Cartlidge: Rise of the Imperfect Flame

by Devon Loos

  “Well, jumps are complicated things. To put it simply, a stream of data is shot thousands of times the speed of light through a wormhole to our destination. When it lands, the stream rips a visible hole in the fabric of space, which allows the whole ship to travel as if it were completely weightless. So when we jump, we travel faster than light through subspace. The jump isn’t instant, though, so it’ll be another hour before we reach the A81 system.”

  “Huh?”

  “Captain on deck!” Tolenva shouted. My whole squad woke and stood at attention. The captain and his quartermaster stood behind us.

  “At ease.” The captain seemed to be a calm, social man, but the quartermaster gave off an uncomfortable air of a strict attitude. “I’m just giving the new quartermaster a tour of the ship.” He turned to him. “This is squad four: the rookie squad.”

  “Rookie squad?”

  Tolenva stood at attention in front of the quartermaster. “Sir, don’t let the name fool you, we will work equally as efficient as any other squad.”

  “Kiss-up” Zen whispered. Tolenva turned his eyes and glared at us.

  “Well, I honestly doubt that… but it’s good to know you’re up to the task.”

  “So you’re the human on my crew list. Cartlidge, was it? How has working with ‘a bunch of aliens’ been treating you?” I turned to the captain.

  “Um, yes sir. It has been rather unusual, sir.” I started to feel uncomfortable.

  “Ah. Don’t worry. I’ve known a few humans in my service. Good people. If you have any problems with anyone come to me.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you sir.” They walked past us, towards the end of the ship.

  “Get your soldiers ready, commander. We’ll be exiting the jump soon.

  “Sir, yes sir.” We cleaned our cabin, readied our equipment, and retreated to our individual sections. By the time the announcement was made, we were already ready for the jump exit.

  Just like the jump startup, the ship began to shake violently. The shaking soon changed, however, to a strong, vibrating sensation. It seemed as if every atom of the ship, including those within myself, was visibly shuffling back and forth. The movement gradually settled, until the ship ran smoothly again. I moved to free myself from my restraints.

  “Hold, soldiers. It isn’t over yet.” A buzzing, electrical sound slowly began to play, until it reached a near deafening sound. Instantly the ship jerked forward, causing the free parts of my body to thrash forward. My hand instinctively went to my neck as if simply feeling it would determine if it was broken. It felt like a car crash. I massaged the back of my neck, then released myself from my restraint.

  “And that, team, is what a jump is like.” Tek, who had already freed himself from his restraints, proceeded to curse Tolenva, and the rest of the squad laughed in reply.

  Tolenva began to speak while we prepared our equipment.

  “As I told you earlier, we are looking for an unknown item somewhere in this star system. This moon is our first target. We will spend a week here, then move on to the next celestial body. Best case scenario, we find it today. Worst case, we spend the next ten weeks here.” I looked out the window. We were orbiting a small, green moon over a blue gas giant.

  “How will we know when we’ve found it?” I asked. The squad only laughed in reply.

  “If it’s shiny and covered in strange runes, just come find us, ok?” Zen replied.

  Tolenva pulled out a map. “Squad one will be stationed here. Squad two and three will be here and here. Squad five is furthest to the south. Six, seven, eight, and nine will be deployed on the other side of the moon. We will be here: in the center of this forest. Our first objective will be to secure the area and set up camp. Then we will each take shifts maintaining the camp, resting, and scouting for the target. Each shift will be in groups of two. Nobody wanders off. Understand?”

  “Yes sir.” Three of us replied. I put on my helmet.

  We finished preparing and gathered with the other squads in the hangars. Four squads would be deployed first, followed by the other five. Ours was one of the four. A small beeping sound echoed through the hangar, counting down the launch. Immediately they were drowned out by the roar of the drop ship’s engines. The ship’s lights came on, the door was sealed tight, the hanger was depressurized, and its airlock opened wide. A final noise signaled the launch, and the ship raced off the rack it once hung upon. The ship dived towards the moon, shaking as it contended with the heat of re-entry. We all watched nervously as dancing flames covered the forward viewing screen. The flames gradually turned to clouds, until a beautiful view of the moon was revealed to us. A horizon of evergreen trees covered the ground, and several birdlike creatures flew through the blue sky in the distance. It seemed as if we were visiting a boreal forest in Canada. The only stark contrast was the great sphere that covered a quarter of the sky.

