Chapter 7
Depths
The black, broken spikes of molten earth cracked ominously under the weight of SONGBIRD as it slowly landed on the crust of the burnt world. Its surface stabbing into the sky almost targeted upwards leaving behind an aggressive cascade of apocalyptic reminders of war. As far as the eye could see this charcoal-esque coating turned what was once fields and a sign of growth and fertility into a stark reminder of pain and death. The land that broke and cracked under the ship floated into the air as a fine dust, adding yet more grey to a sky that hadn't seen colour in a long time. The beams of light from SONGBIRD acting as bright eyes across an ashen land that didn't want to be seen, and as it touched down and the moaning of the earth stopped it felt as if it didn't want to be visited. Almost as if it knew what it once was, and what it had become.
"Right! This is a collect mission, Rage, Peace, Hollow you're outboard with me. Pocket, Tyde I want you on the guns just in case anything shows up. We ain't flying out but we can sure as hell shoot 'em down" Fluke stated to the group gathered in the hull of the ship. They stood around, preparing their equipment and checking it over. It had been years since anyone had been to the ash fields and all that surrounded them now were stories, children's tales of the horrors that lay before them. "and you have the map in your SOAR" Evanz added, as Fluke nodded and held his wrist up
"I do, this will guide us straight to the source of Irinium, each of us four will carry a tankard and we'll fill them up, bring them back and you get the joy of putting it into a bomb" Fluke responded, looking up at the scientist whos face turned into a beaming smile at the mention of explosives. Walking over to the panel by the door and pressing a few buttons it swung open, the cold blackened air thick with ash rushing into the hull like a winters draft from a volcano. The group recoiled as it flickered into their eyes and lungs adding to the dread they faced at visiting this part of the world. Juke's otherwise perfect hologram flickered in the decrepit breeze though unnoticed by himself as everyone else shielded their eyes and faces. Fluke pulled his goggles over his eyes, flicking a switch yellow lights lit up, their beams dancing across the ash in the air visible to all. As if on cue, Rage, Hollow and Peace all flipped their own visors down; Rages resembling a hockey mask made of iron with two large red orbs at the eyes, Peace's a silver skull with deep green eyes and Hollow's completely black with a thick blue strip running over the eyes. They picked their weapons up and walked down the ramp as Tyde sealed the door behind them. The air in the hull settled and the room became quiet.
The four moved forward across the land slowly. Fluke's wrist projected a small blue glow directing them closer to the reservoir of Irinium. Rage, Hollow and Peace kept close behind due to the limited visibility. Having only been subject to the elements for a brief period of time their clothes were already black and sodden with ash, the only light cutting through emanating from their masks and their weaponry. Rage's duel pistols hummed and stayed almost constantly up, Peace held his green assault rifle close to his chest. Hollow relied more on his eyes than the barrel of his gun, keeping it alongside his person; It was on however, and ready to fire. Fluke strictly followed his wrist, his left hand held aloft as the small blinking light acted as his eyes. His right hand clutched onto a large combat shotgun, the black surface blending in to the environment, the yellow glow from the handle all that was given away in the thick air. Their footsteps were heavy, sinking each step like a child on fresh snowfall except they knew that what they stepped on was the remnants of the world before. Hollow looked around at the small spikes jutting up and saw glimpses of what once stood; the foundations of buildings that had been crushed under the weight of a foreign army. He'd seen pictures in books, they all had. He could make out what used to be streets, houses, cars. He could see the thin and vague outlines of what humanity remnants and how it had been blanketed by the thick, black ash of war.
Rage's footsteps were heavy as he looked down, his boots covered and dyed black under the powder they traipsed through. Normally he would've relished the chance to lighten the mood with conversation but the risk of talking and his mouth becoming full of the dreadful taste of this air, even through his full-face mask meant it wasn't worth it. They trudged on, following a small blip on Fluke's wrist like the North star guiding them to a weapon that could take down an Empire; The Ragican Empire.
Fluke stared at the blip as it lead them closer and closer to where they needed to be, only stopping when he suddenly felt a firm hand on his shoulder. Peace who had a grip that shook Fluke out of his trance, nodded his head forward and Fluke looked up. Out of the impenetrable smog a deep black chasm that scarred the land had appeared, one he might have walked into following the radar as closely as he was. It stood out against the face of the world as a true sign of battle; though the surface was coated in the remnants of ash, this deep cut showed the brutality of a world divided. A tear stretching out into the darkness with only a haunting wind a hint of its sheer magnitude. It encapsulated how horrific a fertile world had become under siege from the Ragican empire, and it was exactly where they needed to go next.
The group headed forward with trepidation, Hollow's finger had slowly made the lonesome journey and now it sat rested on the trigger much like Rage and Peace. They walked along a thick ridge that stood a few feet across, on one side the ever growing wall that led up to the surface and on the other, a sheer drop covered and coated in incredibly thick ash clouds with no clear sight at a bottom. Yet they descended. Further and further into the scar that scorched the earth.
