Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (32 page)

Elante walked up to a young woman named Hiraku holding a small
crustacean called a chitling or chit for short. It was named for the taste and
was only traded when an Eek owed someone food. It was a delicacy to most
Eek but nearly impossible to stomach by any other species and yet it had all
the vitamins and protein the body desired. Hiraku was much younger then I
was, vaguely I could remember the name belonging to a small child. A child
that always carried around a stuffed penguin and was never far from her
mother or the other guardians. When the fall happened she was too young to
remember. This devastated world was all she knew.

In the days after the fall (or rather 'the purge' as most will remember it)
humans scattered about through the remains hoping the Aelita or Erebus
would send help. Some gathered using sheets to spell out S.O.S. across the
ground while others held onto flairs hoping to see a drop ship fly by in the
sky above. Others less lucky lay buried under rubble for weeks surviving on
the small bugs and roaches that crawled out from the ground and drinking
from the veins of the biomass that kept them breathing. Elante was one of the
few alive on the surface when the Aelita performed the ‘Hammer of God’ he
was only a few hours away on foot from the spot the Aelita was rescuing the
few like myself that were lucky enough to escape. As I lay still I watched the
various moments in his life when he was hunting hellbeast with Eek, running
from and dissecting the ticks and their hosts who still wandered the alleys of
the city. I watched as he would walk by various ports and drop ships run dry
and rusted from the toxic winds. When I was a child my mother pushed me to
be a pilot. She would send me to the simulators several hours a week even
when I would cry and scream how I didn’t want to go. Had she known one
day I would be forced to escape Errikus the way I did? Did she know I
would be a part of ‘First Descent’ and that her lessons would save my life
time and time again? She always told me I was something more then a user
and destiny held great things for me. I always wrote it off as just something a
mother would say. Even in death she was watching over me and teaching me
how to fly, soar, and survive. For two months I saw through the various eyes
of Elante and Hiraku and other survivors. I saw the things they did to survive
- some horrible and others amazing. For two months I lay in the still of stasis
with nothing but my own thoughts and visions haunted by the death of
Hayden.

“Sev, are you awake? Can you hear me?” the voice belonged to Aira. I
was on the ground inside the stasis chamber my naked body was still covered
in the liquid oxygen. “How are you feeling?” she asked. I remained silent only
looking up at her. I felt like I had been awake for days on end. I could still see
Hiraku and Elante from my dreams. I began to look around. The Praxis
looked the same as it did before. I was no longer in any pain and there was
only a long thin mark from a surgical laser laid out across my side. “What
happened?” I asked. “I hacked the ship and made it sorry about what
happened, there is a medical bay here that still works. Moments after I put
you in stasis it ran a diagnostic. It thought you were a threat somehow and
had I not known how to hack you would be a goner. The lab started growing
ghost organs. You’ve been in and out of stasis six times now each time for a
new surgery.” “What happened to Hayden?” She looked down at the ground
a small cat like creature called a Zeesk was rubbing its head on her legs.
Using the mechanical claw that made up one of her hands she pierced her
index finger. Slowly blood trickled down into the creature mouth. “I burned
his body and buried him, a fate better then most. We’ve been alone out here
for two months, a few days ago I managed to get a signal out. There should
be someone coming for us any day now.”

I found it hard to believe she had waited so long but then I
remembered how archaic this ship was, it must have taken her weeks just to
understand the basics. It was one thing to hack it and talk to it but to send a
signal she must have rebuilt the antenna array from scratch.

I looked down at my side again while getting dressed. Aira had
managed to keep my battle suit ready and functioning for my return, she even
sewed up the hole that Lore’s weapon had made. There was no more then a
fading scar on my side. I honestly wished it would never go away. It was a
reminder of what happened and a reminder of Hayden and how he gave his
life for me. Something I would never forget. The only reminder I would have
once it fades would be my new ghost organs. They had been grown from
matter the Praxis herself gave to Aira. Apparently she had managed to teach
the ship humility as well as manners. The organs had been downed and rinsed
in chemicals so no cells remained nothing would be left except for cartilage
and collagen. I could see it all now Aira placing the pieces inside me and
coating them molding it into something new something my body would take.
The connective tissue would regenerate while I slept reseeding with my own
cells. It was almost a miracle that my body took when it did. Had the stasis
chamber not frozen my body I would have bled out. This ‘ghosting’
technology had been lost to the Erebus for centuries. Sure we had access to
3D printers but only a few knew how to sculpt and sculpt correctly. Aira was
just as much an artist and surgeon as she was a soldier. Most of the time on
the ship we would simply inject some nanites inside someone that would
begin healing and mending the wound but in this case we had no
inoculations, no exotic alien organics, or even cyber parts. 3D printing was a
beautiful art but a slow way to heal.