  We touched down on a clearing at the top of a hill, the first squad to be dropped off. We unloaded our supplies for a few minutes before the ship took off again. A week’s worth of food was packed into a large crate, along with tents, medical supplies, and extra magazines for our weapons. Our camp was ready in minutes. I took a moment to look around. One side of the hill was a drawn-out slope, while the other was a steep ridge. The top itself was flat. Trees surrounded the base of the hill on all sides. Tek and Zen were checking the outer patrol to the south for anything hazardous. Tolenva and I checked the north. Seb and Rockwall remained at camp to finish setting things up.

  “Each shift will be two hours each, on the dot.” He reminded me as we walked. “We’ll have to make sure to budget our time so that we get back to the camp on time.”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You kind of have an obsession with doing everything by the book.” I immediately figured I would regret saying that. He only sighed.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot.”

  “Is… that why you joined the military?”

  “Not exactly. My father was a general. He raised me to do everything this way.” He began to laugh. “I hated him for it, you know, but look at me now.”

  “I never really knew my dad.” The words tumbled out of my mouth. There was an awkward silence.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He finally responded.

  “It’s alright. He’s sorta the reason I’m here too.” A slight smile spread across my face.

  “Well,” he opened his canteen, “to the mission and to our fathers. May it be successful and may they be proud.”

  “Commander!” A voice came over the communicator. Tolenva put away his canteen and opened his communicator.

  “Recon two, this is recon one. Out.”

  “We’re back at the camp. You’re going to want to get back here, too.”

  “Understood. End comms.” He closed his communicator. We both began to run back.

  Our path back took us up the northern side of the hill. Gunshots could be heard from the top. I looked over the steep side of the hill once we reached the camp. Several quadrupedal figures darted into the woods on the far side of the clearing.

  “A pack of… something… was stalking us during our scouting run.” Zen explained. “They followed us all the way back here until we scared them off.”

  Frustrated, Tolenva swore. “Why would you lead them to our camp?”

  “Where were we supposed to go?”

  “Relax guys.” Seb interrupted. “We scared them off with our rifles. They don’t have a reason to come back.”

  “Oh, I think they do have a reason.” Rockwall walked over, carrying an object. The object was an egg. We followed him to where he found the egg. Over the edge of the cliffside was a small cavern, home to dozens of large pale-green eggs. This hill was their breeding ground.

  “We take shifts. One person sleeps while the rest of us keep watch. We stay vigilant, they won’t come near.”

  “Can’t we just move?” Zen asked.

 
“There’s no time.” Tolenva countered. I looked at the sky. He was right. We were moving around the gas giant, which meant that we would have no light for some time. We had to stay here.

  “Wolves will take down a bear when they are threatened, or starving.”

  “What?”

  “Wolves: pack animals from Earth. Bears are solitary animals ten times their size. Wolves surround their target, attacking systematically. No individual wolf is in danger, because the bear cannot fight them all at once.”

  “Are we the wolves or the bears?” Tek asked. I glared at him. It was a curious thought, that something so strong and powerful could be so vulnerable.

