by Bryan Nyaude
The weaponry systems were now ready to use which was good. I opened the hatch, on top of the ship, and positioned myself at the hover ship’s main gun system. Even though, I had never used it before, I had a good idea of how it worked. The 40 feet magnum cannon rifle was a weapon strong enough to display level 5 catastrophic destruction; this type of power could eradicate half a city upon impact. I slowly readjusted my weight and lined the gun’s large 400x scope with the velocity and speed of the creature. The gun’s 15 meter barrel gave me an edge in accuracy, which I needed considering how far up the creature was. My hands slowly toyed with the trigger safeties as an intense desire to attack first tempted me.
“Don’t rush it.”
The destructive and irrational desire to be aggressive was irresistible; however, I overcame it. An absurd move was the last thing I wanted to do in this type of situation. I slowly recoiled the first big shell into the gun and locked onto the creature’s position. Strangely, the creature stopped moving, as it hovered up in the air, with its mouth open. Well, I certainly didn’t have a problem with that as long as I could hit it while it was still stationary.
“Wait a minute.”
I felt an odd feeling in my stomach, like something bad was about to happen again. The way its jaws were open so widely and how its once ferocious wild moves had became motionless. What was it plotting? The look in its eyes spelled despair and danger for me, unless I took action. I took aim at it and fired the first shell, as the ship automatically loaded the second one. I watched as the shell accelerated towards the monster with my teeth clenched. The monster took a direct hit and it growled loudly from the pain, but remained motionless. The shell exploded, causing small black ash smoke to erupt around the creature. The dark vapors cleared after a few seconds, revealing a large massive creature behind them.
No! There wasn’t any damage on its exterior, but it certainly sounded like I had injured it somehow. With the way the ship kept moving, it was very hard to get an accurate shot at the creature’s head. The best I could do, at that time, was at least cripple it enough to let me escape it and return to the main ship. This was bizarre; the beast was slightly in the same position as before with its jaw even wider like it was ready to puke something. Wait! What if it was trying to! Before I could even finish speaking, a strange beam of light shot out of its mouth, aimed in my direction. It was so big and fast, that there was no way to run from it. I quickly got off the weaponry seat and took over the ship steering system, by switching off the AI system. I steered the ship hard right as I tried to get off the path of the giant beam. More and more energy beams of light, more massive than the first one, and faster were shot towards me too. The laser beams colored the sky red with their power and began descending towards me in an untimely fashion. I couldn’t find anywhere to escape the explosion. The beams smashed into the ground, destroying it like it was nothing. The aftermaths were wave shocks that rumbled the ground and reduced the trees to ashes instantly. I tried to navigate my way through what remained of the terrain, but I found myself barely able to hear a thing anymore. It felt like the explosions were happening right in my ear, even though the ship was equipped with an automatic sound proofing system. Still, the beams of light did not stop. It seemed they were getting even stronger and louder, with each second, as I had lost track on how many the lizard had shot out. I struggled for a while, trying to decide whether to stay or abandon the ship. Considering the situation outside, I realized it was too dangerous and my best chances of survival were inside the ship. I quickly typed in some more instructions into the ship’s command system and looked through my sensory units. My hands were classically shaking from doubt and fear—I had never faced such an adversary as deadly, and powerful as this creature was.
Yes! Fortunately, the ship’s system security level wasn’t advanced enough, since I managed to hack into it and change some of the default controls. I transferred most of the ship’s power limiters towards its defense unit, and activated its shields. Although they were not strong enough to defend me against the creature; it was still better than nothing. Suddenly, I felt a screech, rattling from one of the ship’s dorsal hull.
“Now what!”
A loud bang clanked terribly, coming from the anterior upper portion of the ship. The hover ship shook back and forth beyond my control. One of the back engines seemed to have gone offline—smoke was coming from its end. I struggled with everything I had, pouring every ounce of strength my body could master, to regain control of the steering system. The ship’s velocity was the problem because it was still going too fast. By switching off the main speed thrusters, I managed to activate the brake system, regaining minimum control of the craft.
