Planet of Graves

by Marc Everitt

  Time seemed to stand still for Taylor, and he suddenly seemed to be inside the creature’s head, thinking its thoughts and seeing himself at the other end of the passageway. He was surprised to note that the creature felt no hatred towards them; indeed it felt nothing at all for them one way or the other. He could see now that his friends and himself represented a mission to the alien; a task which needed to be undertaken. He could find no memory in the creature’s mind that told him anything about who had sent it here, merely the fact that it was created to be here at this time and stop people interfering. What it was here to stop people interfering with, he didn’t entirely know.

  Taylor tried to reach a little deeper into the mind of the alien being and was startled to find a race memory buried deep in the neural pathways of the warrior. He could see things that the being itself probably didn’t know was there. Things he could only have dreamed of ever experiencing. He could see the history of the species, through the racial memory of its two forebears to itself and its own brief memories. It had been created by genetic research that was thousands of years more advanced than the Company’s most recent developments, he could see that now.

  Each warrior was created from the same basic design, and so had race memories buried deep within their minds. Taylor had been lucky to chance upon them, but now had no intention of looking anywhere else. He could see events that had happened a hundred thousand years ago through the eyes of the being that had been there itself. He felt the race memory tugging at his psyche, as if wanting to tell its story to him; as if wanting to be understood. He could not refuse it and suddenly he was standing in a laboratory looking at the world through fresh, alien eyes He saw the beings that had created him and marvelled at their reptilian appearance. He had no idea what race they were or why they had created him, but he soon did.

  In a couple of moments, his head was filled with their programming, pouring in through the connections to his armoured head. They were T’suk, he was their tool, their genocidal killer. He decided he had seen enough of this particular part of the race memory and pulled himself forward, using psychic power he didn’t know he had. He was looking through the eyes of the same creature, he was sure of that. He had moved ahead in time almost a thousand years, but felt no older or nearer death. He was standing over a weakly struggling creature the like of which he was at once familiar with yet he knew he had never seen before. It had a humanoid appearance except seemed to be directly descended from birds of some sort, having feathers around its arms and legs and a beak-like mouth. It struggled for life at his feet, and he suddenly knew that it was the last of its kind. They had all been killed, the whole species hunted over the last thousand years. Hunted by him. He could reach down and stop the suffering of the poor wretch at his feet, but he had to watch.

  Taylor wanted to turn his head away, but he realised he was looking through the race memory of another being and could only see what the creature itself had seen so long ago. Because of that, Taylor had to watch as the last of the mighty Karak, once a near equivalent galactic power to the T’suk, died at his feet. He felt a sickening sense of closure as he saw himself turn and return to his ship, ready to return to the ancestors of the creatures who had created him.

  He left this memory and moved forward, he was now back in the laboratory and his creators were taking him apart. He had no way to stop them and he felt the pain as if it were his own. He was being dissected to study and he hated the cold, evil reptiles that were doing it to him, even though he was aware all the time that they were not doing it to him at all. Then, before he had time to realise what was going on, he found himself somewhere else through the eyes of a different warrior. He was certain that he was the same species, but he felt stronger and somehow more modern He reasoned that he must be a later production of the same science that had created the warriors. He did not know how but he had an idea of the era he was seeing. He had leapt forward by ten thousand years and was on a world unlike anything he had ever imagined.

  He looked around him, and everything he could see was alive. The sky was filled with swirling clouds of living gas and fluids. The ground underfoot throbbed with life of a sort he did not hope to guess at. The foliage that surrounded him moved slowly with a menace he would have thought impossible. All elements battered his armoured head, as everything around him tried its best to injure and kill him. He knew why, he was here to wipe the oldest species in the galaxy out.

  He suddenly understood where he was and why he had been sent there. He was on the home world of a species called the Ososki, an ancient people who were travelling the galaxy in amazing organic ships before the star which would one day allow life on the T’suk home world to flourish was formed. They were a peaceful, amorphous race that colonised worlds unthinkable to other species and changed them into worlds that could be lived on. They were a force for the better in the galaxy, as if placed there to allow for the coming of later creatures and civilisations and facilitate their expansion across the frontiers. They had no militaristic tendencies and had not put up a fight when the T’suk had finally become developed enough to fight them off of worlds they themselves wished to conquer.

  The T’suk, however, felt no remorse in continuing their campaign of relentless pursuit and destruction of the beings. After this had gone on for a hundred years or so and the T’suk Empire had expanded greatly at the Ososki’s expense, a change came over the peaceful species and they began to defend themselves. Their amorphous nature made them difficult opponents to kill as they could change rapidly and drastically to almost any form at will. It had taken the T’suk hundreds of years to find the source of the ability the Ososki had, and they soon had another warrior created to do what no ordinary soldier could hope to attempt. Taylor viewed the strange world through strange eyes that were not his own and shuddered with the knowledge of why he was here.

