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Year : 2573
Micor sector, Terra Mirror
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"Here is a mirror that will change the monsters reflecting in it."
This message had appeared when they attempted to hack the database of the half-sunken ship, moments before it shut down.
"Captain, it seems it was encoded in a self-destruct shell, and we lacked the key. We did find out one thing though : this ship didn't crash. It was set in sleep mode, and nobody ever started it up."
"I see. Well done, Collins."
Three years ago, a civilian ship had made an emergency landing on Terra Mirror, falling for a deceptive calmness in the atmosphere.
The Mirror stratosphere was filled with a metallic asteroid belt, but the real problem was the turbulent atmosphere right underneath it. Only at irregular intervals would the winds still enough to allow descending, it required a lot of calculation to find out when this would happen and how to maneuver through it.
Most passengers had died when it had crashed in a lake. A small number of survivors had sent a distress signal, but it had been in vain. Now, three years later the atmosphere finally permitted a mission to retrieve the bodies, if only for a proper burial.
No one counted for survivors, for Terra Mirror itself was dying. There were no more frogs or snakes, and the humans had to wear oxygen tanks due to the thin air filled with patches of carbon monoxide and other harmful gasses.
As they searched for the crash-site, the marines had stumbled across a curiosity along the way : a small transport vessel that seemed to have landed decades ago. Maybe it had brought along Internecivus Raptus, for there was a large hole in the hull and hive matter inside; apparently the drones had used it to sleep.
The presence of the xenomorph certainly made the crew nervous. Tensely, they finished up the investigation and salvaged a few useful parts, while always looking around and startled at small sounds.
"Alright, wrap it up. Bayard, did you get your samples?"
Silence, save for a few plop sounds.
"Where did Bayard go?"
They looked around, for as far as the mists allowed sight, but he was not there. Some called his name, likewise without result.
"Now where did that kid go? Anyone seen him?"
"A few minutes ago he was still here, he said something about an interesting radiation trace. I told him to check it out later, didn't see him since."
Commander Morrison sighed. "Get me a contact."
One of the soldiers quickly established a link to their team scientist.
"Mr. Bayard, get your ass back here at once!"
"In a moment, I found something of major interest!" replied a hazy voice; the equipment wasn't the best.
"That was an order!"
"My apologies, but I am not in service of the USCM, can't take any orders."
Morrison groaned in irritation. "Bayard, we're not getting paid to fetch your body if something goes wrong."
"It'll only take a minute! Go ahead without me, I'll be fine!" With that, the connection was broken.
Morrison glared at the tc, then looked up at the nearest marine.
"Wellson, get Bayard back here."
· · · · · · ·
Jonah was one of those people who often would need a reminder of why they had started something. Not that they quite forgot, but sometimes they got so caught up in studying a single tree that they stopped seeing the forest.
He was also one of those people who went into field research expecting a wondrous adventure, unaware that the elephant could trample them. He had the wrong boots, he was tired, but he still was also hopeful and thrilled.
Traces of some type of radiation covered the area, but those weren't nearly as telling as the giant crater he stood before. He could not even see its other end through the mist, despite it not being that thick here. He could only see a little beyond the center, and he knew his geology : this was not caused by a meteorite. For as far as the ground wasn't drenched, he could see specific pressure marks and if he was correct, the crater had a slightly oval shape.
His observations didn't keep him from hearing the sopping sound that slowly came his way. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a humanoid figure approaching through the mist, one of his comrades looking for him no doubt. He was eager to share his discovery, but then he noticed the man didn't call out a greeting.
Seeing as Jonah was dressed in white — nobody had told him labcoats were bad idea — and blond haired, he himself didn't stick out a lot against the milky mist, ... this was a great chance. In a fit of childish glee he hid behind a near rock, slowly moving so that his motion wouldn't betray him. There he knelt down and waited. Perhaps it was Erwin or Shilling, impatient as they were with him he would enjoy giving them a scare.
When the man was nearly aside of the rock, Jonah jumped out with a branch in his arms, yelling :"Freeze or die!"