“This is getting annoying really fast,” I mumbled beneath my breath, and switched the hover ship’s flight system on.
Pressing down hard on the ship’s steering control unit, I stomped on the ship’s thrust gears, forcing it to accelerate up into the air. The ship steadily rose from the ground at a linear constant velocity. Odds of survival seemed higher in an air battle than on the ground. My assumption led me to believe that the creature’s speed and strength was shaved in half above the ground. The creature made an abrupt stop, as it froze motionlessly for a couple of seconds. The giant lizard ceased firing its beams from its mouth and roared at me, for a couple of seconds. I deactivated the anterior shields and transferred all the power to the ship’s main thrusters, in order to increase my momentum, threefold. My plan was to get up close in order to fire the second cannon shell from a point blank radius. I actually felt brave as I was about to do the most stupid thing ever recorded in history. Every brilliant tactician knew that you should never confront a far much greater enemy head on and yet I was doing just that. As it was already too late to turn back, I stepped even harder on the thruster gear and positioned the rifle cannon exactly at the giant lizard’s head. The creature started moving towards me without fear or hesitation.
Excellent! This was going to make a much easier target. The distance between the creature and me grew shorter, alerting me of the impending danger. Timing was everything. Once it was within a few yards away from me, it opened its mouth, planning to attack first, but I beat it to the punch and fired first, sending a massive shell flying in its mouth. The shell shot through its body, rippling the lizard to explode from inside out.
“Eat that,” I snickered myself silly, watching the giant lizard growl out loudly.
Luckily for me, this giant lizard was not truly a terror beast; otherwise, this plan would not have worked, considering how invincible those creatures were. What the! The giant lizard started to look an awfully lot funny as it got bigger like a balloon. There was smoke ushering from its mouth as its movements got sloppy and static.
“Oh come on!”
The colossus creature looked ready to explode—and at this range, I was going to be caught in the blast. Instinctively, I turned my hover ship around and headed in the opposite directions as fast as I could. I glanced back quickly, observing the creature through the glass window, calculating how far the distance between us was. The giant lizard exploded and illuminated the entire night sky with bright orange light. My ship was caught in the blast wave, sending it flying in all directions. The main engine stopped working completely as the thrusters malfunctioned—all electric systems went off line and the video screen became static. All I could hear was a loud roar from the constant explosion. I tried gaining control of the steering system, but it seemed like it was also on the blitz; none of the defense mechanisms were working and it looked like everything had been jammed by some sort of device. Wait! Could it be? By destroying this robot terror beast, I had somehow unlocked its last resort defense mechanism, which shut down everything like an EMP wave. This creature seemed to terrorize me to no end. Considering there was nothing I could do to take control of the ship, I slowly headed to the armory system, while the ship was spinning out of control somehow, and started taking more packs of fresh power batteries. I also to
ok two more level 2 super guns with me and placed them on my back before forcing the emergency exit door open. I jumped out into the open, exposing myself to the blazing sky narrowly evading my demise. I raised my hands, expecting my suit’s wing system to deploy, but it didn’t. “No! No! Of all the luck in the world!”
This couldn’t be happening to me again, just when I had escaped! Without my emergency system, I wasn’t going to make the most graceful of landings. As I was falling, I saw my life flash again for a third time which just ticked me off. I don’t know how I had survived all those time, seemed like one big plot to a bad movie. Falling from over 3000 feet was no laughing matter, considering the speed I was falling at and multiplying it by the planet’s gravity. I tried to reset my power battery by replacing the current one with a more powerful, fresh battery in my hand, but nothing worked. I could still move the armor; however, nothing else worked for the most part.
