The Motherload
By Mat Growcott
Charlotte knocked on the door at the top of the irn-co skyscraper. Landing a spaceship, which was half a mile long on such a small building, had been the easy part, having to face her boss's icy stare was going to be hell. She pictured her boss, a small bald man, Shane Mcmallamhad only got to be the owner of irn-co by cheating liing bribing and killing. It was very bad to be on his bad side. The door opened, a robot about a metre high looked up at her, you could tell it was a robot, the skin around its neck folded up showing a necklace of iron, which the skin from the rest of its body was riveted to. This had obviously been easy and cheap to make and even stranger, the robot had a perfect human woman's body, the only tell tale sign of it being a robot was the 'necklace'.
"The boss will see you now" The robot said in a mechanical voice, "he has been looking forward to your arrival for many days."
That was sick, charlotte thought, she was in deep trouble and the boss was looking forward to sacking her? It seemed she was the only one he didn't like in the company.
She thought back to why she was here, she'd landed on a planet, Dalius15, a distress signal was sounding from a mining town at the bottom of the planet. He ship had landed and there were only 3 people left, one of them was in a coma, with a thing on his face. Charlotte had used basic instinct, and attempted to shoot the creature off, of course this killed the young man it was attached to. It wasn't enough that every night she awoke because of the screams of the man, and his mother who was there, but she was going to lose her ship and her crew and all because she'd tried to help someone.
"If you'd just follow me" the robot woman said.
Charlotte stepped into the office and stared at her feet, she wasn't going to allow the boss to see that this was tearing her up inside. The boss stood up from his chair which seemed a mile away from charlotte.
"Do you want a drink?" He asked stiffly
"Something strong" she said without drinking, she'd been putting it away a bit too much since she left Dalius15, she knew that, but whatever helped. She took the glass Shane was offering her and drank all its content in one long gulp.
"Your going back to Dalius15" Shane shouted at her.
"What? NO!" Charlotte shouted back, she couldn't go back; whatever killed 99% of the population of the planet was still there.
"I thought you'd say that, that's why I poisoned your drink, the antidote is being put on your ship along with a bomb, if I don't get my way you and your crew die."
She blinked
"At least we'd be able to be found…and not turn up with an open rib cage"
"Its your choice."
"What do I have too do?"
"The creatures on Dalius15, I want them. Well, there blood to be exact, I've hired some bounty hunters all you have to do is drive them there and wait until they come back."
"And if they don't?" Charlotte said.
"well, then you'll have a long wait"
Charlotte looked outside the window; Dalius15 wasn't that far away, 2 months at the most. Unlike the crew and the hunters charlotte hadn't gone into deep sleep, she didn't like the idea of having people who are paid to kill let loose on the ship. As the planet got nearer Charlotte thought of what the future could hold. The crew had gone white when she'd told them what had happened. As the ship landed one of the bounty hunters walked through…
"I set the rest of the hunters to sleep for another 3 weeks. We can be back on our way to earth by then. It's a simple kill the creature, bring it on board and take off gig, when you see me run back start up the engines. I'll be back in about an hour."
The tall hunter opened the door
"if the other hunters do wake up within the next hour then keep 'em here somehow, I don't like competition."
The hour went by, several hours went by. Charlotte began to get worried and walked down to the weapons room. She picked up a flare and went outside, setting it off into the pitch-black sky. He heard a scream, she jumped back into the ship and started the engines, turned on the jets and begun to take off, just as she did the tall man limped onto the ship.
"They got me" he called "blood running down face" his arm was missing, his gun was just a twisted scrap of metal, one of his feet were hanging off. He fell over. Charlotte got the ship into orbit and typed out a message to earth, she stopped for a second and thought
"Who got you?"
"ALIENS!!!" he cried.
Shane read through the message
"Aliens attack hunter, permission bomb use, destroy Dalius15" He whispered to himself. So it was true! A creature that was basically a giant weapon. He needed this; he needed it to sell to the highest bidder. He considered the consequences. He typed a message back
"permission Denied, bring back creature alive, any means necessary, need info, bring back to earth"
Charlotte read the reply, this was wrong, someone was already so close to death that he had begun to hallucinate, what was to stop this colony of creatures killing the rest of the crew? The tall man sighed and tried to stand up
"My names Fad" he struggled to say "those creatures are dangerous, the last thing you want to do is go down there. Theres thousands of them and more come each day. I only got attacked by one, imagine what 3 or 6 or 8 could do to you." He coughed
"Don't worry," Charlotte comforted him "we can fix you, add some robot parts, it'll be no problem." He blinked
"They are pure evil, no weapon in the world could stop them, blow the planet up, drop the bomb, permission or not, at least you'll only lose you job, not your head"
"I have to go down, it was an order…"
"Don't you ever question your orders? You like a robot…"
"Don't you talk to me like that!" Charlotte shouted, "I'm not going down, I can't, I've seen the damage these…things can do"
She tapped a few words into the computer and waited…she then deleted these
words and begun to type
Not touching down on planet, infested, reconsider bomb, crew in danger, 1 hunter down, capture of creature alive…IMPOSSIBLE
She waited a moment and then clicked send. She turned to Fad
"You happy now? These guys have the biggest marine army on earth, they could wipe this planet away and forget about it, there's something more then a little complex here then wanting to investigate the alien."
A beep from the computer signalled that a message had been returned.
COMnet password: Beehive
Picture 1323
Specification page: 21
"What's COMnet?" Fad asked
"A computer program that contains pictures and stuff, not many people get to see what's in there because of the nature of some of the things…the government wants to keep it all quiet. Every ship is equipped with it, but not many ships can use it because they don't know the password."
She clicked on a few buttons on the computer and then typed in 'beehive'. A large logo reading "COMnet" popped up. She typed in 1323 and a picture of a corpse popped up. It was no ordinary corpse, this had burns all over him, his chest was open and blood was pouring out. Charlotte quickly turned it off. She coughed, secretly she felt sick, but she wasn't going to show it to anybody. Next she went to specification page 21. It was a video file. She played it, the screen was just black, no, there was something, it was moving very quickly on the opposite wall. Charlotte stared at it, there was gun fire in the back ground, and shouting, something ran towards the camera and knocked it over. Although it was only for a split second, and it was hard to see, you could actually see a huge black monster, something that would have stopped kids sleeping for weeks. She turned off Comnet and begun to type back a message
Understood, Awaiting orders, bomb? Capture Dead?
She shivered as she pressed send and looked outside at the planet, it was gigantic, one of the biggest planets she'd ever seen, and all of it, was covered in this living battle tank? She found that hard to believe, but it was true, all the mines had sent the distress signal at about the same time. This meant a huge army of unstoppable killing machines. Destroying the planet was there only hope. The computer beeped.
Continue, attack, bring back alive or die trying.