Dennis Yahjo
Forest Glade
A person? Just what the hell is happening? This creature, made of some black substance, started out as a tree, RETRACTED all its roots and branches, turned into a giant floating bean, and mid flight shrunk into a person. That person who promptly fell onto the dirt below, and did not get up.
“Dad?” I heard george say behind me. I think he somehow had gotten onto his legs after that whole ordeal.
“Hey, a-are you ok?”
“Yeah… Who is that?”
I slowly got back up on wobbly legs, the adrenalin preventing me from calming down. “I’ll check, you stay over there, if anything happens to me, run away immediately and alert a guard.” I need to distance george as far away from here as possible, I still don’t know if this thing intends to threaten us at all, but it doesn't hurt to be careful. Everything about this situation is unpredictable and absolutely insane.
I finally started taking a few steps towards the person, but not after a lot of contemplation and drawing my damaged sword. It might not do much, based on what happened with the root… but it does give a small amount of hope, even a little, that if this person were to attack hopefully I might at least buy enough time for George to escape. That is the only thing I need to do, is make sure that boy gets out of here alive, he has a bright future after all.
The first few steps towards the creature were timid, showing that I was very cautious. Wait, what if I could converse with it?
“Hello? Who are you? Identify yourself!” I tried to give off a commanding presence but it was not working, my voice was really weak and wobbly. I waited a few seconds, the most tense few seconds of my life; but no response. Wait, it's probably passed out of course it couldn't respond. I finally got close enough to get a good look at who it was, and I was genuinely surprised.
It looked like a girl, maybe a little older than George; she was wearing some strange black suit that covered every inch of her body save for her hands and head. Her hair was short, about to her shoulders and it was a strange black as well, as if whatever the tree was made of made up her hair as well.
The suit was skin-tight as well…
No, focus, it's probably not an elf. But what do I do with this? She obviously is knocked out, so I can’t just leave her here. What if the forest kills her as well?
I looked back at the hole where the tree once was, and I saw it was already collapsing and the forest was patching it back up. I could feel the magic returning into the air as well.
“George… I-I need your opinion.” I said ushering him towards me. He cautiously walked over, keeping his eyes fixed on the stranger as he did so.
“Yeah?” He seemed as scared and confused as I was, but I needed someone else's opinion.
“What should we do with her?” I asked looking back at the girl.
“W-Well…” He trailed off, “We should see if she is alive first.” He was right, it would be the morally correct thing to do, but would it be the correct thing to do, safety wise?
I nodded in agreement before kneeling down, this would be difficult to do. Without moving her, I placed my ear to where her heart should be if she was an elf.
I have never felt more awkward in my life, mostly because I am barely even touching her out of fear she might wake up, but after a hot second, I do hear a heartbeat. It's faint but it's there.
“Yeah, she’s still alive.” I quickly got back up, I did not want to be in that position for long. “But it’s faint… I could try a healing spell.” I tentatively suggested It was the only thing that made sense in this situation, if a person is in trouble then you heal them, right?
“I guess.” George shrugged I don’t think he knew eather. So, with the both of us now in agreement, I pulled out my wand and started the spell. It's not a very complicated spell, at least the one I’m trying to do. But before I could finish the chanting, I looked at her face once more, following her short black hair, I caught another glimpse of her face, and my heart almost jumped out of my chest.
She was awake.
…
Dennis Yahjo
Forest Glade
“Dad!” george yelled, but I already saw what he was pointing at. I stopped the chanting, sort of out of terror that she, IT was awake. Something I wasn’t expecting though, when she seemed to get fully conscious faster than a that of a normal person. When she tried to take a breath, she started coughing uncontrollably. While continuing her coughing fit she got up onto all fours as she continued her ravenous coughing fit, god, she's acting like the air itself is poisonous. I thought.
“Athels, ilsenfar poysin.”
I heard her sputter that out through coughs, before she reached a hand up to her mouth and something weird happened.
That black substance that looked similar to that of the ‘tree’ earlier started covering her mouth and nose. Wait… is that stuff coming out of her?
She finally stopped her frivolous coughing fit, and turned to give me a glaring side eye.
Come on man. Say something.
“H-Hello?”
God I was weak, that sounded pathetic. She finally got up, using her knee to help her in the process. As soon as she stood up, she swung her arm up at me, and more of that black goop CAME OUT OF HER ARM and formed what looked like an extremely thick sword, before I could react, the business end of said sword was an inch from my throat.