The hover ship exploded 70 meters up, behind me, rearing me down at an ever greater speed. I felt sick and almost threw up from the constant spinning I was doing. I felt myself drawn closer towards the ground as the chances of survival grew dim. I slowly closed my eyes for a couple of seconds and meditated, despite falling from the sky at an alarming rate. In every situation, there were always variables to consider before taking action. (Lesson four in the Planetary Survival Guidebook.)
I scanned every object I had in my position and began to come up with a strategy, to get myself out of this mess. Everything in my armor had stopped working except for my machined body movements. The guns seemed to be working, since they worked on a different frequency and power system
“That’s it!”
I suddenly thought of the most bizarre plan I had ever imagined. I bit my lip, filled with anxiety, at the thought of it not working. My eyes dotted everywhere beyond a doubt, constraining me to reconsider other options. Either way, it was going to be a messy fall—no matter what other plan I could come up with. The brilliant and yet fatal plan revolved around the last defense mechanism in my armor. Every war suit had a built in super foam system, which could generate a foam powerful enough to withstand even a megaton force or explosion for a few seconds. Unlike the other systems, the super foam was activated when the outer layer of the suit was synched off by blazing high heat. Since that had not yet happened, I had to improvise and come up with a way to get myself caught in some explosion strong enough to activate it. Crap! For some reason, I looked down and realized that I was almost down to a thousand feet and still falling fast. It was only a matter of seconds now. Quickly, I did the last thing I would ever consider doing, and raised my javelin bazooka at myself. At point blank, it was possible I could die; however, I was out of options. My breath grew heavy and loud, sweat poured down my forehead, towards my eyes. I could feel the stinging salt from the sweat irritate my eyes greatly. Without realizing it, I felt my finger press hard on the trigger. What had I just done?
A missile struck me like lightning, so fast, I barely blinked at all. It hit me in the chest cavity, causing me to lose breath for a couple of hard, crucial seconds. My body jerked uncontrollably, electric jolts running throughout my nervous system. It felt like heat was being poured onto me, like I was in some sort of oven. Due to the sudden lack of clean air, I slowly lost consciousness and feeling in my left arm.
“Didn’t really think this through now, did I?” I whispered, barely able to speak.
Everything went dark and I couldn’t tell if I had or when I hit the ground as I was already unconscious.
3
“Den, can you hear me?” a voice called out to me.
No way! I knew this voice all too well. My heart paced quickly, as I felt a surge of excitement and joy crawl into me. It was Rose’s voice, but that was impossible, since she left me 4 years ago without a trace. This had to be some sort of a bad joke; however, I was gullible enough to play along. For some unknown reason, deep down, I wanted to believe it was her.
Opening my eyes, I whispered, “Rose, is that you? Where are you?”
I couldn’t see anything behind me; I could only see a tunnel ahead of me. There was something there, although I couldn’t see it clearly. My vision was cloudy and hazy for me to see from this vantage point. I got up and walked straight towards it, with eyes full of hope. I just wanted to see her—even if it was just an illusion.
“Rose,” I kept calling out, but there was no answer. Not even a slight sound. This uttering silence was maddening, almost sending heavy chills down my spine. Something about this dream or illusion was unnatural. I started seeing a pond just as I was getting close. It was built from ancient marble cement with a statue of a bird above it. I peered into the nice stream water completely fascinated. Reaching into the water, with my right arm, I completely dipped it halfway in. The water vibrated strongly, ushering small waves in every direction from my arm.
“What the!”
For a second, I thought I saw a glimpse of something in the reflection of the water and suddenly it was gone. I knew that was her voice, I just knew it somehow. I wasn’t going crazy now, was I?
“Do you know why I left?” the voice came back again from within the pond. I am pretty sure I was going crazy now, if I was hearing voices from a pond.
