“War tore us apart, disease weakened our home worlds, and then came the Scourge, wiping out civilization from our most barren moon to distant star. Now, there’s only me left, Yamien Silmund, Captain of the Astral Fleet’s 113th division. I lost contact with the last survivor settlements fifty years ago along with my crew, and the other brigades have long since disappeared into the Void.
“If there’s anyone out there, anyone to hear this message, meet me at Asteroid CZ-914, 814, -94.32. I’m heading there to respond to what I believe to be a distress signal. I’ll arrive by the new year 226, Salazar, the last light of humanity. May he rest in peace. Captain Yamien Silmund, over…”
It was a strange thing, hearing your own voice echo back at you like that. The hollow authority. The feigned optimism. Neither of which could dull the lingering beep of the explosion that’d torn me out of orbit.
I coughed, the dust of the arid planet filling my lungs as I rolled over. A lesser man, someone more human, would’ve died the moment they breathed in the toxic atmosphere.
In place of abundant oxygen, there was only radiation, setting my senses on edge and leaving the taste of blood thick upon my tongue. There was also that sun, boiling my skin from where it blazed green upon a dusty sky. Every breath I drew to feel as if I was huffing the concentrated essence of a hundred saunas.
Death would have been a relief.
But over two centuries had passed since I last considered myself ‘human’, and now, I could feel my lingering concussion fade before my mental enhancements, cracked bones resetting themselves beneath a dozen genetic mutations. I pushed myself upright, only to find the blood on my hands mostly gone as well, slowly getting absorbed back into my skin.
“War tore us apart, disease weake—”
With a gentle touch of my fist, the transmission unit fell silent before it could loop itself — spare me the torture of listening to that fool — leaving it as another broken remain of the ship that’d brought me here.
“Has my voice always sounded like that?” I grunted. “Like a fat ship’s-horn stuck at the bottom of a cave?”
There was gravel to it as well. Earned from a century and a half of drinking myself to sleep. I was sober now, and I sorely regretted it.
“Not going to say anything, huh?”
Then I remembered.
Right, right. I changed the settings to keep her from chiming in whenever she wanted.
I looked over my surroundings as I got to my feet, rolling out my neck to a crack that was enough to make my brain rattle. It needed the awakening.
Not an asteroid, but a planet. Another damned bait by those—
A shrill cry jerked my eyes upward, and even through the blazing sun and dust whirling in the air, I could see them there. A thousand upon thousands silhouettes ripping through the atmosphere, towards the planet’s surface in violent descent. Many were bound to die on impact. Enough would survive to be a headache.
“UI, status!” I grunted as I strode over to snatch up my gauss rifle from the ground, charging it up even before I’d homed in on that nearest target tearing through the sky. It was larger than the rest, heading straight my way; an alien drop pod warping and pulsating as its long tentacles whipped through the air.
It was preparing to unleash its load, maw gaping moments before it began spitting out Crowlers. I wouldn’t wait that long.
The response of my UI was barely audible over the hyper-accelerated scraps that I sent tearing through the air, pulling more shrieks as a hole was punched straight through the alien carriage, causing it to topple over.
“Before our arrival…planet…void of biological signatures…” I slapped the wrist-mounted graft, causing the static to disappear from its rusted voice. “…though, that is rapidly changing by the second, Sir.”
“Noted,” I grunted, knowing full well that she wouldn’t pick up on dryness in my tone as I ejected the smoldering remnants of that first round, letting a fresh one take its place. “And the signal that brought us here?”
“Working on triangulation. Current estimate being uploaded.” I was already charging up that second shot as the overlay flickered across my vision.
Faded lines outlined the structure of the landscape, scanning materials and each minute change in the elevation. There was a table showing temperature, wind speed, galactic coordinates, radiation and oxygen levels as well, along with a rough map that was gradually getting sketched out of my immediate surroundings.
A few blinking circles upon it caught my eye, gradually shrinking in size as I sent that seconds heap of scrap ripping through a second drop pod.
Alien pain rang beautifully in my ears as I snapped towards the remnants of my ship once more. It only took me a second to find it, the iron box having already been outlined in blue on my overlay.
