“How did you pass the eye test?” Thomas the Shifter’s eyes flickered with a silver glow and shifted every other color of the rainbow in random order.
“To survive is to adapt,” he said. His Shifter voice was like a song. A melodic tune carried in his voice. So peaceful and serene Raynor didn’t want to fight him. Raynor shook his head violently Thomas reached out to aid Raynor with his one hand. He slapped it away and lunged for his rifle. He aimed his sights at Thomas.
“Where’s the real Thomas?”
"He's alive. Once we take back our holy temple, you will all be free to go." He took a step forward. He reaffirmed his position and held his finger on the trigger at him. In one fell swoop, his hero died, and he was going to die too. Rage overcame the fear and threatened to overwhelm him.
“Shut up, don’t move!” The Shifter had a natural calm and imposing presence. He stared with pity at him.
"It's over young Raynor. You will live to raise your daughter and to fight another pointless war for your species. Maybe you'll learn that-" He stopped. He craned his head skyward. Static energy filled the air. Some of the small pebbles and blades of grass briefly lifted off the ground.
The clouds parted like waves in an ocean. With a bright flash of light, ten battleships warped in around Saranight Peak. Though not as large as capital ships that wouldn’t even be able to enter the planet because of their size, these battleships, with an elongated shape armed to the teeth in cannons and missile turrets, could reign destruction open the battlefield. Thomas dropped his rifle and threw his hands in the air. Tears of elation replaced the tears of loss.
“Yes! Yes!” Thomas looked down with sympathy and shook his head.
“Raynor…”
“We’ll win, we will hold this peak.”
“Watch closely.”
"What?" A small blue light coursed across the sky like a star streaking across a night sky toward the battleships. Just like the battleships, the Shifter's had support arriving as well. Massive serpentine leviathans with eight massive wings along their bodies warped in from seemingly nowhere. Six arms with enormous claws also lined the body below the first three sets of wings. An ear-shattering roar erupted from their large pointed snouts, threatening to deafen anyone below them.
The battleships hesitated with their action at first. Like Raynor, this was their first time ever seeing this from the Shifters. He could only imagine the chaos in the bridges of the battleships. Their inaction didn't last for long. The warships quickly aimed their cannons at the leviathans flying towards them. They emptied their entire arsenal at the flying beasts, but the cannons and missiles only served to anger the creatures, as the weapons failed to penetrate their thick hides or to do any visible damage.
Just as the hope had swelled in Raynor like a tide crashing against the shore, it evaporated as quickly. More ear-shattering screams erupted from the creatures as they coiled their bodies around the battleships. They dug their claws into the ships like paper and squeezed their muscular bodies, utterly destroying the vessels with so little effort.
"What are those?" Raynor managed to mutter. With the remains of the battleships crashing to the ground, the fight was over. Was it even a battle or a slaughter?
“There are secrets of this world that you don’t know, and you will never take it.” He reached out toward Raynor.
“Still willing to die? Or do you wish to live and see your daughter again?” Raynor mulled it over. He searched his mind frantically for answers, but only one remained. He aimed the gun up at Thomas with grim determination.
“I will die for my species.” Thomas sighed.
“Very well.” With blinding speed, Thomas lunged at Raynor. Before Raynor could pull the trigger, darkness overtook him.
Chapter One
Present Day…
“I will die for my species,” Theodore Raynor said as he looked forward. His face was weathered with stress and age. “Those are the words I said in the face of death. I was young then, inexperienced like the lot of you.” He gazed over the fresh recruits that had recently arrived on the planet, sitting along the tables like a classroom of students attending a lecture.
The light from the twin suns shone through the wide-open window, leaving little purpose for the lights inside. From the window of the room, they could peer out past the walls of the fort to the colorful landscape. The building they were in towered over the rest of the base. Fields of golden grass stretched for a mile before it met the tree line of a jungle of dark purple trees with bright green foliage. Although the blue sky was cloudless now, it wouldn't be long before storm clouds rolled in for an approaching storm.
The recruits all wore their form-fitting silver and blue suits with their helmets laid on the tables in front of them. So many young faces were beaming with confidence from their training, not knowing about the conflict for which they were there. A young woman at the back raised her hand. Raynor pointed at her, to speak.
“What happened after the battleships were destroyed?” The young woman said.
“The history books and the holovids say we regrouped and more reinforcements warped in. They say we defended the peak and we spread out again, keeping the war alive.” He paused before continuing. “That’s all a lie. We lost.” A collection of murmurs and gasps flooded the room. The trainees looked around and waited for Raynor to drop the joke, only to realize they would have to wait forever, since he just stared at them with an expressionless face.