  Night fell quickly. Lanterns bordered the edges of the forests. A great bonfire towered at the center of the camp. The entire area was illuminated. They couldn’t take us by surprise. Seb had the first break from watch, followed by Tek. I was the third, and Zen the fourth. Tolenva was next, but he refused, so Rockwall took his place. Straining to see in the dim light began to take its toll on my eyes, so I donned my helmet and switched the night vision on. Figures darted left and right at the edge of the trees. I continued to watch them. They ran like mammals, but their shape was odd. Occasionally they would dart out of the trees, running past the lanterns. They looked like abominations from some horror movie. Four, thin, spiked legs carried them around, leaving sharp claw marks in the ground as it passed. Their bodies were segmented, like insects, but their backs were covered in a thick, black, fur. A large, serrated beak took up most of the front and top of their heads, leaving only the sides for their two eyes, similar to some sharks back on Earth. Four smaller mandibles surrounded the large beak. As they darted by the lanterns they knocked them over, causing them to break and go dark. I pulled off my helmet and signaled this to the rest of my squad.

  “Night vision soldiers, things are about to get interesting! Seb, go wake up Rockwall.” I put my helmet back on and scouted the area. The creatures were slowly advancing, their eyes shining in the glow of the night vision. They did not know that we could see them. Our best opportunity was now, while they were still distant. I kneeled down and aimed my rifle. Instantly the window kicked in, painting the pack as hostile targets. Red dots gradually covered the screen. There were dozens of them. A gunshot rang out from behind me. Like gunpowder ignited by a spark, the pack rushed towards us rapidly. Deep, hissing noises filled the air. I panicked, and began firing my rifle in three round bursts. The rife grew hot. I was missing most of my shots. The creatures now climbed the hill. I was the farthest down the hill, but I did not think to move back. I was too focused on the swarm. It was like trying to stop a flood. They surrounded me as I shot them down. Many of them shot past me. One of the creatures pounced on me, knocking me to the ground. The creature bit down on my helmet with its beak, its mandibles pecking at my visor. The window glitched for a second each time it hit. Without thinking, I pulled my knife and drove it into the animal’s neck. It let out a gurgling cry as a black liquid streamed onto my helmet. The memory of the drunken man slowly filled my mind. I forced it away by throwing the body of the creature off of me, drawing my pistol, and firing at another creature near-by.

  I jumped to my feet, grabbed my rifle, and continued against the attack. They refused to turn back, even as many of them dropped in the thick rifle fire. My thoughts focused on little else but survival. I did not know how many magazines I burned through. The bodies began to pile up. There were only four or five of them left when they finally retreated back down the hillside. Several of us collapsed from exhaustion. I looked back just in time to see Rockwall sneak off. Slowly, I returned to my feet and slipped away to follow.

  Rockwall stood just out of the cavern, several thick blankets in hand. He carefully crawled in, then covered the patches of eggs with the blankets.

  “I know you’re there, Jacob.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “These eggs will die without some warmth.” He adjusted the eggs so that they were all covered. “Those creatures were vicious, but they were only trying to protect their young.”

  “I didn’t think you were one to care.”

  “Most never do.” He climbed out and sighed. “Everyone sees me as the big quiet guy who can kill anything he wants. Most of the time I just let ‘em believe that, but… I’m not one for unnecessary killing.”

  I pulled off my helmet. “I understand, and, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Thank you.” He climbed back up to the camp. I sat there for awhile, looking at the stars. There were no other incidents that night.

  The next morning we started our standard patrol. For two days we found nothing. The mission almost seemed boring. To kill time I focused on learning about the rest of my squad. Everyone had a story. Everyone had a reason to join. Seb became a medic because his sister died in a crash. No one nearby had the training to save her. Tek was bullied as a child for being weak. The constant harassment forced him learn the art of stealth to get through his day. Supposedly he learned how to find a decent hiding spot in any situation in a maximum of four seconds. This turned him to the cool, silent killer he was today. Zen wanted to prove himself to his disappointed parents, who believed that he would never amount to anything like his more successful brothers had. Fighting and repairing equipment was the only thing Rockwall was ever good at. He hated it, but knew that the military would be a good place to prove to future employers that he could work efficiently. I told them my own story. We were all here because there was nowhere else for us to go. We all grew to respect each other that day. We were brothers in arms. We were a team.

  The fourth night fell upon us quickly. Nothing seemed willing to bother us after the incident with the pack of creatures, so Tolenva loosened up on his strict night watch. I shifted around in my tent, trying to sleep. For a time, I slept soundly.

