Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  Somehow, he had to get the rest of the team out of the station from under the station and get them to the hidden ship and off the surface. He bent to lift the heavy form of Chris Maxwell from the floor, and found it very difficult. He looked and saw that the warrior was circling the building to find the easiest way in, and he made his way as quickly as he could to the main door, dragging Chris behind him. It was slow going and he was glad that the Warrior had decided to be methodical in its approach to the building. It gave him a chance to get inside before it could attack the others. He was sure that the creature was here to kill them all.

  He finally reached the door and knew he didn’t have longer than thirty seconds before the Warrior being finished its circling of the building. He tried to access the door’s opening mechanism and found it locked. They had obviously secured the building as best as they could and that meant he would not be able to get in. He leant back on the door with despair and fell through it as Eli opened it for him.

  “I thought you would be coming back,” smiled Eli, looking around him all the time for the return of the creature. Taylor wasted no time in getting himself into the station and Eli helped him to drag Chris inside as well. They were relieved to see the security systems reassert themselves and Taylor was sure they had to move out of the main corridor as soon as they could. The way the station was laid out was circular in design with a long cylindrical protrusion sticking out at the front. From the air it would have looked like and apple with a very long straight stalk, which had, of course, been stuck to the ground, painted a different colour and suffered the effects of a fairly major earthquake.

  The passageway that led from the main door to the station proper was lined with security systems; and Eli and Taylor knew well enough that they would need to get to the far side of the passageway in order to fully activate the systems. This, when fully activated, would ensure that any movement in the passageway led to the targeting of defence lasers and missiles on the intruder. All Company stations had similar defence strategies; namely, that they were solidly defended to all sides with only one access or exit port. When a Company base had its security protocol activated it semi-circular section of the station was reinforced with thick iron-based concrete polymer.

  The passage that led to the outside had, of course, to remain accessible or else the crew of the station would never be able to get in or out. Once the concrete polymer was in place it was extraordinary difficult to reset the system, so it was imperative that the system was only activated in an emergency. Taylor felt the circumstances merited its use. He and Eli got to the far end of the passageway. The Company never had one of its bases intruded upon when the security protocols were active. They had lost plenty of teams on colony worlds due to a reluctance to activate the system, but not one when it was switched on. Taylor hoped that this would not be the first case, but had a horrible suspicion that even the formidable defences of the fully active passageway would not be enough to keep the alien at bay for long.

  ***

  Senior guard Cox gestured for his team to slow their approach. The station was in sight now and he didn’t want them to be observed as they prepared to report to their superior back at the bunker. He fished a com-unit out of his pocket and spoke into it, “This is Cox. We have the station in sight. No sign of the target. He looks as if he must have gone into the building. Please advise.”

  He waited for his unit to relay the message back. “This is Carlton,” the tone was not friendly, “you know what to do, you cretin. Get in the base, secure the integrity of our project.” The senior guard sighed; it was a sad day when he had to attack innocent people because of Company profit. He was, however, a man who always obeyed the commands of his Executives and was not about to start disobeying them now.

  So he rallied his men for an assault on the station. He looked over his small fighting force. He had seventeen men, some of them patched up from the last encounter with the man they had been sent here to apprehend. He knew that they would be plenty enough to deal with a bunch of around five or six scientists and engineers. He imagined that they would all whimper like frightened children and surrender immediately.

  He paused in his imaginings, as one of the junior guards attracted his attention. “Sir, I think I can see someone.” Cox strained his eyes to see in the darkness, he knew they should have brought some night vision helmets with them. The young man was right, he too could see a figure coming around from the side of the building. It was too dark and he was too far away to see whether or not it was the man they had come to find, but he knew his orders were to silence all at the station by arrest or any other means.

  Ordering his men to advance down across the plains towards the figure, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a micro loud hailer with which he broadcast to the figure, “This is Senior Guard Cox, we are armed and willing to use our weapons. Put your hands in the air.”

  ***

  Inside the station, Taylor could faintly hear the announcement and wondered who they thought they were talking to. “Now what’s happening?” asked Eli as they huddled behind a makeshift barricade that they had erected at the far end of the passageway. They had armed themselves with rifles from the Major’s armoury cupboard and had been waiting for the alien to breach their outer doorway when they had heard the loud hailer. Taylor didn’t answer.

  ***

  “Mr West, we strongly recommend that you raise your hands and do not come any closer!” Senior guard Cox warned over the loud hailer. The figure they could see in the gloom did not seem to be raising his hands and seemed to be approaching them in a rather more purposeful manner then he would ordinarily have liked. He ordered his men to raise their weapons and prepare to fire.

  ***

  “Why are they talking to you?” Eli exclaimed from behind the barricade of desks and units at the end of the passageway.

  Taylor shrugged sheepishly. “I may have annoyed their Executive a little. I think they’re here to either arrest or kill me.”

  “What are we going to do?” Eli asked fretfully.

