ASA cargo ship traveling towards Phytom Base, 2220 AD
Stars and planets whizzed by at superluminal speeds, a range of velocities ranging from the speed of light and up. The ASA cargo ship Void Crosser 2 was equipped with the newest model of Warper engine that was capable of, under proper conditions, hitting a new region called rate speeds. Rate speed one was 250 times the speed of light, rate speed 10 was double that, rate 20 was double again, and so on.
Major Hoshea couldn’t appreciate the speed, though. To him, the wait was still long, a month of traveling through space to get to an outpost 24 light-years from Earth. The Void Crosser 2 was only moderate compared to cargo ships that could be up to the size of a city, so big that they had to be built in space and could never land on a planet. Still, it was bigger than most ships, big enough that Hoshea had a room to himself.
He lay on his stomach in the small bed and examined the hexapad propped on the pillow facing him. The hexapad contained all sorts of ‘pertinent’ information that didn’t seem all that important, but one of the worst jobs as commander of the vessel was to go through all this data and try to write a report with it. Pytom Base, where they were heading, was closer now than Earth, so he was going to send his report there, and they, with more powerful internet connections, could send it to Earth and onto the ASA base outside of New York City.
Hoshea’s eyes were glazed over; he didn’t deny that even to himself, but he was a soldier; if anything, he knew how to suck it up. Something happened to catch his glazed eyes. Peering closely at the numbers, he scratched his head. Hidden amongst the pieces of info about engine outputs and Power wasting by crew members, all jostled together in memos sent to him, was a notice that Pytom Base had been out of contact for twenty hours now.
They missed their next check-in by eight hours. And as usual, they had been silent for twelve hours before that. With less than a week until they reached Pytom Base, there was no way that the signals weren’t reaching. Something might be wrong with their communication systems, but still…
Hoshea rolled off his bed and crossed the small room to reach the main hallway of the ship. He pushed past a cargo man with a fancy name like resource officer or some rubbish like that.
Hoshea pressed a button, opening the door ahead of him, and entered the bridge. “Why was I not directly informed that Phytom Base was out of contact and late for the check-in?”
“You were notified in proper channels,” responded his first mate.
Hoshea had experience as a pilot of a small vessel. When he saved the life of a high-up ASA commander from a still unidentified entity calling itself a Stelloid, ASA promoted him to Major, in charge of a large vessel. However, being a Major was nothing like being a pilot; he didn’t even drive. There was a whole team for that. The worst part was the indifference his crew seemed to show him while still following all the respect codes demanded, like now.
Hoshea glanced at his first mate, a man by the name of Lt. Travis Arman. Arman stared back. Hoshea finally spoke. “I do not find it sufficient for you to ’give’ me important details with no notice, Lieutenant!”
Arman nodded. “Duly noted.”
Hoshea eased into his chair. “Do we have any more information on the situation at Phytom base that no one bothered to tell me in person?”
The bridge was a large oval-shaped room with a lower section of a perfect circle below. Indirect lighting gave the whole room a soft red hue. Above the lower section of computer controls was a giant screen that acted as a window out the front of the ship, with cameras, even though the bridge was in the middle. The screen could also display pertinent information when necessary. Hoshea’s seat and Arman, with a few other important people, were in the smaller section above, while everything else was done a few feet below.
Arman spun his chair slowly to face Hoshea, “We received a communication a few minutes ago; I notified you when it happened.”
Of course, Hoshea thought wryly, dropped into the ever-full ‘notice box. Instead of speaking his mind, he motioned for Arman to continue. “What was this communication?”
“It was a message from a technician, there were a few words only, probably all he had time to write: ‘they will kill us all’.”
Hoshea raised his eyebrows. “Strange, nothing more? Has anyone detected a disturbance in the area around the planet, the arrival of pirates or enemies?”
Arman shrugged, “We aren’t in scanning range.”
Hoshea rolled his eyes, “near the planet no, but the ships could have crossed near us earlier, re-run all previous scans, check for anomalies, send a message back to Earth, and go full speed to Phytom.”
