10 December 2732 AD
Numerian Occupied Space
The speakers crackled, the signal was distorted by distance and the poor conditions in hyperspace between the source and the receiver, making the transmission sound like it was made in a howling blizzard. Garbled and mangled as it was, the voice came through loud and clear, and the sheer terror held in its words was unmistakable. “We need evac immediately!” The voice demanded, “Now, now God damnit! It’s tearing us apart, we need to get the hell off this rock!”
Jenny Nakamoura’s face was like stone as she listened to the words, sympathizing entirely with the team deployed on the moon in question.
“It’s coming through the walls!” The voice continued yelling in utter panic, screams and weapons fire audible in the background. “Get away from there! Get away!”
Static filled the channel, punctuated by sounds of fighting and death, something all too familiar lately. But here there was something different, something apart from the normal cries of a recon team under attack.
“Poor bastards.” Sergeant Isuro Taichi announced with a shudder.
“Yeah,” Jenny agreed quietly, “Sounded like the gates of hell were opening down there.”
“Still worth it?” The Terran of Japanese descent asked. “I mean are we going to find anything down there?”
“Yeah, it’s worth it,” she said firmly, “there might still be someone alive down there.”
“Pretty slim chance Colonel,” Taichi grimaced.
“If it was you down there Izzy, wouldn’t you want us to try?”
He looked into his fellow officer’s eyes, seeing the utter resolve cemented into the dark brown orbs. “Yeah, yeah we should try,” He sighed.
“I’ve been there, trapped on an enemy world. So damn straight we’re going to try. Begin the pre-flight checks.”
She leaned forward in the pilots seat of the shuttle and began running through the start up sequence, Isuro was doing the same thing beside her. It was a familiar enough process, almost a ritual by this point and something she had done scores of times before despite asserting once upon a time that she would never, ever, do anything this stupidly dangerous again.
***
Jenny certainly had the skills for this kind of work, a protégé of Terran Special Forces she had been picked out of the Marine Corps for service with the CIA. Her mix of physical ability, mental sharpness and the ability to calmly put rounds through the head of anyone who opposed the good of Earth made her the perfect Field Agent, a role she fulfilled magnificently for a number of years. Until she went and fell in love.
She had found a soulmate in the form of Paul Dugan, a scruffy opportunistic freighter captain who had had a genuine desire to help people and oppose the horrors of the Denevan war machine. Together they had defied death and helped gather vital information for the Navy, playing an important role in the war. Then one day he had been killed, and Jenny stopped living a normal life, so crushed by grief she had no idea how to go on. She had stayed like that until she learned that she was in fact carrying Paul’s child, a son whom she named Eric in honor of the man who saved her life in more ways than one.
Her son had given her a new and powerful reason to live, but the old Jenny was still gone, she died on Stygia with Paul and with her died the best Field Agent in recent years. She retired, taking over Paul’s old ship, the freighter Star Fall, and continuing his family business with the intention of handing it over one day to his son.
She had not entirely severed her ties with the CIA and still did occasional jobs for them, hiring out the Star Fall like old times and moving agents quietly to and from missions. Sometimes she was required to use some of her more practical skills as her assignments turned dangerous, making sure she kept sharp and in shape, but those missions were few and far between. Her son, now fourteen, was her constant priority and that never changed. Her other great concern was her niece Kelly, a concern which had only increased when the war broke out.
Kelly had joined the Navy before the war over the protests of most of the family. Jenny invariably received the blame for glamorizing the military lifestyle, something she usually answered with a stare intense enough to melt crys-steel. Jenny knew better than anyone the sacrifice and loss such a choice could bring, but also knew the benefits of serving Earth and had been one of the few to fully support Kelly, helping her settle into the academy and giving her some advice during officer training. Kelly had graduated to pilot school, which was no surprise to Jenny, and there had met a dashing officer named Terrance Kirkland who seemed to embody almost the exact opposite personality traits of Kelly, yet oddly they clicked and became an item.