  He was looking through the eyes of the creature that was here to wipe out the Ososki. He saw himself making his slow, and painful, way through the terrain, with even the ground itself throwing obstacles in his path that would be untraversable for a normal being. He saw himself pass, scale and dodge them easily. The planet seemed to know why he was here. He, too, knew his purpose. He was here to destroy the source of the Ososki’s amorphous ability, the planet itself. With the home world gone, the species would be unable to draw on its power to affect their amazing changes and would become easy pickings for the T’suk armies.

  Taylor was repelled by what he saw himself doing as he saw his arms setting huge charges in strategic places along the surface of the world and moving onto the next. It would take the warrior several years to walk around the planet and lay enough charges to effectively destroy the planet and Taylor was glad when he found himself jumping forward to the memory of the laying of the final charge. Strange creatures leapt from all sides and attacked him, trying desperately to defend their home from what they knew was about to happen.

  What Taylor couldn’t see, because the warrior he was looking through never left the world before the vast explosion, was the effect of the act. Not only did it result in the extinction of the most useful and selfless species the galaxy had ever know, but it also sent a fragment of expelled solar matter across the vast tracts of space at incredible speeds. The latent energy of the Ososki home world caused it to explode with far larger force than a normal planet would have. The fragment roared through space uneventfully before ploughing into the small, insignificant system of Sol and destroying the fifth planet in the system, killing all life forever on the fourth and setting back the civilisation on the third by thousands of years.

  Mars stayed a dead world, but Earth did recover slowly and its inhabitants grew to call the destroyed world an asteroid belt and never knew how lucky they were. He was somewhere else now, somewhere he could not quite distinguish. The memory now seemed different and he slowly realised he was experiencing the memories of the actual warrior that was brushing the obstacles of missile fire and laser beams aside and bearing sl
owly but surely down on him. He could see the creature waking up for the first time, and leaving its cryogenic chamber. The images were speeding up now as he neared the present and he saw flashes of the terrible carnage the warrior had caused to the team of guards it had encountered outside the base.

  Then he could see through the creature’s eyes real time and saw his dazed face from a distance closer than he could be comfortable with and he forced his mind to sever the link between himself and the alien creature. He was back in his body and felt small and weak; he had to experience the strength of the warrior to believe it. He now knew that nothing could stop the warrior, it would just keep coming until it had done what it came here to do. Taylor stood from behind his barricade and stopped firing.

  “What are you doing!?” Eli yelled at him as if he were insane.

  “We can’t stop it. We need to find another way out of here. Our only hope is to keep our distance from it for as long as we can,” he replied and dragged Eli and Sara away from the carnage in the passageway. He could see that, although the warrior was being delayed by the barrage of firepower it was withstanding, it was unhurt by it and would be through to the other side of the passageway in a couple of minutes. He had that long to see if his crazy escape plan would work or whether it would kill them as surely as the creature would.

  They ran, and Eli found this to be a much more sensible option. One thing he couldn’t understand was why Taylor had chosen that moment to decide the creature couldn’t be stopped. As Taylor ran, trying desperately to work out the mechanics of his plan, he reasoned that he had only been in the state of psychic union with the creature for a matter of seconds and that his actions must appear to be strange to Sara and Eli. As they passed the unconscious Chris Maxwell they hoisted him up as best they could and then had to stop dead as they practically ran straight into Lana Maxwell running the other way. She seemed wild-eyed and panicked. “Is it inside?” she hollered over the more distant sounds of explosions that were coming from the defensive armament in the passageway.

  Sara shot her a look as if to tell her that of course it was in the station, why did she think they were running. It suddenly occurred to Sarah as she thought this that she had no idea where they were running to. Lana would not be ignored. “What do we do!?” she shouted, looking over her shoulder in the direction from which she had run, Alan was coming up behind her fast. Eli looked from one to the other and could see something had occurred between them, but he could not tell what it was.

  Alan came up to him. “Drop that murderer and leave him here for the monster.” Lana screamed at him to shut his mouth about her husband and Alan edged nervously towards Eli.

  Taylor had no time for this. “We need to get to safety, and that means getting out of this base.”

  “How do you recommend we do that when that thing is blocking the only entrance?” asked Alan. He could only think of trying to tempt the creature to one side of the circular station while they escaped to the passageway round the other. He suggested that to Taylor as they all made their way around the corridor.

  Taylor shook his head. “I’m sure the warrior is ready for that. It had a good look around before it attacked and I think it would be ready for that.”

  “Besides, the passageway to the outer door is practically falling down after the firepower that has been showered down there,” Eli chipped in.

  Lana stopped as they passed the door to the control room. “We could activate the alarm, that would alert any passing ships that may be in the area,” she suggested and began to enter the room to do so.

  “Don’t waste your time. The alarm system has not been reset since it was last used, besides they’d never get here in time,” Sara grabbed Lana by the arm and pulled her along with the rest of them. Taylor had paid special attention to the exchange and made another mental note in his metaphorical notepad.

  “Tay, where are we running to?” asked Eli. “There’s no way out except past that thing and through the passageway, the base is sealed down tight.”

