The First Dawn (The Sci-Corp War Saga Book 1)

by Justin Alexander

  Revelations 6:8

  EARTH TIME: 10.08 AM

  DATE: 2320

  TRAVELLERS GATE, EDGE OF KNOWN SPACE, FIVE HUNDRED MILLION LIGHT YEARS FROM EARTH.

  THE FOLLOWING TRANMISSION IS TO BE CONSIDERED EYES ONLY FOR COMMAND STAFF…..CONSIDERED TOP SECRET…..CODE ALPHA, BRAVO, ZULU, THREE, FIVE, CHARLIE….READY FOR NEAURAL DOWNLOAD.

  DOWNLOAD COMPLETE.

  SIT-REP.

  EMERGENCY BEACON SIGNAL DETECTED NEAR TRAVELLERS GATE, FROM EARLY DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION ARK VESSEL ECLIPSE ONE. MISSING FOR OVER TWO HUNDRED YEARS, PRESUMED LOST WITH ALL HANDS. FLEET X-RAY HAS BEEN DESPATCHED UNDER THE COMMAND OF EARTH FLEET DESTROYER TROY.

  SEARCH AND RESCUE PARAMETRES.

  1) MARINE SPECIAL OPERATIONS TEAM TO BOARD THE VESSEL AND SEARCH FOR ANY SURVIVORS.

  2) THE SHIPS BLACK BOX IS TO BE RECOVERED.

  3) IF POSSIBLE SHIPS REACTORS ARE TO BE ACTIVATED AND BEST POSSIBLE SPEED IS TO BE MADE FOR SCI-CORP RESEARCH STATION CENTAUR FOUR.

  CODE DELTA, FOR GOLD COMMAND ONLY, DIRECT ORDER FROM SCI-CORP.

  IF ANY UNKNOWN FORCES/ORGANISMS ARE DETECTED, COMAND LEVEL HAS AUTHORIZED THE ARK SHIP ECLISPE ONE TO BE DESTROYED. ANY MARINE PERSONEL EXPOSED ARE TO BE QUARNATINED AND PLACED IN CUSTORDY FOR DELIVERY TO SCI-CORP.

  BREACH OF GOLD COMMAND SECRUITY, WILL RESULT IN MANDATORY SENTENCE OF DEATH.

  TRANSMISSION ENDS……

  The dreamer slept and the nightmare came it always did, every night for the past twenty years, like a freight-train ripping through his subconscious. He was eight again, back on the families’ farm on Exodus. Something had woken him, a scream, faint and rasped. He pulled off his covers and grabbed hold of the small stuffed bear his mother had brought him. With the animal cradled tightly to his chest he crept through his darkened room.

  He paused briefly as he reached the door, the final boundary from the sanctuary and security of his room. He steeled his own nerves, even then he had been a warrior and he stepped out into the dimly lit hallway. Instinctively he pulled the bear closer to his tiny frame, knowing that the stuffed animal would protect him. It was like a child to believe such things, that an inanimate object could somehow guard you from evil and harm.

  In silence he set off down the corridor, he wanted to call out to his parents, yet for some reason he knew that he had to be quiet. Only one thought permeated his mind, he had to get to his sister, she was four years younger than him, although sometimes she could annoy him and even if he would never truly admit it, part of him resented her. He also loved her with all his heart. He was her big brother, it was his job to protect her, his mum and dad had told him so.

  He stopped when he reached her room, “Sophia,” daubed in bright red paint across the old-fashioned wooden door, the name itself was surrounded by sparkling stars and hearts.

  Abruptly a voice echoed through his head, “You must run Daniel, run now.” he recognised the soft, gentle tone, it was his sister.

  The words stung at his very soul, like a thousand frozen needles, even now so many years later, he is once more standing outside the same room and like every night he knew what he had to do. However much he may have wanted to run, to escape this nightly torment, he knew that he couldn’t, and part of him didn’t want to. Again he was a child, more afraid than he had ever been, but that did not matter he had to get to his sister, she was in trouble and somehow he knew it. He stretched out his tiny hand and gripped hold of the door handle.