The war once again changed her life, and Jenny found her responsibility to keep her dearest safe suddenly became a lot harder. As a qualified pilot Kelly had naturally volunteered for starfighter duty, requesting a posting in Kirkland’s squadron. Jenny knew full well the life expectancy of such a role and was not about to let her niece become a statistic, using her influence she had Kelly assigned to the scout department seeking out and surveying new worlds to feed raw materials into the gaping maw of the war effort. She was angry of course, but accepted her role and recognised there weren’t many pilots as skilled at the job as she was.
The reassignment however had its price, and that price had been Jenny’s return to active duty. She wasn’t pleased about it, but recognised that it was a price worth paying, and that as the war grew worse and worse her skills were going to be vital to Earth. With the Star Fall alongside she formally rejoined the CIA and became the main method of picking up or dropping off teams behind enemy lines. It was dangerous, but the Star Fall and its crew were used to it, both Toby and Hans were secretly pleased to be back doing their bit for Earth.
To improve their efficiency they had been given two extra pieces of equipment. One was a new atmospheric shuttle considerably better than the usual type. Sleek, stealthy and lightning fast it was perfect for ducking in and completing its mission before the Numerians could react. The second addition was Sergeant Taichi, a serving member of the elite Special Boat Service, a descendant of the British force, with a very handy specialization in battlefield medicine, an often unfortunate requirement when pulling out a team that had been under attack.
They had gelled into a good team, mixing military training, CIA know how and some civilian wisdom to drag them out of danger numerous times. They had become one of the most welcome sights in the universe, the thing a team of operatives stranded behind enemy lines with the Numerians closing in hoped and prayed for. Sometimes they worked along side of dedicated SBS teams picking up life pods from raging battles, risking Numerian fire to save as many lives as possible. On several occasions the Star Fall had been packed full of rescued servicemen and women, snatched from the jaws of death and delivered safely home. It was a job she had grown immensely proud of.
This was one more job, one more emergency extraction she had to perform. This particular type of mission was often the hardest with a good chance of being shot down. It was also unlucky that by the time they received the message and moved to launch the team would often have been wiped out. The success rates for missions like this were extremely low, and coupled with the danger were the worst parts of the job.
But she was still going to try.
***
“Angel One to control, we’re just about ready here,” Jenny announced from the shuttle.
“Confirmed, we’re getting ready to initiate a jump point,” a German accent answered her. “Make sure your civvie pilot stays close.”
“That’s Hans you’re talking about Manny!” Jenny grinned widely. “He can stay latched to a laser beam.”
“All right, get ready then,” the naval officer said, “We’re going in.”
“Roger that, Hans, you hear that?”
“I'm on it,” the heavy-set Swedish pilot of the Star Fall answered from higher up in the ship’s own flight deck. “You just get ready to launch, I hate this part.”
“We’ll make it quick, I don’t like the sound of this one at all,” Jenny related. “We’ll be ready, just stay close to Manny.”
“I’ll be hanging on his moustache,” Hans joked. “Ready for transition to real space.”
***
Beside the Star Fall, dwarfing the light freighter was the UTS Temeraire under the command of the well known Captain Mannfred Richtofen, legendary for both his name and his daring deeds during the Denevan war. Like most other characters in the UTSN he was part of the LRRG, Commodore Collinwood’s Cutthroats operating behind enemy lines on raids or other covert missions, such as supporting special forces teams today.
The Temeraire had seen plenty of action against the Denevans starting its life as an Alaska class Battlecruiser, built on an elongated Des Moines hull with better armor and stronger weapons. Following the war and advances in weapons design the Navy found that its original policy of arming one type of ship with long range weapons, the Alaska, and another with short ranged ones in the form of the Des Moines was now redundant as plasma cannons could now do both. The Kirov class was officially retired, the hulls upgraded to the modern Kongo Class standards with long ranged lasers, medium ranged plasma cannons and short ranged gauss carronades allowing it to punch its weight in any combat mission.
They were significantly better than the first generation Alaskas sent against the Denevans, the equal of anything the Medians or most of the other minor spacefaring powers had, but against the Numerians they were frighteningly vulnerable and rarely committed to stand up fights anymore, used instead on raids and patrols while the America’s tried their best to take the Numerian fleet on alone.