"How did you survive?" A voice called out. Before Raynor could speak, the door to the room cracked open. Two more soldiers attempted to sneak in unnoticed. Raynor recognized them instantly. Jennifer, a young woman with shoulder-length, tousled blonde hair and fair skin entered first. Behind her, a man with short dark hair held her hand as they finished "sneaking" in. They quickly sat down in the back. She combed her fingers through her hair, trying to straighten it as best as she could. She stared forward and Raynor’s gaze locked on to her. Crimson rushed to her cheeks as he shook his head at her in disappointment before he continued.
He paced about the front of the room as he spoke, “We few survivors were taken as prisoners. The Shifters then stranded us on one of our abandoned moon bases in a nearby system. We managed to get the base working order again and called for help.” The recruits looked at each other, confused, some with disbelief clear on their faces. It only took a second for one of the men to stand up in protest.
"But we're still here. We're still fighting." Raynor nodded to him as if he had a point. They were still on Sara. For the first time during their meeting, Raynor smiled with the confidence of his former hero, Commander Leonard and stood straight, proudly.
“We are human,” he yelled, “We may taste defeat, but when has that ever stopped us? We will never give up. We will avenge our fallen. We will be victorious. We will never surrender.” All of the recruits, save Jennifer, rose and stood at attention. They saluted Commander Raynor.
“Never surrender,“ the recruits chanted; all except Jennifer. She rolled her eyes at their ignorant fervor. She didn’t even want to be on this god-forsaken planet. But, here she was, light years away from home, fighting a conflict she had no interest in. She considered herself lucky that Darian had followed her here, after their training camp.
"Now get on out of here and make us proud!" The recruits all funneled out slowly. Jennifer wanted to be the first one out, but the rookies rushed out before she could get up, in their desire to prove themselves. She found herself at the back of the line, next to Darian. Before she could leave, she heard Raynor clear his throat. She sighed and turned around.
“Stay here for a minute, Jennifer.” He approached her. Darian waited for her, but Raynor shooed him away. He stood inches from her in the now silent room.
“It’s not a good sign if you’re consistently late to briefings. Care to explain?” He stared at her intensely, but she focused outside the window, not wanting to meet his stare.
“I woke up late,” she said. Raynor
scoffed. “I know everything there is to know about Shifters. Plus you’ve told me that story a thousand times.”
"And I'll tell it as many times as it takes, Jennifer Raynor. Learning about war and being in it are two entirely different things. You might have been one of the highest testing soldiers to come out of Centauri, but testing and real combat are not the same things." She just wanted to leave so she surrendered to his point.
“Understood, Dad.”
“Sir.”
“Understood… Sir.” His face softened to a smile. He wrapped his arms around her and embraced her. She returned it with a half-hearted hug.
“Report to Santiago on the wall. That’s where your shift is today. I love you.”
She turned and walked off towards the door.
"Yes, sir."
She put on her helmet and closed the door behind her.
Raynor walked over to the full window that gave on to the ground, and saw the recruits treading the indigo soil of the base towards their posts. On the horizon, he saw the dark clouds approaching.
Chapter Two
Jennifer walked along the darkened metal wall that kept enemies at bay. It stood fifty feet above the ground. The path was only wide enough for a single person to pass at a time. She had her rifle slung over her shoulder and her helmet on.
Although the air, and many elements of the planet, was similar to Earth and, therefore, suitable for humans, combat could happen anytime, and they all had to be prepared. She walked down the wall until she met up with a tall soldier, who seemed transfixed by the golden fields. She approached him. Her visor highlighted the outline of his figure and the name "Santiago" hovered above his head. She stood next to him. They stood in silence for a minute. Santiago was an old friend of Raynor’s and offered to take Jennifer under his wing.
“Mornin’, Jenny,” he said finally.
“Good morning, Santiago. Anything interesting out there yet?”
“Always a good mornin’ here,” he said as he pointed out toward the front gate in answer to her question. As the massive gate opened, multiple scouting squads lined up for the eye test. Two soldiers stood with their eye test pens and made the scouts formed two single file lines for testing.
The humans had learned their lessons from the Shifters’ adapting to their eye test. As the Shifter who took Thomas’s appearance had said, “To survive is to adapt.” The new eye test worked with an absolute one hundred percent accuracy. Something in a Shifter's eyes gave them away and alerted humans in a way that blood tests and any other test that could be given to a Shifter always failed to do. They listened intently as all the scouts that returned passed their eye test. If not, a loud alarm would alert the base.
As the scouts finished their testing, she said,
“When are you rotating off this terrible planet?”
“S’not so bad. Lot prettier than Earth right now, that’s for sure.” This piqued her curiosity.
“Why would anyone want to be here?” she indulged him. “Earth is fine; it looks like it did before the sundering.”
