by Jake Bible
“There!” I said and pointed out the view screen. “Do you see it?”
“I do,” Mgurn said and aimed us at a far-off glow. “Sensors still do not pick anything up, though.”
“That’s why the Eight Million Gods gave us eyes, buddy,” I said.
The heavy rock that had filled my gut with dread began to lift as we got closer and closer to the glow. After half an hour, it distinguished itself as exactly what we were looking for: a ring of fire. But that wasn’t all that was distinguished.
The closer we got, the more I could see there was texture to the planet. Not mountains or valleys, nothing so dramatic, just, well, texture. The planet’s surface seemed to be made up of thousands of small bumps. Like goosebumps when you’re cold or nervous.
“Hmmm,” Mgurn said.
“Is that a bad hmmm or a good hmmm?” I asked.
“It is a puzzled hmmm,” Mgurn said.
“Puzzled because?” I asked, not quite sure I wanted the answer.
“I believe the planet’s surface is moving,” Mgurn said. “Do you see it?”
We continued to get closer to the surface, and it didn’t take long for me to see what he meant. Those bumps I saw? Not texture. Nope. They were alive. The whole planet was coated in a writhing mass of creatures. I had no idea what type of creatures, but creatures.
“Fo,” I said.
“Yes,” Mgurn agreed.
We finally reached the ring of fire, and Mgurn hovered over its center. He switched the view and the screen in front of us became a picture of what was directly underneath the ship.
“It is clear within the ring,” Mgurn said. “Should I set down?”
I hesitated for a second, looked at my hands that were no longer throbbing, and nodded.
“This is the place,” I said.
“Very well then,” Mgurn said.
He slowly landed the ship while I switched the view back to what was in front of us. I watched the far-off flames flick high into the dark sky. They leapt up to thirty meters easy. A quick estimate would have put the diameter of the ring at maybe eight or nine hundred meters. It was a big ass ring of fire.
Once settled, Mgurn went over a systems check to make sure the ship was ready for a fast take off if we needed it to be. I didn’t argue and let him take all the time he needed. I was Team Fast Take Off, for sure.
“I am ready,” Mgurn said. “The ship is ready. Are you ready, Joe?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said and stood up. “Let’s get suited up and see what there is to see.”
We made our way down to the cargo hold. After donning full environmental suits, battle armor, and shield generators, we proceeded to get all armed to the teeth.
Mgurn had four KL09 heavy pistols, one for each hand, two H16 plasma carbine multi-weapons, a double row of ion grenades, and what looked like a baseball bat strapped to his leg, before he gave me a thumbs up.
I strapped on two KL09s and took just one H16 plasma carbine multi-weapon. I didn’t have four hands, just the two. Plus, if I lost my carbine and the two KL09s on me didn’t do the trick then a second H16 probably wouldn’t be much more help and only add to my weight load. I wasn’t a two-meter-plus tall bug hound, so I needed to think about that kind of thing.
“I am opening the ramp,” Mgurn announced.
He had one hand on the button and the other three holding weapons. I brought up my H16 and aimed it at the back of the ship as the cargo ramp slowly lowered itself to the planet’s surface. The edge thumped audibly, even through my helmet, and charcoal dust plumed up into the air. We both waited for it to settle then slowly made our way down the ramp.
We had landed dead center in the ring of fire. Nothing came to greet us, nothing came out of any shadows, not that there were any shadows, to rush us and try to eat our faces.
No, all that greeted us was the most eerie sound I had ever heard.
“What is that?” I asked Mgurn.
“Sorrow,” he said and slumped to his knees. “Pure sorrow.”
He started weeping right there on the spot. I looked from him to the flames and back. His shoulders were shaking as he sobbed. He had two more shoulders than me, so that was some heavy duty sobbing.
“Mgurn?” I asked.
“Why, Joe?” Mgurn responded. “Why is it all so sad?”
“Yeah, I’m not feeling it,” I said.
