fresh air. Not that recycled crap we breathed on the ship, but clean natural air!”

The sun was setting in the desert valley. A sky of pink light grew increasingly darker with every minute that passed by.

“How are we going to work through the night in the dark?” A woman, ahead of the two boys, asked her friend in a tone of concern.

“The carrier has spotlights all along the side of it,” her friend answered while pointed back to the ship.

A Humvee ran yellow tape ahead, laying out their designated dig sight before moving on to taper off another crew’s assigned work zone nearby.

A large, two legged mech, clunky in motion, maneuvered towards them stopping just shy of the dig site. Twenty feet high, this was no militarized mech, rather is was equipped with drills used to soften the soil and make it easier for civilians to dig. A wobbly vehicle such as this, looking like it could fall apart at any minute, would never meet the high standards of military use. But civilian based construction was a fitting purpose for the old hunk of outdated manmade technology.

***

Leon sat perched against a boulder as he filed his report on the events from the day. As he typed away on the thin transparent piece of glass, he watched an abundance of entryways open releasing thousands of civilians from New Horizon. Like water from a levy system, they poured out and spread in front of the massive vessel.

“Looks like they are wasting little time in getting right to work,” Leon said to his drone, Scorpio, “Is Kaito still in the debriefing with the vice admiral?”

The drone pinged Kaito’s. “He appears to currently be engaged in communication with Vice Admiral Natalia Fox.”

Leon repositioned himself against the uncomfortable rock. Debriefing with this vice admiral was perhaps the most tedious thirty minutes of his life and being back outside under the brutality of Flare’s sun was pleasant and refreshing in comparison.

Watching the construction crews get to work felt like a milestone reached in preserving the fate of the human race. Here they were on a planet they knew very little about, other than its mediocre potential to sustain life. Here they were quite literally laying the foundation for future generations to come and ensuring the safety of those generations via escaping earth and her volatile sun.

The moon was beginning to rise and take its place in the sky on one end of the horizon as the sun set on another. It was an eerie transition on the alien world, for the moon was much bigger. Brighter than earth's, the sky above exposed much detail of a bustling array of activity in this end of the galaxy.

Watching the sky above, Leon abruptly jumped upright as the ground beneath his feet progressively shook to life. It changed from a minute, subtle rattle of rocks and pebbles to a much more violent vibration. He watched as what appeared to be a sinkhole wobbled to life. He jumped back and suddenly spotted what looked like a large ant on two legs, with claws and long sharp blade like bones running from the arms, leap up from the ditch with a flutter of its wings, latched on to Scorpio and dragged the drone back down into the crater.

It all happened so fast, much like how a trapdoor spider of his home world would catch its prey. Scorpio was gone, down into the earth.

In disbelief over what he had just witnessed, he turned to confirm if anyone else had seen what he had, but no one seemed to have noticed the event occur.

It was like some giant humanoid locust,
Leon contemplated.

Leon’s eyes fixated on the dirt that was shaking out by a cluster of civilians. His heart sank and he found it difficult to form words in his dry mouth.

“Everyone get back to the carrier!” he yelled, unholstering his two high energy pistols. He activated the laser’s optics on the weapons and silently scanned the ground, waiting for the next attack.

A few people looked at him as if he had gone mental.

The earth began to rattle beneath a young girl with long blonde hair who had triggered one of the traps. Leon’s lasers drifted over to the girl as one of the locusts manifested from below. He sprayed the creature in the backside, tearing a hole clean through it. The girl fell to the ground and got showered in the insect’s entrails. Wasting no time, she crawled back to her feet and began to scream, as she fled.

Looks like they saw that one
, Leon thought as the crowd began to panic and run.

The horrific sound of screaming echoed through the air as civilians got caught in the creatures’ traps. Their blades and claws impaled construction workers before they dragged the helpless human beings off into the ground.

Leon was the first to fire a weapon let alone kill one of the large humanoid insects, but he would not be the last.

Aisha ran towards him as another insect leapt up to pull her under. She sprang forward and barrel rolled off to the side to safety. Pisces activated their stealth tech and quickly the two of them became invisible.

