She was stood entirely naked.
Unconsciously, he looked her up and down and down and up again.
Never had he seen such a goddess before.
It was like every inch of her body was sculpted to pure perfection. She had a slender and toned figure that kept its curves in all the right places. Plump breasts met his gaze. He had always been turned on by a woman with big tits, and this woman’s were the best he had ever seen. His eyes travelled lower. She had shaven her private area and didn’t seem to care that he was looking at her.
Matthews sighed as the woman cupped his balls.
Slowly, she massaged them in her hand.
‘You have to find me,’ she repeated, ‘I am waiting for you.’
Matthews licked his lips, as hardness began to set in.
The woman leant in. Matthews reacted by doing the same thing. The two of them kissed.
Matthews' eyes flicked open, and he looked up at the ceiling of his office. He had awoken with such a jolt that he nearly fell from his leather chair. He brought his feet off the desktop and looked around the room. It seemed to take a moment for his mind to come back to reality. The dream had felt so life like. ‘How long have I been asleep?’ he glanced at the clock on his touch screen tablet. He had slept for six hours. It felt like he had slept for twenty-four.
***
A heavy metallic leg swung off the motorbike and crunched down upon the floor. Omar looked down at his foot. The ground beneath him had cracked like a mirror. He lifted his head and looked towards the crystal forest. The valley before him was constructed purely of gigantic crystal that crisscrossed liked a deformed woodland that grew sideways rather than up. Every second the crystals rotated through the colour spectrum. At any one time, every single colour of the rainbow was represented in this beautiful forest of crystal light. He had never seen anything like it in his life. The readout on his forearm tablet displayed a red dot deep within the crystal forest. This was where the landing pod would be. Once he found that he would be able to expand his search for the survivors. Omar grabbed his cannon like assault rifle off the back of the motorbike and began the journey down the valley into the mystical crystal landscape.
***
Bar A was devoid of life at this time of night. The bartender was sat on a stool behind the bar watching a science fiction movie on the flat screen television behind the bar. In the far corner of the place was Jimmy, the young man who had been placed in charge of taking care of the vegetation chamber by Captain Abbott. The boy had worked as a gardener on Earth, which meant he should have at least some idea of how to take care of the fruit and vegetables in the vegetation chamber. Detailed tutorials helped fill in the blanks. The boy was nursing a drink and didn’t even acknowledge Matthews as he entered.
The peace officer approached the barman.
‘How’s it going tonight?’
‘Dead,’ he grunted, ‘the shooting at the dig killed off most of my customers.’
‘That is what I came to talk to you about.’
‘Oh?’
‘The night before the shooting did Rick come in here?’ Matthews flashed a picture of the deceased dig manager on his portable tablet. The barman nodded his head at the face he had seen pretty much every single day since they crashed on this god forsaken planet.
‘Rick was always in here, usually after a barny with his missus.’
‘Was he in here without anyone?’
‘The last time I saw him he came in for a drink. We spoke for a bit about the stuff he was finding at the dig site, but when it got a bit busier, he retreated to a table. He didn’t seem to like the other customers too much. At the end of the night, I saw him leaving with a woman.’
‘Would it be this woman?’ Matthews showed an image of Kimberly.
‘That is the one. Is that the wife?’
‘No. Why?’
‘They looked like a couple with all the flirting and hand holding that was going on.’
‘You sure that’s what you saw?’ asked Matthews. ‘This is important.’
‘The woman looked more than happy to receive his attention. I just assumed it was his wife.’
‘Right,’ replied Matthews. He was about to follow up with another question when his communicator began to vibrate. ‘One second. Hello?’
‘Officer Matthews, this is Dr Linda Mackenzie.’ She was one of the students that had been working with Dr Jones in the alien city. After the shooting, he had been good enough to send back two of his younger medical students to help at the base. ‘Could you please come down to the medical bay? I have found something very interesting that you might want to look at.’