***
The Temeraire opened its jump point and cruised through, the Star Fall right on its flank keeping perfect formation. “Alright Angel, we’re taking cover behind the fifth planet,” Manny informed them. “Don’t drag your feet, no enemy ships on the lidar, but it doesn’t mean it’ll be like that forever.”
“Roger that, see you soon Manny,” Jenny confirmed. “Angel one out.”
The Star Fall broke away, its system drives roaring at full burn as the Battlecruiser turned about and headed for its hiding place, waiting to escort them out, if necessary with all weapons blazing. The Temeraire would be easy prey for most Numerian ships, but Manny had more than a few twists and tricks to ensure he escaped with his skin, and his friends intact.
The system itself was largely unimportant, so uninteresting it didn’t even have a name, just a stellar location number on the star charts. It had no habitable planets and one moon with a moderately breathable atmosphere. Initial surveys found it pointless, and it took a follow up by Wegman-Yamashiro to discover that at one point the system had been habitable. One world showed the remnants of an advanced civilization, while the still habitable moon had several large ruins of a type unknown to history. Further exploration was scheduled, but never initiated due to the war.
The system was abandoned without a fight and the Numerians claimed it, deeming it just as worthless as the UT. They left a small garrison on the moon and set their sights on bigger fish. Sensing an opportunity here to observe the Numerians in a non-critical area, and hopefully, get an insight into their character while at rest, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had authorized a small surveillance operation to study the Numerian garrison, and also to monitor any passing signals traffic relayed through the system between the fleet and their home commands.
It was a low priority mission, but important enough to maintain a presence. The UT had several teams deployed at once, with a Cruiser usually deployed in hyperspace to support every three or four teams as required, either dropping supplies, picking up transmissions or in cases like this rescuing the ground troops if at all possible.
The Fall did not slow down, the small ship having no intention of establishing orbit and waiting almost stationary for the shuttle to return. It would drop the small craft off close to the planet, blasting it out of the hanger, then loop around and pick it up again a few minutes later. It minimized the risk for all concerned, and meant if one vessel was lost the other still had a good chance of getting away.
“Coming up to our launch point,” Hans relayed to Jenny, “opening the bay doors.” Through the windows of the shuttle Jenny saw the metal doors spread apart like a metal mouth, jagged teeth retracting from their path.
“Engines read green across the board,” Isuro informed Jenny. “Full power available, all flight systems green.”
“We’re ready down here,” Jenny relayed back to Hans, “Catapult us into the deep black.”
Isuro braced himself, “I really hate this part...”
“Launching in three, two, one...” Hans counted down, “Adios Amigos!” Beneath the shuttle an electromagnetic catapult activated, throwing the ship out of the bay with a jolt like the best theme park ride ever, or in the case of Isuro, the worst. The catapult had belonged to a Carrier but with a few tweaks and a lot of lost paperwork it had found itself on the venerable independent vessel Star Fall. The shuttle was gone in a heartbeat, Jenny quickly recovering and gaining control, dropping the nose towards the moon and their plotted landing site. Behind them the Fall was already leaving, angling to slingshot around one of the other moons and swing back in a few dozen minutes to collect them.
“Still no enemy contacts,” Isuro informed Jenny with clear relief.
“Understood, landing zone confirmed.” Jenny put the shuttle on course. “Coming in five by five.” She quickly checked her instruments, confirming everything was clear. “Any signals?” she asked.
Isuro checked the comm net, “nothing, just static.”
“But it’s still broadcasting?”
“Yeah, though its just the carrier wave, they aren't broadcasting anything, just static.”
“It hasn’t been switched off or destroyed, so that counts for something,” she said with a hopeful tone. “Lowball, this is Angel One, do you read me? Please respond, over.” There was no answer.
“Lowball, do you copy? This is Angel One, respond, over.”
Isuro shook his head, “not a thing.”
“All right, we’ll put down and check it out on foot. How’s the weather?”
“Beautiful, full scale thunderstorm and gale force winds.”
She sighed, “makes you appreciate the inside of a ship sometimes. All right, wrap up warm when we hit the deck. I really don’t like where this is going.”