A faint blur could be seen as the locust that had attempted to snatch the girl got cut, severed from the waist down.

The insects were coming from the ground now and engaging in full-fledged combat. Their trickery was done after claiming roughly thirty to forty civilians and military escort alike, down into the red dirt.

Gunfire volleyed fourth from a half a dozen military personnel who were getting cornered by a handful of the insects. Two men got impaled and bled out on the ground while their comrades dismantled the culprits with hailing energy beams, lasers, and railguns.

Behind one of the fallen insects was one of the creatures Leon and Kaito had engaged in the cave just earlier in the day. It sprayed liquid all over three men as they fired at it, ripping it to pieces. The men were quick to clench their faces and fall to the ground screaming in agony as their skin bubbled and burned away.

Abram bellowed out in the distance, a cry of bloodlust, as he swung his war hammer, collecting piles of dead insects. Despite his success, he was getting swarmed and overrun. Four of the locust jumped on him, wrestling him to the ground. He dropped his weapon and fought back with his massive fists, breaking them apart with his bare hands until three more joined in to help plunge the giant down under the ground.

Leon killed dozens of the insects trying to make his way to any nearby comrade. A rookie soldier, young boy no older than twenty, was his closest fighting ally just a few yards away. Leon made his way to him, dropping enemies with accurate shots to their face, one after another. He reached the ally just as a locust poked the boy straight through the neck with a long, sharp blade. Leon dropped the bug, tearing its face, neck, and shoulders off in a hail of fire then looked down to the boy who clenched his neck as if he could stop the bleeding that gushed freely like a fountain and drowned him where he lay.

While maintaining direct eye contact with the boy, Leon quickly raised one of his pistols over the kids face and fired twice. He figured the least he could do was give him a quick, painless death before he moved forward in the slaughter for survival.

Tyler and Aries advanced the side flank gunning down one after another in a perfectly executed sequence, but they would never reach Leon in time.

The bugs simply would not stop coming. As soon as one died, two more would emerge from the ground to take its place.

His pistols were dangerously close to overheating. It wasn’t a matter of if it happened, but rather when. He glanced down to the heat index indicator on the side of his weapons. The meters had reached fully into the red hazard zone. He had no choice but to keep firing, gambling the risk of his firearms exploding in his hand outweighed the other option of allowing himself to get overwhelmed by the giant insects.

He could feel the heat radiating off the weapons. His instincts begged him to call out to Scorpio, but the bot was gone and presumably dead. The pistols stung his fingers and began melting away his gloves as he continued to drop more of the locusts.

Just as all seemed lost, surrounded by over a dozen of the things and his death inevitably drawing ever so near, a shot rang out crackling across the sky like lightning. In the smallest of nanoseconds, a path was fully cleared ahead of him. Nothing but smoldering mush lay on the ground, a clear and present runway for escape.

The aftershock boom felt as though it blew Leon’s eardrums from his head. His entire face was ringing and in a slight daze, Leon saw Kaito was off in the distance, peaking his face up above the scope of his sniper rifle, barrel still smoking. He seemed to mouth the words ‘run’.

***

Aisha slashed down one after another. She was mostly invisible to them, thus held an immeasurable tactical advantage. Her killing spree would get cut short by a large sack of a rotting larva, seemingly confused, as it witnessed its comrades falling to the ground, getting their ligaments ripped apart by some incomprehensible, invisible force. In panic it spewed acid in all directions before it.

Pisces got engulfed in most of the spray and Aisha raised her hand to shield her face from what was left incoming through the air.

The liquid covered her left hand and forearm. Very quickly her armor, her clothing, her skin and bone was eaten alive by this acid. She shrieked in pain as Pisces fell to the ground, dissolving in the acid and causing her stealth cloak to vanish.

She fell to her knees in pain and shock, not knowing what to do as she watched her arm quickly become a gooey string of useless muscle. The tendons and fibers liquefied before her very eyes and dripped right off the bone.