End Boss

by Bryan Nyaude

  “Stop thinking for a second and focus.”

  I still had to get out of this hole, somehow, and get back to the others. I sighed out loudly, inhaling small breaths of air to conserve my energy. I was about to attempt something that required focus and physical endurance.

  “DX300, can you switch all of the power output and concentrate it into the gravity repelling system?”

  I slowly moved around, while observing my surroundings carefully. There wasn’t much to latch on, so a high charged jump, using compressed thrusters, was my only option.

  “Switching power to the dorsal command system, suit equilibrium balance has been off set for the next 30 seconds. Nuclear core reactor destabilizing at critical levels in t-minus 44 hours.”

  Bending slightly, I amassed enough leg strength that my body could produce, and jumped up as high as I could. Combined with the increased power supply in my armor, I was able to leap even much greater than I anticipated. But was it going to be enough? I felt myself ascend up into the air at intense speed at first, but I slowly began to lose momentum—it was still not enough.

  “Please let me make it!”

  Judging by how the size of this hole, it looked like this attempt was going to fail. However, by some fortunate coincident or luck, I was almost there to the top. All of a sudden, I stopped accelerating and began to drop again into the dark abyss. I struggled trying to grab onto the wall close to me, but the surfaces were too flat. No! I was so close to getting out, I needed more thrust.

  “Darn! I wish I could just fly out of here,” I screamed out of despair, from the top of my lungs, to anyone who would hear.

  “Voice command recognized,” a very unfamiliar cold voice echoed through my armor. “Flight system activated in t-minus 5 4 3 2 1.”

  What the! I stopped falling from the sky and just began to hover up in the air. I slowly looked down and felt chills creep up my spine, as I was this close to smashing face first into the ground. Phew! All this intense activity was really going to give me a heart attack, if I wasn’t careful. Still, I didn’t realize whose voice that was, and how I had stopped falling. The better question was how had I survived a laser beam blast to the body, or survived that fall to the bottom of this hole? I didn’t even have a lot of scratches, which was another mystery to add into my book of questions.

  “DX300, can you analyze and tell me whose voice that was?”

  I was curious as to whom that voice belonged to; I also wanted to thank that person for saving my life. I looked closely in my surrounding and saw no one around me. The whole area was silent, leaving only me to my thoughts.

  “No data, voice not recognized,” my AI system began speaking in a brute manner. “Glitch in the system, glitch in the system. Commencing viral scanning, process will take a few hours.”

  “I see!”

  It stopped speaking and went off line. No! I was now alone with no one to talk to. Suddenly, I felt vibrations throughout my armor suit. Glitch! What did it mean by that? Had that voice somehow introduced a virus into my main suit program, and corrupted my AI in the process? Hmm! It was really strange, but at this point in my journey, nothing could surprise me anymore. I hovered for a little while, speculating arguable theories on how the suit’s wing system worked. My hypothesis was that it was voice activated and obeyed only certain commands the user spoke.

  “Fly up,” I yelled, trying to make sure it heard my command.

  Strangely, nothing happened—I was expecting some kind of reaction or something, but for reasons unknown, it didn’t work. I kept at it for 10 minutes, shouting many voice commands and yet nothing was happening. As I was about to finally give up, I raised my hands to yawn and suddenly was lifted up high by some immense force. The wings on the suit had begun to flap up and down, tremendously, creating a vacuum of wind beneath my feet.

  Whoa! I was flying vertically and it felt weird, and great as the wind hit my visor constantly with a fresh breeze of air. Before I even realized it, I was out of the hole, and I couldn’t help, but feel a bit of relief. I put my hands down and the wings stopped flapping without warning, causing me to fall below. I quickly raised my hands up again, and they started flapping, sending me soaring into the sky. I guess I was wrong about the wings being voice activated. I wonder what else I was wrong about.

  This armor was truly something else, no other suit had flapping wings for flight. Well, technically, this was actually my first battle armor, so my assumption was limited. Although ancient, in some way, it was better than the latest models. I stopped admiring my armor for a while and began to focus on the important stuff. Now that I was out, I clearly had no idea what to do first. From the corner of my eye, I caught a tiny glimpse of light below me. It was very small; however, it was a start in my search to reunite with my crew. The ground was still blue, although it showed some disturbance and signs of destruction, as if a massive struggle had taken place. I could only hope the terror beasts were not in that area, considering the fact that my armor’s weapon system were not working. The scanners, in my headgear, told me that there was a very high heat substance in the area, which I felt was worth investigating. As I dropped my hands down, I began to descend slowly while the armor calculated the coordinates of the object.

  Wait! I remembered this area from before; it was the area we had been assigned to study by our superiors. From above, it looked ordinary, but my coordinates about the location were precise. If I was to guess, this was exactly where the satellite scanners had detected some abnormal masses of energy. But where were the others? We were supposed to stay in that area for at least 10 hours and completely go over all of our data. There were no energy shields, and no force field tents in the vicinity. I checked my inboard monitor, which told me that barely six hours had passed since we had crash landed on Erzat. So what did this all mean? These linear specific sets of events were not correlating to our original plans at all. I looked down, beneath me, for anything out of the ordinary to serve as my first clue as to what might have occurred.