The shuttle was rocked hard as they passed through the storm, the sleek shape helping cut through the atmosphere but it was still a rough approach with all the turbulence, the computer guidance working hard to keep the ship level. Jenny was half focused on the landing, and half on the last transmission from the planet. It had chilled her, and that was not something she was used to.
Jenny didn’t scare easy. It wasn’t just her training and her experiences, it was something in her character which was not easily upset or overturned. She could keep a straight face and an even set of nerves in virtually any circumstance, but right now she was beginning to get the creeps. She had run missions like this before, heard the panicked calls for extraction knowing help was probably too far away. Those voices had been scared, a desperate call, but the voice from this planet had something else to it... pure unadulterated terror.
The team deployed on this planet were USMC Force Recon, the same branch of the special forces Jenny herself had been commissioned into. They were dedicated recon troops trained to be secretive, cool and calm under all circumstances. They were patient and utterly in control at all times, chosen from those recruits with the most stable psyches. They were expected to operate alone with no contact for months on end, they didn’t snap, didn’t panic, didn’t get cabin fever or lose their minds. Even if their whole team was annihilated a Raider never, ever panicked, it just wasn’t in their consciousness. To drive someone like that to such a level of panic needed an event that terrified them at the core of their psyche. For Jenny it had taken Paul’s death to snap her out of her professional demeanor, for the people on this planet she had no idea what it had taken. Whatever it was she was not thrilled about setting foot in the same place it inhabited.
“It’s coming through the walls,” she repeated. “That’s what the message said.”
“I remember,” Isoru agreed. “The voice sounded absolutely terrified.”
“Yeah, but why did they say it? Why not them? Or him?” Jenny wondered aloud.
“Heat of the moment maybe?” The other man shrugged. “If the Numerians are storming your position I guess its hard to talk straight.”
“These guys were good, we put them down here remember?”
“I remember, they all seemed to have it pretty well together.”
She exhaled loudly, “I hate this war. Standby to drop the landing gear, I’m lowering flaps and firing the breaking thrusters.”
The shuttle dropped through the cloud cover into the pouring rain, the usual weather for this planet, and doing little to make it a more appealing destination. The craft held steady against the crosswinds, looping over a set of ruins and touching down on a cracked square outside the remnants of a large stone building highly decorated in an alien motif.
“This is where they were based,” She said, “some kind of old temple.”
Lightning burst overhead, filling the cockpit with volumnous peals of thunder and silhouetting the ruined building.
“This is like a freakin' horror holovid!” Isuro grimaced. “Let’s get it over with, fast.” They unbuckled their seatbelts and quickly proceeded aft, putting on their body armor and gathering their weapons. For Isuro his armament consisted of a standard plasma rifle and handgun, for Jenny a similar rifle but entirely different handgun.
“I’m amazed you can even lift that hand cannon,” the Sergeant grinned at her choice of sidearm.
She hefted the weapon, an ancient Smith and Wesson .454 Magnum that had been Paul’s pride and joy, and now travelled everywhere with her.
“Never know when we’ll have a close encounter,” she said as she holstered it and pulled on a boonie hat to keep off the rain. “Ready?”
“Why not? Not like I have anything else on my adgenda.” He he quiopped as he opened the hatch. The bulky metal door falling open to the ground. “Rain, great.”
The two operatives darted out into the dim gray light, the heavy clouds heavily filtering the already quite poor sunshine. They swept the area with their rifles, located no threats, and at once darted forward, on their way, keeping low and moving from cover to cover. There was so much broken masonry it was hard not to find a place to hide, and while it helped the two CIA Agents it also meant they had to be especially wary of an ambush.
Isuro raised his hand, then pointed to the ground. Jenny followed his gesture and spotted a pair of well hidden mines, standard UT Army issue. The two agents had IFF beacons in their clothing and would register as friendly to the sensors on the mines, but it did confirm that no Numerians had moved through this area.
With great caution they moved up the steps to the temple itself, rainwater pouring down the stone stairway like a small waterfall, the two agents with their rifles held tightly at the ready, sensors mounted on the barrels scanning with each step. They reached the door, peered in, and then with a swift simultaneous move leapt around and flattened themselves against the inner walls.
