“You said you wanted to help, right?” Asuta said urgently, “Well, this is how we do it. We have to go out there and save as many of them as we can before the Endless Flesh entrenches itself here. We have at least two hundred and fifty Immortals on this planet right now, and over a hundred of them are free since I blasted their drop pods into pieces. The longer we wait, the more of them get recaptured. So, we split up and take a ship to pick them up on our own. Going in groups will take too long.”
Asuta stopped at a sealed door and started tapping at the panel next to it to enter the passcode as she juggled to hold the holopad in her other hand at the same time.
“But what if one of us gets captured?” Sean asked, “Isn’t it too much of a risk?”
“Look, I don’t think you understand,” Asuta said as the door slid open, “This is some serious junk, Sean. The more of these people we save the less the Endless Flesh down here on the planet has to work with. You’ll all stay in your ships, it’ll be fine.”
They walked into the ship hanger and Asuta paused as she looked at Roger, Lira, Ash, and Sean trailing behind her.
“Oh, except if they’ve developed anti-air forms. Then we’re screwed. But it’s too early for that, so we’re probably fine.”
Asuta tapped a few more things into the holopad before looking back up at them.
“Alright, go, go, go! Time’s a’wasting young sprouts! I’ve sent your sector assignments to your ships. Just go there and see if you find any human lifesigns. Or go pick someone up nearby if one of my defensive city scanners senses anything. We’ll be on comms, so make sure to just call if you get into trouble.”
“Right!” They all replied and all went to a different ship to pilot, even Ash. Sean quickly flicked a few switches and started firing up the combat flier and studied the display of the region of the planet that Asuta wanted him to patrol. Well, he called it the combat flier. But everything Asuta had seemed to have some sort of weapons, so it didn’t make too much of a difference really. But this one had plenty of space in the back for anyone he picked up, and two side doors to the main cabin that could slide open and closed quickly when needed for pickup.
After waiting for a few minutes for the others to fly out of the hangar with their own vehicles, Sean was flying over the open grassy plains towards his assigned area. Even after only less than a few hours, Sean could already see disturbing forms wandering about the open plains around the area where their landing pods had dropped and been bombarded by Asuta’s weaponry. Rather than the beetles Sean had been expecting from them, their form was altogether different. Sean searched for the word of what they looked like in the back of his mind for a few moments, before it clicked with him. Praying mantises. They looked like praying mantis’ but five feet tall and covered in the same bright emerald shell the same color as the beetles that Sean was used to seeing.
Sean’s finger itched to press the trigger to fire his weapons whenever he saw groups of them gathering as he flew. But there were too many, and he had to save his ammunition for when he really needed it. Sean had already seen thousands of the mantises as he flew for the last two hours to his assigned region. Asuta’s heavy weapons would take care of them, Sean just had to worry about saving as many immortals as he could until then.
It took three hours total before Sean arrived at the first projected landing site for one of the destroyed Endless Flesh landing pods. His ship let out a powerful pulse to scan for lifesigns, but there was nothing. He couldn’t see anything through the green canopy of the trees below him. Sean could vaguely spot some strange bits and bodies being picked at by the birds hanging the branches in some places. But the bodies were scattered across the space of miles, but they all seemed dead. Although the bodies were most concentrated around the area that Sean was hovering over right now.
Sean took the vehicle a little higher and started circling and scanning for lifesigns again as he searched for the immortal that must have dropped around this area. At least one should have landed here.
After a few minutes the sensors finally picked something up, and Sean quickly flew the vehicle over in that direction. Sean let out a sigh of relief once he saw a naked man standing there with a machete like blade made of bone held in his right hand.
Sean lowered his ship down to the ground and gently settled it down and ordered the back doors to open.
“Come on in,” Sean said over the intercom to the man, “I’m here to help.”
It seems that’s all that was needed to break the man’s indecision, and he jogged forward and jumped inside. With the press of a button in front of him, Sean closed the open side door and started lifting off again. He quickly set the autopilot to fly them towards the next landing site another thirty minute’s flight from here and rifled through a pouch to the side of his seat. It took a few seconds before he finally managed to pick out the clothing band inside and untangle them from the others he had hastily thrown in there just before he left.
Without looking back at the naked man behind him, Sean held out the clothing band out behind him to where he knew the naked Immortal was standing.
“What’s this?” The man asked as Sean felt him taking the bracelet from his grip.
“Clothing bands,” Sean said, “Figure you’d want something to wear after your ordeal.”
“Clothing… bands? What?”