Arman didn’t appear to be angry, but Hoshea knew he was just hiding it. He knew the entire crew was probably sniggering behind their hands at him. “As the Major wishes.” Then, to the crew in general. “See if we can increase speed, prepare a communication to Earth, and re-run the scans.”
Hoshea muttered something under his breath about being able to yell out orders himself. The Void Crosser 2 raced across the space, heading straight towards Phytom base, straight towards danger.
• • • • •
“They haven’t responded?” Hoshea asked, looking to Arman. It had been a week now, and the Void Crosser 2 was in orbit above Phytom base.
“No, they have not.”
Hoshea frowned. “And why did you try to radio them without my consent?”
“My apologies, Major, because you were occupied with running over the engine reports, I thought I could…”
“Well, you thought wrong, Arman!” Hoshea growled, dropping into his chair. “Do I need to be constantly present to stop you from making stupid decisions!?”
“Sir, I was simply…”
“No, this wasn’t simple at all. Now whoever is down there knows we are here.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I’m not sure, but you lost us the choice to decide whether or not we wanted to.”
The Void Crosser 2 hovered in the upper edges of Phytom’s atmosphere. The planet was almost entirely a hot, baked desert; the poles were the only green places where it was cool enough during the day to survive. Phytom base was where automated mining drills were built, repaired, and unloaded. The drills scoured the sandy surface for precious minerals hidden within its sandy depths. Phytom was also the first offworld city, though it was barely more than a suburb. The main base was surrounded by extending rings of houses and businesses, totaling up to about a hundred inhabitants outside the base and 53 within. However, some of the base workers had taken houses outside of the base, which led to the town’s growth in the first place.
Hoshea sat up. “Arman, you stay with the ship.”
Arman nodded, smiling. “Yes, sir.”
Hoshea glanced over to Louis, who stood in the shadows at the edge of the room. He was in charge of security, which meant he usually didn’t do anything. He was equally ranked with Hoshea but was technically under Hoshea’s authority, as Hoshea was the commander of the vessel. “Louis, you get your team together, you guys are with me.”
Louis inclined his head and disappeared through the exit. Hoshea stood, “Arman, keep the ship here. If anything goes wrong, head to the atmosphere and wait for us to contact you. In the meantime, try to contact ASA using the communication satellite above the planet.”
“Of course, Major.”
Hoshea nodded and left after Louis, preparing to head out into the city to figure out what was happening. Something about this situation felt eerily familiar, though he was yet to realize from where.
• • • • •
“Section one clear,” Louis called out, motioning his men forward. They moved deeper into the city, finding only deserted and empty buildings for the first few blocks, and had ceased checking for now in other buildings.
Hoshea moved behind, weapon ready. It was a pew-1.5, a new weapon class from the old radial guns. After the ASA hit radial-25, they worked on a new project, which they simply called a powered energy weapon (pew). It was better than two radial-25s and looked totally different from the standard radial blaster, which looked frozen in time since the radial-5s.
The gun was long and sleek with a small stock and handle. The front was a spinning circular plate with four nozzles, each firing a laser bullet in a sequence, one after the other. It was capable of doing an incredible 16 shots per second, thanks to this circular plate design, each with a force of 600 newtons. However, force didn’t matter when your target was disintegrated after a few hits.
Louis made a hand signal at the next intersection, and the party halted. Hoshea sniffed at the air and caught the slight scent of something dead, but the smell soon faded. They were out of the housing section and into the business section. It was a tiny town, with only one other section, the ASA base in the center.
“Do you hear that?” Louis asked quietly.
Hoshea craned his head, listening carefully. The sound of faint metal scratching caught his ears, like six metal feet, like a Stelloid. It was like he was on that ship again for a brief moment, the horror overwhelming him, then the Stelloids arrived.
Hoshea called out a warning, and Louis had time to motion everyone back before the first blasts struck the soldiers.