  The area looked completely vacant, with no trace of residual life force at all. If they were not here, then were they done? My sensory scanners were not picking up any human thermal or armor signatures anywhere.

  Darn! Had they left without me already? I landed quietly down on the ground, and began a survey of the area, by releasing a small cube drone linked to my com link. It flew up into the area and searched the surrounding area within a 500 meter radius. But why had my crew left?

  Just how long had I been in that hole for? Were the time readings in my scanners offset somehow by the fall? Had something happened to them, while I was out cold? I soon realized my investigations were bringing out more questions than answers. Clearly, not a good start for me. The area around me smelled terrible with the scent of sulfur and particle beam gun powder. The ground was full of terror beasts footprints—by my estimate, there were sixty to eighty of them. From what I observed, on the ground, I could tell that a huge fight had taken place, and it seemed almost one sided. With our weapons being unable to harm these terror beasts, this battle was theirs for the taking. “This is new!”

  Scattered in the debris, there were new fresh tracks on the ground that didn’t belong to any of our hover ships. They looked like mobile armor vehicle units used in the great salvage war, 500 years ago. I recognized the imprints from the history journals I read as a child. But what did this mean? There were no signs of the terror beasts anywhere or the people responsible for the new tracks. Just what on earth was going on here? My drone signaled me, as it had picked up something and I headed towards it. Strange! My crew had left their hover ships behind and deserted this place. That didn’t make any sense at all. Why would they do that? Hmm! I thought about it for a second while in a stationary position. Wait! Could someone have come to rescue them or were they kidnapped.

  “Maybe! Nah! There couldn’t be another team on this planet, could there?”

  I mean, the terror beasts only destroyed everything and were not
smart enough to start kidnapping people, were they? Darn! So many questions and with no answer to these puzzling questions. I quickly and cautiously made my way through the debris and rubble surrounding the area, headed towards our small ships. The area was completely silent, a little too quiet for my taste. There was a slight grey bluish color in the sky, which completely fascinated me for a second. Normally, I would want to explain this sudden change of climate, but for now it wasn’t important. I approached one hover ship and boarded it, searching for a clue as to what had happened. I wasn’t surprised to find no one inside it, or that the ship was still on. Yes! There was a download system, inserted in every ship, which housed the main video system. This system was always operational with over 800000 terabytes in each unit. I opened the arm deck in my suit, containing the screen link cord, and inserted the cord slowly into the ship's main frame system.

  “Access video from the last data bank,” I said to the hover ship’s AI system. “Accessing through Squad Officer Den Atmas, command 000225.”

  Nothing happened at first, but then I heard a voice reply, “command accepted, and accessing ship analog database.”

  The entire system logs began to display on my head gear system, as I went through all the data quickly. Oh no! I had been in that hole for more than 25 hours—based on the day and time. Well, that explained a lot, but as for my other questions, that was still a mystery. I typed in some more instructions, allowing me more access into the secured video systems. The videos systems pulled out one of the files dating back to 25 hours ago, revealing every important information I desired. I couldn’t stop my eyes from wondering around all over the screens as I tried to careful look through every last piece of detail. It looked like they were outmatched by the superior numbers of the terror beasts.

  “Contact headquarters and tell them to bring reinforcement,” the captain ordered as weapon systems were being fired all over the place.

  Explosions, mixed in with screams, jolted me back as I began to fear the worst. The number of terror beasts kept growing even bigger, and soon, they were being overrun. The blue creatures attacked ferociously at everyone without mercy.

  One of the men said, “Captain, our com links systems have been jammed, we have no way of contacting HQ anymore.”

  “What,” the captain sounded surprised, his voice felt shaken for some unknown reason. “This is impossible it couldn’t be.”

  “Captain, look up there,” another voice screamed out loud. “Something is approaching really fast.”

  The video system in the ship began to become static as it went on and off without warning. “What is that?” the lieutenant roared through the gun fire.

  There was a strange noise sort of like a horn. I saw the terror become motionless. Unexpectedly, they retreated back to the forest, as a huge ship landed close to the crew. No! The video system went off after that before I could even find out what happened to everyone. What was happening now? This certainly wasn’t the ship we had come on this planet with, but actually another. Without any warning, I felt a jolt of pain travel through my entire body so fast I couldn’t comprehend it. It felt like an inflammation, like my entire body’s mast cells had all been activated and were releasing histamine at the same time. As I tried to get a hold of myself, the pain went through to my head and I fell on the floor, in agonizing pain. Now what? Was my body now reacting to something else in this ship? I felt an unnerving and gruesome pain the moment I tried to move my injured shoulder. But why was I starting to feel this pain now?

  Darn it! What was I to do now?

  Wait! There was an emergency kit system in every hover ship, so I scanned around for it with my eyes. I located it and slowly crept towards it, using the last ounce of energy in my body. My strength was failing me really fast, and my legs had already gone numb. I didn’t know why this was happening to me, but it was probably safe to assume that if I didn’t do something about it soon, bad things would happen. Once I reached the emergency kit system, the hull door opened automatically and I crawled in slowly, trying to endure the pain. The pain was unbearable, it was the worst feeling I had ever felt in all my life.