Sean paused, but still didn’t look back yet.
“Er, yeah,” Sean said, “Around the wrist then press that button in the center. I didn’t know how to work them either right after I first saw the Shadow. Only rich people had them on my old planet.”
There was the distinctive rustle of the nanites crawling over the man’s skin behind Sean.
“Whoa!” The man said, “This is amazing! All of this contained in one little wristband… Things sure have changed.”
“Why don’t you come up?” Sean said after a moment of silence, “I’ve still got to pilot, but the copilot’s chair is open.”
The man grunted and clambered forward to sit down next to Sean, putting his bone blade down between his feet.
“Thanks for the help,” the man said, “I’m Entiru by the way. Sorry, I thought you were someone else for a moment. Nice to meet you…?”
“Sean,” he supplied, “I’m Sean.”
“Huh. That’s… how times have changed I guess.”
Sean shot a confused glance at the man who was frowning slightly at him. Sean shook his head as he realized he didn’t actually have to pay attention to the controls with the autopilot engaged at the moment. He let go of the controls and fully turned to face Entiru.
“I guess so,” Sean said to defuse the strange tension that had sprung up for seemingly no reason, “Must have been trapped in there for a while, I assume.”
“I think so,” Entiru agreed, “What planet is this? Were the terraforming efforts fruitful?”
“Terraforming?” Sean asked, “What are you talking about? What efforts?”
“You know, the Immortals going out to terraform new planets for humanity? If you have this place that’s so lush, then I assume it was successful.”
Sean processed that for a moment before it clicked. Ah! He was talking about the expeditions of Immortals going beyond the galaxy to settle planets across the universe.
“Oh, yes,” Sean said with relief, “They’re doing quite well from what I’ve heard, news is that another expedition is gearing up to leave sometime soon. Although who knows when that’ll actually be with how expensive it is.”
“Isn’t that right,” Entiru said with a sigh, “I’m glad they figured it out. I, all of us trapped in there, were worried about whether they had failed. But given that, it’s clear I’ve been gone for quite a long time even for Immortals like me. So, what’s the situation? Where are we going?”
“Oh, I’m an Immortal too,” Sean said quickly after realizing he hadn’t made that clear from the start, “We’re going to save as many people like you as we can. Saving them from capture and weakening the Endless Flesh both.”
“Endless Flesh…” Entiru mused after staring at Sean in surprise for a moment, “Hm, appropriate name I suppose. Can I do anything to help?”
“Well, not much,” Sean said, “We’ve still got a while until we’re at the next crash site. Maybe you can go out and help people come in if they’re being attacked. If you go in the back there should be a few pistols or lighter weapons in a bin that you can use.”
Entiru nodded and stood from the copilots chair.
“I’ll go arm myself then. Thanks again for the save.”
“No problem Entiru,” Sean replied, “Glad to help.”
Entiru walked into the back and started shuffling around the bins to arm himself as Sean kept his eyes on the sensors in case there were any of those ‘anti-air’ creatures waiting for them that Asuta had hinted at. Knowing her, if she thought they were dangerous then Sean wouldn’t dare underestimate them for even a second.
— — —
Entiru shifted in place and held his pistol in his grip as he stood by the closed doors of the flying vehicle.
“We’ve got movement down there, somebody’s fighting,” the pilot Sean said from the front cabin, “Prepare yourself. Try not to shoot her, but… you know the drill. Don’t hesitate to blast her if it’ll kill whatever’s attacking her. She’ll regenerate.”
Entiru hesitated and looked towards the pilots cabin briefly. Such callousness towards harming others, even if this woman would be an Immortal…
The flying vehicle began lowering down and Entiru felt the whole ship vibrating as the main gun fired downwards. Entiru waited by the door as he heard explosions below. The vehicle eventually stopped to hover and the pilot pressed a button on the panel in front of him, sending the door in front of Entiru sliding open.
He held out his pistol in front of him and took careful shots at the four foot tall praying mantises swarming a naked woman flailing around in the center of a large crater. The pilot’s initial barrage had seemed to have killed most of them, but there were still more and more of the creatures emerging from the trees from all sides in a trickle to stream towards their five or so injured brethren that had survived to continue their assault on the woman.
After the first couple shots killing the creature’s immediately attacking the woman, Entiru waved violently with his free hand until the woman wearing an emotionless mask spotted him. Even as Entiru watched he saw the rising panic in her expression as her reset brain began rearing back into overdrive again to revive her fear and panic.
Her eyes widened as she spotted Entiru and the ship for seemingly the first time and she started stumbling towards them.