"Wait, what do you mean I messed up your work?" Evanz said to Tyde who was busy in the engine room cleaning out several release valves that had become clogged with ash.
"I mean, don't get me wrong you're a clever guy n all" Tyde responded, turning to face the scientist who could've gotten lost in the huge mechanics shadow "but you have a lot to learn on how to use a welder!"he added, before smiling and throwing his tools to a side. Juke who had mainly been an observer throughout this interaction chuckled to himself, revelling in the fact that the scientist who seemingly relied on compliments to his maverick brilliance was being told that he wasn't just as brilliant as he thought. Evans however wasn't enjoying it nearly as much, he knew it was an activity he wasn't associated with but he'd run the numbers, he was sure that what he'd done was right and this bumbling hulk of an American was joking. Yet before he could even begin to argue why his answers where seemingly given to him as Tyde continued "here look, you put it along here which looks fine. But as soon as we take off and this all heats up, you're gonna have a whole heap o' mess." running his fingers along the old signs of handiwork upon the engine. Evanz knew not to argue further with the master-engineer, as much as his scientist interior wanted to.
Tyde walked through the door and headed back into the hull and up to the cockpit to find pocket monitoring the out-board party. "They're about to enter a chasm" She stated, pre-empting Tyde's question "but that means we're gonna lose contact for a while." She added. Looking up at her countryman her small stature hid her brilliance; incredibly adept at engineering and piloting she found her place as a weapons expert on one of the most renowned ships in the fleet under one of the most famous captains. Joining up alongside Tyde, they filled the slots that had appeared after a mission gone wrong though never told what had happened, they relished the opportunity to fly the open skies. At the time she thought, she never knew it would come to this. Working on one of the most important missions alongside a childhood friend who, with a rare serious look across his face asked "Weapons ready?." She nodded. This responsibility was what she'd wanted, but now she wished she was anywhere else in the world.
Fluke stopped, the others quickly following suit as their eyes darted around. He turned, his eyes glowing yellow and the lower half of his face covered by a thick cloth. Pointing at his wrist signalling that the group had almost made it to the location, with only another 40 feet or so to go and that they had to tread lightly. They all nodded their acknowledgement and continued, the visual range only a couple feet in front of them in the depths of the cavern. The air was incredibly thick with black dust and the only visuals they had came from their immediate surroundings. The sky long gone, in all directions was a thick black, constantly swirling mess of horror only matched in visuals by the whistle of the wind. All they had to remind them they were alive. The group trekked on, breathing heavily and completely on edge. For the first time in as long as they had been here there begun to be a source of outside light. A light glow emanated from a few feet in front of them, which got brighter as they stepped ever closer. Its white breaking apart the thick black that had hugged them tightly as they descended into a hell only few had seen, edging closer it got brighter like the light at the end of a tunnel. Fluke stopped again and the other followed suit. In front of them, at the base of this war-created cavern a hundred feet below the surface of the earth in a cracked scar of geology they stood at the edge of a small white pool of a thick churning liquid. On Fluke's wrist the blue line blinked repeatedly; They had reached their destination.
The group took their tankards off of their backs, each able to hold a few litres of the thick, molasses-like liquid as Fluke and Hollow quickly dipped them into the substance. Its unnatural hue matched by the texture as it glooped into the tankards and the bright white light it gave became sealed in the tall, steel tubes attached to each of their backs. Hollow filled his, and Fluke as the two stood guard against invisible enemies as Rage and Peace begun to fill theirs. The air was picking up as a sun they'd long forgotten shifted, pushing an already dark planet into a darker place. The wind still all they could hear as Fluke and Hollow tightened their fingers on the trigger aiming at invisible enemies, Rage and Peace hunched over filling their tankards slowly and steadily.
Hollow stared, his eyes straining through the dim light his mask offered into the darkness. Already feeling like he had been here too long he was on edge as the ash danced around him. It wasn't the ash that scared them, it was the horrors it hid. Children's stories rang through his head as figures would appear and disappear in his peripherals. Another shift amongst the darting white and black powder that surrounded them and he tightened his grip further, the chills running from the top of his spine to the centre of his core. He stared into the distance that was only a few feet from his face, ready. Suddenly from amongst the circling white, grey and black around him two dull and rotten white eyes progressed towards him; completely hidden by the smog around them until a few feet from his person, it emerged. A person, the eyes glowing white with a sense of anger. Its face pale, peeling and cold with hair sparse and matted. Its body hunched and distorted it creeped towards a frozen Hollow who had only heard stories of those who had lost their lives to the radiation left by the Ragicans. A person where the soul was carved out and all that was left was a husk of a person, a shell. A hollower.
Whether in fear or disbelief he hesitated as the lumbering person edged closer and closer, its mouth hanging open wider than a humans ever could as the jaw dislocated and it let out a startling cry that ripped through the stale air and straight into the heads and hearts of the four. Hollow, shaken out of his stupor clenched his hand and pulled the trigger, sending a thick electric beam straight through the head of the nearby Hollower before illuminating a good twenty feet in front of them, as another dozen sets of eyes lit up and turned their gaze to the group.
