And so it was that the Solar Vessel was nearing planetfall. A shame, however, that it was to fall harder and faster than anyone on board could ever expect. My arm was slowly recovering; the muscles and joints in my arm were slowly repairing themselves. Kendrick's twitches had completely left him, so he still drove the Seamoth. We still darted through the Mushroom Forest as quick as the moth would take us, a jet of bubbles left in our wake. We still felt the eyes on us, however. It was a strange feeling. Pods plastered to the limestone struts of the forest trees opened to reveal wandering eyes, and they fixed on us eerily.
"We should reach the island in less than a day." I called forward to Kend.
"Good." He said. "I want to see the kid. Did Sasha tell you who the father is?"
I sighed. "I'll likely never know." I admitted. "Do you know? Is this truth hidden amidst all your other secrets?"
"Sadly not." He grinned. He was slowly becoming his old self again, and his old self I rather enjoyed. Of course his face was still scarred and torn, but his personality made up for what he lacked in good looks. It was a shame I had to travel the oceans without him by my side. Properly by my side, at least. "Perhaps we should ask. She wasn't married was she?"
"Not that I know of," I told him, "but stranger things than a secret wedding have happened." Then there was further silence. After a minute of it I decided to break the tension, or at least attempt to. "So, did you know Ollos has started calling his people the Sil-" I was interrupted by a noise outside. It resembled that of a plunger ripped from a smooth surface; that wet sticky sound. This rekindled the silence. After a minute the same noise repeated. It came again and again, the gaps in between occurrences decreasing.
"What the bloody hell's going on?" Kendrick finally snapped.He looked back but the dimensions of the moth clouded his vision.
"Turn the damn thing around, we can get a better look at it." I slapped his shoulder and with a brisk motion the moth turned a good ninety degrees. We looked to our lefts and in the distance we saw a grand shoal of small red fish, no bigger than my clenched fist. We had no choice but to assume them hostile, as we weren't about to chance our lives. I kicked the chair and Kend lunged forwards towards the mountain. We darted through the trunks of mushroom trees, and eventually Kend and I had the same Idea as the ground began to slowly rise up, out of the forest.
"I'm going to pull up!" Kend announced. He tugged at the steering wheel and the seamoth leaned backwards. It began to head towards the surface, but this manoeuvre cost us speed, and there was a sudden impact behind us, and the sound of metal tearing, and wires snapping, and steel falling out of place. The moth stopped, and with a second crash the glass smashed in front of us and water poured in. Kend broke in the rest of the window and swam out and upwards, but I was still stuck behind the chair. I pushed with all of my might but still I couldn't get the seat to budge, to get out of my damn way. I looked up at the same moment Kendrick glanced back down at me. I wished for him to go on without me, but he swam back down and into the moth to try and pull me out. I urged him to go on, but soon enough I was pulled free of my confines. He tugged me forward and threw me up a whole two feet above him, and we both continued to the surface.
The moth was a ruin. Metal floated in place in the water surrounding the main body, and glass fell to the sea floor. Soon enough one of the fish found its way inside, and with a careful explosion the whole structure fell to pieces.
We breached the surface, and the island was in sight.
But we heard the scraping of metal, the sirens, and we see the great gun turning in the distance. It faced north.
phantomfinchWest Philadelphia , born and raised on the playground is where I spent most of my days.Join Date: 2016-09-06Member: 222128Members
edited February 2017
I'm still shipping zanos and kend, the sea moth is a one person submersible so someone was sitting on some else's lap, unless someone else was clinging onto to the moth's side.
Also, my people should have a better introduction then "oh shit I a bird flew into my window"
There would at least be a scene like this
To show the true swarm mentality of my proud communists.
I'm still shipping zanos and kend, the sea moth is a one person submersible so someone was sitting on some else's lap, unless someone else was clinging onto to the moth's side.
Also, my people should have a better introduction then "oh shit I a bird flew into my window"
There would at least be a scene like this
To show the true swarm mentality of my proud communists.
I'm still shipping zanos and kend, the sea moth is a one person submersible so someone was sitting on some else's lap, unless someone else was clinging onto to the moth's side.
Also, my people should have a better introduction then "oh shit I a bird flew into my window"
There would at least be a scene like this -__--___-__--___----___-_-_---__--
To show the true swarm mentality of my proud communists.
One is pressed behind the seat. That's why Zanos nearly died, he couldn't get out as quickly as he should have
The black speck streaked across the blue above us. The cold nipped away at our very souls, reducing us to no more than shivering lumps of flesh and bone, near enough stranded not only at sea, but on an uncharted planet with no hope of getting home. Unless Solar was able to manoeuvre the beam, the crew were as good as lost. Ruthless was worse than useless, sitting on the pebbles, beating rocks together. He was strong, and a reliable ally, but he was dim, and slow in the brain. Jack was, no doubt, smarter than me. He was more cunning than anyone on Lunar, more cunning than anyone on Eclipse, even. I'd say he surpassed even Sampson in intellect. But he had Malla's kindness. The combination of the two could only end in joy.
"That's Solar." He said. "I didn't anticipate it arriving so soon." I didn't either. It was about to dive behind the horizon out of our sight, when the great green beam fired upwards. It hit the ship and in moments the entire vessel was torn into two enormous lumps. They hurtled over the horizon, never to be seen by us again. "Next ship they send better be stronger," Jack commented, "or we're never getting out of here."
"I doubt they'll be sending anymore ships." I told him. I turned my body to the ice burg, far into northern waters. "I doubt anyone will worry about us anymore." There was silence. Then there was a splash. It was forceful, and I felt speckles of ice cold water hit my sooty face. I didn't see what had hit the water at first, but soon enough a life pod erupted from the water, floating on the surface. More and more hit the water.
"Get the damn people out of there!" Jack commanded. I looked on as more and more fell. My men swam to them and pulled from their tops two people out of each. Some were blooded, some were dead, and some life pods were blazing, smoke rising from their tops when they were cracked open.
As new survivors crawled onto the shores from the pods, I saw something on the ice burg, far in the distance. It was a deep grey, the deep grey of the gun, and it shared the same metallic reflections. It was a cube jutting out of the side of the ice. I saw cables erupt from the glossy surface and submerge back inside. I only saw this for a minute before the ice burg rotated back the way it had come, and it was out of my field of view once again.
"All of you!" I beckoned the new survivors to me. "I'm sure you're all wondering what we're doing here. Long story short the survivors of both Lunar and Eclipse have divided into two factions after Malla Corren was killed. Malla was our leader, and his death split the survivors into the Islanders, the Silvers and us."
"The Northerners." Jack stepped forwards. I looked at him and smiled.
"Yes," I agrees, "the Northerners."
"And what of Sampson?" One survivor asked, and an uproar began. "Where is he?" They asked. "Why is he not in command?" They asked.
"Sampson died long ago, long before even Lunar arrived here." I answered. "He was killed by one of my... associates..." I remembered Tary. I never had forgotten her, but her memory blossomed at that moment like it had never done since her death.
"And what about Ollos?" Other survivors asked.
"Ollos?" I was surprised to hear them asking, but with a bit of thought it became not so strange. Ollos was a rich man, and it was news to many that a businessman of Obraxis Prime would join a mission such as this. "Well, Ollos betrayed Malla. Ollos killed him, and that turned his sister against Ollos and the Silvers. I didn't particulalry agree with his actions, but-"
"So this Corren wants Ollos dead?" They questioned. I nodded, and they gave each other unsure looks. I wondered if there were other survivors of Solar, and where they were now.
As if by magic the enormous gun had split the Solar Vessel right down the middle. The nose end of the ship hurtled into the waters around our Silver island whilst the arse end plummeted into the waters around the mountain. Our numbers had been somewhat replenished, and I was thankful for that. Unluckily Ollos didn't share my views on the matter. "I'll not waste any more materials on those damn Exos!" He whined. "You'll all be walking I swear!"
He went on to explain the situation to everyone who had landed, but one man caught my eye. In his belt was a small pistol that could only be a stasis gun. Fastened to his back was a long, thin blade, its hilt shimmering gold in the sunlight. It was as if he had pried the weapon from the hands of a medieval knight. His face was tall and long, and his beard was not that large. His black hair hung down past his ears, past his chin, past everything from the neck up. He noticed me staring when Ollos' talk was done, which was, of course, filled with fabrications and exaggerations. The man walked over to me. I continued with my work as if I had never seen him, but he knew I had taken full notice.
"I can see past that man's tricks." He told me. My head snapped back to him and I smiled an enormous, beaming smile. The man had a strong Texas accent, meaning he had to be from Earth.
"It seems we're the only two on this island who can." I continued pulling wires from Degasi wrecks, throwing them onto a growing pile on the floor. I looked back at him. "Where did you get that sword? And that gun?"
"I made 'em myself. Built the gun from scratch on one of Strader Alpha's moons, and fought tribesmen on Obraxis Prime for this here sword." He fiddled with the hit behind his back, twisting the thin blade in its scabbard. "Do you even wanna be here right now?" He asked me. "I sure as hell don't, and those 'Corren' folk sound quite nice if you were to ask me." He saw it too. I was delighted. There were seven moths docked, we could take two and be at the Islander's doorstep in no time.
