Chapter.2:3 The Meeting

“Vincent, I notice that the temperature is dropping slowly”

“Really? Ah, must be because we are so far away from the sun and that our main power cell connected to the heat generator is also down….”

“Vincent, don’t you have a power suit?”

“Ah, no… I am a civilian and I didn’t bother to purchase one either because they are so expensive, not only that, never in my life would I have thought that I would need one either” I said with a sulk.

“Oh really, that’s good in a way, your father have left you a schematic of a combat power suit. You’ll like it, I know it.”

“Ah, I’d better check it out later then after we get out of here” I said while walking through the hallway which was the soldier’s quarters or so Alice said with my modified welder ready.

“And Vincent… Where is the human corpses? I thought you explained to me that the creatures have been running around killing humans everywhere?”

I quickly looked around confused with my SMB as the flashlight instead of the cube. Just like what she had just said, the dead corpses of human beings could not be seen anywhere on these infested hallways, not only that. Ever since I left the maintenance room, I did not notice one corpse unless it was that those walking deformed human that I crippled instead of killed.

Why didn’t I think of how strange it was?

Did they all turn into those things?

Argh, what’s going on? I thought while scrubbing my messy hair.

“I don’t know Alice…” I said right after and kept walking while pondering about the weird events.

…

“We are here” she said and hid herself inside the SMB while I stood at front of a infested door. I then aimed the flamethrower, burned the tumour and opened the lid for the manual lock, which was placed at the same spot like the other door. But before I put the power cell in, I let out a heavy sigh… “Hah… 1 out of 40 in at least 3 hours… Better late than never I guess...”

As the door raised to the ceiling after I put the power cell inside the hole, I could hear a few firearms being readied with a “kachik” aimed towards me from behind.

“Whao! Easy there” I said before the door slowly raised upwards and with my hands in the air.

What was revealed were boxes near the door with explosives in them and soldiers with white suits behind the boxes aiming their rifles at me in a row. It looked like they were about to set some explosives as a last resort for the door. Not like it would work though, since unlike the doors to the apartments the door to a weapon storage was always built with one of the strongest materials so that no one would be able to break in.

“Who are you?” said a feminine voice from behind the row of soldiers that had no helmets on, which were being pushed away so that certain someone could get through.

“Just a normal civilian with the task of opening the doors” I said with a shrug as they removed their hostile aim towards me.

“Oh really, why don’t you come inside and we’ll talk?” The feminine voice with a helmet that covered her whole face said.

Looking at her, I could only wonder why she was the only one with the helmet on, unlike the other soldiers.

With a nod I then walked past the boxes with explosives and soon after she pushed a lever to close the door that was now usable because it had electricity powering it.

...

A minute later I was now strangely bound to a chair with soldiers with cool looking white suits surrounding me with a few meters distance and a unique black and red striped light suit interrogated me as she circled around me. Looking at her suit, I could only drool at how awesome it looked with the thin sleek high grade fabrics that air tightly surrounded her delicate body, combined with type 9 metal plates that were attached to the parts which the vitals were and everywhere that had no joints for the best maneuverability. On her right upper arm there was also a metal plate strapped around with the help of some kind of fabric and a text that said “rank 37 Maverick suit Ashinova” on it. Last and not least a rig behind her spine that held the air for the suit and the other extra functions like temperature control and so on so forth.

Maverick Suit... the one my father made specifically for the soldiers on the Ashinova and for space. It’s a elite combat suit that had the capacity of 2 hours of air and could renew itself by just standing somewhere with oxygen. Metal that could deflect and protect from most of the advanced kinetic bullets, a suit that could move around space with the help of thrusters on different parts of the suit like the hands, shoulders, legs and feet, powered by power cells that needed around a hour recharging depending on how much you use it. And if the suit get punctured or damaged somewhere that would unseal the vacuum and expose the user to the deep space, the suit would then quickly reseal itself. Last and not least… It can increased the senses of the user by 10 fold but was highly not recommended as it took a big toll on the brain. So mostly, the user of the Maverick suit would set it at around 3, which had been proven to be the safe zone.

It is the elite suit for the best combat army in space, unless there existed a classified out there.

Luckily, only those that worked for the security of Ashinova got one, but only the rankers had customized colours on them because they were placed within the top 100 out of all soldiers. It’s probably to encourage the soldiers to work hard. Hence also the reason why the other soldiers but the one circling around me had a white digital coloured suit.

But even so, the other space stations or factions have probably created their own suits to fit their needs and security. Funny though, the citizens of Ashinova that counted up to over 100000 which followed the neutral faction, wanted nothing to do with the ongoing war unless it was to research or create a new technology. But for some reason, we were also the state of the art of all tech that included health, combat and daily needs which everyone in the Ashinova made a living by selling the schematics to outsiders. The war classed ships was our weakside though, unless it was transportation classed ships since we didn’t like “war”.

Even if some faction tried to attack us with their fleet of corsairs that had the length of 1000 meters, they would still face the fortress called Ashinova that could blast them to pieces with its planetary canon. You could say that we was actually the biggest threat in the universe…

This was also the reason why we had barely any soldiers protecting the inside, because we firmly believed that anything that tried to get inside, would be stopped outside. Today it was proved wrong and cost us greatly.