The man stopped in his track and didn't seem phased much by the surprise.
Jonah stood still too; this was not one of his comrades. His hands trembled and the branch dropped, he took his glasses off and tried to rub them clearer, perhaps he was seeing wrong? It had to be wrong, it couldn't be a good thing if he met an armed stranger on this planet, he probably was wrong and —
"Commander, I have come across a civilian."
Definitely not good.
"Is he armed?" a dim voice asked through some transmitter.
"He might have hit me with that branch."
"Private?" the voice reprimanded.
"No sir, he does not seem to be armed."
"Alright. Hold a minute, we will investigate this."
After a little observation, Jonah was only more puzzled. The man was entirely covered up and his riffle was slender and efficient-looking, nothing like those of the marines he had come with.
"Are you one of the Space Marines too, another faction or something? Did we trespass somewhere? We didn't mean to! We-" Jonah stuttered.
"Please remain quiet." the soldier calmly ordered.
He held his tongue and waited, it didn't take long for the static voice to return.
"Ah, a charity mission to retrieve a few deceased stranded. They seem to have taken advantage of the same shift in the atmosphere as we have." the voice muttered, then in a clearer tone : "It is unfortunate he has seen you, but we can take no risks. Eliminate him."
"Is that absolutely necessary, sir? Perhaps we can silence him in another way."
"No option. Use the shocker, dump him in a pool, make it look like an accident. Do you understand?"
With a sigh, the soldier said :"Affirmative, sir. Over and out."
Instincts took over, Jonah turned to run ... but the ground sucked him close and then he felt the stun of electricity. There wasn't even any fading to blackness as always happened in the movies.
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In retrospect, maybe he should have asked Bayard what he had found, Morrison realized. Upon arrival at the crash site, they saw that a significant part of the lake had disappeared, as if the water had flooded elsewhere. The captain wasn't a geographer, but it took no genius to understand that that water had to have gone somewhere. It was too cold for it to have vaporized, so ...
On the bright side, this made salvaging the bodies a lot easier. At least, he was pretty sure these things here were the bodies they were looking for. Lying in the water for years had caused the flesh to swell up and become a white, waxy mass. He definitely could use their scientist right now to determine which was wildlife and which was human.
Neither Wellson nor Bayard had been heard of in a while, and he opened his tc again in hopes of a quicker contact over these blasted poor receptors.
This time though, the connection was clear. It was also not a voice he understood.
"State your identity." commanded the link hijacker.
"I am captain Morrison from the U.S.M. Ariston, from the USCM. Please state you-"
"I have nothing to state before you. You are trespassing and will be apprehended soon. Cooperate and all will go well."
"Wait a minute, trespassing? This planet is open ground, we are on an authorized retrieval mission."
But the connection was broken only.
Morrison ordered his men to just salvage anything that looked mammal and then stay on alert, there seemed to be a complication and it was best to stay put till it was resolved.
The wait seemed to last for hours, but it was little over thirty minutes before silhouettes parted from the fog. By that time, all their work was done and the troopers waited anxiously.
Strangers in uniforms of Space Marines appeared, but they lacked any insignia identifying them. Their equipment was well financed and their behavior controlled and orderly, unlike they themselves. Professionals in front of a second rate faction.
"In name of the Interstellar Alliances, I demand to know what System you serve." Morrison spoke firmly, but was unable to hide the shiver in his voice.
"In the name of the same Alliances, we hold no responsibility to explain you anything." someone called back, yet none stepped forward to identify themselves as leader.
"Look, we're all on this planet for whatever reason, but we shouldn't make things difficult on each other. We found traces of xenomorph a while back and —" Morrison tried.
"There are no more xenomorph."
"You killed them already?"
"No. Now, accompany us back to your vessel. Take those bags there with you."
"What's going on?" one of Morrison's men called, an unveiled hint of panic in his voice. "Come on men, we're all marines, what's this about?"
The one nearest Morrison now spoke, rather softly : "If you haven't investigated that space craft, we would have been able to avoid this."