Aira showed me were she had buried Hayden. She told me how the
Praxis had been attacked several times by hellbeast and how she found the
Zeesk wandering through the passageways searching for food. She adopted it
seeing as it like her felt alone and in need of a companion. I hadn’t realized
how frail Aira had become, her skin an anemic white and her stomach and
arms thinner then I had ever seen them. She had been surviving on what the
ship had given her. Strange fruits that grew inside and the water that covered
the control room floor. The Zeesk fed off her blood. I had heard of creatures
like this living on exotic worlds that rotated around red dwarf stars. Some of
the worlds I could remember Abas, Carath, Havancia, worlds full of strange
life. I wondered how it got here and if it had been another experiment created
by the Lethe; had it been another animal taken aboard an ark and brought to
this new world? Something about this place seemed wrong. Why had the
Lethe abandoned so many of their own worlds to come here? It was
irrelevant. The Lethe were extinct and we had come here to make this our
home. We would adapt just like the Zeesk. Aira seemed to favor talking to it.
It reminded her of the dogs onboard the Aelita. Animals that never left their
masters side and showed the greatest empathy for those in need. They were a
part of the few good memories that she had clung too. Another two days
passed before anyone came and when they did I recognized the leader of the
scouting party right away. He looked older as if the last two months had aged
him quite a bit but I had no doubt. It was Talon.

He came riding up to the Praxis riding on a creature called a Belau. It
was had a long neck that stretched like a giraffe maybe ten-twelve feet into
the air covered in black hair that dreaded and came down two-three feet all
across its neck. It’s face was shaped like a horse with two eyes and an nose
except for it had sharp fangs, curved tusks, and long ears that seemed to flail
in the wind. Its body was round with two birdlike legs and two short arms
that hung down as nothing more then extra appendages. Talon was on it’s
back with several weeks worth of supplies. A few others were with him each
traveling on the same blue birds each with several weeks’ worth of rations.
They’re bodies were covered in red battle armor similar to my own and they
each held a M44 to their side. On their way to us they must have had several
run –ins with the local wildlife.

The
first thing he did when he saw me was pull a gun. Aira blocked his
shot and he screamed, “He has to die,” he screamed. I walked up to him
unarmed and put my hand out. I didn’t understand why Talon was cursing
my name and calling for my execution but I wasn’t afraid of dying. I would
just be joining my friends on the other side. He looked angry and full of rage
until finally Aira calmed him down and explained everything that had
happened from my crash landing to our encounter with the Tesh-Kar and
Praxis to my wounds and ghost organs and how I had been asleep and
couldn’t have done any of horrible things he had begun accusing me of. Talon
looked at me with a dirty smile and said, “Balkava has made you her poster
boy, a martyr for her revolution.” “What revolution?” I said, “the one that
becomes the reason she must die,” Aira was the one that answered looking me
directly in the eye. I knew she had felt like taking care of me had caused her
to fail her mission.

Talon began to explain. At
first I didn’t need the details when he spoke
about the battle and the sacrifice Hera was ready to make. I knew if he had
survived then the crew onboard the Erebus never burned up in the
atmosphere and that there were thousands of survivors. What I didn’t know
was Talon was in fact more then half cybernetic. He was the first one I had
ever seen that didn’t wear his implants and augmentations were they could be
seen. Looking at him you would think he was hundred percent human. When
I confronted him about it and explained how I saw through his eyes because
of the shards inside me, something he wasn’t too happy about, he told me as a
child he had been in an accident aboard a drop ship with his family. They
were doing trade with the Arr7 who fixed his body making him whole again.
Unlike Lore and Addax his mind was left untouched. When I told Talon
about my visions I was pleased to tell him and Aira about the survivors the
other humans alive on Errikus. If they had survived then there could be more
on other worlds spread across the galaxy. This didn’t make up for the fact
that Talon felt he had been violated but it did help mend the wound between
us.