One of the mantises chittered and its body compressed before it leapt over ten feet from the side to latch its jaws on the woman’s upper arm. Her eyes widened and she screamed as the mantis’ legs landed on the ground and it fought to tug backwards to pull the woman from her feet.
Entiru shot at the Mantis’ head and winced as he missed and seared a burning hole right in the woman’s shoulder. But Entiru steeled himself. The pilot was right, saving her was more important than worrying about her pain. He kept firing, two more shots killing the mantis latched onto the woman’s leg by its jaws. She was screaming and had fallen to the ground writhing as she held her injured shoulder.
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Entiru began firing rapidly and started holding back the four new mantis’ that had arrived in the meantime.
The woman’s screams stopped. Entiru glanced over and saw her scrambling to her feet again, her expression completely flat and emotionless as she pumped her legs to sprint towards where Entiru stood to the side of the open doors.
Another mantis went to leap at the woman, but Entiru released a barrage of quick shots that sent it falling limply to the ground before latching onto the woman, a lucky shot landing directly on its armored head and killing it in a single strike.
The naked woman dived past Entiru into the metal floor of the helicopter-like vehicle.
“She’s in!” Entiru shouted and took a step back as the helicopter raised off of the ground at dizzying speeds. The five mantis’ gathered below them attempted to leap up to strike at them with the blades at the ends of their arms. But they fell far short and fell back to the ground with angry chitters and screeches. Entiru pressed the button next to the open sliding door and the thing slid shut and with a hiss sealed itself.
Entiru turned around and saw the emotionless woman staring at him blankly. Over the course of the next second, emotion returned to her face and she started to rapidly flush. She curled inwards and used her arms to conceal her bare chest and crotch.
Entiru shook his head and looked off at a point on the floor as he realized what she must think of his staring. He had forgotten her state for a moment with his absolute focus on firing his weaponry and trying to not strike her with his weapon’s plasma shots out there.
Entiru gave a half aborted cough as the awkwardness of the situation washed over him and he reached into a pouch hanging on his hip. He retrieved one of the ‘clothing bands’ the pilot had given him and held it out to the woman without looking at her.
“It’s clothing,” he said after she didn’t move for a second, “Around the wrist then hit the button and it’ll cover you. I’m wearing one right now.”
Another moment of silence before the band was snatched out of his hand quickly. There was the strange rustle, the sound of the nanites crawling over her no doubt. She let out a gasp and Entiru could see her body shifting out of the corner of his eye as he stared pointedly at the floor.
“It worked,” the woman said, “Thanks for the ah, save. Was I the only one that made it out?”
Entiru looked to the front, “Sean? How many people are we looking to find?”
The woman grimaced slightly as she heard the pilot’s name, and Entiru gave her a small shrug as she shot him a questioning look.
“About ten or fifteen for now for us, with my friends with their own vehicles doing the same best as they can.” Sean said as the engines began to hum louder as they picked up speed onto their next destination, “It’ll get crowded back there with so many, probably only barely enough space to stand actually if things go well… Estimate was… Two hundred and fifty Immortals total? Past this first run, anyone left will probably be recaptured by the Endless Flesh. But don’t worry. Me and my friends will be working to free them all eventually. If the Endless Flesh doesn’t overwhelm us first.”
“Endless Flesh?” the woman asked, “You mean our captors?”
“Yes, that’s what they’re called…?” Sean said, a strange note in his voice now, “Were you guys new Immortals when you were captured? How old are you two?”
“I’m over two thousand, three hundred and forty years old,” Entiru said proudly before wilting slightly. “Before I was captured by those creatures that is.”
The woman looked at him in admiration, “Over two thousand? I was barely turning six hundred when I was captured.”
“Hey, it’s nice to meet someone else that’s so young then,” the pilot Sean said in a light tone, “Besides your quick stint in prison we’re almost the same age. I think I’m… Six, seven hundred years old? Something like that? That sounds about right. You know, I wonder if I’ll get a party for a thousand, that could be fun. Oh, and we can have a bigger one when my girlfriend turns ten thousand. I think she’s about nine thousand years old now, we wouldn’t want to miss the right year to celebrate…”
“Ten thousand?!” Both of them said in shock, snapping their heads to the front.
“I know, thanks for reminding me actually. After we’re done with this invasion hopefully we’ll be able to plan a party for the both of us. Entiru, can you get the new woman settled and ready to help with the next landing site? I only brought lighter weapons on the ship, but hopefully two guns will be better than one.”