"They're just north of here. I'm sure you can pilot a Seamoth, can't you... what's your name?"
"The name's Yakon." He grinned. "Yakon Barren. You've probably heard of me; hijacked a Federation cruiser single-handed, battled a Star Eel in the Elarian Stretch not too long ago..." I hadn't heard of said exploits, so the next minutes were met with silence. He dismissed this. "Let's go." He sighed.
I lead Yakon to the docks where we would take two moths and leave. I slid into one of them, and Yakon was about to do the same when we heard a shout behind us. "Where do you think you're going?!" Ollos wailed behind us. Yakon turned around and he stood there, the machine gun arms of the mech rotating faster than anything, whirring loudly, ready to fire one thousand bullets into Yakon's chest.
"Well..." Yakon began, "those Corren folk you spoke abouts actually sound like quite nice people. I don't think youse killed 'em justly, I think youse killed em because someone told you to." The machine gun's whirr turned to a rattle, and I expected Yakon to fall back in an instant, the blood draining from him, but quicker than a black hole sucks in a raceship travelling at warp speed, Yakon drew his blaster and fired it at Ollos, powering the mech down for just long enough. Yakon slid across the roof of the moth and fell into its top. "Right," he said as he closed the roof of the vehicle, "I take it you know how to pilot one of these things."
"I went through extensive training." I told him. "I'm sure I can get to the mountain in one piece..."
"Well, I ain't sure about one piece..." Yakon chuckled, but I sat there in horror as the vessels slowly lowered into the water, the sea moving up the windows at snail's pace. "It's gonna be a bumpy ride, pal. What's you're name, engineer?"
"Jason..." I answered sheepishly. "Jason Sand."
"Hey!" Yakon said as we darted forwards into the ocean. "My name's pronounced Jakon, but people just say Yakon since it's spelled like that. So, if my name were to be spelled as it were soundin', we'd only be one letter off from each other! Ain't that a delight?"
“And we still don’t know who the father of that child is?” I looked at Sellan, wondering, and all he could do in return was shrug and shake his head. Kendrick sat on one of the rocks by the sea, looking out onto the Aurora. There were newcomers, I saw, from the Solar Vessel. They were shaken, and still distressed. Sasha comforted them, but only for a short while. They outnumbered us, and we were certain that Ollos had scrambled together his small force from the wreckage. He only had the nose of the ship though; the housing and the engine rooms were what landed by our island, and that meant more people than he could ever scavenge.
Still I was curious who Jack Malla Corren’s father was. It annoyed me that Kend didn’t know, it frustrated me that Sellan hadn’t even tried to find out. I saw on the other side of the island the small, dead Reefback on the shore. Its shell was becoming overgrown with moss. It had been sitting there for a week now, so no wonder. I watched as Sasha dashed back into the base when Jack started wailing. If only Malla were still here to look after the poor boy, or the father stepped forward and helped Sasha out; I was sure it was someone on Lunar, or perhaps even on Eclipse.
I entered the base. Sasha was rocking J-M-C in her arms, hushing him. His crying was beginning to fall quiet, and she looked up at me smiling. “People say he has my face.” She told me. “I disagree.”
I looked down at Jack and then back up to Sasha. “Then we’ll agree to disagree.” We both grinned and she set Jack back down on the side.
“I take it you didn’t find him then.” Sasha’s face suddenly became sad, and there was a moment of silence.
“No.” I said. “But I did find Kendrick. He’s alive and well; still a bit shaken by the whole thing, but he’ll come around.” She smiled. “Sasha, I have a question to ask you.” She looked up again.
“If it’s about the portal, we’re having it destroyed. I agree we can’t let Ollos thro-“
“It’s not about the portal. It’s about Jack.” I told her. She looked at me with giant green eyes, as if she knew the question that would be asked. She nodded without words. “Who’s Jack’s father? You know if it’s someone who holds power Jack could be extremely valuable.”
“Jack is extremely valuable.” She said coolly, but I knew behind her mask she was offended.
“I’m sorry. If you want to keep it a secret then I understand, but-“
“Yes, I’d like to keep it a secret.” She snapped, her voice keeping soft, and she still had a smile on her face, regardless of the tears that were building in her eyes. There was awkward quiet, eventually broken by her. “Who killed Malla?” She asked.
“I don’t know, but Seth killed Penna, says Kend. Jack Stamford killed Leonard and lost Kend his good looks.” I looked out of one of the windows. Kendrick still looked out to sea. Then I looked at Jack. He had small black hairs, and his eyes were a deep blue, but it was true; he had his mother’s features. Sasha's hair was brown, close to black, but not the same as Jack's. Her face tensed. She looked back out at Kend. Then her eyes drifted to the Aurora.
"Do you think Zenn is still out there?" She asked. "On the Aurora? Biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike out at Ollos?"
"Or us." I suggested. Sasha looked at me coldly. She was about to say something but recoiled. Then she looked down, half in shame, half in relief that she had kept quiet.
"Yes." She agreed. "Or us." I looked out at Kendrick. I remembered his accounts of the massacre, of everything that had happened out there. I remembered Seth and his killings and betrayals, I remembered how Kend had told me of Ruthless’ strength, and how he was eventually overpowered. His descriptions were so vivid after he had recovered, I could picture the event in my head. Faces I had never seen before became clear in my mind. Then I saw his face again; Seth. His eyes that burned black in his head. I saw all the people around him; all of his companions. Then I had figured it out. I was frustrated I hadn't known sooner.
I would argue that here the environment was more friendly than down in the south. Perhaps I'm biased, since I prefer the cold to the warmth; I don't find pleasure in bathing in sunlight until your clothes grow heavy and wet and your skin becomes coated in sweat. Even if it weren't for my swayed opinion I found the north welcoming. The seas were tranquil, relative to what the Islanders and Silvers had to deal with, and our island was large and flat, and welcoming to settlers. Where the Islanders crammed their base between the gun and the mountain, and the Silvers were having it worse than that I hope, we had space to expand, outwards and upwards. We housed our twenty two survivors in a four story giant, observatories shooting from its sides like a towering spider web. Out here we could focus on luxury alongside survival.
And the nights were glorious. Down south there were clouds that blocked the full light of the moon, and the Aurora cutting its bottom away. Here the clouds scarcely blew through, and only the glacier was blocking the enormous red moon. I was okay with that. It was a natural thing, a beauty far greater than the Aurora in my opinion. I found it rather underwhelming; smaller than I'd have hoped, and home to more death than I care to speak of. People already said the wreckage was haunted, but what would Malla's spirit do to Zenn if he were to return, I wonder...
The red and white light beamed down onto the waters, shimmering as the waves rippled across the black ocean. I walked out of the base, covered head to toe in thick clothing. But not the face. I liked feeling the cold on my face; the feeling it gave when it nibbled at your cheeks and chin, gnawing away at your features. Others had begged me not to go outside. Too cold, they said, but I did not listen. I walked across the pebbles, gazing up at the red moon as I did so. Then I saw Zenn. He was perched on a rock in the middle of the island. The moonlight shone from the diamond blade he fiddles with in his hands.
It was a sad story really. That blade had been with a leader he hated, and when he was finally dead and the knife fell into Malla's hands, a leader he truly wanted, he was convinced to rebel. Seth was a horrid creature, barely even a man. He was manipulative, he was cruel, and I was glad he was dead. When Zenn heard me coming he tucked the knife away. His coal black hair swayed in the wind. "What are you doing out here?" He asked me. "You're meant to be inside; everyone is."
"I came out to see the moons." I answered. "Obraxis Prime had five. It was an enormous planet, but I recall everything about it. That was back when Ollos was good, and Seth hadn't manipulated him like he did you."
"Ollos would argue otherwise." I replied. There was a second of silence before Zenn shuffled slightly left, giving me space to sit next to him. He patted the coarse rock beside him, inviting me to take a seat.
"Ollos is a bastard who would rather kill everyone here than leave with us." Zenn was angry now. There was another moment of quiet. "But none of us are angels, especially not me. I killed my best friend, I killed the man who talked me into killing my best friend, and then I killed a bunch more people. I have broken pacts and gone against vows, and now it seems I'm paying the price. Stuck up here in the frozen north, out of the way of the war, but also away from anything that'll get us out of here."
"It's a lot prettier up here, though." I said. "And you didn't kill anyone, Zenn. I did; I killed Kendrick with Ruthless' help. You are innocent, you were manipulated and you are paying no price. It is as good up here as it was down there." I hoped I was being reassuring.
"I'll bare the scars until the day I die." It was clear that I hadn't been. "But I suppose it helps having the brightest person on the planet at my side."
"And the strongest." There was a moment where me and Zenn were on the verge of bursting with laughter, before I clarified that I meant Ruthless and not myself. "Either way, I doubt I'm the most intelligent man here. There was someone on the Lunar Vessel who rivalled me in intellect, I assure you." Zenn nodded, but I for the life of me couldn't remember this man's name. "Joshua... Jakon... Jerret..."