  “NO!” the voice screamed a mix of rage and terror laced within it. “You must go now there is no time, they are already here and you must go.”

  “No,” he murmured as he turned the handle. Sluggishly the wood creaked and sighed as if it as well was attempting to dissuade him from entering.

  “Please Daniel don’t you must go, I love you and I don’t want the bad thing to get you.”

  “It won’t,” Daniel replied holding up his teddy bear, “Nothing can hurt me.”

  “He won’t be able to protect you Daniel, this is something that not even he can stop.”

  He didn’t reply, he couldn’t, cautiously he began to push the door open and he could feel his tiny heart hammering within his torso.

  “Please,” the voice begged.

  For a moment he stood in the open doorway and peered into the pitch black interior of the room, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. After a few minutes he saw her, Sophia lying sound asleep safe under her covers, she knew the rules, once under your duvet you were safe and nothing could get you. It was the one constant rule he had learnt as a child, the one thing that he held as the ultimate truth. He felt a sense of relief flow over his diminutive frame, as everything was as it should be. It must have been just a bad dream, nothing more, his sister was safe and soon he knew that he would awaken. It would be the start of the school holidays, and six weeks of fun and adventure would await him.

  He was about leave, to return to the warmth and refuge of his own bed when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He swung round and came face to face with something that should only exist in some twisted dreamscape, like some primal nightmare given form. He was sure that at any second he would rouse and find himself back within the safe confines of his bed.

  Yet he didn’t stir awake, instead he remained frozen to the spot, as the shadow sped down the hallway. Within the murk he could feel something cloaked, something hidden, a presence without form, an ancient evil stirred and loosed upon this World. Eyes burnt within the shades, now as the Man he was, they appeared to him like red dwarf stars amid the dark vault of space, but to the child he is then, it looks simply like rippling flames and he is afraid. He felt panic begin to swirl over his body like ice cold water and he began to tremble uncontrollably.

  His sister’s voice shrieked within his consciousness, “RUN!”

  Yet even if he had wanted to, he couldn’t move, he was paralysed with dread, his child’s mind unable to cope with what he saw. Urine soaked through his favourite animal print pyjamas, and his breathing became heavy. All he could do was watch as the shadow tore past him and into his sister’s room.

  “NO!” he managed to cough, as his mind fought desperately to regain control of his paralysed limbs. Again he is the man he has grown into, he stands in the entry, his pyjamas replaced by lightweight body armour and his loyal friend by a projectile rifle. He fantasised that he would depress the trigger and watch the super-heated rounds tear into the evil spirit housed within the shadows. It would flee squawking and he would run to Sophia’s bed and cradle her petite frame within his powerful arms. Yet quickly reality returned to the lurid dream, he was not a man but a boy armed with nothing more than a teddy bear.

  The shade hesitated for an instant and seemed to crane itself towards him. He could feel its frigid, dead eyes upon him, the same eyes, which had known only darkness until it had borne witness to the birth of the universe in the fires of the big bang.

  Then it was if this primordial evil was clawing at his mind. There was an instance of agony and then it was as if a sea of light weaved its way over his body. It shrouded him with love in its most pure form and made him feel completely safe.

  “Leave him alone,” Sophia whispered.

  “No,” He pleaded, tears streaming down his cheeks, he knew what she was doing.

  “Please I need you, I love you,” he managed to murmur.

  The bleakness turned its attention back to the room, it glided over to Sophia who still appeared to be sleeping. It paused, and he could feel it reaching out to her. He could almost feel its spectral fingers ripping away at her flesh, yet she appeared unharmed, it wanted her that way, it wanted her alive and fresh. Suddenly the gloom drifted over her, encompassing her miniscule, frail body in darkness.

  “NO!” he cried. He tried to move, desperate to reach his sister, desperate to save her. His fear was gone, replaced now by a seething rage, the rage of a man not a boy. Whatever this shadow was, wherever it came from it was trying to hurt Sophia and it would pay.
It was useless though, frozen in place as he was, a simple and silent witness to what was about to happen.

  “It’s ok Daniel,” His sister’s voice resonated through his mind like a whisper upon the wind. “There’s nothing you can do the bad thing has me, but it can’t get you I’ve made sure.”