And I wasn’t. I didn’t feel any sorrow at all. No sadness or grief or need to ball my eyes out in the middle of the ring of fire. Yeah, I could hear the pain in the sound coming from outside the ring, but it didn’t make me want to go hide in my bedroom and smoke clove cigarettes. It was what it was. Kinda annoying more than anything.
“Mgurn, get up,” I ordered, trying not to let the annoyance fill my voice. “Buddy? You can’t kneel there the whole time. We got a quest to fulfill. This is the first trial, remember? Gonna need you alert and ready to kick ass, okay? Mgurn?”
He responded with a wail. It was just like the sound I heard an old lady make when I was a Marine, and we’d just flattened her village. And all the people living in it. She’d been out gathering food and came back to total annihilation and an occupying force. It sounded like that.
Except Mgurn was not an old lady, and we didn’t just flatten a village.
“Mgurn!” I shouted loud enough to cause feedback in my com. “Get your Leforian ass up and stand tall! You are failing me here! Do you want to be the assistant that fails Salvage Merc One?”
“No!” he cried out, his voice thick with emotion.
“Then get up! NOW!”
He slowly made it upright again. I thought of helping him, but I figured the second I touched him, he’d just collapse into a puddle of grief, so I let him struggle on his own.
His sobs took forever to die down, and when he was finally only sniffles and snorts, I gave him a curt nod then pointed at the ring of fire.
“Okay, feel better?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Good enough for me,” I said. “Let’s go check out what this ring thing is for. My vision had a ring of fire, and there is the ring of fire.”
We walked closer with me taking point and Mgurn following close behind. Every few steps, he’d hiccup, but at least the crying didn’t start again. We were halfway from the ship to the ring when everything changed. Of course it did. No reason for it not to.
“Uh…where’d the flames go?” I asked as the ring sputtered, sputtered, died.
Then came the bumps.
Eight
The planet itself wasn’t black. It wasn’t even charcoal. It was what covered it that was black, that was charcoal.
That had been burnt, but not killed. That lay in wait for someone to stumble upon them so they may greet it and call it a friend.
And by friend, I mean they wanted to show it their teeth and possibly—oh, hell, probably—eat the crud out of it.
I was the it. Same with Mgurn. We were no longer Salvage Merc One and his trusty assistant. We were the next course for a whole lot of hungry bumps that looked like they hadn’t eaten in a very long time.
“Joe!” Mgurn shouted. It was half-warning, half-question.
“Shoot the fo out of them!” I shouted back and opened fire.
My H16 barked to life, and I strafed the onrushing creatures.
They were a burnt-flesh mix of a small gorilla and a large wolverine. On they loped, baring surprisingly white teeth. So many white teeth. The teeth practically glowed in the dark as the things came for us. But the white didn’t stay for long as the plasma bolts tore into the heads of the creatures.
Bright red blood, bright and red like the star that was the center of the Daedalus System, exploded outward. Heads popped, chests were ripped open, limbs cut off at the joints, muscles spraying out in long, scarlet tendrils behind the ever-rushing creatures.
Against the stark, black background, it was almost beautiful. Almost, but not quite. The thing that ruined it was how there didn’t se
em to be an end to the creatures. The visor on my helmet lit up with reading after reading, the computer within trying to calculate the numbers before us. But there was no calculation to be had. The visor finally blinked a warning infinity sign, it too colored bright red.
“Joe!” Mgurn shouted again. “We must retreat!”
“But this is the place!” I replied. “This is the first part of the quest! The first trial! I have to figure out why!”
“You cannot figure it out if you are overrun by these things and dead!” Mgurn countered.
The guy had a point.
The plasma bolts weren’t slowing the things down, so I switched to ion launcher, pumped the H16 twice, then pulled the trigger and let the grenades fly from the barrel. The artillery arced over the heads of the first five rows of the things then exploded in a brilliant flash of the purest light. My visor instantly dimmed, keeping my eyes from being melted from my skull.
A thirty-meter trough had been dug in the ranks of the creatures by the ion grenades, but that was like throwing a rock into a puddle, the water just washed back into place as if nothing had happened.