But enough about that. A few seconds later she then stopped right at front of me and looked at me with her helmet that covered her whole face with a visor that glowed in orange but hid her eyes.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"So... Why do you have this weapon of mass destruction that could burn anyone in its path?" She questioned me.

"To do like what you described?"

"Nah... I am just kidding, remove the rope privates"

As the soldiers untied me from the rope, I noticed a bunch of civilians from children to olds ones around the corner, calmly watching the scene and tried to listen to what was happening around me.

"Now tell me, what is happening out there?"

I nodded and so I told them the circumstances of the outside and what the consequences were from the soldiers being locked in and a few part from my story.

"Holy shit" She said while the other whispered among themselves about the events that had unfolded.

"Yeah... It's ugly out there and we need to rescue as many as possible"

"We'd better hurry, they are probably in danger right now."

"No... Tell me more about the monsters first, it will increase the chances of our survival" she said while ordering everyone to stop with their whispering and listen closely instead.

I then stretched my arm out which made them confused for a second but then realised that I were going to use the SMB. “Alice, show them the images of what we have seen”

“Okay”

“Ladies and gentlemen, This is the first specimen that we had encountered” She said with a 3d image of a spider like creature but with one body instead of two and a thorn like carapace look. It had 6 legs where the front acted like claws and the creature were the size of a half adult, probably even taller if it could stretch its leg up. A scary looking monster which could split its head in half and had a lot of sharp teeth with triple the size of human teeth. And last but not least, a tail with dragon like thorns on its spine. A hybrid between a reptile, mantis and spider...

“It is fast and only good at frontal combat” Alice said which made the soldiers discuss and chat about what they had heard and some even talked about how they could kill it with their new made plans.

…

After a while, Alice then noticed that they were done with the first specimen and waited for the next one.

“This is the second specimen” She said with a 3d image of a bat like creature. It had 2 legs with large and sharp claws, 2 hands stuck with its wings and surprisingly the hands were smaller than the claws on the legs and a body with the same size like the spiderling. It looked nearly identical to the spiderling, only that it had 2 horns also.

“It can shoot projectiles but is weak before taking flight”

Just like before, more soldiers started to discuss about how they could deal with this threat.

…

Suddenly Alice was quiet after the soldiers were done discussing about the second specimen.

“Alice, what’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing…”

Then the one I just fought appeared at front of me in 3d… The deformed human like monster.

Looking around I could quickly notice that everyone started to discuss to each other of how this could be possible.

“Did you make some kind of mistake?” Someone with a white suit asked while the civilians and the others gaped in shock of seeing a human but deformed.

“It can’t be real right?” Someone added.

“No… It’s a mutated human…” I said with a disgusted look.

“Alice, show them the animation”

“Are you sure, I can understand if it’s only you but...?” she hesitantly asked.

“Show it we need everyone to see it now, or they will watch in fear later.”

“Affirmative” she said and activated the animation of the transformation of the deformed human.

The animation looked so real and a few even puked in a trash bin nearby… It was a disgusting scene of a twitching human growing new limbs from different part of the body while deforming the human skeleton as if they were trying to make the body itself handicapped just to look scary but still useable and charge at its opponents. Hell the body even decayed to the point of not even looking like a human anymore, but because the clothings hid the strongly decayed part, you could still make it out.

After a while a few even started to cry, the second last animation even showed a boy turning his head 180 degrees while cracking the spine connected to the head of his with pitch black holes where the eyes should be just to split it in half and show its large sabertooth like teeth in the end. Not only that, the boy’s intestines was hanging out from the big hole at the stomach and drools could be seen leaking heavily from the split mouth.

“Enough we get it” The red one angrily said, which made Alice quickly stop the animation.

“It has a really high endurance and will only die when it disintegrate, don’t let it get close to you” Alice continued.

“To think we have to kill our own kin..” The red one said with a sulk behind the helmet.

...

It went on until we got the last one… The snake like creature.

“This is the latest specimen we have encountered so far” She said and showed a 3d image of the large snake like creature that had a body exactly like a Z, where the top of the Z was a big and large shield like head with the face at the end which could split in 4 parts. The middle part to the end was a human like torso but with the ribs inside out, with a snakey tail attached to the underside. The tissue like torso had two mantis like arms that stuck out with large and sharp claws that could cut anything in its path. The creature had a spine that looked like it held everything together from the head to the tail with thorns sticking out of it. The body also had a strong looking carapace.

“Strength, bulletproof, a bit fireproof, fast, agile, strong and can adapt. No weakness discovered so far”

… Everyone was dead quiet after they had heard that it was bullet proof, their only weapon so far was rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and my flame thrower.

They quickly started to discuss about how they should win against this creature, while some proved it to be futile and discussed about how they should create escape routes and plans to how to distract the creature instead, which went on for a while.

…

“I think it is clear that we have to avoid this creature until we get enough firepower” one of the white suited soldiers said among the others.

“No, we’re gonna hunt the hunter” the red suited one interrupted.

“You and you, follow me” she said, which they responded with a salute and followed her into the deeper part of the weapon storage.

...