"This? What ... it's about that thing?"
"Just follow us and there will be no problems."
Morrison had always been a man of obliging to the rules, believing they would resolve everything.
Sometimes it's best to look a little further past what makes the rules tick, he realized shortly after.
· · · · · · ·
Upon opening his eyes again, the first thought to cross Jonah's mind was a warning, for it had become darker and soon the cold would become too much ... heck, it was cold already. Instinctively he struggled with his stiff limbs to get up from the soaked ground.
I survived?
He tried looking around, who had saved him? Had any of his companions come?
Not enough view like this ...
He set his elbows against the ground and tried to get up, only to find himself falling. The slimy surface of the rock he lay on offered no hold and he nearly slipped into the black water. But something solid caught him in the stomach. It pushed him back onto the rock, and then withdrew. Confused, Jonah straightened the glasses on his nose and tried to see. Contact lenses would have been so useful right now, if only he hadn't been squicked by the idea of putting them onto his eyes.
It had been a long, white arm that felt like bone with a layer of skin atop of it and it belonged to a large white blur.
Said blur was inhumanly large, yet had a skull like face somewhere in the middle, he couldn't tell what fit where exactly. Straining his eyes, perhaps it had a long neck that hung low and ... a crest? Also, four legs, half sunken into the marsh but he could see it sat like a dog.
No, that hadn't been an arm, that had been a tail.
Now, Terra Mirror was a weird place, but not unusual. He could see no way anything that ever had lived here would become this thing. Dimly the form reminded of a xenomorph queen, yet they were black. The only black about this creature were its eyes.
A beep drew his attention away. He pulled the counter forward and learned that his oxygen tank was nearly empty.
"Oh crap."
Quickly he tried to get his location on his tc, but the jolt and the water had destroyed it. It cursed again as it zapped his fingers and it dropped into the water.
Now the shape before him moved again, extending a thin hand towards the dropped object and offering it back to Jonah.
A little surprised, he said : "No use."
Even stranger, he seemed to be understood. The creature drew back its hand and brought the tc to its face for a closer look. But the human had no time to wait, he needed a new oxygen tank.
He carefully stepped off the rock and at the same moment the monster stood up on two legs. Jonah fell back, startled, but the creature made no move to attack him. In fact, it walked away. With beating heart, Jonah remained where he was for a minute, then crawled back onto his feet and ... waited. He wasn't sure for what. But he was supposed to wait.
Soon the monster emerged from the mists again, now it carried something dark and dangling. Jonah realized quickly what it was.
The corpse was dropped before him, partially intact. He could see the stun gun in the belt, the weapon he recognized too ... but the head and arms ... there, blood and melting skin dropped off the cracked bones. A wave of nausea set over Jonah, the fact he couldn't see any details didn't really help.
He pulled the mask off of his face and vomited.
Why was it showing him this? Did it like upsetting its dinner before it ate? Was that why it had waited till he had woken up? The burst of adrenaline he had needed finally announced itself.
He tried to flee, he fell and crawled up again and his mind went blank. Dimly aware of the monster behind him standing up, he hurried right into a pool, half swam, half struggled to the other side. His oxygen tank he lost in the process and he was gaping for air before he reached the other shore.
It was there already. He looked up through a haze of his weak eyes and filthy water, not to be killed but to see it hold out something.
The soldier's oxygen tank.
He hesitated, long enough for the monster to reach down and pull him out, setting him on another rock. There it put the tank in his lap. For a few more seconds the human just stared, then he rapidly placed the tank on his back and the mask over his face.
Fresh air streamed into his lungs and a sense of relief into his mind ... along with something else.
A simple form of happiness, like that of a child. Jonah hadn't experienced something like this since he was little, and he guessed it was because he had survived, right?
"Thank you." he muttered. More of that strange happiness.
He raised a hand with the thought of trying to pet the monster, not knowing a better reaction.
She responded in a disturbingly human way : it took his hand.
It was new to her, but not to him, so she had learned it from him. They withdrew their hands at the same moment.