With my gauss rifle folding onto my back, I walked over to yank that handle, sending a sharp hiss into the air. The dust whirled around it as metal sheets extended and warped, showing sections of reinforced polymer and lightweight fabric as my armor wrapped itself around my body.
It was a rusty, cracked, weathered, and worn thing — patched and upgraded with endless scavenged materials over the centuries. But it was mine, and it’d kept me alive where countless others had died.
Several new sections came to life upon my visual overlay. There was an indicator of how much ammo I carried, far less than I would’ve liked, the armor value and durability of each metal plate and stretch of fabric that protected my less sturdy organs, along with a breakdown of my bodily functions. Heartbeat, stamina, health flickered into view along with a fading yellow outline of my bones that’d just mended themselves, my sunken blood levels, and current radiation poisoning.
I could even see the strain on my lungs from trying to breathe the thin atmosphere, eased as my mask kicked in to begin filtering the air.
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I was as in good condition as I’d ever been, but that didn’t mean much when a Leviathan had found me.
The very sun dimmed as the country sized being floated through the stratosphere, a thousand twitching eyes focusing in on me.
Decades of pursuit, and they’d at last caught up with me.
I’d gotten careless, and I couldn’t even blame the drinks.
With those first blobs of flesh and carapace hitting the planet’s surface around me, I set off running.
No matter how much ammunition I had, I’d never be able to fight them all. I needed to reach the source of that signal, and time was working against me.
𐫰 𐫰 𐫰
I hit the ground rolling, the alabaster claw having passed mere inches above my head.
I twisted around, the barrel of my rifle almost brushing against the faceless creature as I sent another bolt of energized metal blasting through its skull. Splatters of inky black tainted my visor, and even before its body had fallen over, I’d dropped the rifle in exchange for a set of A-17 mechanical pistols I’d pulled from the side of my armor.
That one ammo gauge that’d been flashing red disappeared from my overlay, and without ever breaking my stride, my feet found traction once more and I kept running. My digital map was in chaos, twisting with static as an endless wave of alien lifeforms crashed down around me, the heat signals going wild.
I barely needed to aim to find a target as I spun my pistols towards that first wave of chittering death that’d crowned the arid dunes around me.
The insectoid Crowlers always made up their vanguard. Fast, agile, and expendable, I barely made a dent in their numbers as that first incendiary round bore through an open maw, sending a torrent of hellfire to rip through their ranks. Another three rounds fired, and a wall of chemical flames rose upon the dunes, clinging to anything that carelessly passed through.
It would buy me a few seconds at most. The skies above me had already turned into a swarming cloud of death.
The Scourge had come for me in force, and in orbit, I could see one of a hundred gaping maws of the Leviathan as it spewed out its vile carriage of millions upon this barren world.
“Exact location!” I barked, another barrage of incendiary rounds having extended the barrier of hellfire to completely surround me. Though, it left the pistols feeling painfully light in my hands. Another red indicator upon my overlay.
I tossed them aside as the UI picked up in my ears.
“Calculated to 87% accuracy—”
The moment the red indicator appeared upon the ground, I ripped one of the breach rounds from my chest. The charge within activated the moment it left its hold, and there was no time for me to hesitate.
Even to the untrained eye, the vortex of energy gathering at its core would’ve been visible. Space itself was rippling and shifting as I threw it through the air.
It’d barely left my grip as, far above, one of the leviathan’s city-sized eyes snapped towards it.
A deep thrum cracked my eardrums, the presence of the hive-mind nearly knocking me to my knees as dust began lifting from the ground. Sprays of acid and hollow spines shot through the air as nearby Drifters tried to intercept the round.
None that would ever reach it in time.
It hit the ground, ripping through it with enough force to disintegrate a thousand Crowlers from my spastic map; clearing an empty hole in the wave of heat signals.
An instant later, my own overlay had begun blinking a violent red, plates of my armor having been ripped apart as I kept rushing towards its epicenter. I coughed up blood as the violent aftershock pulled me in. It was like a miniature black hole had been opened there in the sand, causing me to glide across the ground at rapidly accelerating speeds – down towards the crater the explosion had left in its wake.