  [Chapter 10: Sapphire]

  Something grew restless in me and I abandoned the idea of sleep. I lazily left my tent to stand on the ridge and gaze at the sky. The night sky of this foreign moon was familiar to Earth’s, yet so very different. The nearby gas giant filled me with the sense of a dream world, yet I stood in a reality I still had yet to fully settle into. The stars looked the same at first, but the constellations were entirely different. I continued a search for any familiar group of stars when one of the stars began to shine intensely. Focusing on the strange star clarified that the light was not a star at all but rather some sort of burning object entering the atmosphere of the moon. The object turned sharply and crashed in the forest with a large explosive echo. The rest of my team was probably awake by now but I wasn’t sure; I was already down the steep slope running towards the object.

  There was no smoke, much to my surprise and frustration, so I ran in the direction I anticipated to be the object’s landing point. The evergreens I ran by were almost identical to the ones on earth, only the bristles were softer here, as I did not suffer a single scratch when my face brushed against the branches. I finally came up on a waterfall leading into a large chasm. The chasm’s waterfall created a small pond at the bottom, just before trailing off again into a cave on the other side. My eyes scanned the chasm walls where a scar in the ledge of the wall pinpointed the object’s trajectory. I followed it to the location of the object, which sat in a crater at the center of the mist filled chasm. The entire chasm was filled with a thick cloud of mist. Some sort of coolant was leaking from the object, onto red hot pieces of metal, and into the water creating a sea of steam and fog.

  I looked closer at the object. About what I would guess would be 150 meters away, sat a large metal pod. The pod was silver, charred black and brown from the crash. An ancient form of the Rovanekren language covered every inch of the octagonal pod. Both ends narrowed down into rectangular bottlenecks. On one end large triangular pyramids protruded from four of the eight sides. I figured they were engine thrusters of some sort. The other end extended for about another two feet before ending with an open hatch. A detached metallic door bobbed a few
feet from the hatch opening.

  The pod was open! Whatever was inside was alive and moving. I reached for my rifle. It was missing. The image of the rifle lying in my tent popped into my head, sowing a seed of panic. I hurriedly searched myself for anything that could be used to defend an attack and settled on a small shock knife from the back of my belt. The faint blue aura covering the blade brought little comfort since the pod may likely have delivered something twice my size. I scanned the chasm for movement. Nothing. I considered going down to search, but decided against it since that would likely be a death sentence.

  Something moved slightly under me. My eyes snapped to the location of a large tree hanging halfway to the bottom of the chasm. I figured it was just close enough to penetrate the steam cloud and proceeded to slide down to the tree. As I landed the tree shivered for a moment in protest of the extra weight. Scanning the area again, I still found nothing.

  Adjusting my position on the tree brought the pond into view. I looked closer. Just under the waterfall stood a thin figure, limbs raised. They were arms… straining, hair. It was a woman washing in the waterfall. It took only another moment to realize she was completely naked. I forced myself not to stare, moved to put away my now pointless knife, and awkwardly reached for my communicator. A crackling noise rang out from under me. I looked back at the figure who was now searching around. She must have heard it too. A wave of horror struck me. I looked down at the branch I was on and then moved to leap upward to reach for safety. CRACK! Too late. Downwards I fell into the pool below. The water was deeper than I expected and shockingly cool compared to the heat of the night. I quickly reached the surface for air. There was a stray rock formation underneath the water that served as a support so I did not have to swim. I opened my eyes to find the woman only a few feet away. She screamed and my eyes shut against my will. I fell backwards into the pool, and landed on another shallow area. As I rose, a sharp pain flushed down the left side of my face. I opened my right eye but kept my left shut. My hand instinctively made its way to the area. A warm liquid covered the spot. Blood. She scratched me. Three deep claw marks decorated my left eye. I slowly opened the injured eye. Complete eyesight brought about a sigh of relief. The woman was hiding behind a rock on the other side of the pool.