There was an itching at the back of my head, and I almost stopped firing to scratch at it. I kept the ion grenades launching until my H16 clicked empty then I switched it back to plasma bolts. My finger stayed depressed on the trigger despite the overwhelming desire to scratch the crud out of my neck.
I glanced over at Mgurn and saw he’d stopped shooting one of the KL09s and was furiously digging at a spot on his own neck where his helmet met his suit. If he kept at it, he’d break the seal and it would be all over from there.
“Knock it off!” I shouted. “Mgurn! Stop scratching!”
“I cannot!” Mgurn replied. “It will not leave me alone! All the sorrow! All the pain! It is right there! Right where I cannot get at it! If I get at it, I can stop it! I can stop it, Joe!”
Okay. That wasn’t good.
A loud crunch and shudder diverted my attention for a split second, and I glanced at the readings on my visor. Oh, crud. We were surrounded. I foing forgot we’d been standing in a ring of fire. A ring. Rings are circular. The ring had been surrounded on all sides by the things. And from all sides they were coming at us.
That meant there were a whole hell of a lot of creatures that we hadn’t even been firing at.
“Back in the ship!” I yelled. “Back in now!”
“I said that earlier and you declined!” Mgurn argued. He didn’t argue enough not to do what I said, but he still argued. “I wish you would make up your mind!”
“It’s made up!” I shouted as I slung my H16 and grabbed his arm, yanking him back up the cargo ramp and into the ship. “One hundred percent made up!”
Once Mgurn was far enough in, I spun about and turned the H16 to plasma flame. The thrower emitted a three-meter-length tongue of fire, and for a brief moment, the creatures slowed. Some even stopped. But that moment was brief. The mass of them pressed from behind, pushing the front rows directly into the plasma fire.
The creatures squealed like wounded terpigs. Mgurn squealed almost as loudly from behind me, and I heard a thump. My guess was he’d just collapsed since his squeal stopped suddenly. But I didn’t have time to turn and check on him. I had to clear enough of the creatures away so the cargo ramp had time to close.
I kept the fire flowing, whipping my H16 back and forth so the flames looked like a burning whip. More and more creatures screamed, but the mass didn’t slow. I was trying to stop a flood with a single sandbag.
I said fo it and slammed my hand on the ramp controls. The ramp began to close, but not before a dozen of the things reached it and climbed aboard. I switched back to plasma bolts and blew the heads off three before the others reached me.
They tackled me, and I was pinned to the cargo hold’s deck. Their mouths opened, and they tried to rip into me, but my shield kept them off, sparks flying with each attack. The inability to rip me to shreds pissed them off even more, and their movements became nothing but pure, unadulterated fury.
I tried to get one of my KL09s free, but it was knocked from my hand by the frenzy that pinned me to the deck.
Then there was a sound like nothing I’d heard before. A shape appeared above me, just barely visible through the clawing, gnashing, insane creatures. I felt a jolt all the way through the pile and then another. It was followed by more and more jolts. Soon, the pile lessened and the weight on me became bearable.
I freed my other KL09 and shoved the barrel against the head of a snarling creature. The head was vaporized instantly as I pulled the trigger. The thing’s bright red blood coated my visor, and I wiped it clear. Above me was a blood-coated Mgurn, that baseball bat club of his hanging loosely from one hand, dripping with even more blood. I pushed up onto my elbows and looked around. The only things left alive were me and Mgurn.
“Thanks, buddy,” I said.
“Make it stop, Joe,” Mgurn whispered. “Please…”
He fell onto his knees then onto his face. I knew he wasn’t dead because I could see his life sign readings on my visor. But they didn’t look good, and unless I figured out what the hell I was supposed to do, Mgurn was a dead Leforian.
“Okay, buddy, I’ll make it stop,” I said as I got up.
I increased the power to my battle armor so I could pick him up and carry him into the lift. The power would drain quickly, so I cursed every long second it took to get to the infirmary level. Barely waiting for the lift doors to open, I hurried into the med bay and basically tossed Mgurn into a med chamber.