  “Crap! You have got to be kidding me.”

  Another problem emerged, completely irritating me. I had to type in the treatment I wanted, in order for the neon alpha particles to be released inside the compartment. Darn! My strength had deserted me, and I no longer had any energy to get up and type in the instructions as I slowly started losing consciousness. No! This wasn’t going to be my ending. I had not come all this way to die like this. With the last remaining willpower, I summoned enough strength into my right arm, and clicked on a button before collapsing down. The temperature in the room fell below room temperature, as the neon particles started filling up inside the entire compartment. They glowed like fire flies across the room, almost as elegant as butterflies on a sunny day. If I wasn’t delusional, I could’ve sworn they looked like they were alive. The pain began to slowly recede, my strength returning, as I held dearly onto my remaining ounce of willpower.

  Rose!

  Why was I thinking of her at a time like this? Four years had passed since I last saw her. Was I ever going to see her again? I was ashamed to admit this, but I have no clue what her last words to me were. She told me where she was going; however, at that moment, my mind seemed occupied with something else. The moment I realized she was gone, I decided to go after her, however, something bad appeared to prevent this. It was the terror beasts. Darn those terror beasts. They ruined my life completely—it was because of them I had stopped looking for her, got separated from the rest of my family, and lastly, they had stopped me from getting my PhD.

  Man! All those brutal hours I had spent studying at the academy, the long essays and tests I had endured and taken for 4 and a half years, were all for nothing. I had been a semester away from my PhD. I guess all of that effort was in vain.

  No! Why couldn’t I have gone to the beach with my friends? Why didn’t I have fun when I had the chance? Rabbits! The anger inside me was strong enough to get me back on my feet somehow. The pain I felt before was starting to ease up, as I regained a portion of my sanity back. Strange! I felt different for some unknown reason. It felt like I had taken an extraordinary amount of energy boosting pills. Just what was this amazing feeling I felt? Oh no! I glanced on the com screen, to see what I had typed in, and saw that I had accidentally released the maximum dose of neon alpha particles. This amount of neon particle release was enough to heal more than 15 people, ten times over, and it looked like my body had absorbed most of the particles. I became scared at what would happen next, considering how lethal a huge dosage of the particles could be on the body and mind. “Oh well!”

  There was nothing I could do about this incident so I put the matter aside. But still, one thing bothered me more than anything else. What had become of my crew? The com link was still static, meaning I couldn’t contact the reserve crew at the main ship and warn them. Whatever was on this planet with us, had the power to control the terror beasts completely, which was definitely a frightening thought. Perhaps something on this planet was connected to the appearance of the creatures to our planet. Slowly, I sighed and thought to myself on what to do next. Hmm! If they knew how to find our scout units in these thick, blue jungles, then they certainly knew how to find our main ship. Crap! This meant the rest of my crew was in danger unless I warned them somehow.

  Without the com link system, there was no way to contact them, and if I signaled them using rocket guided flash canisters, I could attract terror beasts to my location. What a terrible dilemma I was in. But if I could navigate this ship back to the main ship coordinates, I could tell them in person. The sun was starting to fade faintly into the horizon, giving me the ultimate cover through the treacherous forest. Suddenly, the ship scanners began to blink loudly—there was an unknown energy anomaly close by. So it meant they hadn’t investigated the mysterious energy signal yet. My options seemed limited.

  Aah
h! I wish I knew what to do next, because this was getting complicated. I couldn’t just leave this place and throw away the efforts of those who had sacrificed their lives to get here. On second thought, I could leave and come back with reinforcements to investigate this mystery. No! If I came back with reinforcements, there was a possibility I would sacrifice more lives. So it was up to me to investigate the strange energy signal. I got up and went to the ship’s weaponry dock that was in the next compartment. Inside, there was a vast array of solar based weapons and new model armor, all stacked in an organized manner. I approached one suit and stripped off its power supply battery to replace my old one. Since I no longer required oxygen tanks to breathe on this planet, I didn’t bother taking them with me. I also grabbed a javelin bazooka and a lance beam dagger, just as a safety precaution. As I exited the small ship, I activated the new installed scanner system with the coordinates of the energy into my suit’s system. The sun was almost gone, leaving a slightly attractive and warming glimmer across the sky. I couldn’t hear or detect any terror beasts in the surroundings. The area looked peaceful; nothing seemed out of the ordinary, for the most part. I looked one last time around to see if it was safe, before taking off into the air, heading towards the unknown energy signal. The ascension into the sky was constant, barely lifting me up at vertical acceleration, flying just about 100 meters in the air. The calm, fresh breeze felt good as I could feel and breathe it gently. With this new modified battery, my armor suit’s sluggish movements ceased completely. Suddenly my scanners began to blink intensely, revealing a high surge of energy power. The signal got even stronger, the closer I moved towards the source of the energy.