“Athels eirn on trenslect onit.”
Despite having that black stuff covering her face, I could still hear her words perfectly as if nothing was there (not that I could understand them anyway).
“Wait! NO STOP!”
I heard george yell from behind me before I heard his footsteps coming closer. “NO, George stay back-” Before I could finish, she cut me off but this time I could perfectly understand what she was saying.
“Listen to your dad, kid. If you even are one.” I turned back to face her blank expressionless face, even with that stuff covering it mostly I could tell she was expressionless.
“Wha… When were you…” I trailed off, There was a few seconds of silence where I was trying to get some words out but I couldn’t. What would I say in this situation? What could I say, I am being held hostage but I don’t know why, I don’t know who or what she is or what she could possibly want.
Eventually, she decided to take up the silence.
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“Who are you, and from where do you hail from?”
I paused for a few seconds, is she serious? We’re in the heart of Acomore territory.
“YOU BEST ANSWER ME.” She said sternly, prompting me to give a hasty answer.
“I-I am but a simple trader and farmer here in the capital. Pl-Please, I don’t mean you any harm.” I could feel her piercing gaze, and as I did, I knew… she could read me like a book.
…
Sergent Major Eleanor Usaldo
Kepler-442b orbital station Primal 1
NUMBER 566 IS TO AWAKEN IMMEDIATELY.
The speakers of my cell blared out. The sudden noise woke me up on the spot, causing me to jolt out of my bed like an enemy was attacking, I always keep the alarm as loud as I can to make sure that I wake up. The comfort of having a peaceful wake up has almost been completely lost to me now, I don't even remember the last time I woke up peacefully. It was probably back when I was a baby, now that I think about it.
“Good morning Sergeant Major Usaldo, I do hope you slept well?” In my head I heard the voice of ATLAS say.
“You can say that… And, I told you to stop calling me that, it's way too formal. And incredibly annoying.” The VI (Virtual Intelligence) that governs the internal workings of my unit did not respond, not like it could anyways. It was designed to be very rudimentary and to not have any intelligence on its own save for its ability to work the countless nano-particles laced within each and every cell of my body.
At this point I don’t remember a time when I was normal, when I was three, the government “rescued” me from my parents, but everyone knows, my parents never agreed to them taking me and I was perfectly fine in their care. But I was the perfect candidate. So they got rid of them like they do with everyone else that might get in the way of the war efforts. Hard to believe that was almost 600 years ago now.
“Sergeant Major Usaldo, the admiral has requested you for a meeting. Attend immediately.
The voice of the PA system rang throughout my cell, and a split second after it finished the door to my cell opened, revealing the hallway beyond.
The admiral is the highest ranking military officer in the solar system, everyone has their own traits and talents that are genetically selected to make them incredible leaders and smarter than anyone around them. And the one in charge of this solar system is the weirdest guy I have ever met. He always requests me for the stupidest things, like one time he requested that I attend a meeting to sort out whether there was “funny business” between Alexander and I. Which there wasn’t we were just good friends, but now he has been stationed on the other side of the galaxy. Almost literally.
As I walk through the comparatively small corridor (compared to the rest of the ship) I glanced every once in a while out of the small windows that dotted the corridor, outside there was floating junk and debris. Reminders that we are not the biggest fish in the sea. Nothing has ever gotten through the stations thick hull however, save for one incident where a rogue black hole went undetected through all the array of sensors that this station boasts and was able to tear a small hole through the side of a corridor before being neutralized. That was four hundred years ago now, but I still remember the panic that ensued like it was yesterday.
“Heh,” I laughed while thinking about the chaos that was caused that day. Though it was eventually found that the black hole was launched from a Vlandeer vessel. Still can’t believe this war has dragged on for this long.
It all started when a rogue AI was able to commandeer a small deep space reconnaissance fleet. Where it set up base in some unknown star system in some unknown galaxy and started rapidly evolving, it was about at this point that it announced its name to be Vlandeer (no one knows why). Recently our own AI and scientists have worked together and for the past few years and miraculously, we have been winning! At this point we have almost completely pushed the Vlandeer out of the galaxy.
The long hallways and chambers of this space station have always seemed a little too extreme to me, I’ve gotten used to the small airtight chambers of the early 26th century ships, those always seemed more practical to me leaving less space for leisurely activities and more practical.
“Well, here it is” I said to myself, stopping at a set of double doors. Almost immediately, the doors opened almost like they just sensed my presence.