Hoshea and the others were at a corner in the business district, and the street was narrow and lined with small shops. Large businesses had yet to establish branches on Phytom; all these places were owned by the person who probably also lived inside. Down one side of the narrow street, a dark metal form raced quickly towards them across the pavement, firing off electric, thin blasts of green light that sparked and burned the street. Whenever the stream of light struck a person, they seized up and dropped dead, sometimes before they could even scream. No matter where the shot hit or who the person was.
Another Stelloid came up a side street, firing repeatedly. Hoshea dropped to one knee behind a convenient mail deposit box. Mail was still a thing, believe it or not. It seemed that as long as people needed to send packages, sentimental people would send letters. Others ducked behind street objects, and Louis motioned towards a deserted bakery. The troops backed up, mostly avoiding the fire; five of the twelve men were down on the ground.
Hoshea aimed and held down on the trigger of his gun. It kicked hard, firing in a continuous round of small but powerful laser blasts, like a Gatling gun. The Stelloid that was Hoshea’s target barely faltered. He hit it only once before it was on the move up over around, so Hoshea couldn’t trace it. Stelloids were excellent at avoidance.
The other Stelloid continued to advance unceasingly, keeping the small device on its wrist that shot out its killing beams, firing continually. It traced the deadly laser through the air like a laser pointer, killing two more men as it struck them, not leaving a mark except for the violent expressions of pain on their faces.
Hoshea dove to the side as the Stelloid he targeted shot a new blast that exploded the mail deposit box. Letters flew into the air like a blizzard, some of which were cut in half by the farther away Stelloid, still aiming at Louis’s men, who were nearly to the shop. Hoshea ran through the papery mass that mostly hid him, arriving at the door just as Louis (the last man left) jumped in.
Gasping, Louis slammed the door. He took a position at the windows, gun ready, but the Stelloids didn’t advance any closer. They scuttled back and forth along the street silently before moving off to hold a conference together in low tones barely audible through the glass.
“What on Earth were those!?” Louis asked rhetorically. What he didn’t know was that Hoshea did know. He knew all too well the Stelloids. He shivered just remembering, the worst part about a stelloid wasn’t the horrific way they killed or the unrelenting way they did it. It wasn’t even the waves of horror and beauty washing off them in their every graceful, deadly move. No, it was something far worse; how they got inside your mind. It was how they twisted your thoughts and never let you forget what you had seen. Louis shook his head; his body began to shiver a bit unconsciously. “They killed them all… just like that. How? How is that possible?”
The singing began. A high, clear, ethereal note that swelled into a beautiful melody. It didn’t sound like a voice or an instrument, but just a pure, unadulterated note. Peace and harmony came from the sounds like water pooling over a dry desert. Louis relaxed, and Hoshea had to force himself to stay alert.
“It’s a trick!” He yelled above the noise. “It is their hunting technique! Like an angler fish or a fly trap, it wants to lure you in!”
Louis shook his head as if coming out of a stupor. He had the door partially open, and in a flash of realization, he tried to close it, but not before a blast of something greeted light seared straight through his body and dropped him to the floor. Hoshea was alone, again, his crew dead, the Stelloids after him. That is when the memories really attacked him.
He saw it again, Kyle’s scream, the Stelloid’s words. The chasing, the screaming, the death of his crewmates, it was like every nightmare he’d had since then, reliving the moments that attacked him now.
Hoshea stumbled up and away from the corner he’d sat in and rounded the bakery counter. The Stelloids moved away from the shop and out down the streets. Hoshea blindly wandered into a large kitchen and opened a closet, sitting down where there were no windows. Safe, at least for the moment.
Hoshea sighed, head in hands, trying to force down his panic. “What am I going to do?” The death and misery surrounded him, pressed down on him like only a Stelloid could.
“You could start by finding a different hiding place; this is my spot.”
Hoshea yelped in surprise. He turned and pressed the barrel of his pew-1.5 into the chin of a rather distinguished-looking man sitting on a bag of flour. The man had greasy, light blond hair and a very distinguished uniform. Something like a lab coat and a suit coat together.
“Easy, ASA boy,” The man said, going cross-eyed as he attempted to stare at the four nozzles on the barrel. “This is my hiding place and you don’t see me bonking anyone on the chin!”