It seems such a harmless act. Seeing through someone else’s eyes and
watching what they are doing. It was for the betterment of the world. If I
could have used the nexus to see what Balkava was going to do and stop her I
would have. Talon told us ‘First Descent’ was the first to rebel. The moment
Balkava landed she began waking people from stasis and using several new
deathsquads of soldiers, some nobody had ever seen and others taken from
Echo and Delta. She slaughtered dozens just to send a message. She then
proclaimed herself empress and ruler as the only surviving elder. The humans
and Skrav have all carved out their own territories on this planet. Balkava
was the first to attack them sending a few hundred to their death but
weakening them enough she could take control of the wreckage of both the
Aelita and Skrav ships. She recovered the Aelita’s nexus and said I was the
one using it. She was using my name and reputation to bend the surviving
humans to her will. She manipulated everyone all the while converting the
Erebus into a fortress.

“Using Skrav drones she scanned the inside of Eden-3 and found it was
much more then just an orbital. This entire place is energy plant and research
station. The Lethe were doing something here, building something that would
make FTL look like it was a walk in the park and make travel through the
immer obsolete. Before we could find out anymore she hung us up to dry
saying it was your order and command. ‘First Descent’ or what was left of
them anyway: Trevor, Meddix, and Brecca fought back but they were no
match. Meddix and Trevor managed to escape and have been posted on a
place we call the bridge fighting Skrav since but Brecca was captured and
beheaded. They called it a sacrifice. They made an example out of her and
used the opportunity to enforce her new order,” Talon said. Hayden would
have been mortified if he was still alive. He loved Brecca though he never
said it. I could only hope if there was an afterlife they were together in it.

“No one can touch her or get close to her because of the drones and
she’s using the deathsquads to enforce her command,” Talon wasn’t finished
telling us about what happened after the Erebus crash-landed. I wasn’t sure
he would ever be. The things he described the deathsquads doing not just to
those that resisted but to captured Skrav and Tesh-Kar were horrible. This
was how she was going to do it. The technology on Eden-3 was what she
would use to create her imperium.

“Did you know this was going to happen?” I asked Aira. We were
traveling on the backs of a Belau together. A few of Talon’s squad stayed back
on the Praxis investigating and researching it to see if they could find a way
to make it fly or use it as a weapon. I didn’t care what they did with it, it was
dangerous and it had a way of getting into people’s heads that didn’t feel
right. We had just eaten our first real meal in ages and I could see the color
coming back into her face. “In a way we knew this was a possibility, the
nexus showed us many things and variables.” That was all I needed to hear. I
was just as convinced now as Aira had been before that Balkava had to die. I
would help her to kill my old friend unless we found another way to stop this.
Aira was the first to look at me and say I was now officially a part of the
resistance.

We were days away from the bridge when a group of Skrav got the
drop on us. They were vicious warrior types with long swords made from the
bone of animals they had killed on the hunts they had been on. They killed
the Belau our main method of transportation. In the end it was their own
pride that led to their quick and easy defeat. They were trying to scalp us
with their bladed weapons rather then fire on us and by the time they realized
we were too much of a match their honor betrayed them. The ones that were
injured left alive had their weapons ripped from their hands before they were
shot. A few of the Skrav dug their blades into them pulling it through their
bodies with their small arms. We set up camp and watched hellbeast feast on
their remains. We were lucky none of us got killed in the attack it seemed
they were already weakened and ill from whatever humans had at them first.
I guess that was a part of the reason they let their pride get the better of them.
They wanted to prove to themselves they could win against a small group of
men and women. They had only moved into the hills because of the signal
Aira had sent. They were heading towards the Praxis. There was no other
reason for them to be out here. It wouldn’t be long now before Balkava
herself sent a garrison our way. If she were using my image as a weapon what
would they do if they saw me? Her deathsquads probably knew the truth, I
felt like that was safe to assume. I was the child of Errikus, a survivor and
hero and that made me a symbol; a symbol which the adept could follow. If I
managed to make my way into the Erebus camp maybe I could gather enough
public support the resistance could dethrone Balkava and we could put a stop
to this civil war.