Rage and Peace instantly sealed their containers and latched them onto their backs as soon as the first shot was fired. Fluke had already jumped alongside Hollow as they begun to fire into the almost-darkness at enemies they could only assume were close. Bright yellow spreads of light and a thick blue electric beam were all they could use to illuminate the approaching enemies as they repeatedly fired into dark space, the only gratification when another pair of eyes disappeared. The slow, lumbering figures of the Hollowers edged closer and closer as more attention was brought to the group with Rage and Peace finally able to get to their guns, spark them into life and signal to the other two they were ready to move.
Slowly edging up the path they couldn't see they begun to head up, Hollow and Peace covered the back firing round after round into the building Hollowers whos ethereal screech permeated the air and cut deep into everyone around. Fluke had returned to the front and flicked his map back up on his wrist, the only guide they had to the top that they had to follow. Rage fired round after round into them from range as the zombie-like ex humans clambered and climbed on top of each other to reach the group. Very quickly they were engulfed completely in the smog again as they lost all sight of the pool of Iridium and the surface, having to stick against the wall tightly and just keep moving; their speed limited by the complete lack of vision. A hand pushed out through a wall next to Fluke who stumbled as Rage pulled up his revolvers and fired three shots into the wrist, obliterating any previous existence of a Hollower's arm.
Hollow and Peace fired as they paced backwards. A seemingly endless supply of these crooked half-people clambered towards them, growing in number as they fired round after round. Peace's assault rifle firing dozens of green-tinged bullets that tore through the already rotten flesh of the Hollowers, ripping them apart piece by piece as Hollow's thick beam left much larger cuts across the groups. Higher and higher they climbed, carrying what would become powerful explosives on their backs as they stepped up an increasingly high cliff face defending against an almost invisible enemy. The only sounds they could hear, the sound of their guns firing and the cutting scream of the Hollowers as they lay waste to more, adding to a pile of ashen corpses that had long past capacity. More and more came, clambering over torn through corpses and climbing the cliff face with inch long claws ripping into the mountain-side to scale the surface. The only hope they had to look forward to was keeping those claws away from their own throats.
Rage kept firing, more and more had begun to gather around the group and climb down the walls as he fired shot after shot into the air blowing parts of Hollower's down upon them, Fluke firing sparingly before checking the map and making sure they were still heading in the right direction. Although heading to the surface a few turning, twisting paths stood aloft in the chasm leaving them at several crossroads they had to navigate to make sure they peaked at the right time. Almost, Fluke thought to himself as they kept on, bullets and screams filling his ears. They crested onto the surface and found themselves in the open; they were close, as the four fired round after round into the still thick crowd of Hollowers.
"They've surfaced, we're lighting up!" Pocket shouted down into the hull as she begun to flick several switches along the cockpit which illuminated the many panels in front of her and turned on two powerful beams of light on the front of Songbird that tore through the smog into the distance. Upon hearing this Tyde jumped down into his gunseat as the panels above him flipped down and lay in his lap. He descended into the pod that hung beneath the ship as his console locked into the three barrels in front of him. Flicking a switch on his own panel, a spotlight now lead in front of him as he aimed directly at where the outboard party were coming from; where the small illuminations of red, blue, green and yellow were getting brighter. Pocket sat at the controls of the ship, she'd gone over how to fly countless times but this was her first real test at the controls and she was never sure if she was ready. She sighed, regaining her confidence and remembering all that had been told to her by the pilot she'd studied under. You'll only ever fly as good as you think you can rang in her head as she stared with a new found confidence out the front window. Before flicking a switch and allowing the door to open, she was ready.
The four kept on firing round into round at their surroundings, just a short run to the ship now and they'd be home free. Fluke having put away the map had pulled out his shotgun and joined the others as the swamping Hollowers had begun haunting and crowding them from all sides like a spreading hive mind of horror. They moved, slaughtering dozens as they made their way as quickly as they could whilst sprinting into completely unknown and invisible land whilst hounded by countless enemies hidden and shrieking in a fog they couldn't puncture. Their dire situation suddenly illuminated by two thick beams of light from the front of SONGBIRD as they sprinted the final distance towards it, guns blazing behind them. Hitting the bottom of the ramp they clambered up into the door as the twisted and scarred arms of Hollowers reached into the air to grab them. Suddenly a large booming filled the air as round after round from the turret begun tearing through groups of the unnatural pursuers, tearing limbs off in single shots. Tyde fired again and again discarding groups as nothing more than paper under his coarse bullets, they boarded and all four turned and pointed their guns at the door picking off those who had passed the turret.
Pocket needed no signal as she tore the ship into the air, the bright powerful engines illuminating the enemy that they face for the first times; hundreds of lifeless eyes stared up at them. Punching the engines she took off as the four kept firing at the door slowly sealing and breaking through the ash and into the sky as once again a deep silence dropped over the group. As soon as it sealed shut a deathly silence fell over the group. They'd faced the haunting past of what parts of humanity had become under the war, and this was only the first part of the mission.