I yanked off my helmet and sighed with relief once the chamber was sealed and working. His life signs stabilized, but they did not improve. Leforians are tricky when it comes to tech, so just getting him stabilized was a foing miracle.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I muttered as I ran from the med bay and made my way back up to the bridge. “Gotta figure this out.”
I was firing up the thrusters before my ass cheeks were fully settled into the pilot’s seat. I grabbed the controls and was about to lift off when I realized I didn’t know where I was going.
“Gotta figure this out,” I said to myself. “Figure it the fo out, Joe!”
The ship shuddered as the creatures began to swarm over it. The view screen went dark except for flashes of bright white teeth. I flicked it fully off so I could think. No need to stare at all the dental horror.
“Ring of fire,” I said. “We landed in the ring of fire. The ring of fire went out, and the things came at us. What was the point of the ring of fire? Why bother if it’s going to just go dark?”
There was the sound of tearing metal, and I sat bolt upright. A klaxon sounded. Hull breach.
“Fo,” I said and pushed the thrusters to full then lifted the ship up into the air.
I switched the view screen back on and wasn’t surprised to see a couple dozen of the things still hanging tight. I climbed steeply then pitched the controls into a barrel roll, sending the creatures flying from the ship’s hull. As I raced towards the ground, ready to pull up at the last minute so the sudden movement would dislodge any of the bastards that were still hanging on, I saw it.
The ring of fire was lit up again.
There it was, right below me, bright as could be. The creatures retreated from it and hunkered back down on the ground. Those trapped inside the ring tore at each other, their teeth and claws ripping into scorched and scarred flesh, tearing chunks off and sending waves of blood this way and that.
I almost forgot to pull up, I was so busy staring at the scene.
“Almost fell into a ring of fire,” I chuckled.
That triggered a small memory; a bit of music from my childhood. There was a song. A song with the same name. Something about falling into a ring of fire. It was an ancient tune, one from well before humanity fled to the stars.
I brought the ship around so I could hover above the ring of fire. I watched the creatures annihilate each other until only one stood. It thumped its
chest and stared up at me. Then it tore its own head off and a geyser of blood spurted into the air before the body collapsed onto its sick brethren.
“Don’t see that every day,” I muttered.
That song… It worried at the back of my mind. I could hear the melody, but couldn’t quite recreate it. I thought of the lyrics again falling into a ring of fire. Falling into…
“No way,” I thought. But the more it played in my brain, the more I became certain it was the answer. “Well, crud.”
I sent the ship climbing once more. After thirty seconds, I pushed the controls forward into a steep dive. It was the same dive as before, but there was a huge difference. This time, I wasn’t going to pull up. I was going to fly right into the ground. I was going to fall into the ring of fire.
Every alarm in the ship went off. There were alarms I didn’t even know the ship had going off so loud that I thought I was made of sound. My molecules vibrated at a frequency that couldn’t be healthy for a human being, even one with some weird ass artifact stuck inside him.
Safety overrides tried to kick in, but I overrode the overrides. The ship continued on its collision course with the planet’s surface.
The navigation AI started barking at me, shouting for me to pull up, shouting and asking questions.
“Why, Joe? Why?” it screamed as we hit the planet head on.
Kind of a weird question for a simple AI to ask.
I expected so much crashing and breaking and kablooey, but none of it came. The ship kept flying, kept falling, and all around was a tunnel of fire. From a ring to a tunnel, with nothing but fire all the way down.
“Holy crud,” I whispered as I watched the flames lick the outer edges of the ship.
I checked the sensor readings, but there was no damage to the ship. The shields didn’t even register a disturbance. As far as the sensors were concerned, there was no fire.
Then a light at the end of the tunnel presented itself, and I started to smile. I’d figured it out. Fall into the ring of fire, and it would deliver us to the next destination. It sucked that Mgurn was hurt because I didn’t figure it out sooner. The second we were safely on the other side, when we’d arrived at our next locale, I was going to walk into that med bay and apologize my ass off.