"Jacob." Zenn told me. "Jacob Sand. He was a dealer for Ollos, back when he was a good guy. He sold the minerals Ollos mined up to anyone he could find. He nearly got arrested for selling them to some pirates. I wouldn't call him a smart man."
"I would." I smiled. "I think he's very smart, and very witty. If he's still under Ollos we have more reason to fear the traitor."
There was silence for five minutes, whilst we simply looked up at the moon and wondered when we were to leave this place. At least, that's what I was wondering. Then Zenn announced he was going inside, and that I should probably follow.
Solar had crashed three days ago, or so the readings told me. My lifepod had crashed on a great block of ice in the northern regions of the planet. I had just woken up, and had just opened the pod doors, and the cold already tore at my flesh like a pack of dogs. It sent my fingers numb, my nose chilly and my eyes watered like twin waterfalls. The winds were strong. I looked around, through the gusts, the air packed with small flakes of powdery snow.
There was a small island in the distance. It looked like it had a tower on it, but... my imagination, I expect...
Although I assumed the glacier to be natural, a path where the ice flattened out lead up the side of the ice. I followed it. The cold would take me at any moment. I wouldn't dare die curious. Shivering, and turning blue, I wandered across the ice, up the gradual slope, until in the distance I saw some sort of cube that jutted out of the ice.
I got closer, and found it to be a deep grey, made of metal, surrounded by thick cables that erupted from the ice and curled in the air before submerging once again into the frozen water. I thought it to be a settlement, so I went closer at a jog. I was overjoyed to find a gaping oblong entrance before me, and I was about to run into the structure when, deep within, I saw something move, and wriggle, as if it were alive.
This thing clawed its way across the ground towards me. It was green, and glowing, and all I saw of it was a pulsating mass of oozing growths and disgusting cysts. I backed out of the construction. I slipped. Now I was on my back. In the snow. On the ice. This creature, or what I thought to be a creature, came closer and closer, and soon it was grasping at my ankles with slippery mutated hands, with uneven amounts of fingers; five turned to six in an instant, and back even quicker.
I writhed for control, tripping further and further backwards, away from the creature. Even as we fought it mutated and malformed, swelling in some areas and collapsing inwards in others. Then one of the cysts on its arm popped and the liquid inside oozed out onto my leg. It wasn't on there for long. It absorbed rather quickly into my skin, and the patch began to burn.
More and more cysts erupted and I began to hurt and ache all over.
The creature backed away into its den once again, crawling ever so slowly across the ice. It entered the settlement before the entire body collapsed and every growth on its body exploded, leaving nothing but a mat of skin on the ground.
I looked at my hands. They began to scar, and the scars began to glow orange, and green growths pushed out of my skin, one on the tip of my thumb, breaking my nail away from the appendage. My palms were covered in the lumps. My hands began to shake. My vision became a cloud of green, and for a second I wondered if my mind was even my own.
My skin began to bubble, and the growths began to pop one by one, instantly replaced with another. The ice around me turned a sticky green; the disgusting green of vomit just settled.
I looked back at the island. I wondered if there was anyone there. No I didn't, I knew there wasn't... but it couldn't hurt to check... but I knew that it would do me no good, although my mind urged me to go forward. My brain hurt; not as if I were thinking very hard, my brain aching in a powerful sense, but it physically stung. I felt the growths on the inside of my skull. There was a large patch of green around me now, where snow had once settled.
I didn't feel the cold, I didn't feel the breeze, I didn't feel the touch of the snow.
Damn the Solar, and all those who came with it. The shivering sacks of fear that came in the vessel were no good to me. The only one of any use, Yakon, betrayed me at his first on-world dawn. I'd loved to have had him in my employ for longer, but he apparently hadn't had the endurance to keep up with the rest. He took with him Jacob Sand, which I hated more than anything. He was the smartest man on this damn planet, and it hurt more than anything that he was gone. But I still had people tucked away, behind enemy lines, like time bombs waiting to explode in Corren faces.
And it appeared as though one of them had.
A short blonde man ran over to me, carrying with him a metal box, coated in algae and barnacles. "Sir!" He said. When he saw me his pace quickened. "One of our Islander spies retrieved this not too long ago; he passed it through the portal only a few minutes back." The metal box seemed underwhelming. He slammed it down on the sand in front of me, with enough force to make the entire island rock. I glanced at it, and then back up at him.
"What am I looking at?" I asked. I brushed some of the plantlife away, and as if by magic a word was revealed exactly where I had swept. The word brought me relief, and as soon as I saw it I knew the value of this object.
Sunbeam.
"You brought me the Sunbeam's long-range scanners." I chuckled. I was fortunate. This terminal held information about the past, and the present. If I wanted I could relay messages of Avery and his crew, I could open files that displayed certain scans executed long ago... but that's not what I wanted it for. "Hook this up to the monitor right away." I ordered, and two new men carried the box away from me.
An hour later it was ready. On the monitor was displayed a bird's-eye-view of the surrounding oceans. "Of course, its time in the sea has worn it down," the blonde man informed. "It doesn't have as much range as it used to."
"Range enough." I assured him. I looked at our island in the centre of the screen. Everything was a deep blue, with islands outlined in a brighter shade. Our island was teeming with bright blue dots. Some were moving around, whilst others were stationary. Then I looked up the map. Further north I saw two light blue dots. They were slowly making their way up the map, at snails pace from this perspective. "Yakon... and Jacob." I pointed to the dual-dots. "They took two moths and they're headed off to the Islanders... up here..." My finger drifted upwards, to the mountain. More people were there, yes, and their island was bigger, but they hadn't the firepower we possessed.
"Where is Zenn's group?" One man asked.
I turned around. "He's up north." I answered.
"How do you know?" He kept asking questions.
"Because he told me that, when he was sure Seth was dead, he'd be heading north." I turned back to the map.
"Then who's that on the Aurora?" He asked. He pointed. There was a solitary blue dot on the Aurora, right in its centre. It pulsated slowly, and I looked on, letting my confusion turn to worry, and then my worry turn to anger. Soon I had a hatred boiling in the pit of my stomach, rising like a spout through my chest and out of the mouth.
"A survivor..." I said as coolly as I could. "Get Draconis ready, Straya; it's time to go hunting..."
"Are you sure, Sir?" Straya was my head of vehicles. He had never questioned me before.
"If that's who I think that is everything we have ever done has been for nought!" I yelled, louder than I think I should have. "Now we either hunt that bastard down or we wait for a Corren to find them, and we're not gonna let a Corren get to this guy, at least not with one of them dead!" My teeth were tightened together. "Get... Draconis... Ready..."
There was a sudden burst of commotion amongst us. People were racing to our small base on the shore, as Sasha had called in everyone to discuss something she called 'exceedingly important'. I, of course, followed them all inside, but I did not run as they did. People pushed past me, brushing my shoulders and knocking my elbows. Kend walked even further back. His head was bowed, his eyes were still twitching. He was broken, we could all be sure of that. It was our job to try and fix him again.
I walked into the room. Everyone was gathered around a scanner. It showed an overhead view of the entire surrounding ocean, and blue dots indicated humans. Many were in the north, on our island, but now we saw something else; an island to the south, just below the Aurora on the map. Sasha smiled. "Kend salvaged this fragment from the Sunbeam." She told us. "He says he only found half of it, though. If we had the other part we would have a wider range. It's sad, but this is all we've got."
Sellan stepped forward, and pointed at the southern island. "Ollos thought he could hide from us..." He grinned. "We finished dismantling the portal only last night, so he can't come through anymore. But now we know where he is so we wouldn't have need for it."
Sasha pointed at two small dots. They were crawling north. "These," she began, "are two of Ollos' men. They are headed to our island. We'll be ready for them."
Then she looked at the Aurora. It was then when I noticed it too. There was a light blue dot pulsating on the ship. I could tell that this was the first time Sellan saw this. I looked at Sasha, and she stared back. Then others began to see. People began to talk amongst themselves, and this grew louder and louder until the crowds were shouting and screaming. "We have to get them back!" some shouted, "it could be Seth!" some rightly pointed out.
Either way, someone was alive on the Aurora.
I turned back to Kend. He walked out of the room, his head in his hands. He rubbed at his eyes forcefully, and then looked over his shoulder at me. I nodded at him, hoping he would smile and nod back, but his eyes turned lifeless. It was as if he had seen a ghost. His fingers began to twitch, and he did not blink. His sight drifted upwards, and his head twisted and drooped backwards. His mouth fell open and his body began to twitch. He collapsed to the sand.
"Kend!" I shouted, but no one heard me. Everyone was too busy fighting to see the scanner. Everyone was sure who it was, but I was less certain. Kend had told me that his death was rather definitive. Then I remembered. Kend was still the key; the sole survivor of the massacre. Well, not anymore...
The crowd began to leave the building. They were pressing through the exit, between each other and the steel walls. They popped out and began to run along the sand towards the Aurora. I was pushed over, and I fell to the floor beside Kend. I grabbed his face, which was still twitching. I didn't know what was happening; I wasn't a medic. I yelled again, but no one heard me. Then, when the building was empty, Sellan ran out to meet us. He knelt down beside Kend, and began performing more useful medical procedures than I had been doing.