“Well hello darling, I have been waiting for you.”
The admiral spoke in his usual hyperactive tone, he always speaks like that to people he is comfortable with.
“Good evening sir, might I ask what this sudden request is for?” I ask as I moved into my standard position of attention. He grinned before slamming his desk excitedly,
“I have a job for you my friend!” He got up as he said that, walking around his desk, to grab something on a shelf.
“Oh?" I said while raising an eyebrow. "And what might that be sir?” I asked in a sort of exasperated tone, one of which would not be tolerated with any other admiral besides him, to which he just shrugged off.
I finally saw what he was reaching for, it was one of those old style tablets used during the 24th century new soviets wars. “You know what this is?” He said referencing to the tablet
“Yes sir, it is a high-density quantum computing tablet used by the renegade new soviet group during the 24th century wars over the Proxima Centauri system.” I said with a certain cool that would be expected of a person of my age and caliber.
“Very Good! You are exactly correct!” he exclaimed, before pausing, letting me soak in the pride. “Now, I bring it up because it is actually related to your next mission. You will be heading to Proxima Centauri B, where there is an old base of the new soviet group that's been abandoned. We recently gained intel that the Vlandeer found traces of some portal tech that the new soviets were working on. We need to get to it before they do, thankfully, for them to get to it they will have to go deep within our territory, and we just have to send a ship over there.”
I looked at him confused, “Then why send me? Will my firepower really be necessary?”
“Ah, it will, you see the new soviets are known for setting up tons of traps and trickery in order to hide their gadgets. Not only that, but we also think that the Vlandeer have already snuck onto the planet.” he put the tablet down and leaned on his desk, “And, one other thing, that planet still has some natives,” I was surprised,
“Natives? I thought they were all but extinguished upon first contact because of how violent they were.” I queried, to which he just shook his head.
“Almost entirely extinguished, turns out the nukes weren’t able to get deep enough to get all of them. Not only that, but they missed the worst of them, the extremely predatorial ones that now have evolved and have a certain taste for human blood. I think they knew that the nukes were from us as well, and they can be pretty vengeful.”
I can imagine why, their entire home was turned into a desolate wasteland, and the perpetrators are not only walking free, but also claiming the land as their own.
“Now, you have your mission, I'll give ATLAS the finer details on your ride there.”
I nodded in agreement before saying my goodbyes, I think he likes these little meetings of ours, even though they are completely pointless, he could have just sent me the data via ATLAS. He’s too old fashioned to do that though.
As I walked out of the room, ATLAS informed me of the mission data being received. Out of curiosity I decided to look through exactly what it was that the new soviets were working on, what I saw surprised me. Based on absolutely no evidence at all they were convinced that there was some other reality that they could escape to, because at the time this was their last settlement and they were getting desperate.
No one knows if they were successful or not though. When some other now dead organization came to wipe out the settlement they found it to be already abandoned, the new soviet scientists were nowhere to be found. Some speculated that they had succeeded, some apparently suggested that they went deep into the planet and were eaten by the natives. But no-one knew for sure so it was just another thing chalked up into the great mysteries of mankind.
That was until the Vlandeer decided there was something worth looking into in that desolate place. So we need to get there before they do.
“Ma’am the shuttle craft is ready.” One of the many on station soldiers said saluting to me. I returned the gesture and walked through the connection terminal to the craft. Everyone I walked past gave me a salute, and I had to return each and every one. After a while it can get exasperating, but I have become mostly immune to it after the years of service.
“Run a pre-FTL heat check on the main composite thrusters, we don’t want to melt our thrusters in hyperspace. And make sure the heat shielding and frontal breaking thrusters have sufficient power and accuracy.” I barked these orders out through the ship speakers. One of the last things I want is a repeat of one of the flights I took a hundred years ago, either we didn’t do the correct system checks or we missed something but our ship barley even lasted one light year before it imploded, I was the only survivor.
Something you never really think about when traveling in space, is when you are traveling at high speed, say 10X the speed of light, you would think that you would just have to fire the thrusters twice, one to get you going and one to get you to stop, right? Well, that's what it would look like at face value, think about this, every cubic meter of space has on average ten atoms in it. Now compared to the trillions of atoms in the standard breathable atmosphere, that is nothing. But when you run into those ten atoms across trillions upon trillions of meters traveled when going faster than light, that can add up.
“Pre-flight checks are all showing green sergeant. All systems are go.”
“Great, let's get this ball rolling people.”