“Who… are you?”
“Dr. Philip Range, secret weapons developer for the ASA. I’m a civilian, though not military.”
Hoshea sat back, putting his weapon down. “So, Pytom base… secret weapons?”
Philip nodded. “Yeah, most people thought Phytom was just a way point, and the ASA was happy to let them think that. Maybe that’s why this new species attacked here; we were working on a few big projects.”
“Something like those jars on the shelf?”
Philip glanced at the shelf, fixing his eyes on the five glass and lead jars specially labeled next to him. “These? No, I happened to salvage these as I escaped from the base and came to hide here. It is a prototype bio-weapon. An infectious acid, I think it is called. Something like that.”
Hoshea nodded. He stood and leaned against the wall, grabbing his radio. He needed to calm down and figure out what to do. Images of death and soldiers screaming in violent pain filled his mind, which didn’t help at all. “Arman, Lt. Arman, come in.”
Silence from above, it was likely Arman was somewhere in the upper atmosphere, seeing as that was Hoshea’s orders when he left. Even so, Hoshea shouldn’t be having a problem reaching the ship. Philip kicked back on his stool and pulled a loaf of bread off the shelf, daintily eating a slice. Hoshea pounded his fist into the wall in frustration. “Why isn’t he responding!”
Philip continued to chew. Hoshea looked over at Philip and then at the bread. Philip passed him the bag. Hoshea took a slice, looking thoughtfully at it. “So you’ve been hiding out in here since they attacked.”
“Yep.”
“What do you know about these aliens?”
Philip rubbed his stubbled chin thoughtfully. “They appear to be a sort of ‘apex predator’ but one step further. Like, a sort of hunter on the next level. They have several different tools and tactics to trap their prey, first and foremost being their song, which has a weird effect on most people. Anywho, they seem to have taken up residence in the army base. That is about all I know.”
Hoshea’s gut lurched as he thought of Louis opening the door and dying just as he realized what was going on. Hoshea’s first experience with a Stelloid had been similar, and if it weren’t for the quick thinking of the Solite Shane Melniz, he would’ve been toast.
“Well,” Hoshea said, quickly turning and hoisting his pew-1.5. “Let’s go.”
Philip lifted an eyebrow skeptically. “Let’s? As in us? As in me?”
Hoshea motioned. “You know your way around town, I know the Stelloids. Dealt with them on a top-secret mission. Although it was only made top secret after the fact. You and I can figure something out.”
“Those things are unstoppable. You should doubly know that if you’ve run into them before!”
Hoshea opened the closet door. “I killed one, a few more shouldn’t be hard.”
Philip reluctantly got up to follow him. “You killed one?”
“With some help from Shane Melniz.”
“The famous Solite?”
“Yep.”
“And he killed one with your help?” Philip correctly altered who helped whom.
“Yes.” Hoshea was somewhat annoyed at Philip’s assumption, despite it being true.
“So not even Shane Melniz could take on the two dozen around this place, that was just one.”
Hoshea pushed open the shop’s back door. “Oh, stop complaining already. How do we get to the army base?”
“Hang on,” Philip said, running back into the shop. He came out in a moment with a bag, smiling to himself, and led Hoshea through the town.
They had to be cautious, moving from shop to shop, through alleyways, and hiding whenever the pairs of Stelloids clicked their way along the streets. At one of these points, Philip tapped Hoshea and gestured at them. “Do you see the small humanoid shape in the center of the spidery body?”
Hoshea nodded. “The legs aren’t armor, they’re robotic extensions. The actual Stelloid part is a small pale humanoid creature with a creepy jaw and eyes. They look pretty pathetic when not on their battle machines in full armor.”
A few streets down, Philip tapped him again. “What exactly are you trying to do?”
Hoshea marched up the flimsy stairs to the roof, where Philip said they’d get a good view of what was left of the army base. “I want to scout out the area, take out any Stelloids I can, but most importantly, contact Arman.”