I looked at the beach, and people lined the coast, screaming his name. I looked at Sasha. She was on the verge of tears. She was usually able to keep them all under control. Not anymore. Now they knew their true leader was alive. The leader they had followed since the beginning. Her focus was more on the two who were approaching, most likely to kill us. My focus was on that too, not the mystery man on the Aurora. I looked at Sellan, who was performing CPR on Kend. It was hard to watch. Eventually Kend fell silent, and limp. His eyes shut themselves.
One of the many perks of life in the north was the overwhelming sense of calm. It filled you from head to toe; the cold that nipped at the tips of your fingers was strangely relaxing, as was the gentle breeze and the sound of crisp water lapping against coarse pebbles. We had just received word that there was a survivor on the Aurora; a transmission meant only for certain people amongst the Islanders had been breached and heard by some of our best scientists, and now we knew that life had been found on the Aurora ruins. Realistically, it could have been anyone, but I knew that everyone would leap to the remarkable conclusion that this survivor was Malla. I wished I could tell people that he watched him get stabbed in the back and fall dead, but he would be met with a resounding chorus of 'why didn't you do anything (I killed Seth, which apparently wasn't enough in my mind)'.
Ruthless left the base, along with Jack Stamford.
"I heard the news," Ruthless sat down next to me. Even when sitting on this rock he was two heads taller than me, and two feet wider. "Malla's still alive."
"We all heard the news," Stamford shook his head, "and it is highly unlikely that it's Malla aboard that ship."
"Really?" I asked with a worried grin plastered to my face. "His survival and leadership skills are remarkable, and that's when he's leading a whole force. He would be unstoppable on his own, with all of that fruit and rainwater to himself." I brushed my sleeves and stood up, turning to face Jack. "And his sister; she has a remarkable mind. Sometimes her lack of loyalty fails her, but her strategic thinking is unmatched by anyone else on the planet."
"What do you mean?" Ruthless scratched his head with all four fingers.
"He means," Jack scoffed, "that if that child of hers has half of his uncle's skills, and even a quarter of his mother's strategy, he'll be a machine; completely unstoppable."
"Then what are we going to do about it?" Ruthless grinned, and cracked his knuckles.
"Sit back." I said. Ruthless looked disappointed. "Ollos can sit on his little island in the south, and he can watch as this baby grows and grows until adulthood, kept alive by his mother's intellect. Then when he takes over... well, Ollos will have to build a rocket quickly, then, wont he?"
"And what if he points his vessels the other way?" Jack crossed his arms. "What if he wants to kill the people who followed his uncle's murderers?"
A sudden wave of anger swept over me. "I didn't kill Malla," I snapped. "He isn't even dead." I realised that I had jumped to the same conclusions I had ridiculed others of leaping to. Jack looked at me and smiled.
"You think you're an angel?" He asked.
"I think I'm smart," I grinned. "Smart enough to know how intelligent others around me are. If I know Sasha like I do, Jack Malla Corren will grow to be smart enough to sail the right direction."
There was a minute of silence. Stamford broke the quiet. "This is what I like about you," he said. I began to smile. "I like to have someone around who I can talk to with as much intellect as me."
"Doesn't work if you're not friends." I added.
"Yes, and that's why it works."
This is all going to slow down a bit, as a result of happenings in the real world, and a growing focus on my own personal story.
This other story isn't written in first person, like Eclipse is, so the tenses may clash. If you see anything third person here point it out and I'll get it changed
After twelve days of being stuck in a confined space with Yakon, the island was finally in sight. He had not stopped telling me of his adventures and voyages all around the galaxy, half of which I'm sure were fabricated, and those that were real exaggerated. He was pleased to be so close to our destination, but I was happier. For months had I been stranded on that island, doing everything Ollos had asked, and all of his lieutenants and side-kicks bossed us all around, and got us to make weapons for them.
No more. Sasha would be more accepting, I had hoped.
We slid up to the side of the island in the moth. As we surfaced and glided along the edge of the beach, three guards with stasis rifles ran to the bank and pointed their weapons at us. It was clear they had been ready to receive us. "Come out with your hands in the air, Silvers!" They yelled. Yakon bust open the moth with his fist, cracking the glass and opening it with force. He jumped to his feet, and I pried myself from behind his seat, where I was crammed in. "Last we checked there were two moths," the guard said, disappointed.
"Turns out those big octopus zappers do more damage close range," Yakon smiled and jumped from the rim of the moth to the sand. "And we ain't no Silvers; we're glad not to be." He held his hands up above his head.
"We want to see Sasha," I began to stand. "Do you know where we might find her?"
"Sasha's gone," another guard yelled, thrusting his gun forward for Yakon to back off. "We found a survivor on the Aurora, and now we're going to collect this survivor, for better or for worse."
"Well, this is Yakon," I began, "and I am Jacob Sand."
"We know who you are, Sand." One hissed menacingly. "You're the arrogant bastard who thought he was the smartest guy on Lunar! Tell me, Jacob, how smart are you now? You walked right into the enemy's arms, and we'll be damned if-"
A baby began to cry. Yakon looked over all of their heads. "That a kid?" Yakon asked stupidly. Of course it is, I wanted to whisper, but it would have been in bad taste. There was a silence. "We wish you no harm," Yakon resumed. "All we want to do is join the Islanders; the Silvers turned out to be nothin' but asses."
The guards looked at each other, and after a few minutes of watching them talk and listening to the crying child, they let us through. Yakon instantly ran for the sound of the crying baby, and I followed close behind.
As he entered the large, circular room, the baby almost instantly stopped crying; it still sniffled, and made sad little noises, but for the most part it fell silent. Yakon reached into the crib and pulled the baby out gently. He quietly hushed it, and made motions with his mouth and eyes that made the baby smile, and sometimes laugh. I watched on. He was good with children.
If we were accepted into the Islanders, he would treat the child well.
I was sure Malla was on the Aurora, as were the rest of the crew; as was Sasha. If calculations were to be believed, we would meet one another just west of the Aurora. Doubtless there would be a battle, but only a fool such as herself would dare war against the might of the Silvers. We were more powerful than the Islanders, we were more plentiful, we were generally the better group. Even our cyclops reigned supreme.
Obraxis Prime was a difficult place to live; harsh environments coupled with deadly creatures and bandits proved establishing a mining company there difficult. It goes without saying that one learns a great deal about self defence when faced with these challenges. Not only am I as great and successful buisnessman and critical thinker, but I am also a masterful gunslinger and fighter. It helps to have some of Lunar's best engineers behind you, as well. Marder told me that he was working on some new tech for me to use against the Islanders, and that it would be ready soon.
When he walked in I was already giddy. Of course he was carrying a crate. He slammed it on the floor in front of me and with a click it opened up. Firstly, he pulled from the box a pair of goggles. "These will allow you to detect heat," he promised. "They tap into your neural code, so they will activate on command. Use it sparingly, though; power isn't easy to come by on the islands, and these goggles need a hell of a lot of juice."
"I don't plan on using them for too long." I assured him. I grabbed the goggles and slipped them on over my head. When they were around my eyes I felt nothing except a new, tingling feeling in my head. Then, when I thought it, I saw in orange and yellow and purple. I saw men and women's heat, and I saw the metal and ocean's deep purple cold. I turned it off swiftly as to not waste battery. "Sasha won't be around for too long. And that baby of hers will bite the dust soon after. What else have you got for me?"
Marder grinned. He rummaged around in the container and pulled from it a silver gauntlet. It was plated, and on its palm was a light blue circle. "This is a shield generator glove," he said. "If you press your palm to the ground and take it away, a shield will pop up in front of you that will allow shields past from your end, but will prevent projectiles from passing through the other."
I rolled up my sleeve all the way to my shoulder, revealing deep gashes on my upper arms. Seth had given me four on each arm, to show my high status. I slipped on the gauntlet, and crouched down. I slowly pressed my hand against the steel floor, and when I took it away a light blue shield three metres wide and as tall as the ceiling erupted from the ground in front of me. I laughed. "Her forces won't stand a chance against this!"
"There is one more thing..." Marder reached into the crate and pulled from it a black, shimmering pistol. "This is a quantum pistol. It fires lethal blasts of heat energy in the form of lasers. This is a standard-issue sidearm that I have reverse engineered from memory. With this, they stand no chance against you."
I took the gun from Marder's hands. I weighed it, I felt it's grip, I twirled it in my hands. "Does it work?" I ask. Marder nods. I looked him in the eyes, and suddenly saw him become very scared. He was prepared to run, but I grabbed him by the scruff of his collar. Slowly, I moved my gun to his forehead. I pressed it against the skin. "I just want to test it, Marder... Honest..." He began to cry, and scream, and beg. I started to laugh. Then there was gunfire, and blood splattered across my clothes. Marder's lifeless body fell to the floor.
I laughed hysterically. It was beautiful.
And then... I felt a tear running down my eye... I wiped it away, and continued my manic laughter.
Comments
I'm guessing you didn't mean to put that?