  Taylor flashed a crafty smile at his friend and said cryptically, “No, there’s a way out all right. I just have to work out how we can pass through it without being burned to death.”

  Strangely, that statement did nothing to make the team feel any better. They made their way, following Taylor, into the reactor room and came to a stop. The reactor room, being off of the circular corridor, was not a place that Lana felt they should be. “If we stay in here we’ll be trapped. Sitting ducks for that thing. It’ll be through the passageway soon,” she snorted disgustedly at the strategy.

  Taylor had better things to do than listen. He was working at a console and occasionally looking up at the ceiling to see how long he thought the station could hold itself together and how much he would have to do to help it fall. Eli approached him. “What are you doing fiddling with the reactor venting system at a time like this? I don’t think it matters if the reactor overheats now,” he said deadpan.

  Taylor shook his head. “Think about it. If the base is totally cut off and the only way in is through the passageway then how do we get out?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I keep asking you.”

  “And I’m trying to work on it. I could use some help rather than loads of questions,” Taylor pointed out.

  Eli looked blank. “Help with what? I have no idea what you are doing.”

  Taylor stood up from his crouched position adjusting a flow valve. He looked Eli in the eye, looking for all the world as if he were very disappointed in his friend. The rest of the team were pacing and looking nervously from Taylor to the door where they expected to see the warrior appear at any moment. Taylor spoke slowly and calmly to Eli, “Why do we vent the reactor?”

  “To get rid of excess gasses given off by the reaction within,” Eli quoted straight from the manual by memory. He could not see where this was leading. Taylor asked another question, all the while waiting for the dials behind him to lower themselves to the level he wanted.

  “Where do we vent the gasses to?” he persisted.

  “Outside the station through the top of the.…,” Eli stopped halfway through his manual recital. He could see the point Taylor was trying to make now.

  “Would someone mind telling us what you two are talking about?” Lana scowled in the corner of the room. As far as she could see the two engineers were simply wasting time.

  Eli turned to her and tried to explain what he had just realised himself. “Well, there is a powerful venting system for the reactor which drawers air out from the surrounding area of the core and draws it through big vents out onto the surface of the station.”

  Alan was beginning to see the idea but had a point to make. “But this air is super-heated, we’d be burned to death before we got out,”

  Taylor took the opportunity to take the floor and field the question, “I’m waiting for the flow valve to decrease the temperature of the air. We should be able to get through in a couple of minutes.”

  Suddenly, a huge explosion rocked the entire base and Taylor’s face turned sombre. “I think that means the alien creature is through the passageway. If I were it, I would blow it up to stop us getting through and out to the main door. I assume that explosion was just that. We have to work fast.”

  While Taylor and Eli worked feverishly to cool the air in the venting system, Alan and Sara were watching the hallway with great concern. They had no idea how fast the creature could move, but they were sure it wouldn’t take long for the alien to check the rooms it passed and get to the reactor room. Lana was sitting next to her husband who had regained consciousness but was very weak and could barely speak. Taylor noticed that the big man was awake and thanked his lucky stars. He had not been looking forward to carry him all the way to Maystone’s ship. They should now be able to move a little quicker. He left Eli adjusting valves and went to prepare the second part of his plan.

  Sara tried to get his attention as he passed and entered the corridor. “Where are you g
oing?” she asked, concerned.

  He replied without turning around or breaking his purposeful stride, “To get a surprise ready for our alien friend.”

  ***

  The warrior had been about halfway around the circular building, checking each room as it passed for any sign of its prey, when the man walked out into its path with a smile and a cheerful wave. It was perplexed as to why this particular human did not run like the others did, and why it seemingly wanted to meet it. It paused in its movement and scanned the human in front of it, it could still register an amount of T’suk DNA on the human but this seemed to be decreasing rapidly.

  The Warrior did not know what this meant, but it had a good idea. It had seen the human in front of it throwing fluid onto its fellow human and then had registered the signals from that human also. It made sense that the fluid was causing the readings it had been receiving. It reasoned that this should be no impediment to its mission and decided it was time to make the annoying human a viable target once more.

  Taylor stood before the incredible creature trying not to marvel at the alien he was barely ten meters from. It stood; its skin armour shifting tones from gold to bronze as he watched. On his way to intercept the creature, he had stopped off quickly in the shattered remains of the control room and collected what was left of a piece of hardware he thought could help. It was a projector, usually used to make presentations and display data. It was hand-held and projected an image onto a nearby surface.

  He quickly recorded a message onto the unit and then hurried to make his rendezvous with the being he now stood before. He held the unit behind his back, keen for the alien not to see what he was about to do. The Warrior somehow seemed different, its stance was more aggressive and he concluded his time with immunity was beginning to wear a little thin. Didn’t matter, if all went to plan in the next few minutes he would be to get to Marystone’s ship without any worries about the Warrior. He keyed the buttons on the rear of the unit and edged himself nearer to the curve in the hallway.