Philip followed him onto the roof. “You can’t stop them, you’d need an entire army, and you’re just a man with a gun.”
“An angry man with a big gun.” Hoshea corrected. “That makes a difference. The Stelloids massacred my entire crew once, and now they’ve killed off more of my new one. Also, I have you.” Hoshea’s bravado and light attitude hid his deep-seated anger. A rage inside him against every Stelloid for every action they’d commited.
“I wouldn’t exactly count myself as an asset,” Philip muttered, “I’m probably more of a liability.”
Hoshea took a glance off the edge of the roof. A giant domed oval building seemingly made of skin filled the area of scorched Earth where the army base once sat. It seemed swell and shrank as if it was breathing in and out. Hoshea shuddered. “What on Earth is that?”
“That… is definitely a new renovation,” Philip mused, looking at it. “It seems to have pores, or holes to get in, maybe it is a nest of some kind. It looks like a flattish wasp nest.”
Hoshea flattened himself to the roof as a group of Stelloids below exited the huge nest through one of the pore-like holes. Grabbing his radio, he looked up into the nearly white blue sky as if he could spot the Void Crosser 2. No luck. “Arman, come in, Lt. Arman!”
The radio buzzed briefly, and then Arman’s voice filtered through, full of surprise. “Major? You’re alive.”
“Yes, Lieutenant, I’m alive,” Hoshea responded dryly. “Where are you, where have you been?”
“We’ve been hiding out a ways from the city, we took quite the beating from an unidentified alien vessel, and we just got our comms back up. The ships (three of them, I think) have been flying over looking for us, so far they haven’t found us, we’re in the trees just outside the desert.”
Hoshea glanced over the roof’s edge as Philip motioned, pointing out some Stelloids exiting the nest. “Listen closely, lieutenant, these creatures are called Stelloids. I’ve encountered them before, but it was kept top secret. They are highly dangerous; they take no prisoners, give no quarter. One hit from a weapon of theirs and you’re dead. We have to approach this situation with caution.”
“Agreed, should we bunker down and wait for the arrival of ASA reinforcements?”
“That could take at least two months, and they probably won’t send a battle cruiser, just a scout ship. A local and I are going to see if we can get a better view of what we’re up against. You sit tight and hope they don’t find our ship. I’ll make contact in thirty minutes. Over and out.”
“Roger, over and out.”
Hoshea propped himself on one elbow. “I don’t know what to do.”
Philip glanced sideways at him. “You looked like you had a plan a moment ago.”
“Yeah, but it was ridiculous. And Arman hates me, he thinks he should have taken command of the vessel when the previous commander died.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Philip muttered, running his hand through his graying hair. He had longish hair and a stiff mustache, but bright hazel eyes.
“He doesn’t think my ideas are any good.”
“Maybe it’s just that you don’t think your ideas are good.”
Before Hoshea could respond to that, things went wrong. Very wrong. A Stelloid lept up the side of the building, mechanical suit whirring as the false spider legs dug into the mortar. With a heave, it pulled itself up and onto the roof, the central figure in the mechanical suit, extended forward and outward, hands raised.
The bracelet blasters on its arms glinted in the light; those were its worst weapons. Instant death awaited whoever they hit with a single shot anywhere. Not instant enough to be painless, though, not based on the expression of agony filling the faces of the dead. A second Stelloid smashed into the door to the roof, flinging it open and racing up. Philip dived for the edge, but the first Stelloid grabbed him across the chest with one of its legs pinning him against its body.
Odd, I thought the Stelloids didn’t take prisoners, Hoshea thought, but then the second one was on him, pinning him down as the central piece (the actual stelloid) slid forward and split open. The stelloid inside, sitting where it operated the mechanical suit, looked much like the other Hoshea had seen; a thin crop of blonish-white hair was pulled back and tied on this creature’s scalp. It snarled at Hoshea menacingly. “You!”
“Do… I… know you?” Hoshea asked, wincing under the weight of the Stelloid on top of him
“You killed him!” The Stelloid hissed. “Now I’m going to kill you.”