Both of them paused before sharing a long glance.
“Yeah, sure thing Sean,” Entiru said before walking into the back to where the weapons had been stored, the woman following him.
“I think we’ve been gone for longer than we thought,” Entiru said shakily after handing the woman a spare pistol. She held it in her hands and stared at it with a look of confusion on her face as she tried to figure out how it worked.
“I wonder what happened to the Genemother and Gaia,” she said, “Do you think they’re still out there somewhere?”
“The Genemother is an immortal, she’s still alive,” Entiru said firmly, “But probably captured by the same beast that took us. We’ll just have to do our best to find out where she is and save her.”
The woman hesitated, before nodding.
“I’ve… I saw you at the events. On Gaia. The homeworld. You’re Entiru, aren’t you? One of the Genemother’s royal guards?”
“Yes. I was. But I was taken early. I have no idea what happened to her.”
“I never learned any of this combat stuff,” the woman said as she kept fiddling with the pistol, “I’m Alvrix by the way. Never thought I would need it beyond the basics. But if the Genemother’s in trouble, then I’ll help if I can.”
Entiru patted her lightly on the shoulder and used his other hand to gently pry the pistol from her hands. He stepped next to her and demonstrated how to work the pistol.
“Safety switch,” he said, “Power dial on the side. Lower is less lethal, higher is more. This light here turns on when the weapons are about to overheat. Just wait and let it cool down when it turns on. The more lethal and more energetic the shots, the quicker it’ll overheat. Besides that, just pull the trigger and make sure to hold it like this.”
Entiru demonstrated the proper grip on the pistol for a moment and handed it back to her after she nodded at him.
“Alvrix, I’ll be happy for the help. But for now let’s focus on saving as many of our fellows as we can first. We’ll figure out the rest when we find out what’s happened since we were captured.”
She nodded and took an uncomfortable stance and adjusted her grip on the pistol.
Entiru took his own pistol from the holster at his side and demonstrated the grip again and she adjusted until it was moderately closer to the real thing. There was no time for real training, whatever he could teach her in the next twenty minutes was probably the best they were going to get.
— — —
Sean eyed the growing group chatting quietly behind him. There had been a few frantic moments in the next series of pickups so far. But things had gone mostly smoothly with the groups of Immortals back there who seemed to work together fairly well. It seems that all of them had been captured in one big attack on their homeworld.
Sean was slightly confused by that. Most of them were very young, only a few were even over a thousand. Of the seven that Sean had picked up, Entiru was the oldest by far and had easily taken command of the rest. It seems that he had been someone important on their homeworld, guarding their Immortal monarch.
Sean wondered if they had hidden themselves from the Immortal Council somehow. A monarchy with an Immortal as its head sounded like something that they would heavily disapprove of. And if they were isolated enough to not know what clothing bands or basic information about the galaxy like Sean had been, then their home planet was likely somewhere in the outer rim too. Somewhere the Immortal council banned Immortals from settling so they didn’t mingle with mortals and become immortal rulers like these people were discussing so casually.
But they had all been attacked and captured by the Endless Flesh, so their original situation hardly mattered anymore. Sean would just have to make sure that they knew not to say anything incriminating about their past if any of the Immortal Council Enforcers thought to ask them about it sometime in the future.
“Alright, this is the last one,” Sean shouted back to the group whispering to one another, “Unfortunately, scans show that the Endless Flesh has sent more creatures and have already recaptured the rest. This is the only one left where there’s still some fighting and a chance we can get them out.”
Entiru and the rest of the group nodded at Sean as he finally got a good view of the site of the fighting. His eyes widened as he took in the scene. There were five Immortals standing on top of a rocky outcropping and fighting a veritable carpet of insects fighting upwards to grab them.
It was four men and one woman clustered together, all of them dual wielding bone blades much like the one that Entiru had been wielding when Sean had found him.
Sean saw one of the men tip forward as one of the mantis’ gripped his blade in its jaws and drag him down to fall into the swarm.
Another man leapt downward after him and started furiously slicing with his blades and cleared a space around the downed man and dragged him back to his feet before the both of them hastily scrambled back up the steep slope they had fallen down from.
The woman of the group looked up away from the battle as Sean’s ship rapidly approached the group from above. She shouted and gestured towards them with one of her blades before reversing her grip on one of her blades to pin a mantid to the ground by stabbing through the gap between its armored head and body.
Sean spun his ship in a circle and opened fire with his main guns full force as he arrived. He noticed that this swarm was much more diverse than the others. Not only were there mantids, but a few of the more familiar large green beetles that he was used to. The trees of the forest rustled around them as the swarm of Endless Flesh pressed inwards from all sides.