Nothing met them on the inside, no gunfire or surprised Numerian faces. Just quiet. Their scanners checked for heat or movement, the basic indicators of life, and found nothing.
“Clear,” Jenny said.
“Clear,” Isuro agreed. “This is the place though, look over there.”
Jenny looked over at a corner and saw a selection of electronic devices set up on stone ledges and tables looking very out of place in the ruins. They were standard issue communication sets and monitoring devices, the equipment the recon team had brought with them.
“Looks intact.” she said, walking over to it. “And still active.”
“The Numerians hate our technology, they’d have smashed it up before they left,” Isuro said quietly, leaving unsaid what they both were thinking.
“Yeah, so why didn’t they?” She examined the equipment, finding the main comm unit still broadcasting.
Isuro continued looking around the large temple, rain dripping from innumerable cracks in the roof and tapping loudly on the floor. It was roughly circular with an altar of stone in the middle and a second doorway on the far side opposite the one they had entered through. There were dark hints of color, old paintings that had once been magnificent, now as desiccated and weary as the building itself. Debris choked the floor, the remnants of a first and second story that had long since fallen in exposing the roof above.
“I’m seeing evidence of a fight, plasma burns on the walls,” he said. “Pretty wild, not what I’d expect from Force Recon Raiders.”
“Yeah, I got some evidence too.” Jenny paused, “look here.”
The Sergeant stepped carefully around the rubble towards his colleague, seeing what she was looking at. A body.
“One of ours?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Pretty messed up though, but it doesn’t look like he was shot, more like ripped to shreds.”
Isuro winced at the expression on the face of the body, one of utter and complete terror. “This is really creeping me out,” he paused and frowned, looking around the temple. “Where are the rest?”
“Nine man team.” Jenny confirmed. “Eight to go.”
“We’re going to get confirmation on all of them?”
Jenny reached down, taking the dogtags from the body and dropping them in her pocket. “Every last one.”
They began to look around, but after a quick search found no further bodies, there was evidence that more than one Marine had tried to hold this place.
“They could be anywhere,” Isuro sighed. “We can’t check the whole moon.”
Jenny tapped her personal radio, “Lowball team, please respond.” She waited briefly, “Lowball this is Angel, is anyone there? Does any member of the team copy?”
“Nothing.” The other man grunted.
“Damn it.” Jenny looked over the still functioning equipment. “Absolutely nothing, look at the readings, this whole world is dead.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Not just our team, look, no Numerian signals either.”
Isuro saw what she meant, his face dropping. “What the hell?”
“If the Numerians did this, why leave all this gear behind and working?” She asked. “And if they won why are they just as quiet?”
“Might be a trap,” Isuro warned.
“Possibly, the base was pretty close by, our people could observe it through binoculars.”
“We really want to go out there?”
“Hell no, but I guess we have to,” Jenny checked her rifle once more. “Okay, grab the data record crystals from the equipment and then join me out back, let’s see what the Numerians are doing.”
She blew out a breath of warm air, the exhalation misting before her eyes as she held the rifle in her hands just a little bit tighter and started stalking towards the far door. She could hear Isuro emptying the trays in each of the monitoring devices, retrieving the information that had been bought at such a high price. It had better be worth it.
Beyond the far door the rain still poured down from the heavens in a torrent, a hazy gray sheet that pelted down on the landscape. Behind the temple was a small courtyard that revealed a sheer dropoff beyond. The temple had apparently been constructed on this cliff face to look upon the rising sun on one side of the sky and the moonrise on the other. No doubt once upon a time it was a spectacular scene, but the ruined atmosphere of the planet obscured all past majesty and glory that this vista once may have held.
There were ragged rocks at the edge of the cliff, like rough jagged teeth they served both as a fence to keep people from the edge and as cover for those peering over. Some areas had masonry or broken stone showing where the natural rocks had been enhanced by artificial structures, but those walls were now long since broken and uncared for, the priests and monks who attended them just dust and forgotten memories.