And so it was that the Solar Vessel was nearing planetfall. A shame, however, that it was to fall harder and faster than anyone on board could ever expect. My arm was slowly recovering; the muscles and joints in my arm were slowly repairing themselves. Kendrick's twitches had completely left him, so he still drove the Seamoth. We still darted through the Mushroom Forest as quick as the moth would take us, a jet of bubbles left in our wake. We still felt the eyes on us, however. It was a strange feeling. Pods plastered to the limestone struts of the forest trees opened to reveal wandering eyes, and they fixed on us eerily.
"We should reach the island in less than a day." I called forward to Kend.
"Good." He said. "I want to see the kid. Did Sasha tell you who the father is?"
I sighed. "I'll likely never know." I admitted. "Do you know? Is this truth hidden amidst all your other secrets?"
"Sadly not." He grinned. He was slowly becoming his old self again, and his old self I rather enjoyed. Of course his face was still scarred and torn, but his personality made up for what he lacked in good looks. It was a shame I had to travel the oceans without him by my side. Properly by my side, at least. "Perhaps we should ask. She wasn't married was she?"
"Not that I know of," I told him, "but stranger things than a secret wedding have happened." Then there was further silence. After a minute of it I decided to break the tension, or at least attempt to. "So, did you know Ollos has started calling his people the Sil-" I was interrupted by a noise outside. It resembled that of a plunger ripped from a smooth surface; that wet sticky sound. This rekindled the silence. After a minute the same noise repeated. It came again and again, the gaps in between occurrences decreasing.
"What the bloody hell's going on?" Kendrick finally snapped.He looked back but the dimensions of the moth clouded his vision.
"Turn the damn thing around, we can get a better look at it." I slapped his shoulder and with a brisk motion the moth turned a good ninety degrees. We looked to our lefts and in the distance we saw a grand shoal of small red fish, no bigger than my clenched fist. We had no choice but to assume them hostile, as we weren't about to chance our lives. I kicked the chair and Kend lunged forwards towards the mountain. We darted through the trunks of mushroom trees, and eventually Kend and I had the same Idea as the ground began to slowly rise up, out of the forest.
"I'm going to pull up!" Kend announced. He tugged at the steering wheel and the seamoth leaned backwards. It began to head towards the surface, but this manoeuvre cost us speed, and there was a sudden impact behind us, and the sound of metal tearing, and wires snapping, and steel falling out of place. The moth stopped, and with a second crash the glass smashed in front of us and water poured in. Kend broke in the rest of the window and swam out and upwards, but I was still stuck behind the chair. I pushed with all of my might but still I couldn't get the seat to budge, to get out of my damn way. I looked up at the same moment Kendrick glanced back down at me. I wished for him to go on without me, but he swam back down and into the moth to try and pull me out. I urged him to go on, but soon enough I was pulled free of my confines. He tugged me forward and threw me up a whole two feet above him, and we both continued to the surface.
The moth was a ruin. Metal floated in place in the water surrounding the main body, and glass fell to the sea floor. Soon enough one of the fish found its way inside, and with a careful explosion the whole structure fell to pieces.
We breached the surface, and the island was in sight.
But we heard the scraping of metal, the sirens, and we see the great gun turning in the distance. It faced north.
Solar was here.
In the time that the first survivor left, and these people got here, Biters must have gotten either smarter, or stronger.
Phantom should be pleased.
Also, my people should have a better introduction then "oh shit I a bird flew into my window"
There would at least be a scene like this
To show the true swarm mentality of my proud communists.
As I once said to @Morph_Guy:
Here's another one for you.
Loving the suspense so far.
I'm surprised that's all there was, considering how late at night I wrote this.
I wouldn't give Phantom that satisfaction. Those things are Crash
One is pressed behind the seat. That's why Zanos nearly died, he couldn't get out as quickly as he should have
The black speck streaked across the blue above us. The cold nipped away at our very souls, reducing us to no more than shivering lumps of flesh and bone, near enough stranded not only at sea, but on an uncharted planet with no hope of getting home. Unless Solar was able to manoeuvre the beam, the crew were as good as lost. Ruthless was worse than useless, sitting on the pebbles, beating rocks together. He was strong, and a reliable ally, but he was dim, and slow in the brain. Jack was, no doubt, smarter than me. He was more cunning than anyone on Lunar, more cunning than anyone on Eclipse, even. I'd say he surpassed even Sampson in intellect. But he had Malla's kindness. The combination of the two could only end in joy.
"That's Solar." He said. "I didn't anticipate it arriving so soon." I didn't either. It was about to dive behind the horizon out of our sight, when the great green beam fired upwards. It hit the ship and in moments the entire vessel was torn into two enormous lumps. They hurtled over the horizon, never to be seen by us again. "Next ship they send better be stronger," Jack commented, "or we're never getting out of here."
"I doubt they'll be sending anymore ships." I told him. I turned my body to the ice burg, far into northern waters. "I doubt anyone will worry about us anymore." There was silence. Then there was a splash. It was forceful, and I felt speckles of ice cold water hit my sooty face. I didn't see what had hit the water at first, but soon enough a life pod erupted from the water, floating on the surface. More and more hit the water.
"Get the damn people out of there!" Jack commanded. I looked on as more and more fell. My men swam to them and pulled from their tops two people out of each. Some were blooded, some were dead, and some life pods were blazing, smoke rising from their tops when they were cracked open.
As new survivors crawled onto the shores from the pods, I saw something on the ice burg, far in the distance. It was a deep grey, the deep grey of the gun, and it shared the same metallic reflections. It was a cube jutting out of the side of the ice. I saw cables erupt from the glossy surface and submerge back inside. I only saw this for a minute before the ice burg rotated back the way it had come, and it was out of my field of view once again.
"All of you!" I beckoned the new survivors to me. "I'm sure you're all wondering what we're doing here. Long story short the survivors of both Lunar and Eclipse have divided into two factions after Malla Corren was killed. Malla was our leader, and his death split the survivors into the Islanders, the Silvers and us."
"The Northerners." Jack stepped forwards. I looked at him and smiled.
"Yes," I agrees, "the Northerners."
"And what of Sampson?" One survivor asked, and an uproar began. "Where is he?" They asked. "Why is he not in command?" They asked.
"Sampson died long ago, long before even Lunar arrived here." I answered. "He was killed by one of my... associates..." I remembered Tary. I never had forgotten her, but her memory blossomed at that moment like it had never done since her death.
"And what about Ollos?" Other survivors asked.
"Ollos?" I was surprised to hear them asking, but with a bit of thought it became not so strange. Ollos was a rich man, and it was news to many that a businessman of Obraxis Prime would join a mission such as this. "Well, Ollos betrayed Malla. Ollos killed him, and that turned his sister against Ollos and the Silvers. I didn't particulalry agree with his actions, but-"
"So this Corren wants Ollos dead?" They questioned. I nodded, and they gave each other unsure looks. I wondered if there were other survivors of Solar, and where they were now.
Hopefully, we get to see some sane humans this time around.
As if by magic the enormous gun had split the Solar Vessel right down the middle. The nose end of the ship hurtled into the waters around our Silver island whilst the arse end plummeted into the waters around the mountain. Our numbers had been somewhat replenished, and I was thankful for that. Unluckily Ollos didn't share my views on the matter. "I'll not waste any more materials on those damn Exos!" He whined. "You'll all be walking I swear!"
He went on to explain the situation to everyone who had landed, but one man caught my eye. In his belt was a small pistol that could only be a stasis gun. Fastened to his back was a long, thin blade, its hilt shimmering gold in the sunlight. It was as if he had pried the weapon from the hands of a medieval knight. His face was tall and long, and his beard was not that large. His black hair hung down past his ears, past his chin, past everything from the neck up. He noticed me staring when Ollos' talk was done, which was, of course, filled with fabrications and exaggerations. The man walked over to me. I continued with my work as if I had never seen him, but he knew I had taken full notice.
"I can see past that man's tricks." He told me. My head snapped back to him and I smiled an enormous, beaming smile. The man had a strong Texas accent, meaning he had to be from Earth.
"It seems we're the only two on this island who can." I continued pulling wires from Degasi wrecks, throwing them onto a growing pile on the floor. I looked back at him. "Where did you get that sword? And that gun?"
"I made 'em myself. Built the gun from scratch on one of Strader Alpha's moons, and fought tribesmen on Obraxis Prime for this here sword." He fiddled with the hit behind his back, twisting the thin blade in its scabbard. "Do you even wanna be here right now?" He asked me. "I sure as hell don't, and those 'Corren' folk sound quite nice if you were to ask me." He saw it too. I was delighted. There were seven moths docked, we could take two and be at the Islander's doorstep in no time.
"They're just north of here. I'm sure you can pilot a Seamoth, can't you... what's your name?"
"The name's Yakon." He grinned. "Yakon Barren. You've probably heard of me; hijacked a Federation cruiser single-handed, battled a Star Eel in the Elarian Stretch not too long ago..." I hadn't heard of said exploits, so the next minutes were met with silence. He dismissed this. "Let's go." He sighed.
I lead Yakon to the docks where we would take two moths and leave. I slid into one of them, and Yakon was about to do the same when we heard a shout behind us. "Where do you think you're going?!" Ollos wailed behind us. Yakon turned around and he stood there, the machine gun arms of the mech rotating faster than anything, whirring loudly, ready to fire one thousand bullets into Yakon's chest.
