Naraka

Chapter One: The Nightworld

Naraka was a world that had never known light, and Yami was a man who had never known hope.

It wasn't his home, he hadn't grown up on this hellhole of a world, but it was here he had been sent after he had stuck a sharpened auto-driver in his stepfather's lower sternum.

Yami had known darkness before; his own biological father had used to lock him in the vegetable cellar for fun, leaving him there for hours, sometimes forgetting about him there. He had almost gotten used to the crippling panic attacks, his heart hammering him away into blissful unconsciousness. He could barely remember the sounds of his father, beating his mother and sister as though they were urga calves, their screams reaching him through the walls of the basement. Darkness had seemed like a friend at times, always there to take him away from the horror of his world. But now darkness was Naraka, and Naraka was forever.

When he first got off the penal transport, the Imperial Commissar that greeted him had sported a massive ocular augmentation rammed into the side of his skull. Yami had never seen an augmentation before, back on his own world people had no money to replace lost limbs or eyes. But this commissar had an orb of red fire like the Devil himself, that shimmering eye that stared at him from out of the pitch darkness. A flash of blue electricity signaled that there was a stun baton in his hand.

"GET OFF THE BUS! GET OFF THE BUS!" came the order, barked at the top of the ancient man's haggard lungs. Yami scrambled on his hands and knees in the pitch black, a mass of human scum at his back pushing him forward. Limbs tangled as they prisoners shuffled forwards off the transport. Yami fell to the ground and his chin slammed onto the black ground underneath him. He tasted blood.

"GET UP!" the voice demanded, and Yami felt a powerful surge of hot fire in his lower back. He cried out in shock, pushing himself up on his elbows and staggering to his feet. His wrists had been bound together with some unseen cord. The world was black except for the eye, that eye of red fire that glared at him from the darkness.

"EVERYONE GET IN A LINE! GET IN A LINE!"

A hundred jump-suited prisoners clambered in the blackness to find each other and form some semblance of a line. All around him Yami saw the blinding blue flash of stun batons as Commissars swung their weapons left and right. Screams of pain rang loud in his ears. The acrid smoke of burned skin filled his nostrils. After many moments of pure chaos, the prisoners managed to find each other in the dark and stand side by side. Yami felt the hot breath of the man next to him as he gasped for air, he heard the crunch of military boots in the dirt in front of him. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he might have glimpsed a horizon, but the darkness was like a bag over his head. The sun could have been directly overhead and he would never have known.

There was a sudden voice from out of the night. "Prisoners! Welcome to Naraka!"

The voice was different from the red-eyed commissar; it was younger, more confident. Yami could imagine a stiff-backed veteran in a militia uniform, but he knew there would be no such thing here. This was an Imperial, a disciplinary officer here to welcome them to their new home in hell.

"As you have probably noticed by now, it is very dark on Naraka!"

No shit, Yami thought to himself.

"That is because this world is a dark world! You will not find the Emperors light here, let me assure you!"

Yami felt his breath catch in his throat. He leaned away from the man beside him, whose breath smiled like sour urga milk. He coughed quietly, but kept his mouth shut as well as he could. He didn't want to draw the attention of the commissars. Not here in the dark, where they could strike at any moment.

"If any of you have any notions about escaping, I would discard them now! There is nowhere for you to go on this world, trust me; you do not want to go wandering in the dark out here. Your guards are all equipped with infrared augmetics, so you will have to trust them from now on to be your eyes! Welcome to the Narakan Penal Colony!"

The voice broke away, and Yami heard a chorus of shouting along the line of prisoners. Men were terrified, stammering in the darkness or crying out for help. Yami was nearly blinded when a sudden flash of white light beamed him in the eyes from far ahead of him.

"GET A MOVE ON! MOVE TOWARD THE LIGHT!" Screamed the commissar from before. Yami felt hands pushing him from behind, heard the surging crowd of prisoners around him as they scrambled for the tiny beam of white light. With his bound hands he reached forward, trying to feel his way in the dark as the prisoners crowded around him. The light flickered dismally, sending a shock of fear shooting up his spine. But it was nothing compared to the horror her felt, when he heard his first howl.

It was like a wolf's howl, but with an alien tenor like a church organ. It resounded in his head, beating against the walls of his skull like the roar of a demon. Alone in the darkness, surrounded by a torrent of chaos, Yami began to feel a panic attack creeping up on him. His heart rammed into the back of his chest like a pneumatic hammer.

"You'd better move it scum! There's a pack of night wolves on the ridge!

"It's okay…it's okay…" Yami heard himself saying in the dark, but it was far from okay. He heard the alien howls again, heard the commissars laugh wickedly behind him like sniggering devils. He could feel cold fingers wrap around his throat as he pumped his legs in the direction of the feeble light. Then he heard the first scream.

It was preceded by a powerful snarl, like a hungry lion pouncing on its meal. There was a terrible screech, and the sound of snapping bones. The smell of fresh blood hit Yami in the face with a gust of wind.

"Get moving prisoners, if you don't want to be dinner!" Laughed the commissar. His voice sounded high and far away all of the sudden. Yami felt a scream of terror welling in his throat, felt his heart race as fear shook his body. He looked back at the light. All he had to do was get to the light.

As Yami sprinted in the dark, he felt human meat and bones crunch under his shoes as prisoners were trampled in the stampede. He didn't care. He only had to reach the light, and then he would be safe. He heard more screams at his back, smelled a terrific stench of fetid breath. The night wolves were close.

Yami leapt forward, the light was so close now. It was a spotlight, sitting atop a door made of iron and concrete. It was probably the entrance to a bunker, but Yami could hardly be concerned with where it led. He could already see orange-suited bodies slipping through the black portal into whatever awaited beyond. He saw spatters of blood splash against the concrete walls, tainting the white light red. His muscles burned from exertion, his bound hands held out before him to push aside his fellows.

There was a scream behind him, and something knocked into Yami from behind. It was a prisoner, from the feel of it a very bulky one. He had stumbled on the blood-slick stones and crashed straight into Yami's back.

"Help me! Please please!" The man squealed, scratching at Yami's legs with sharp nails. Yami felt the man's fingers cut into his flesh, but he kicked out at him with his heel. Yami felt his foot impact something, something that snapped and broke away. He heard a gut-wrenching scream, felt a froth of something wet spray him in the face. Then he smelled the breath again, hot and wretched, as though someone had dug up an open grave. There was a tempestuous growl that erupted from the darkness.

Yami scrambled to his feet, ignoring the cries of the wounded man who still pleaded for mercy. He pushed himself forward, the weak light ahead of him sucking in the last of the terrified prisoners. Yami's eyes burned and he wiped the blood off of his face with a sleeve. As he ran he tried to ignore the pitiful calls from the dying man, the blubbery sound as the nightwolves tore into his open flesh with rapturous glee.

With a sudden rush of relief Yami leapt through the open door, its glorious porthole illuminated by the dying white light. As he crashed through the doorway and felt cold concrete underneath him, the door slid shut with a metallic click. He could hear the heavy breathing of the prisoners around him as they sucked down the bitter air, could hear their cries of agony and pain as they nursed terrible wounds. It was as dark in here as it had been out there. Even though Yami knew that the door was closed and the nightwolves were outside, he didn't feel any safer.

A voice punctuated the dark, it sounded electronic and static laden, as though it were coming over a speaker system.

"I hope you enjoyed that light while you had it prisoners, you won't see light again for a long, long time."