  “No I can save you.”

  “No you can’t,” Her voice grew faint as the darkness encompassed her. “I have to go, don’t look in mum and dads room, just run leave the house and run away.”

  An incandescent gleam filled the room, Daniel sealed his eyes tightly. After a few minute’s the haze that shrouded his vision began to clear and when it did, he stared at his sister’s empty bed. He let out an animalistic cry, it had her. The darkness had her. He is a man again, a seething mass of fury and guilt. Screaming for a God to save him and deliver him from this torture. Yet like always he hears no answer, no higher power is interested in his suffering and again he is alone.

  He is the child once more, he found he could move, he spun around and ran towards his parent’s room. He wanted them to hold him, to tell him that it was ok, that it was all just a bad dream. He wanted to fall asleep in their arms and wake to find his sister with him. He would hold her close to him and kiss her and maybe even give her his teddy bear to cuddle. He wanted his life to be back to the way it was, the way it was meant to be. Yet part of him is aware that can never be true, his own existence has morphed into something else. What he knows is lost and his childhood is already over.

  Daniel reached the room and paused for an instant. He could hear Sophia’s voice again telling him not to look, just to run, yet he knew this was all just a nightmare. There was no darkness, no evil, they were just used in stories and they didn’t exist in the real world. Deliberately, calmly he pushed open the door, his strength buoyed and his soul desperate for comfort.

  The scene of carnage that greeted him was something his young mind just couldn’t comprehend, blood splatters covered almost the whole room as if some mad painter had been loosed upon it. He couldn’t understand how his parents were both pinned to the wall, their bodies torn asunder, internal organs draped out on the bed and faces set in grotesque mask of sheer anguish.

  He turned away and vomited heavily onto the floor. He grasps the teddy bear tightly and ran down the stairs hoping that if he was fast enough he could somehow escape the images. What he didn’t understand was that they were permanently burned into his soul now and that he could never get away from them. It wouldn’t matter how many drugs he consumed or how much alcohol he could throw down his neck. No sadly some things you just cannot forget, however much you may want to.

  So he tore down the stairs and burst out of the front door, yet instead of seeing the immense fields of wheat he usually did, he found himself standing upon a vast plateau, etched with pot marks and littered with bodies as far as the eye could see.

  Then he heard Sophia’s voice, older now, yet still her, he could tell. “Beware the shadow Daniel it has its eye on you, tomorrow you will see it and there is nothing I can do to prevent all that will follow.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Captain Daniel “Lone star” Miller awoke with a start, his body shaking and sheets once again soaked with sweet. He jumped out of the bunk and was across the room in a second. His gaze centred on the travel bag, he clawed it open hungrily and tore out a large bottle of clear liquid.

  The cap was off, the bottle was at his lips and he took a long, deep gulp. Pictures sparked along synapses and called forth the memories. His sister’s smile, father teaching him to fish, mother looking over him when he was sick and once again like so many nights before, he feels the familiar burn as the alcohol flows down his throat.

  He slumped to the floor unceremoniously and coughed loudly. Tears welled in his eyes as he cradled the bottle close to his chest, another long drink follows, hoping that once more the liquor would begin to cloud his thoughts and perhaps for just the briefest of moments he could find some peace.

  He no longer tried to fight the nightmares, they came even more frequently now, in fact whenever he shut his eyes. Sometimes even when he was still awake, they haunted him like an invisible spectre, a constant throbbing and excruciating reminder of all he had lost.

  Something was different though about this most recent dreamscape, it was the first time he had seen that field littered with bodies, and heard his sister’s voice as if she was grown up. Another sip of the precious liquor later and he barred his eyes. He wished it would all just go away, he was told once that memories were meant to fade that was how they were designed, it was how you managed to get over things, how you moved on with your life. He could never escape his past though, so permanently burnt into his soul were the memories that they could never be removed and never be replaced. He was reminded every day of what happened that night and he could never flee it. Never out run it.