"Well..." Yakon began, "those Corren folk you spoke abouts actually sound like quite nice people. I don't think youse killed 'em justly, I think youse killed em because someone told you to." The machine gun's whirr turned to a rattle, and I expected Yakon to fall back in an instant, the blood draining from him, but quicker than a black hole sucks in a raceship travelling at warp speed, Yakon drew his blaster and fired it at Ollos, powering the mech down for just long enough. Yakon slid across the roof of the moth and fell into its top. "Right," he said as he closed the roof of the vehicle, "I take it you know how to pilot one of these things."
"I went through extensive training." I told him. "I'm sure I can get to the mountain in one piece..."
"Well, I ain't sure about one piece..." Yakon chuckled, but I sat there in horror as the vessels slowly lowered into the water, the sea moving up the windows at snail's pace. "It's gonna be a bumpy ride, pal. What's you're name, engineer?"
"Jason..." I answered sheepishly. "Jason Sand."
"Hey!" Yakon said as we darted forwards into the ocean. "My name's pronounced Jakon, but people just say Yakon since it's spelled like that. So, if my name were to be spelled as it were soundin', we'd only be one letter off from each other! Ain't that a delight?"
"Yea..." I managed. "What a delight..."
“And we still don’t know who the father of that child is?” I looked at Sellan, wondering, and all he could do in return was shrug and shake his head. Kendrick sat on one of the rocks by the sea, looking out onto the Aurora. There were newcomers, I saw, from the Solar Vessel. They were shaken, and still distressed. Sasha comforted them, but only for a short while. They outnumbered us, and we were certain that Ollos had scrambled together his small force from the wreckage. He only had the nose of the ship though; the housing and the engine rooms were what landed by our island, and that meant more people than he could ever scavenge.
Still I was curious who Jack Malla Corren’s father was. It annoyed me that Kend didn’t know, it frustrated me that Sellan hadn’t even tried to find out. I saw on the other side of the island the small, dead Reefback on the shore. Its shell was becoming overgrown with moss. It had been sitting there for a week now, so no wonder. I watched as Sasha dashed back into the base when Jack started wailing. If only Malla were still here to look after the poor boy, or the father stepped forward and helped Sasha out; I was sure it was someone on Lunar, or perhaps even on Eclipse.
I entered the base. Sasha was rocking J-M-C in her arms, hushing him. His crying was beginning to fall quiet, and she looked up at me smiling. “People say he has my face.” She told me. “I disagree.”
I looked down at Jack and then back up to Sasha. “Then we’ll agree to disagree.” We both grinned and she set Jack back down on the side.
“I take it you didn’t find him then.” Sasha’s face suddenly became sad, and there was a moment of silence.
“No.” I said. “But I did find Kendrick. He’s alive and well; still a bit shaken by the whole thing, but he’ll come around.” She smiled. “Sasha, I have a question to ask you.” She looked up again.
“If it’s about the portal, we’re having it destroyed. I agree we can’t let Ollos thro-“
“It’s not about the portal. It’s about Jack.” I told her. She looked at me with giant green eyes, as if she knew the question that would be asked. She nodded without words. “Who’s Jack’s father? You know if it’s someone who holds power Jack could be extremely valuable.”
“Jack is extremely valuable.” She said coolly, but I knew behind her mask she was offended.
“I’m sorry. If you want to keep it a secret then I understand, but-“
“Yes, I’d like to keep it a secret.” She snapped, her voice keeping soft, and she still had a smile on her face, regardless of the tears that were building in her eyes. There was awkward quiet, eventually broken by her. “Who killed Malla?” She asked.
“I don’t know, but Seth killed Penna, says Kend. Jack Stamford killed Leonard and lost Kend his good looks.” I looked out of one of the windows. Kendrick still looked out to sea. Then I looked at Jack. He had small black hairs, and his eyes were a deep blue, but it was true; he had his mother’s features. Sasha's hair was brown, close to black, but not the same as Jack's. Her face tensed. She looked back out at Kend. Then her eyes drifted to the Aurora.
"Do you think Zenn is still out there?" She asked. "On the Aurora? Biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike out at Ollos?"
"Or us." I suggested. Sasha looked at me coldly. She was about to say something but recoiled. Then she looked down, half in shame, half in relief that she had kept quiet.
"Yes." She agreed. "Or us." I looked out at Kendrick. I remembered his accounts of the massacre, of everything that had happened out there. I remembered Seth and his killings and betrayals, I remembered how Kend had told me of Ruthless’ strength, and how he was eventually overpowered. His descriptions were so vivid after he had recovered, I could picture the event in my head. Faces I had never seen before became clear in my mind. Then I saw his face again; Seth. His eyes that burned black in his head. I saw all the people around him; all of his companions. Then I had figured it out. I was frustrated I hadn't known sooner.
I would argue that here the environment was more friendly than down in the south. Perhaps I'm biased, since I prefer the cold to the warmth; I don't find pleasure in bathing in sunlight until your clothes grow heavy and wet and your skin becomes coated in sweat. Even if it weren't for my swayed opinion I found the north welcoming. The seas were tranquil, relative to what the Islanders and Silvers had to deal with, and our island was large and flat, and welcoming to settlers. Where the Islanders crammed their base between the gun and the mountain, and the Silvers were having it worse than that I hope, we had space to expand, outwards and upwards. We housed our twenty two survivors in a four story giant, observatories shooting from its sides like a towering spider web. Out here we could focus on luxury alongside survival.
And the nights were glorious. Down south there were clouds that blocked the full light of the moon, and the Aurora cutting its bottom away. Here the clouds scarcely blew through, and only the glacier was blocking the enormous red moon. I was okay with that. It was a natural thing, a beauty far greater than the Aurora in my opinion. I found it rather underwhelming; smaller than I'd have hoped, and home to more death than I care to speak of. People already said the wreckage was haunted, but what would Malla's spirit do to Zenn if he were to return, I wonder...
The red and white light beamed down onto the waters, shimmering as the waves rippled across the black ocean. I walked out of the base, covered head to toe in thick clothing. But not the face. I liked feeling the cold on my face; the feeling it gave when it nibbled at your cheeks and chin, gnawing away at your features. Others had begged me not to go outside. Too cold, they said, but I did not listen. I walked across the pebbles, gazing up at the red moon as I did so. Then I saw Zenn. He was perched on a rock in the middle of the island. The moonlight shone from the diamond blade he fiddles with in his hands.
It was a sad story really. That blade had been with a leader he hated, and when he was finally dead and the knife fell into Malla's hands, a leader he truly wanted, he was convinced to rebel. Seth was a horrid creature, barely even a man. He was manipulative, he was cruel, and I was glad he was dead. When Zenn heard me coming he tucked the knife away. His coal black hair swayed in the wind. "What are you doing out here?" He asked me. "You're meant to be inside; everyone is."
"I came out to see the moons." I answered. "Obraxis Prime had five. It was an enormous planet, but I recall everything about it. That was back when Ollos was good, and Seth hadn't manipulated him like he did you."
"Luckily Seth's meddling isn't permanent." Zenn grinned.
"Ollos would argue otherwise." I replied. There was a second of silence before Zenn shuffled slightly left, giving me space to sit next to him. He patted the coarse rock beside him, inviting me to take a seat.
"Ollos is a bastard who would rather kill everyone here than leave with us." Zenn was angry now. There was another moment of quiet. "But none of us are angels, especially not me. I killed my best friend, I killed the man who talked me into killing my best friend, and then I killed a bunch more people. I have broken pacts and gone against vows, and now it seems I'm paying the price. Stuck up here in the frozen north, out of the way of the war, but also away from anything that'll get us out of here."
"It's a lot prettier up here, though." I said. "And you didn't kill anyone, Zenn. I did; I killed Kendrick with Ruthless' help. You are innocent, you were manipulated and you are paying no price. It is as good up here as it was down there." I hoped I was being reassuring.
"I'll bare the scars until the day I die." It was clear that I hadn't been. "But I suppose it helps having the brightest person on the planet at my side."
"And the strongest." There was a moment where me and Zenn were on the verge of bursting with laughter, before I clarified that I meant Ruthless and not myself. "Either way, I doubt I'm the most intelligent man here. There was someone on the Lunar Vessel who rivalled me in intellect, I assure you." Zenn nodded, but I for the life of me couldn't remember this man's name. "Joshua... Jakon... Jerret..."
"Jacob." Zenn told me. "Jacob Sand. He was a dealer for Ollos, back when he was a good guy. He sold the minerals Ollos mined up to anyone he could find. He nearly got arrested for selling them to some pirates. I wouldn't call him a smart man."
"I would." I smiled. "I think he's very smart, and very witty. If he's still under Ollos we have more reason to fear the traitor."
There was silence for five minutes, whilst we simply looked up at the moon and wondered when we were to leave this place. At least, that's what I was wondering. Then Zenn announced he was going inside, and that I should probably follow.
I stayed out there for another five hours.