The rain thumped on the brim of her boonie hat, annoyingly interfering with her pricked up ears as she moved quickly from rock to rock, looking and listening for any indication of life. There was nothing, no sign of the team, the Numerians or for that matter any animal life at all. That caused a brief moment of pause, no birds or insects or mammals, no small creatures sheltering from the rain amid the ruins, no calls or whoops. Nothing at all. Clearly the civilization that lived here was long gone, but the air was breathable and climate fresh, there should have been something that could live here. It was definitely unnerving, a completely silent, and dead world.
Towards the corner of the small courtyard she saw an out of place object, a tripod surmounted by a set of high powered binoculars, clearly equipment brought by the team. Carefully she made her way over and came to crouch beside them, staying low and hidden behind the jagged rocks dominating this slice of the planet. The binoculars themselves seemed perfectly functional, and a quick peek over the cliff showed several assorted buildings that were unmistakeably Numerian in the distance, a collection of green hued structures and arrays that sat by a riverside a few miles away at the edge of a valley. The river itself a muddy torrent. Again no movement was visible.
Jenny huffed in annoyance and began looking more closely around herself, ducking along the edge of the cliff and checking behind each of the increasingly large rocks. Some bore carvings that caught her eye, lurid scenes of quadruped creatures fighting beasts that looked eerily like demons from Terran culture. Some fears were perhaps universal she mused.
She very nearly tripped over the body. It was lying face down at the edge of a rock, the green uniform soaked almost black. The male body had no weapons or clear wounds, but the feature that really caught her eye was a tangle of viscous yellow fibers draped around the figure. It was like nothing she had seen before and had to be alien in origin, but for what purpose she had no idea.
She touched the strands with a gloved finger, pushing them aside with a mild look of revulsion. She doubted this was the work of the Numnerians, it made no sense, and was beginning to wonder just how alone they really were here.
No real survey work had been done here, nobody knew exactly if this world was deserted or not. It was possible something survived here, something leftover from the race that had lived here or some native predator. The world below had been rendered uninhabitable by a massive orbital barrage five thousand years earlier, the sort of atmosphere churning strike the Denevans had tried but ultimately failed to copy with their fleet of Mass Drivers. Whatever and whoever had hit these dwellings had done so with a power no living race had demonstrated, not even the Numerians, and that just added to Jenny’s increasing discomfort.
She rested a hand on the body’ shoulder and turned it over, the skin as pallid and gaunt as the last victim. She noted the dogtags around the neck and unfastened them, trying to figure out where to look for the other seven team members.
As she stretched out her hand to take the tags, suddenly the eyes of the apparently dead body snapped open, wide and full of fear and terror.
Jenny almost let the man's head slam back onto the hard stone in her surprise. She cursed herself for not checking for a pulse first and simply assuming the man was dead. His eyes darted about, not fixing on any one thing, blinking in the rain as he took quick shallow breaths.
“Hey, hey.” Jenny grabbed his attention. “Listen, can you hear me?”
The man fixed his wide terror filled eyes on her, giving no real response.
“Where’s the rest of your unit?” She asked slowly. “We’re here to get you out. Where are they?”
His mouth moved, his breath still ragged as he tried to formulate his words.
“You’re safe Marine, it’s over.” She reassured him. “Whatever happened, it’s done.”
Gradually the wide-eyed man shook his head before speaking very hoarsely. “No... it isn’t.”
A rock scraped behind Jenny, and in a flash she twisted her body and swung around her plasma rifle, water flying from the chrome barrel as it lined up on the noise.
“Whoa! Check your fire!” Isuro raised his hands, “it's just me, not the bad guys!”
“Damnit to hell Izzy! Do not ever sneak up on me like that, especially not on God-forsaken and haunted dead worlds!”
“Sorry.” He exhaled, clearly shocked himself at havng a weapon thrust his way. “Hey, you got a live one?”
She turned back nodding, “yeah, but he’s out of it though,” she sighed, “Post traumatic stress, I think.”
“One of your guys? A Raider?” Isuro asked. “I thought your guys could handle everything?”
“Guess we missed something in the training.” She said warily. “Marine, what happened?”
The man was still incommunicado.