Sean circled and the ship slowly descended as he devastated the carpet of insects surging inwards towards the five fighting Immortals.
The five began fighting their way backwards towards the open doors, not turning their backs to the few injured creature’s from the swarm still attacking them after surviving Sean’s barrage.
Just as Sean was hovering over the ground and the side doors of the ship slid open, his eyes widened as he saw something emerging from the edge of the woods along with more of the standard variants. It was a giant, a humanoid of over twenty five feet tall. Its body was covered in green plating and its head was still that of the mantis’. It reached to its side with its armored three fingered hand and with a heave ripped a nearby tree straight out of the ground. It adjusted its grip and drew back its arm.
Sean’s eyes widened and he jerked his controls, sending the ship lurching to the side just as the giant threw the tree like a massive javelin at high speed towards the ship. The branches brushed by them and scraped off the shield of the ship. But the larger branches still hit the side of the ship and caused the shield to flash brightly, close to failing, as the branches snapped into kindling. The main mass of the tree went sailing past them and landed in the forest behind them with a loud crash of splintering wood.
Sean quickly corrected his angle and swerved back to his old position, ignoring the shouting from behind him. He swerved back and saw that the five fighting immortals were close now. The five quickly turned and sprinted towards the ship full speed and dived in through the open side doors, the cover fire from Entiru and Alvrix just barely covering their escape.
The five fighting immortals quickly piled in just barely in time for Sean to violently jolt the ship to the side again as the giant threw another uprooted tree in their direction. Luckily Entiru managed to shut the doors in time and Alvrix just barely managed to catch herself by grabbing Entiru’s arm before she was sent flying out the open doors into the chittering swarm of insects below.
The tree went crashing by, a more direct hit this time, the trunk actually slamming into the ship itself if only just barely to glance off the metal exterior. The shield flashed brightly and groaned for a moment before failing all at once and causing a massive screech of twisting metal at once. Large branches from the tree pierced into the sides of the ship as the whole right side dented inwards all at once.
The evergreen tree remained stuck to their ship like a burr as the engines pitch raised to a frantic whine as Sean desperately tried to prevent them from crashing.
He glanced back and saw that Alvrix’s body had been thoroughly flattened between the metal denting inwards and the crumpled section of the door pinning her to the floor of the ship. There were obvious gaps, but luckily the door had held in its frame even if its shape was heavily distorted as it bent inwards into the ship.
Several of the other Immortals had fallen to the ground, skewered by branches coming through the outer hull or stunned by being slammed bodily as they entered the vehicle. Sean even saw that one of the Immortals had been decapitated and was lying limp on the ground sliding around even as their head worked to regenerate itself.
“Get Alvrix!” Sean shouted over the intercom so they could all hear him, “She’ll eat through the door and fall out when she regenerates!”
Entiru hesitated before reaching out and grabbing Alvrix’s squished and pulped form and dragging it into the center of the cabin and away from the doors even as everyone kept stumbling around.
With a final groan of metal, the last of the tree branches snapped, and the main trunk detached from their vessel and fell down to the ground below. The ship immediately shot into the sky at high speed as the weight dropped off of the ship. Just in time too, another large tree sailed through the space they had just launched from.
The ship attempted to flip over as one thruster had been much more powerful to counterbalance the heavy weight of the tree latched to one side. But Sean managed to stabilize their flight and kept the ship moving upwards upwards. The giant threw one more tree, but it barely reached half of the distance to them before falling down to the ground again.
Sean quickly ran a diagnostic on the engines and let out a sigh of relief as it appeared the engines themselves and the main supports were mostly undamaged. Although the shields were completely destroyed and the whole half of the ship that had been hit was mangled.
Everyone had regenerated their bodies in the back by now as Sean set course back to main base now that they’re retrieved everyone.
“You five were captured together?” Sean heard Entiru ask one of the men who they had just picked up.
“Yes, thanks for the rescue. We were sure we were about to be overrun…”
Sean flicked on the intercom again, “Everyone settle in, it’ll be a few hours to fly back home, but the diagnostics tell me that the ship will make it there.”
Entiru nodded to Sean before turning back to the group and continuing their conversation and comforting those that had been severely injured from the tree branches and regenerated themselves. Sean felt a bit bad when he overheard them. It seems that they all still felt pain. Sean hadn’t even considered how traumatizing what just happened to all of them if they weren’t already used to it…