I don't think reincarnation is the best way to bring him back.
Death?
Sorry about my nitpicking by the way!
Don't be sorry. You're brightening the future for others later on. You're doing God's work.
That's how I do it, though; a bunch of setup for a grand finale, hopefully outweighing the last. Now we're going into some more intense territory...
Solar had crashed three days ago, or so the readings told me. My lifepod had crashed on a great block of ice in the northern regions of the planet. I had just woken up, and had just opened the pod doors, and the cold already tore at my flesh like a pack of dogs. It sent my fingers numb, my nose chilly and my eyes watered like twin waterfalls. The winds were strong. I looked around, through the gusts, the air packed with small flakes of powdery snow.
There was a small island in the distance. It looked like it had a tower on it, but... my imagination, I expect...
Although I assumed the glacier to be natural, a path where the ice flattened out lead up the side of the ice. I followed it. The cold would take me at any moment. I wouldn't dare die curious. Shivering, and turning blue, I wandered across the ice, up the gradual slope, until in the distance I saw some sort of cube that jutted out of the ice.
I got closer, and found it to be a deep grey, made of metal, surrounded by thick cables that erupted from the ice and curled in the air before submerging once again into the frozen water. I thought it to be a settlement, so I went closer at a jog. I was overjoyed to find a gaping oblong entrance before me, and I was about to run into the structure when, deep within, I saw something move, and wriggle, as if it were alive.
This thing clawed its way across the ground towards me. It was green, and glowing, and all I saw of it was a pulsating mass of oozing growths and disgusting cysts. I backed out of the construction. I slipped. Now I was on my back. In the snow. On the ice. This creature, or what I thought to be a creature, came closer and closer, and soon it was grasping at my ankles with slippery mutated hands, with uneven amounts of fingers; five turned to six in an instant, and back even quicker.
I writhed for control, tripping further and further backwards, away from the creature. Even as we fought it mutated and malformed, swelling in some areas and collapsing inwards in others. Then one of the cysts on its arm popped and the liquid inside oozed out onto my leg. It wasn't on there for long. It absorbed rather quickly into my skin, and the patch began to burn.
More and more cysts erupted and I began to hurt and ache all over.
The creature backed away into its den once again, crawling ever so slowly across the ice. It entered the settlement before the entire body collapsed and every growth on its body exploded, leaving nothing but a mat of skin on the ground.
I looked at my hands. They began to scar, and the scars began to glow orange, and green growths pushed out of my skin, one on the tip of my thumb, breaking my nail away from the appendage. My palms were covered in the lumps. My hands began to shake. My vision became a cloud of green, and for a second I wondered if my mind was even my own.
My skin began to bubble, and the growths began to pop one by one, instantly replaced with another. The ice around me turned a sticky green; the disgusting green of vomit just settled.
I looked back at the island. I wondered if there was anyone there. No I didn't, I knew there wasn't... but it couldn't hurt to check... but I knew that it would do me no good, although my mind urged me to go forward. My brain hurt; not as if I were thinking very hard, my brain aching in a powerful sense, but it physically stung. I felt the growths on the inside of my skull. There was a large patch of green around me now, where snow had once settled.
I didn't feel the cold, I didn't feel the breeze, I didn't feel the touch of the snow.
I didn't feel.
Damn the Solar, and all those who came with it. The shivering sacks of fear that came in the vessel were no good to me. The only one of any use, Yakon, betrayed me at his first on-world dawn. I'd loved to have had him in my employ for longer, but he apparently hadn't had the endurance to keep up with the rest. He took with him Jacob Sand, which I hated more than anything. He was the smartest man on this damn planet, and it hurt more than anything that he was gone. But I still had people tucked away, behind enemy lines, like time bombs waiting to explode in Corren faces.
And it appeared as though one of them had.
A short blonde man ran over to me, carrying with him a metal box, coated in algae and barnacles. "Sir!" He said. When he saw me his pace quickened. "One of our Islander spies retrieved this not too long ago; he passed it through the portal only a few minutes back." The metal box seemed underwhelming. He slammed it down on the sand in front of me, with enough force to make the entire island rock. I glanced at it, and then back up at him.
"What am I looking at?" I asked. I brushed some of the plantlife away, and as if by magic a word was revealed exactly where I had swept. The word brought me relief, and as soon as I saw it I knew the value of this object.
Sunbeam.
"You brought me the Sunbeam's long-range scanners." I chuckled. I was fortunate. This terminal held information about the past, and the present. If I wanted I could relay messages of Avery and his crew, I could open files that displayed certain scans executed long ago... but that's not what I wanted it for. "Hook this up to the monitor right away." I ordered, and two new men carried the box away from me.
An hour later it was ready. On the monitor was displayed a bird's-eye-view of the surrounding oceans. "Of course, its time in the sea has worn it down," the blonde man informed. "It doesn't have as much range as it used to."
"Range enough." I assured him. I looked at our island in the centre of the screen. Everything was a deep blue, with islands outlined in a brighter shade. Our island was teeming with bright blue dots. Some were moving around, whilst others were stationary. Then I looked up the map. Further north I saw two light blue dots. They were slowly making their way up the map, at snails pace from this perspective. "Yakon... and Jacob." I pointed to the dual-dots. "They took two moths and they're headed off to the Islanders... up here..." My finger drifted upwards, to the mountain. More people were there, yes, and their island was bigger, but they hadn't the firepower we possessed.
"Where is Zenn's group?" One man asked.
I turned around. "He's up north." I answered.
"How do you know?" He kept asking questions.
"Because he told me that, when he was sure Seth was dead, he'd be heading north." I turned back to the map.
"Then who's that on the Aurora?" He asked. He pointed. There was a solitary blue dot on the Aurora, right in its centre. It pulsated slowly, and I looked on, letting my confusion turn to worry, and then my worry turn to anger. Soon I had a hatred boiling in the pit of my stomach, rising like a spout through my chest and out of the mouth.
"A survivor..." I said as coolly as I could. "Get Draconis ready, Straya; it's time to go hunting..."
"Are you sure, Sir?" Straya was my head of vehicles. He had never questioned me before.
"If that's who I think that is everything we have ever done has been for nought!" I yelled, louder than I think I should have. "Now we either hunt that bastard down or we wait for a Corren to find them, and we're not gonna let a Corren get to this guy, at least not with one of them dead!" My teeth were tightened together. "Get... Draconis... Ready..."
Gigantic (possibly nuclear) warship anyone?
There was a sudden burst of commotion amongst us. People were racing to our small base on the shore, as Sasha had called in everyone to discuss something she called 'exceedingly important'. I, of course, followed them all inside, but I did not run as they did. People pushed past me, brushing my shoulders and knocking my elbows. Kend walked even further back. His head was bowed, his eyes were still twitching. He was broken, we could all be sure of that. It was our job to try and fix him again.
I walked into the room. Everyone was gathered around a scanner. It showed an overhead view of the entire surrounding ocean, and blue dots indicated humans. Many were in the north, on our island, but now we saw something else; an island to the south, just below the Aurora on the map. Sasha smiled. "Kend salvaged this fragment from the Sunbeam." She told us. "He says he only found half of it, though. If we had the other part we would have a wider range. It's sad, but this is all we've got."
Sellan stepped forward, and pointed at the southern island. "Ollos thought he could hide from us..." He grinned. "We finished dismantling the portal only last night, so he can't come through anymore. But now we know where he is so we wouldn't have need for it."
Sasha pointed at two small dots. They were crawling north. "These," she began, "are two of Ollos' men. They are headed to our island. We'll be ready for them."
Then she looked at the Aurora. It was then when I noticed it too. There was a light blue dot pulsating on the ship. I could tell that this was the first time Sellan saw this. I looked at Sasha, and she stared back. Then others began to see. People began to talk amongst themselves, and this grew louder and louder until the crowds were shouting and screaming. "We have to get them back!" some shouted, "it could be Seth!" some rightly pointed out.
Either way, someone was alive on the Aurora.
I turned back to Kend. He walked out of the room, his head in his hands. He rubbed at his eyes forcefully, and then looked over his shoulder at me. I nodded at him, hoping he would smile and nod back, but his eyes turned lifeless. It was as if he had seen a ghost. His fingers began to twitch, and he did not blink. His sight drifted upwards, and his head twisted and drooped backwards. His mouth fell open and his body began to twitch. He collapsed to the sand.
"Kend!" I shouted, but no one heard me. Everyone was too busy fighting to see the scanner. Everyone was sure who it was, but I was less certain. Kend had told me that his death was rather definitive. Then I remembered. Kend was still the key; the sole survivor of the massacre. Well, not anymore...
The crowd began to leave the building. They were pressing through the exit, between each other and the steel walls. They popped out and began to run along the sand towards the Aurora. I was pushed over, and I fell to the floor beside Kend. I grabbed his face, which was still twitching. I didn't know what was happening; I wasn't a medic. I yelled again, but no one heard me. Then, when the building was empty, Sellan ran out to meet us. He knelt down beside Kend, and began performing more useful medical procedures than I had been doing.