“Has he got a name?” Isuro asked. “His dogtags?”
Jenny checked briefly. “Adams, Reinhardt, Corporal, with the fiftieth Recon Regiment,” she said, sounding confused. “Standard tags for a Raider, but there is no Fiftieth Regiment.”
“Walls...” The man muttered, “through the walls...”
Jenny helped him up, propping him in a sitting position behind a rock. “What was that Corporal?”
“Through the walls...” He exhaled quietly, his eyes still rolling about with little control.
“Didn’t the radio message say that?” Isuro remembered. “about something coming through the walls?”
“Yeah, but the walls are intact, no sign of a breach.” The female agent frowned, “Corporal, Corporal Adams?”
The man still lolled his head from side to side as if he was completely drunk.
“Reinhardt?” she tried, and at that name he stopped and stared at her. “Reinhardt, where are the others?”
He stuttered out a breath, “dead.”
She gritted her teeth. “Numerian?”
He shook his head.
“What then?”
“Death.”
“I know they’re dead, but what killed them?”
“Death.” He repeated in a whisper. “Death itself, come straight out of hell.” He breathed more harshly, screwing his eyes shut. “It killed them! Through the walls, through the walls! We couldn’t hit it, no time, just from nowhere...”
“Some sort of creature?” Jenny asked. “A predator?”
“No animal, no,no,no.” Reinhardt shook his head, shivering his whole body. “It knew what it was doing, it killed some, kept others, kept me.”
“Why?”
He chuckled, the sound turning into a sob. “To have for dinner later on.”
Isuro swallowed nervously, “Colonel, what the hell is going on here?”
“I dunno, but it doesn’t sound like the Numerians caught them. Reinhardt, where did it keep the rest? Are they alive?”
“Not anymore,” He sobbed out. “It only needed one, just me...”
Jenny held her nerve, the utter terror in the man was still palpable. “Where are the bodies?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need to find them, make sure before we leave.”
“You can’t do anything for them.”
“I want to try,” she answered in reply. “Or at least confirm it, take their tags home.”
“It came through the walls...” He said in quiet sadness. “We didn’t have time to fight... The walls.”
“It’s over.” Jenny put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re getting you out of here.”
Reinhardt looked up at her, his eyes drifting to look over her shoulder before widening in pure fear. He drew a breath and just screamed, a shrill sound, alien to Marines as well trained as these men would be. He fought to stand and Jenny had to push him back down, fighting to keep the writhing man still.
“Izzy, don’t just stand there give him a shot!”
The Sergeant snapped out of his trance, enthralled by the horror filled tale he quickly remembered his place and took out a hypospray filled with a sedative. He knelt down by the panicking man and applied the sedative, at once stopping his struggle and returning his breath to normal. He slowly began fading into unconsciousness, his eyes drooping.
“This is so not cool,” Isuro managed to stutter out. “We should go, now.”
“We’re still seven men down.” Jenny answered. “We can’t until...”
Reinhardt grabbed her arm, his fingers like claws as his eyes widened briefly, his mouth open. “...run...” He finally faded into a dreamless sleep, totally under the effects of the sedative.
“Now that's down right creepy,” the Sergeant said in a whisper.
Jenny stood and turned around, finding herself face to face with a demon, a snarling white lined face with three sets of pitch black eyes highlighted in the electric fire of a lightning bolt. She almost stumbled back in shock before her brain told her it was just a picture, another image carved into the rocks and painted. She let out a nervous breath, she was letting this place get to her. “I found what set him off.”
Isuro looked over, “Damn, thats one scary son-of-a-bitch. Lots of images like that around here, demons laying waste to cities, sucking souls from people, usually Armageddon sort of things.”
“Pretty much what appers to have happened by the looks of these ruins.” She said as she glanced around at the broken temple. “And no, I didn’t say I believe in demons.” She quickly added.
“No, but he does.” Isuro looked at the sleeping survivor.
“We better get him out of here,” she said. “Can you carry him to the shuttle?”
“Not a problem boss.”
“I’ll give this place another once over, see if I can see anything from up here,” Jenny said as she screwed up her resolve. “Keep in touch.”