  Taylor shrugged before replying. “If they are talking to who I think they are, then there’s not a lot I can do for them. I just hope they don’t do anything to make the alien think they’re a threat.” He winced as he heard the unmistakable sound of laser fire outside the station and shook his head sadly. “Yep, that’ll do it.”

  ***

  Cox was afraid. He had ordered his men to fire at the advancing figure and they had done so. The blasts they had managed to fire at the figure had seemed to have no effect and then it had got close enough for them to see it clearly. It was not human at all, some sort of alien, with a scorpion tail and a single eye. It was impervious to their weapons and had already responded with some sort of weapon of its own, killing two of his men.

  “Fall back!!” he bellowed over the screams of the injured and the fearful wailing of the men. The Warrior was amongst them. Lashing out with its horned arms and legs, cutting flesh and bone, while all the time its hand-held weapon, which seemed to be some sort of high powered pulse weapon and had turned one of Cox’s men to jelly before his eyes, and its tail energy projector blasted at anything that got in its way. Cox realised his men had no chance against the monster and was trying desperately to get as many men away from the thing as he could.

  It had other ideas though and they fell back it tore into the foremost men who were trying to act as a form of rear-guard and decimated them. Cox was in the middle of the group, and was firing his laser at the creature. He was sure he had hit the thing at least twice but it seemed to have no effect and slowed the alien not a bit. One of the men swung his rifle like a club at the back of the alien’s head and connected solidly. The being simply turned and grabbed the young guard by the throat, lifting him above the ground by two metres. It turned from the fleeing guards and ceased its pursuit. Cox could not turn his head away as his young officer started to choke to death; many of his guards were running for their lives now and he shoul
d be joining them.

  The alien warrior seemed to be displaying the guard it had caught, as if it wanted them to see. Cox felt as if it wanted him personally to see. Before the unfortunate guard could choke, the creature threw him up in the air, high above its head and towards the rest of the guards. The young man flew through the air slowly, and the warrior could take its time targeting the guard with its tail weapon. A huge blast of energy hit the man as he was about to land in the group of running guards. The body of the young man exploded with the huge charge it had been struck with and the pieces of his corpse rained down on his erstwhile colleagues, hot and bloody.

  The Warrior drew closer to them and was once again in the midst of them. Cox could see his men, putting up no fight whatsoever now. The alien warrior was picking them off as they prayed for mercy or a swift end. Cox fell to his knees, shaking and crying tears of terror through closed eyes. He tried to block out the feeble screams of his men as they were viciously killed one by one. Some of them died through the deadly energy bursts that the creature gave out from time to time, others were less lucky.

  While the alien was recharging its weapon, it killed the guards by dismemberment and slashing blows from its bone-like protrusions that emanated from its arm and leg joints. The screaming dwindled until Cox could hear only silence and, in a moment of clarity, he knew the creature was standing over him. He slowly opened his eyes and looked into the strange face of the deadly alien.

  “Please…. not me….,” he whimpered weakly. The Warrior had saved him for last it seemed, he could only hope he was going to suffer a quick death. The Warrior waited, standing over his kneeling form, as its tail altered itself. The end of the tail, where the bulbous mass that had been spitting out energy to such deadly effect, was reshaping into a sharp point. The Warrior raised its tail as high as it could over its head, and Cox screamed as he realised what it was that was going to happen. The tail came down in a blur and the point pierced Cox’s body through his left shoulder, exiting it at his right hip.

  The Warrior raised Cox up in the air, blood pouring from the dying man’s mouth and spilling onto the parched, cracked ground. The last thing Senior guard Cox saw was the Warrior looking up at him curiously as if interested in how people died. Once the human was dead the Warrior threw it off its tail and reshaped the ending back into its preferred shape; that of the energy projector. It was about to walk away when it heard noises coming from the dead body of the last man it had killed. It moved to investigate and found a small device in the human’s garments.

  “Repeat. This is Carlton. Report, damn you,” the Warrior shifted its field of vision to determine where the signal to this unit was coming from and concluded that it was from the second of its two targets. It would soon be dealing with that situation as well, but for now it would have to conclude its business here. It turned and walked back to the nearby station, ready to attack. It left seventeen corpses lying where they fell, never to be buried or mourned; it had no time for extravagances.

  ***

  Sara had re-joined Eli and Taylor after checking up on Alan and Lana. “They are both OK,” she said, “very frightened and confused. I’ve told Lana you saved her husband and that he is recovering in their room where you put him. She didn’t seem to care.”

  “She is in shock. She will support her husband again when she gets through this,” Taylor affirmed.

  Sara laughed, “Even after the crimes he had committed here?” she snorted disdainfully.

  Eli pulled her close, unable to stop himself, and told her not to worry about that now. “Chris will get his just desserts, I promise you that,” Taylor said enigmatically. “He’ll get what he deserves. We all will.”

  ***

  In another part of the station, Lana sat shaking and scared in the corner of the wrecked control room. Alan paced up and down in front of her. “Will you please stop that!” she exclaimed hysterically. Alan was at his wits’ end and was not about to take that from a woman who he considered the wife of a murderer.