***
Crumpled debris and chewed up pieces of metal surrounded the crash site. The landing pod rested in three separate pieces in the crystal forest. Omar looked up at the canopy of multicoloured crystals. He could see the impact the deep sleep chamber had made on the forest floor, but there wasn’t a single gap in the crystals above. He knew he should see destruction above him, but it was as if the escape pod hadn’t come down from above as the crystal forest looked untouched. Omar slapped the side of his helmet, as the screen across his visor momentarily turned to static. He was finding his armoured suit was moving sluggish and slow now as if it was running out of power, but the battery power appeared at eighty percent. These suits could go for weeks without recharging, and he had charged the suit to full capacity before leaving the base. He looked down at remains of a torso lying on the floor. Omar knelt and held his forearm tablet over the body. The green light of the tracking device flickered to a red light, confirming that the person was dead. This was the seventh body he had found. Omar walked through the debris, patting the side of his helmet, as he approached the final part of the crumpled up escape pod. He clambered up the centre of the ship. Six dead bodies were still in their sleeping chambers. The small mercy was that these people would have died without ever having to feel any pain. It took a few minutes for him to change their status to deceased. It left two green life signals in the crystal forest. Omar had hoped to find more survivors, but unlike the others, this sleeping chamber must have had a systems malfunction. He walked back out into the forest. The two other life signs were deeper in the forest as if they had left the crash site completely. Did that mean someone had survived? Omar headed deeper into the forest of light to find the answer to his question.
***
She woke to the sound of something clanging through the silence of the house. Kimberly glanced at her husband half-expecting for him to have awoken too, but he was dead to the world. The drugs he was taking had knocked him out. It was probably for the best. He was no good to anyone in his current condition. She pulled the duvet up to her chin when she heard the sound again. It was confirmation she wasn’t hearing things. Kimberly rolled out of bed, pulled on her silk dressing gown and slunk into the hallway. The lights of the house were out, but a dull glow was coming from the kitchen. Silently, she moved through the shadows. She cursed herself for not grabbing a weapon. Even a can of hairspray would have done, at least she could have put that in the person’s eyes. She poked her eyes around the doorway and into the kitchen. Her five-year-old son was stood in his underpants holding a kitchen knife. The light was coming from the open fridge door.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded to know, angrily.
Her son nearly jumped out of his skin.
‘I told you I would get in trouble,’ he spoke towards an empty space in the kitchen.
Kimberly’s heart sank.
‘Who are you talking to?’
‘No one,’ he lied.
‘Oh good god,’ she rushed over to him, removed the knife from his hand and hugged him tight. ‘Listen to me, Christopher. Do not talk to your imaginary friend anymore, do you understand?’
‘I don’t think he will like it.’
‘I don’t care. Do you promise me you won’t talk to him?’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
‘Good boy, now you can come
and sleep with me tonight.’
Kimberly placed the knife back and closed the fridge door. She scooped her son up off the floor, hugging him close to her breast. Her eyes glanced at the empty space he had spoken too. Deep down she could feel someone was there. The feel of the room was different to the sensation Gabriel gave her. Did this mean there was someone else here? What did they want with her son? She would never let anyone have her son.
***
Matthews sat on a silver stool in the medical bay, listening intently and following very little. The two young doctors were no older than eighteen years of age, just babies. They were students, but not medical students as he had first thought. One was a pretty young woman that looked about fourteen, and the other was a guy who could hardly grow any facial hair. The bodies of the dig victims were lying on the silver tables that ran the full length of the room. They were all to be buried once released by the medical team. The two young doctors held up graphs and charts on their touch screen tablets and used complex words that went in one ear and out the other.
‘Have you sent your finding to Dr Jones?’ asked Matthews.
‘Yes. The message we are giving you comes directly from him,’ said Linda.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Matthews pinched the ridge of his nose. It was too much to take in. ‘You have found a virus in their blood?’ He pointed to the dead bodies. ‘You have also tested yourself and found that you both have the exact same virus.’