Still, how was I supposed to know that? I mean, was she going to give me a hint or some kind of theory as to explain that question? I didn’t reply, instead, I just looked away, hoping to avoid the question. If this really was Rose, then she sure was making it one very difficult reunion. But where was this voice coming from? This had to be some sort of terrible nightmare I was having—none of this was real. It was all in my head. Knowing that, I had a feeling the clue to finding her was also hidden deep within my subconscious. I played along, hoping to get a clue or some sort of sign to point me in the right direction.
“How come I can’t see you?” I asked her, trying to be sincere and serious at the same time. “Are you really here with me right now?”
“You already know the answer to your first question, Den. Why don’t you look deep inside your heart?”
Her response as usual puzzled me for a second, but then it all came back to me. Rose was fond of deep and rhetorical questions, and I had found it hard and troubling to answer in the past. Suppose that explained why I had no clue where she had gone to. Half the time, I zoned out on her, which was a really bad trait since we were getting married the following year. I remember her father telling her to call it off; however, she still had faith I would change. Hate to say it, but her parents were right about me.
“Strategically, it is impossible to look inside your own heart unless you have an X-ray drone scan your body while you are motionless. So, I can’t do that at this moment without any equipment.”
The voice chuckled and said, “you were always clueless even when I asked you rhetorical questions. You relied too much on technology to get you this far; you think that by yourself you can’t do anything. When you finally look inside your heart and come to an epiphany, you will know what I meant, and how to find me. I will be waiting, Den.”
The voice began to fade away as the pond slowly vanished into the darkness, leaving me clueless. This dream or whatever it was had yielded absolutely nothing as to her whereabouts. I felt frustrated and angry enough to lash out at anything.
“No, Rose, wait please come back,” I yelled from the top of my lungs as I kept running forward, towards the fading light.
“Darn it!” I screamed one more time and awoke up, somewhere on the alien planet.
I could see the sun in the sky and all the dark blue tress lined randomly around me. The trees danced from side to side as a gentle whistle of wind rustled through them. My mind wrestled, trying to make sense of the dream. It was another puzzle to add onto a list of other unsolved memories from my past. It pained to know that, even in my dreams, Rose still left me deep, hidden messages I had absolutely no clues to. Nothing irritated me more than hidden and deep messages; they were always complicating to solve.
I sighed slowly, getting halfway up, sitting on my back. I was startled when I saw a primitive hydro-h fire from five centuries ago. It was definitely rare and ancient—I couldn’t take my eyes off it. To my surprise, there were also silicon old blankets I hadn’t notice wrapped around me.
“That girl must mean a lot to you?” a voice spoke and I quickly jumped up to defend myself.
I looked around me and there was a man standing calmly near a military assault hover vehicle, dated back to the last Planetary War. He looked human enough, although his skin looked a little bit gray and rough. There was something peculiar and unsightly about him. I could tell that he hadn’t shaved in ages, judging by the size of his beard. He shifted his weight to his leg while staring at me, unfazed. The way his eyes pierced at me made me feel rather uncomfortable.
Strange! He wore no armor and walked comfortably like the strong gravity on this planet was not affecting him. “Wait a minute.”
He could be an alien. I tensed and shrugged at the thought of this scene ending violently. My arms and legs were unbound and free, which left me in the situation with the option to use weapons. I looked around, but did not find my javelin bazooka. Suddenly, memories flushed back into my mind, reminding me of how I had arrived to this awkward meeting. I remembered everything now; I had fired upon myself with a javelin bazooka to activate the last line of defense in the armor. Prior to that, I remembered nothing after.
This was impossible; at that height plus the great gravity of this planet, I shouldn’t be alive. It puzzled me for a second, as I tried to come up with the right words to say.
“Does that girl mean that much to you?” he asked again, now, finally paying attention to me. “I saw her from your dreams. You were stupid to let such a girl leave you.”
What! How did he know that? I was sure I didn’t blurt out any hard secrets from my past. I looked at him with rage and content. The slow wind blew past me, back and forth, touching the pores of my exposed skin coldly. I shifted cautiously, looking steadily around for anything to use as a weapon.