  He rounded on her in a rare show of anger. “What would you have me do? Eh? The planet is tearing itself apart, we can’t leave the base because of some….. thing who seems to want to kill us all and Will, Jeff and the Major have all been killed by your damn husband!”

  She raised from the floor and went nose to nose with Alan. “I know my husband did not kill anyone! He could, but he hasn’t. You shouldn’t believe everything that West man says. Who is he anyway?”

  “He’s a Company engineer,” replied Alan, his anger dissipated and his natural timidity returning in the face of female aggression.

  “Oh, he’s a Company engineer, is he, who just happens to be a detective as well, I take it. What gives him the right to accuse Chris? How do we know he isn’t behind it all? Things have certainly been a bit strange since he got here.”

  Lana snarled, walking towards a retreating Alan. “What about the device Will saw your husband making in the control room?”

  Alan was not so sure of himself now but was determined to carry on regardless. “What about it? That doesn’t prove anything, you dickless little man!” Lana shouted angrily. Alan was interested to see that she showed no surprise about the device. He wondered if she was involved in the murders as well as her husband. If she was, then he could be in great danger. As she advanced on him he began to wish he had never raised the issue and suddenly wanted to be with Eli and his friend in the passageway entrance. Anywhere, apart from alone with Lana Maxwell. She ran at him, arms outstretched and in the couple of seconds before her hands were around his throat, he had time to admire the bouncing of her bosom as she ran. Then he was trying to fight her off as she tried maniacally to strangle him to death.

  ***

  “Here it comes,” whispered Taylor as he watched the display on the heat sensitive motion tracker he had taken from Maystone’s camp. He could see the approach of the Warrior as a blob on his screen, getting ever closer to the front of the passageway. He checked all the passage lasers and missiles were active and ready to fire and then checked his own laser rifle. He suspected, however, that they would do little good. The guards outside had certainly been armed with laser rifles and the creature was still coming after meeting a squad of them. He wondered if any of them would live through the night.

  The light in the passageway flickered as it swung, detached from its ceiling mount; and it lent the scene a macabre air that he really could have done without. “If it gets in here, how are we going to escape?” Eli pointed out, and Taylor knew he was right. The only way would be to pass the creature and get to the front door. He found it unlikely that the being would allow them to leave. ‘There is no other way out of the station when the security is active’, he thought, ‘unless….’

  Suddenly, the main door exploded in an eruption of the Warrior’s energy and Taylor could see it twenty metres ahead of them at the other end of the corridor. “Here we go, gang,” Taylor said as he fired his rifle at the creature. Eli did the same but it seemed to cause no damage. As the Warrior took a step into the passageway, it was tracked and fired upon by the passageway defence systems. The area turned into a living hell as laser fire and small projectile missiles flew from both sides at the alien warrior and the noise was deafening.

  ***

  In the control room, Alan could suddenly breathe again. Lana had released her hold on him, and he gulped in air desperately while trying to keep away from her. She seemed more interested in the sound of firing coming from the front of the station. “That sounds like its inside!” she yelled over the din and ran out towards the bedlam. Alan ran after her, keen to both see what was going on and also to tell his friend Eli that both of the Maxwells were as psychotic as each other. He rubbed his throat as he ran, he could feel the welts coming up from where her surprisingly strong hands had gripped him. He had no idea she was so strong, and would certainly think twice about spending any time on his own with her. It seemed obvious to him that the Maxwells were in it together and he had to
tell Eli and Taylor before it was too late. If Lana got there first in her current state he had no idea what would happen.

  ***

  The passageway was full of laser fire and explosions, but the alien warrior just kept coming. The lasers had no effect on it whatsoever, but the missiles at least slowed its approach towards where Taylor, Eli and Sara were huddled under a home-made barricade that consisted of tables, desks and anything else they hand been able to put their hands on. As the creature approached, slowly but mercilessly, Taylor began to feel something other than fear and his desire to stay alive. He began to feel something nagging at the back of his mind, small but growing undeniably stronger. Similar to the sensation of connection that he had felt when alone in the desert plains, yet this psychic sense was far more defined.

  He knew immediately where this message was coming from and was not surprised to find it emanating from the alien warrior marching mercilessly towards them through a barrage of firepower that would have destroyed an army of lesser beings. He slipped into a state of automatic body function. He carried on firing into the passageway, knowing full-well that he was unlikely to harm the alien, and not wanting to arouse suspicion from Eli. He knew Eli, and he knew Eli would stir him from his state if he realised he was not focused on what was going on. Taylor had slipped from the everyday frame of mind that was concerned with the life and death situation he was facing, and found himself beginning to receive a message, but he did not think it was being intentionally transmitted by the creature.

  For some reason that he could not explain, he seemed to be able to see straight into the subconscious of the alien. All of a sudden, nothing seemed more important than finding out as much as he could about the creature. His rational mind excused this action by reasoning that if he knew more about the creature he would have more chance of defending his friends against it, but he knew that this was not why he had to know. He had to know because he was the sort of person who had to explore and had to know all he could. A chance to peek into the mind of the creature before him could not be turned down.