Jonah knew next to nothing about the sixth sense, it had always been this elusive, annoying deus ex machina from cheap stories. But this, this had to be something like it. There were no sounds or even any semblance of spoken sentences, and he had trouble distinguishing with what were his emotions and those that belonged to the creature.
He breathed in slowly and deliberately, trying to place this experience into his previously dull life.
Facing a strangely xenomorphic entity that attempted to communicate with him through emotions, stuck on a rotting planet while Marines without insignia walked around trying to kill him ... more? This was her gift of information, there were many more and they all lacked the signs. She had seen Jonah's companions too and noticed they did have signs ... the others didn't.
Her thoughts gradually wove together with his until he could see her memories as if they were his own. The emulation of minds only clarified a few things though. The fear and confusion was his, the sight hers, as was the loneliness.
The wish to kill the murderers, he wasn't sure about that. But he had to go save his companions.
"Do you want to come with me?" he asked.
She did.
"We need help and you won't be lonely if you come with me." he continued muttering.
She needed to answer a second time before he understood, wordlessly relaying that she wanted to follow. Going home. She knew that too.
This planet wasn't home, never had been, even though she had never known home either.
· · · · · · ·
This was not exactly comfortable. Seated on her skeletal back was quite a challenge on its own, he could easily fall off with what little he saw and his freezing limbs really didn't help.
She didn't like the cold either and she absolutely hated the darkness. Off course she could still 'see' in it, but she liked using her real eyes, even if they weren't very sharp. Just like his. Jonah couldn't help but wonder whether this was why she had taken a liking to him. Simple identification can bring companionship very far, though were it goes never is a certainty.
Now they were going somewhere warm, she had promised. It made him smile at first, but then the images came. A form of sight neither consisting of colors, nor sound, until his brain added this to the vision.
It wasn't just warmth, it was fire. The ship on which he had arrived was burning, bodies were inside, pipes exploding, enemies leaving it behind ...
They had done it. Those people, who ever they were, they had killed them. He hadn't known them well at all, but they hadn't deserved this, they'd been his companions ... the enemy would kill him too.
In tandem with the rise of his hatred, she added hers. He hated them, so she hated them.
Would he like to go and kill them? She had killed all the nasty black brood once. These would be easier.
Yes, he would like that. He hadn't considered murder ever before, but she made it seem so easy. It was a matter of survival after all. But he didn't like gore. Maybe just leave them to suffocate?
But if they pursued them, then they couldn't go to the warmness.
It didn't matter, he let her know. That fire would go out eventually, but if they went off this planet, they could find more warmth than anything here. They would use those people.
Her instincts dulled his moral objections, his logic overpowered her simple desires and so they became a slave to each other.
The monster changed direction to the vessel in which the enemy had arrived.
It didn't take too long before Jonah stepped off onto a higher boulder, peering out just over the mist. His new friend went ahead and soon the screaming started while he calmly sat down with crossed legs.
The air was too moist for the flame throwers and the gasses made it too dangerous. They couldn't see in the fog and she was too cold for thermal vision, yet lacked the electromagnetic field that the normal Internecivus Raptus already had little of. These little facts pleasingly mused through Jonah's head, and he used them to direct her how she ought to fight. It was like a video game and he had the remote control.
Her rage and power was so fascinating, death didn't look very scary like this. Here a missing limb, there a head torn off ... and he was safe here. Survival! How much more ... satisfying in real life.
Whenever she needed it, he responded by offering her a new strategy to trick the men. He was dimly aware of the man who tried to sneak up on him, but it didn't worry him.
"~ I'm insane. ~" he thought when observing his detached attitude. Turning his head slowly, he saw his enemy's weak spot. Not alert, opening from below ... with the sudden speed of adrenaline and an unfamiliar instinct, he had leaped up and forced the soldier's riffle upward. They both fell off the slippery boulders.
Jonah ignored a punch to the face and brought his hands to the soldier's face, pulling off the oxygen mask and forcing him under water.
This was self defense, right? He had to kill to survive. It was good. All that mattered was the safety of the family.
What family?