‘Yes and no,’ replied Nick, the young man. ‘The dead men had contracted a foreign virus that must have been living on this planet when we crashed. Linda and I also have contracted a virus. Our theory is that every single survivor has been infected, but it isn’t by the same virus.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The components of the virus are very complex, and like nothing, the computer has seen before,’ explained Linda. ‘This is why we believe it is from the planet. This is something new we are dealing with, but each virus is unique. Myself and one of the victims have the same virus, as the genetic code is identical. The other’s all have viruses that are different.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Matthews.
‘Neither do we,’ countered Nick, ‘this is why we asked you to come here. We need to perform tests on all the survivors. We need to know what it is doing to people, or if anyone has fallen ill? This virus could be deadly. We need to gather more information so that we can find a cure.’
‘Hold up,’ Matthews held up a hand. ‘You want to test everyone?’
‘We need to test everyone,’ countered Linda.
‘What did Dr Jones say?’
‘He said to test everyone before it is too late.’
‘Do we know if this virus is deadly?’
‘No,’ admitted Nick, ‘we know nothing about it.’
‘It is very late,’ said Matthews, getting to his feet and stretching out his back muscles. ‘Let me think about it for a few hours. I don’t want to unnecessary scare people, not after what has just happened.’ He gestured to the dead bodies of the dig site victims. ‘Give me a few hours.’
***
The lights of the forest were hypnotising. Omar was so lost in the beauty of it all that he wasn’t aware of the creatures that were gathering all around him. The things were hard to spot. They were about half the size of a domesticated cat and were camouflaged to perfection. The creature’s skin mimicked the nearest light of a crystal tree, making them almost impossible to spot apart from the slits of bright red in their eyes. Omar slapped his helmet and tapped the tablet of his armoured suit. Both of them were locked in total static. His vision was down to a narrow tunnel of clear image directly in front of him. The last reading of the location chips said that the two survivors were literally a couple of hundred meters ahead of him. He had to be close to them by now.
One of the alien creatures dropped down onto the floor in front of him.
Detached from a tree, it reverted to a mustard colour.
Omar came to a standstill and raised his assault rifle at the little thing.
The strange animal tilted it’s head this way and that.
Omar weighted up the creature for a moment and then walked on.
A second creature fell down in front of him.
And then there was a third.
Omar paused for a second time as hundreds of the damn thing fell all around him. One of them let out a short high pitched cry, revealing a mouth of razor sharp teeth. In a second the creatures turned. Thousands of them rushed at the man in the armoured tank suit. Omar didn’t think. Natural instinct took over. He applied pressure to the assault rifle and lit the fuckers up. The cannon-like weapon thundered loudly. One bullet cut through the bodies of a dozen of the tiny creatures and then cut through the crystal formations in the distance. Omar spun three hundred and sixty degrees, spraying bullets everywhere. Green blood splashed in all directions, as the little creatures were propelled backwards through the air. In the background the crystal structures fell towards the ground, shattering into a million pieces with the dramatic sound of a mirror being thrown against a wall. It didn’t seem to matter how many of the fuckers he killed, they just kept coming. One of the creatures attached itself to the right leg of his armoured suit. A damage report flicked in his visor, as red warning lights appeared across his vision. The bastard was eating through the armour as if it wasn’t even there. Omar slapped the creature away, but another had jumped onto his back, chewing through the reinforced metal on his shoulder. Omar did what any sane man would do. He charged forward through the crystal forest, stomping on any of the fuckers that got beneath his heavy feet, hoping that a freight train attitude and a good burst of speed might get him out of this dangerous situation.
***
‘What the fuck happened here?’ asked Ryan, as he stepped into the command room of the crashed space ship. The place had been shot to pieces. Two bodies were sprawled out. One of them had been cut in two from the gunshot wound that clearly came from the assault rifle of an armoured tank suit. Sheridan examined the body of a shaved headed female.