“Will do.”
“I mean it Izzy,” she stated firmly, “This place is already weirding us out, keep your radio on.”
The Sergeant hefted up the surviving member of the recon team and began carrying him back to the shuttle while Jenny finished her sweep of the courtyard, taking particular notice of the images. Each one seemed to tell an increasingly violent tale until they finally stopped, the final image a mix of demons, Winged Lizard looking creatures and big flying spiders. She guessed it was some abstract sort of image, some symbolic representation of the enemy that probably doomed the planet this moon orbited. She shivered involuntarily, and not because of the cold.
She finished her search, once again beside the binoculars, and having nowhere else to look settled beside them and peered through. They were set on the Numerian base, logical enough considering the team was here to observe them, but she unlocked the device from its tripod and began checking the rest of the valley looking for a small figure or two in green among the ruins or outcroppings. The rain made it hard to focus, but even so she managed to pinpoint at least one at the foot of the cliff. Based on the angle it looked like he had jumped.
Once again she had to fight back a case of the nerves, something she’d done more in the last half hour than she had for ten years previously. She kept up her search, coming up to the Numerian camp and pausing to investigate more thoroughly. Again their dwellings were empty, not a single worker or warrior was visible. A camp of that size would have had a few dozen people to operate it, with so many there at least one should have been visible. There was nothing.
She lowered the binoculars and looked out with her own two eyes, the weather closing in and growing colder as the moon began to shift behind its twin. A slight rumble of thunder sounded, joined by a few shocks of lightning in the valley, one that struck the pinnacle of a small hill at the valley edge. Her eyes saw the fork strike, and lingered as she saw something moving there, a small speck that betrayed something unusual, something that should not be there. It did not look Terran or Numerian, it was intangible, unreal, and she forced herself to raise the binoculars and take a closer look, to examine this supernatural manifestation.
She looked upon it for a full ten seconds, then dropped the binoculars, turned tail and ran for her life.
Jenny vaulted over the rocks and debris like an Olympic class hurdler, not even pausing to gauge distance or time, she just went on instinct at full pelt. She did not examine the insides of the temple, deliberately ignoring the carved demons watching her, faces flashing in reflected lightning while their open mouthed fangs dripped with rain like salivating animals.
Isuro had already loaded Reinhardt and was on his way out to join her again when he spotted her leave the temple, launch down the stairs with a thud, and then head straight for the shuttle.
“Are we done?” He asked with building relief. “Are we going?”
“Damned right we are!” She delivered her mother’s favorite expression. “Get the ramp up!”
She made it into the shuttle in two strides and went straight to the flight deck without even changing, splashing water on the instruments. Fortunately a little water was no detriment to them. Isuro closed the ramp, letting it fit snug with the body as the shuttle roared to life.
“Did you see something?” he called up, moving to join her.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I think so, but I’m damn well not staying to find out!”
Her comrade sat beside her, the shuttle lifting up with a hurried wobble. “Some sort of creature?”
“I think so.” She confirmed, rushing the takeoff sequence and punching the main engines with a violent blast of power. “Looked like it was doing to the Numerians what it did to our people.”
Isuro muttered a quiet Buddhist chant of protection over himself and the shuttle.
“I didn’t think you were religious?”
He tilted his head, “I am now.”
Jenny nodded a little, “yeah, I think I know the feeling.”
Clouds passed the cockpit windows and were replaced by black space and stars, cold yet familiar and incredibly welcome.
“The Fall is on scanners,” Isuro said as he spotted their ride home. “Plotting to intercept.”
“Course locked in.” Jenny said, then collapsed back in her chair and left it to the autopilot.
Isuro looked down solemnly, then turned to his fellow agent. “What happened on that moon?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to know,” Jenny answered honestly. “The Numerian base is gone, we don’t have anymore business here. I’m going to have this place locked down, quarantined.”
“You can do that?”
“I have friends in high places,” she answered. “No one is setting foot here again, ever. It’s a dead world, a murdered world. Something wants us to let it rest in peace.” The shuttle angled to meet the familiar shape of the small cargo ship.
“And I’m not about to argue with it.”