I wouldn’t have fought it even if I could.
By the time I noticed the crack that’d formed there in the planet’s shell, I’d already ripped another two breach rounds from my chest. Moments before darkness took me and I fell through the crust, I threw them towards the incoming swarm.
“Estimated distance to bottom, 2.6 kilometers…”
The explosion that followed nearly knocked me out cold.
𐫰 𐫰 𐫰
Although my suit absorbed the worst of the impact, if not for my augmented bone structure and genetically enhanced joints, I’d never have been able to stand up after that harsh landing. It sent tremors through the ground, cracking the stone beneath me.
With the last of my suppressant coursing through my veins, however, there to ensure my senses stayed sharp, I just rolled out my neck as I took in my surroundings. Dozens of new impressions flashed across my overlay as rubble kept trickling down around me.
A new temperature reading, almost freezing compared to the surface above. A radiation level that’d spiked to dangerous levels. An echo location that came back vague and distorted, telling me of the vast space surrounding me. A silence that was palpable, and darkness. Pitch black darkness that was too dense for any night vision to pierce.
With a grunted, “Lights,” the floodlights on my armor sprang to life, illuminating a slice of the massive hall I now found myself in.
Dust still swirled around me from my entrance, and pieces of the ceiling lay scattered at my feet. Beyond that, however, every part of the space was deliberate.
The stone floor was smooth, and the distant walls were carved with precision, outlining a hall that was wide and tall enough to have fit entire arenas stacked on top of each other had it so pleased.
Intricate murals ran across the walls, too far away for even my enhanced eyes to make out. It did reflect the sound, at least, causing every step I took to bounce back like a hundred steps at once.
No wonder my echo location is freaking out. It’s—
I wasn’t allowed to finish the thought as an endless scraping and scratching filled my ears, like a thousand swarming cockroaches.
Raising my gaze towards that hole I’d made in the ceiling far above, I could see it steadily getting jammed up as another ten-thousand Crowlers swarmed inside.
The walls seemed to shift and moving as an endless wave of alabaster carapace skittered down toward me.
With a silent curse, I started running once more. I didn’t even need to ask my UI for directions. Ever since I entered this place, I’d been able to hear it within my mind. Something calling for me.
Instead, I allowed my overlay to home in on the densest clusters of heat signals up above, and a dozen thermite flares were launched from my suit of armor without needing any further guidance.
They crashed into the angled ceiling with deafening explosions, illuminating the hall with streaks of burning light and filling it with more echoing shrieks.
Dark blood, gore, and charred carapace rained down around me. Though, there were larger figures mixed in with the macabre deluge as well.
Able to see something white shift at the corner of my eye, I clenched my fist. The serrated Luthranium blade sprang from my wrist just in time to meet that first silhouette falling towards me.
A shower of sizzling blood washed over my face and shoulders as, what’d been once been a singular Crowler fell down as two around me. I’d split it down the middle without ever slowing my run.
More bodies hit the floor around me. Some still moving, other lifeless, but the only ones I cared for were those standing in my way.
Another three-foot blade sprang from my other wrist as well, and my fingers found the sonic daggers at my belt. I yanked them free, the shrill cry of the vibrating blades rising into a symphony alongside death throes and resounding shrieks.
Gore and smoldering remains rained over me as I cleared my path with violence.
𐫰 𐫰 𐫰
My entire overlay was blinking out of control as I ran down that echoing hallway. There was smooth stone all around me, angled pillars jotting out of that encroaching darkness that my floodlights struggled to pierce.
Scraping claws. Too many damned scraping claws and chittering cries chasing at my heels. Even as I’d let corpses pave my way, I hadn’t been able to deter them.
“We’re coming up on the signal, Sir,” my UI informed me.
Flicking the switch on that last breach charge attached to my chest, I tore it loose and chucked it behind me without looking.
This time, as my overlay went haywire and scorching heat washed over my back, the shock wave of that thundering explosion didn’t suck me in, it sent me flying.
The last I heard was the walls and ceiling collapsing as darkness took me.