‘It is just as I said,’ her father was standing to the front of the room.
‘Who did this?’ asked Ryan.
‘Omar,’ countered Sheridan, ‘this woman has a Space Marine tattoo on her arm.’ Sheridan pulled out her touch screen tablet and scanned it over the woman’s hand. An identification screen came up, revealing detailed information about this woman. She had been part of a four-man Space Marine team headed to Remus. Sheridan changed her status to deceased.
‘Why would he do this?’
‘That is what we are here to find out.’
‘The CCTV footage will hold all the answers,’ explained her father. ‘He tried to sabotage it by shooting up the command room, but the main memory banks are several floors down. This will give you all the evidence you need to arrest him.’
‘Identify the other body and change him to deceased,’ ordered Sheridan. ‘I am going down to the main memory banks.’
***
Dr Jones walked through the great alien hall with Dr Ziva at his side. The two of them were all that was left of his team now that he had sent the others back to support in the medical centre. His mind was consumed with thoughts of the virus his team had found in the bodies of the dead. It fitted into the evidence he had found here in the alien city. This planet was a centre of learning and knowledge. Thousands of Gods had resided here, but where had they all gone? Could a God really die? Or had the Gods disappeared when the people on this planet had died? Dr Jones was aware of the reports that survivors had been seen talking to invisible people. Did that mean the Gods on this planet were no more than a virus? Could the Gods be returning now that there are people to infect? Captain Abbott had been his friend. Dr Jones did not believe for one second that she killed the men at the dig site. Something about that whole situation felt off. Could she have been acting under the influence of the virus, or a God? Dr Jones didn’t know what to make o
f it. His theory could be well off, but he couldn’t work out where the Gods had gone. This planet has an infinite amount of knowledge of the workings of the universe. It has the history of worlds that were formed before the dinosaurs were extinct on Earth. Why hadn’t the Gods brought more people to this planet? Could they only exist if there were people? If everyone on the planet had now contracted a virus, did that mean the Gods were that and nothing more? But why would a virus want to teach knowledge and help worlds? Dr Jones would have to speak to Peace Officer Matthews. They had to run more tests on people. They had to learn the truth. The more they learnt about this planet, the more confusing everything was becoming.
***
Large metallic hands grabbed at the creatures, as they climbed upon the armoured battle suit. Omar tossed the bastards aside, but there were simply too many of them. Damage reports flashed across the screen, as the suit's power drained at a drastically increasing rate. It was only at eighteen percent. It was as if these creatures were sucking the energy out of it. Suddenly, the suit stopped. The creatures had chewed straight through the spinal circuits, essentially crippling the battle suits legs.
‘Fuck,’ cursed Omar.
He was a sitting duck.
He had two options. He could remain in the suit until they ate through to him, or make a break for it, but if these things could chew through metal, they would devour him as soon as he stepped out into the open. Either way, he was going to die. He knew this. He accepted this, but the survival instinct was built into him. Omar struck the emergency release button. The front of the suit exploded outwards like the cockpit of a fighter jet. He managed to squash all the little creatures directly in front of him, opening a small but limited passage. Omar leapt from the suit, practically falling down onto his hands and knees, and then sprinted with everything that he had. Unconsciously, he grabbed the sidearm sitting in his thigh holster, but before he could activate the weapon the sound of a roaring engine filled the air. An armoured truck exploded through a wall of multicoloured crystal, ploughing through the hordes of aliens. A heavy machine gun on top of the vehicle opened up with devastating effect. The thundering sound of the weapon roared through the crystal forest, blowing the creatures into a thousand pieces. Omar could see no gunner or driver, but he didn’t look long enough to be sure. He was running with everything he had, but it appeared the creatures were no longer interested in him. They were swarming the armoured truck, as it drove off in the other direction in a slow and steady pace.
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