I looked at the beach, and people lined the coast, screaming his name. I looked at Sasha. She was on the verge of tears. She was usually able to keep them all under control. Not anymore. Now they knew their true leader was alive. The leader they had followed since the beginning. Her focus was more on the two who were approaching, most likely to kill us. My focus was on that too, not the mystery man on the Aurora. I looked at Sellan, who was performing CPR on Kend. It was hard to watch. Eventually Kend fell silent, and limp. His eyes shut themselves.
Jack began to cry.
I *sniff* don't know, maybe it's just me.
One of the many perks of life in the north was the overwhelming sense of calm. It filled you from head to toe; the cold that nipped at the tips of your fingers was strangely relaxing, as was the gentle breeze and the sound of crisp water lapping against coarse pebbles. We had just received word that there was a survivor on the Aurora; a transmission meant only for certain people amongst the Islanders had been breached and heard by some of our best scientists, and now we knew that life had been found on the Aurora ruins. Realistically, it could have been anyone, but I knew that everyone would leap to the remarkable conclusion that this survivor was Malla. I wished I could tell people that he watched him get stabbed in the back and fall dead, but he would be met with a resounding chorus of 'why didn't you do anything (I killed Seth, which apparently wasn't enough in my mind)'.
Ruthless left the base, along with Jack Stamford.
"I heard the news," Ruthless sat down next to me. Even when sitting on this rock he was two heads taller than me, and two feet wider. "Malla's still alive."
"We all heard the news," Stamford shook his head, "and it is highly unlikely that it's Malla aboard that ship."
"Really?" I asked with a worried grin plastered to my face. "His survival and leadership skills are remarkable, and that's when he's leading a whole force. He would be unstoppable on his own, with all of that fruit and rainwater to himself." I brushed my sleeves and stood up, turning to face Jack. "And his sister; she has a remarkable mind. Sometimes her lack of loyalty fails her, but her strategic thinking is unmatched by anyone else on the planet."
"What do you mean?" Ruthless scratched his head with all four fingers.
"He means," Jack scoffed, "that if that child of hers has half of his uncle's skills, and even a quarter of his mother's strategy, he'll be a machine; completely unstoppable."
"Then what are we going to do about it?" Ruthless grinned, and cracked his knuckles.
"Sit back." I said. Ruthless looked disappointed. "Ollos can sit on his little island in the south, and he can watch as this baby grows and grows until adulthood, kept alive by his mother's intellect. Then when he takes over... well, Ollos will have to build a rocket quickly, then, wont he?"
"And what if he points his vessels the other way?" Jack crossed his arms. "What if he wants to kill the people who followed his uncle's murderers?"
A sudden wave of anger swept over me. "I didn't kill Malla," I snapped. "He isn't even dead." I realised that I had jumped to the same conclusions I had ridiculed others of leaping to. Jack looked at me and smiled.
"You think you're an angel?" He asked.
"I think I'm smart," I grinned. "Smart enough to know how intelligent others around me are. If I know Sasha like I do, Jack Malla Corren will grow to be smart enough to sail the right direction."
There was a minute of silence. Stamford broke the quiet. "This is what I like about you," he said. I began to smile. "I like to have someone around who I can talk to with as much intellect as me."
"Doesn't work if you're not friends." I added.
"Yes, and that's why it works."
This other story isn't written in first person, like Eclipse is, so the tenses may clash. If you see anything third person here point it out and I'll get it changed
With how much faith they're putting in Jack, who's still a young child, I would assume that we would get to see adult Jack Corren.
Or maybe he's just a really skilled, 7 year-old assassin.
I'm good either way.
After twelve days of being stuck in a confined space with Yakon, the island was finally in sight. He had not stopped telling me of his adventures and voyages all around the galaxy, half of which I'm sure were fabricated, and those that were real exaggerated. He was pleased to be so close to our destination, but I was happier. For months had I been stranded on that island, doing everything Ollos had asked, and all of his lieutenants and side-kicks bossed us all around, and got us to make weapons for them.
No more. Sasha would be more accepting, I had hoped.
We slid up to the side of the island in the moth. As we surfaced and glided along the edge of the beach, three guards with stasis rifles ran to the bank and pointed their weapons at us. It was clear they had been ready to receive us. "Come out with your hands in the air, Silvers!" They yelled. Yakon bust open the moth with his fist, cracking the glass and opening it with force. He jumped to his feet, and I pried myself from behind his seat, where I was crammed in. "Last we checked there were two moths," the guard said, disappointed.
"Turns out those big octopus zappers do more damage close range," Yakon smiled and jumped from the rim of the moth to the sand. "And we ain't no Silvers; we're glad not to be." He held his hands up above his head.
"We want to see Sasha," I began to stand. "Do you know where we might find her?"
"Sasha's gone," another guard yelled, thrusting his gun forward for Yakon to back off. "We found a survivor on the Aurora, and now we're going to collect this survivor, for better or for worse."
"Well, this is Yakon," I began, "and I am Jacob Sand."
"We know who you are, Sand." One hissed menacingly. "You're the arrogant bastard who thought he was the smartest guy on Lunar! Tell me, Jacob, how smart are you now? You walked right into the enemy's arms, and we'll be damned if-"
A baby began to cry. Yakon looked over all of their heads. "That a kid?" Yakon asked stupidly. Of course it is, I wanted to whisper, but it would have been in bad taste. There was a silence. "We wish you no harm," Yakon resumed. "All we want to do is join the Islanders; the Silvers turned out to be nothin' but asses."
The guards looked at each other, and after a few minutes of watching them talk and listening to the crying child, they let us through. Yakon instantly ran for the sound of the crying baby, and I followed close behind.
As he entered the large, circular room, the baby almost instantly stopped crying; it still sniffled, and made sad little noises, but for the most part it fell silent. Yakon reached into the crib and pulled the baby out gently. He quietly hushed it, and made motions with his mouth and eyes that made the baby smile, and sometimes laugh. I watched on. He was good with children.
If we were accepted into the Islanders, he would treat the child well.
I was sure Malla was on the Aurora, as were the rest of the crew; as was Sasha. If calculations were to be believed, we would meet one another just west of the Aurora. Doubtless there would be a battle, but only a fool such as herself would dare war against the might of the Silvers. We were more powerful than the Islanders, we were more plentiful, we were generally the better group. Even our cyclops reigned supreme.
Obraxis Prime was a difficult place to live; harsh environments coupled with deadly creatures and bandits proved establishing a mining company there difficult. It goes without saying that one learns a great deal about self defence when faced with these challenges. Not only am I as great and successful buisnessman and critical thinker, but I am also a masterful gunslinger and fighter. It helps to have some of Lunar's best engineers behind you, as well. Marder told me that he was working on some new tech for me to use against the Islanders, and that it would be ready soon.
When he walked in I was already giddy. Of course he was carrying a crate. He slammed it on the floor in front of me and with a click it opened up. Firstly, he pulled from the box a pair of goggles. "These will allow you to detect heat," he promised. "They tap into your neural code, so they will activate on command. Use it sparingly, though; power isn't easy to come by on the islands, and these goggles need a hell of a lot of juice."
"I don't plan on using them for too long." I assured him. I grabbed the goggles and slipped them on over my head. When they were around my eyes I felt nothing except a new, tingling feeling in my head. Then, when I thought it, I saw in orange and yellow and purple. I saw men and women's heat, and I saw the metal and ocean's deep purple cold. I turned it off swiftly as to not waste battery. "Sasha won't be around for too long. And that baby of hers will bite the dust soon after. What else have you got for me?"
Marder grinned. He rummaged around in the container and pulled from it a silver gauntlet. It was plated, and on its palm was a light blue circle. "This is a shield generator glove," he said. "If you press your palm to the ground and take it away, a shield will pop up in front of you that will allow shields past from your end, but will prevent projectiles from passing through the other."
I rolled up my sleeve all the way to my shoulder, revealing deep gashes on my upper arms. Seth had given me four on each arm, to show my high status. I slipped on the gauntlet, and crouched down. I slowly pressed my hand against the steel floor, and when I took it away a light blue shield three metres wide and as tall as the ceiling erupted from the ground in front of me. I laughed. "Her forces won't stand a chance against this!"
"There is one more thing..." Marder reached into the crate and pulled from it a black, shimmering pistol. "This is a quantum pistol. It fires lethal blasts of heat energy in the form of lasers. This is a standard-issue sidearm that I have reverse engineered from memory. With this, they stand no chance against you."
I took the gun from Marder's hands. I weighed it, I felt it's grip, I twirled it in my hands. "Does it work?" I ask. Marder nods. I looked him in the eyes, and suddenly saw him become very scared. He was prepared to run, but I grabbed him by the scruff of his collar. Slowly, I moved my gun to his forehead. I pressed it against the skin. "I just want to test it, Marder... Honest..." He began to cry, and scream, and beg. I started to laugh. Then there was gunfire, and blood splattered across my clothes. Marder's lifeless body fell to the floor.
I laughed hysterically. It was beautiful.
And then... I felt a tear running down my eye... I wiped it away, and continued my manic laughter.
A battle was coming.
All in favor of Ollos being fed to Reaper, say I.
No reaper would be too quick, how about a swarm of bleeders all at once.
Also