With a sudden inhale, he pulled back.
The soldier struggled up, Jonah now saw he'd already been injured by his friend. No wonder he had gotten the advantage.
The riffle ... there. He lunged for it and aimed, but didn't shoot. The adrenaline that had seemed so helpful just moments before now sent his heart racing almost painfully.
He had allowed her instincts to control him too much.
"~ We need them alive! We need them to fly off away with us! ~" The thoughts raced through his head, but she only caught slowly onto their complicated meaning.
She kept killing, but by the time she arrived at Jonah's side with a stream of acid behind her, she obliged to his will.
"~ We need tactic too ... ~"
Pointing the riffle at the trooper, he said dryly said :"You are the last human aside of me on this planet. I'm the one with the weapon. I am the one with the alien friend. You have two options, I am sure you can guess either."
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The vessel's hatch opened to the docks of a nameless ship in orbit.
A man in a mud covered jacket stepped onto the dock, wearing an Enigma oxygen tank. At his side walked something akin to an Internecivus Raptus queen, yet with eerie human traits that pushed the creature into the uncanny valley to all those who beheld her : where the jaws of a queen would be was a sad skull-like face, half hidden under the corona. Translucent skin covered the entire being, rendering it a sickly white in contrast to the black it should have been.
The marines weren't certain whether they would have preferred the familiar rampaging queen or this quiet, haunting being. They didn't understand either why she — and they — didn't attack.
Not until one of the androids made a move did they get the idea to move, but here the human queen shot forward and destroyed the android, only to return to her docile moaning just as quick.
The humans still stood there, and they ignored the words of the ship that commanded them to act.
One by one, those who responded to their confusion by upwelling rage dropped to the ground and cringed, clutching invisible wounds and screaming. Those who surrendered to the fear froze, but only a few understood the power at work. It was the power they have come to claim, and it had come to them ... it had become matured and ready to be used, and in enemy hands.
Jonah noted this information with casual interest and didn't dwell on it. Evil scientists, what else was new? In a stoic trance, he made his way through the ship and harvested thoughts until he reached the control chambers.
Here the general and his subordinates suffered from the visions too, while Jonah was spared of them in the mental embrace of the chimera. He only experienced her massive presence, clinging to the little stability he offered; the experience of her murders she instead shared with the soldiers of this ship.
Telepathy, empathy, clairvoyance, they were powerful yet once you had them, amazingly mundane. It was difficult though, like solving maths had been in his childhood. He wanted to control the ship so they could leave, he needed them to obey because he lacked the knowledge to control the ship ...
Enigma? Yes, that's what this place belonged to. He watched the men on the ground cringe as he tried to break into their minds without getting caught in the visions, and then he wondered why he didn't care for their pain. Even if he wanted it for them, he had never been able to watch something suffer ... why now?
Enigma ... they had to leave.
Any sense of urgency or compassion was drowned by the chimera : she only rejoiced in the warmth that she had always needed.
New experiences, and best of all, she had found her parent. She was born to follow her parent. The parent hadn't been there.
He hated these humans. She agreed.
He thought these humans were dangerous. She agreed.
He thought they had to leave. She agreed.
He thought she had to continue locking these people in fear, except the ones they needed to leave. She agreed.
He thought she had to hurt them if they thought of hurting either of them. She very agreed.
Today had been a good day for her. Many new things. Joy and hate. Good to be so alive.
And now, they were going to leave the cold.
Father was going to do it.
· · · · · · ·
The fires of the salvage ship soon ceased burning and life on Terra Mirror continued dying. The planet became empty again, like it had been before the humans had come.
The ship in orbit that carried no name left.
But before perfect silence would step in, another ship would land, not too long after the departure of the nationless queen. It came merely to pick up the remains of the missing soldiers and the people that died in an accident trying to get their remains.
No one officially reported the strange sight they found near an inexplicable crater. They had found the shell of a praetorian in the process of becoming a queen, but it had burst open from the inside. They took it along off record, and that was that.
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Author's Note : fixed up as of 2010-04-15.