"It's not the same," annoyance tinged his voice. "The corporate conglomerates ruined our planet, and instead of paying for their crimes, they were paid to make Earth undergo terraforming. The planet will never truly be the same. The worst part is that those conglomerates got away with it, and they’re on their private worlds living large.”
She shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it, but that’s just how things are.”
“There anything the old man wants you to do today?” Santiago asked her.
“More of the same, Shifters haven’t been this far out in a long time, but Dad always says that’s when they’ll strike. I’m eager and scared at the opportunity to actually fight one.”
“Good. It’d be foolish not to be. You ever see one?”
“Yeah.” She swaggered slightly.
“You mistake my question. Have you ever really seen one?” Santiago sounded a little harsher, when he asked this.
Jennifer shrugged again. “Just when they come back to be dissected and when I studied them. What are you getting at?”
"When they're lyin' down, they're no threat.” Santiago was suddenly very serious. “But, if you ever see one in their true form, you're only safe if you can hide if you don't have backup or perfect reflexes."
“I know they’re tall, but are they really that intimidating?”
“You’ll see for yourself if you serve here long enough.”
“Maybe.” Jennifer spoke with the confidence of untried youth.
“We’re just waiting on one more scouting party to arrive back.” Santiago told her. “Charlie team always comes back late.”
The foliage of the tree line shifted violently. She focused her vision on where native the birds in the trees fluttered and scattered in random directions. She hit his shoulder and pointed toward them.
"Here they come."
However, what actually came out made her jaw drop. From the thick jungle, a deep blue Shifter emerged, in its true form. Even from so far away she could see it stood at eight feet tall. Her visor zoomed in on the image of it like binoculars. Its strong, amorphous humanoid form stood. Even from so far away, its imposing presence froze Jennifer.
It looked as if water flowed within the translucent body of the shifter. The liquid inside of it roiled in a constant flowing motion. It wore no clothes but didn't have any visible reproductive organs. Even though it was an alien; it resembled a strong-bodied human very much. She recalled one of her many lessons about the Shifters. Blue meant that it was a male, whereas females were red. A darker tone indicated its age.
This Shifter carried a walking stick made of the purple wood of the native trees, which was only slightly taller than the Shifter. It was decorated with five, soldiers’ helmets - clacking and hitting each other at the top.
"Sound the alarm," Santiago choked out.
Jennifer just continued to stare, mouth agape as the Shifter walked slowly toward the base. Santiago grabbed her arm and shook her. Her attention broke from the Shifter, and she stared at him. His visor lifted and she could see the seriousness and concern, in his light brown eyes. She blinked a few times and finally realized he had given her orders.
She ran down the wall to where the wall met the gate. A thin, tall tower with a red button was waiting to be pushed. Without the rain and storms, the switch would have collected dust from not having been used for so long. Now it would fulfill its purpose. She slammed her fist onto the button.
A blaring ring, with ever increasing volume, alerted the whole base. She looked at the now active base. Soldiers emerged from the flat top dark metal buildings, in their suits, like an ant colony. Not soon after she sounded the alarm, she saw Raynor appear from the primary control tower with four armed guards. She ran back to Santiago and stared at the Shifter.
After a few minutes, Raynor stood by her side with his armed entourage standing side-by-side on the wall to his left. The alarm ceased, and they watched the lone Shifter with a cautious curiosity. Raynor turned to his sides and looked at the bases’ sniper towers. Their orders would be to shoot on command and not a moment sooner. If the Shifter had come to surrender, they couldn't risk victory because of carelessness.
The Shifter had closed half of the distance between the base and the jungle. It stood tall. A gust of wind passed through the field. It didn’t seem to notice and stood there for several minutes, waiting for a response. After ten minutes of a stalemate of inaction, Jennifer turned towards Raynor.
“It doesn’t look as if it has any intention of coming closer,” she said.
“What’s on its staff?” Raynor asked. Though he wore a near identical decorated suit to Commander Leonard, he didn’t wear a helmet. He wanted his men to see the face of confidence and determination, to bolster morale. They needed every advantage they could get, even if it meant a higher risk of harm to himself.
One of the few things that he had been left with, were Leonard's metal wolf head sh
oulder pads, and he wore them with pride. They still had their ferocious teeth, bared and pristine. They looked the same as they had twenty years ago. The souvenir served a dual purpose: it reminded him of the Shifter's mercy, but the memory of his failure eclipsed that memory of humanity.
Jennifer turned back towards the Shifter and focused on the staff.
“Helmets” she answered her father. “Five of them. It must be Team Charlie. I see no blood on the staff. They could be alive.”
Raynor pondered his options. If the Shifter wasn’t coming any closer, he didn’t desire to waste time on it.
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