  Sluggishly Daniel got back to his feet, the drink worked quickly, it was why he paid the extra credits for it and already he could feel that familiar and welcome dull to his senses. He let the half empty bottle tumble out of his hand and shatter on the metal floor. He glanced down at the pool of clear liquid and saw his own broken visage reflected within it. He was unsteady now, that familiar warm glow spreading through his body. He stumbled over to the small-reinforced glass porthole. Through it he saw the black well of space staring back at him and remembered something he had heard at the academy.

  “If you stare long enough into the abyss, eventually the abyss stares back into you”

  He knew only too well, the true meaning of the quotation, for twenty years he had stared into the gloom and now the gloom was looking back into him, into his very soul.

  A grim chuckle escaped his lips as he thought how easy it would be to end all of his suffering, one or maybe two explosive tipped rounds and the porthole would shatter. The oxygen would be sucked out the room and his torment would be over.

  He forced those ideas from his mind and envisioned the immense hulk of the Eclipse One hovering gracefully, out there among the blinking stars. It had been one of the earliest deep space exploration vessels, sent out over two hundred years ago when man first stepped foot into the unknown. Designed to travel vast distances, seek out planets that would be suitable for colonisation and begin the process of forging new Earths.

  The vessel had never returned and was thought lost with all four hundred and fifty hands on board. That was until two days ago when its emergency broadcast beacon had unexpectedly been picked up by an Earth. Force long-range scanner near traveller’s gate, at the very edge of known space. A smile crested his lips as he imagined where the ship had been for all this time, he wondered if it too had looked into the abyss, wondered what it had seen in the murk of uncharted space, wondered what secrets or nightmares it held within its tarnished hull.

  The orders had been succinct and blunt. His special operations team, was to board the ship and search for any survivors, seek out the black box and if possible get the old girl running again. To most people it would seem insane, to go out and board an antiquated hulk abandoned in the freezing expanse of space for centuries, without back up and discover its mysteries, yet it was what they did. It was what they were trained for, to get dropped behind enemy lines or hostile environments to rescue downed pilots or ship crews. Each man and women of his unit had been specially selected and chosen. They were the most elite Marines in Earth. Force, the best of the best, some would say.

  He laughed again almost manically, his troops may have been the best and yet he was far from it. His drinking was becoming a problem, and he could barely hide it anymore. Sometimes it was easier, especially when they were on shore leave and all out drinking together, when it was a matter of pride to basically drink yourself into a coma. Tomorrow though his soldiers would need him. A familiar feeling rose in his gut and once again he was a child standing outside his sister’s room.

  He staggered away from the porthole and back to his kit bag, he had already forgot
ten about the broken glass and stepped straight in it. Shards cut his soles and he didn’t care. He rummaged around until he found his drug’s stash and pulled out the detox pills. It was something he had begun to use almost daily now, an attempt to counteract his problem or at least minimize the damage on his job and those that relied upon him. The medication would, within three hours remove all traces of alcohol from his system. Although they had dangerous side-effects, it was a necessary evil.

  Daniel stood for a minute, trying to quiet the wrath and fear that was eating away at him. From the corner of his eye he spotted his service pistol, and once again the one desire he never mentioned resurfaced.

  He stretched out, the cold steel felt reassuring in his hand. He took the weapon and returned to his bunk. Bloody footprints followed him, an ominous portent, which he was almost completely oblivious to. He chambered the first explosive tipped round and clicked the safety catch off. Then he sat the firearm in his lap, was he truly ready for this, to face his greatest fear to finally face the darkness. Since that night all those years ago he had felt death waiting for him, slinking within the shadows, awaiting its prize.

  He thought of his life, of all the mistakes he had made, of the wife he was now estranged from. A woman who had tried to help him, tried to understand his pain, before she decided to throw herself fully into her work with Sci-corp. He had loved her, he was sure of that, perhaps he still did in his own was and was just unable or unwilling to show it. He knew he would never see his sister again, except in the nightmares which would continue for the rest of his days, a constant and visceral reminder of all he had lost.

  How could a person really live like that, perpetually tortured every night, there was only so much bleakness and anguish that a man could be expected to deal with. Yes maybe it was time, maybe this was the best place, at the very edge of known space as close to God or whatever power may exist. Maybe they would take pity on his broken spirit and grant him some rest.