Earthless: The Survivors Series

by Letts,Jason

  “Perhaps their mental power isn’t enough to allow their body to withstand Detonus’s methane atmosphere. If they don’t have space suits or breathing apparatuses, the sunshadow may be limited in what planets they can wreak havoc on,” she said.

  Loris clenched his teeth, succumbing to the realization that they hadn’t yet gotten to the bottom of who destroyed Earth, and that going up against an alien race with incredible mental prowess held the promise of great danger. But he wasn’t willing to back down before and he sure wasn’t going to stop now. Finding those responsible and avenging his people was so close at hand.

  “We will go to the planet behind the sun and deliver judgment according to their guilt,” Loris said, sighing and giving the signal for the Cortes to return to the Magellan. The Detonan on the screen opened its mouth wide, revealing toothless gums that wriggled as if they were filled with insects. It may have been happy.

  “We knew you would see reason.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Desperate to uncover the truth about who was responsible for Earth’s destruction, Loris docked the Cortes and ordered the Magellan to travel to the planet opposite Detonus. The Detonan fleet returned home without giving them any more trouble, clearing the way to a dark yellow orb of scrub forest, grassland, and short but jagged hills.

  While there was plenty of vegetation, animal life was almost non-existent. It took a painfully long time to root out the beings the Detnonan referred to during their conversation, but these life forms were only a few thousand strong and huddled in one secluded corner of the land. Their home consisted of thatched canopies and tunnels that would make the Crossroads on Nova appear over-developed by comparison.

  Brina insisted upon accompanying Loris and the others as they took the Hudson down to the surface. No one was under any illusions that a psychologist would be able to match creatures with psychic powers, but she was hungry to help and couldn’t stand being on the station anymore.

  It didn’t take them long to encounter one of the natives. When the Hudson’s hatch opened and the dozen crew set foot on the temperate planet, it caught them off guard when what appeared to be a ten-year-old boy stepped out of the brush. He stood there and gazed at them with wide-eyed wonder, seemingly oblivious to their weapons or the harm they intended to inflict if they’d been behind the explosion of Earth. Loris looked down at him, considering if he needed to find a way to ask if his parents were around.

  “You’ve come here to destroy us.”

  They heard the words as clear as day in their minds, but the boy’s lips never moved and no one else was around. Those from the Hudson looked around at each other to see if others had heard the voice too. It was off-putting to Loris, who already had trouble accepting that the boy’s verbal projection was real, to tell a child he might wipe out his people. He couldn’t do it.

  “No, of course not,” Loris said, wondering if those words would end up being a lie. The expression of the young boy didn’t change. After staring at him for a few minutes, they began to pick up subtle clues that he was not human. The interior of his nostrils, the length of his fingers, and his extremely slow breathing suggested that he was very much a different kind of life form. He wore a loin cloth and the thinnest sandals imaginable.

  “Unwitting agents. Clever.”

  As much as Loris burned to find out how they could’ve set the bomb in Earth’s crust, the boy’s abilities were too strange to go without commenting on.

  “How is it that you’re able to understand our language even though you’ve never seen us before?”

  The child tilted his head a little.

  “We don’t understand any language. What we understand is cerebral expression. From that root, all languages are compatible. But, I will correct you. We have seen you before.”

  Loris blinked when he heard that, anticipating a hint at the answer he’d been searching for.

  “What do you know about the death of humanity?” he asked, sounding less accusatory than he’d imagined he would from the beginning. There was just something about this creature’s youthful appearance that made him resistant to blame. The boy closed his eyes, turned around, and walked back into the brush.

  “You should ask me what I know about its origins.”

  What followed wasn’t a word so much as an urge in their minds to follow him, an urge he had clearly placed there. They waded into the knee-high grass and ducked into a large bush that required careful maneuvering between its branches. On the other side was an arid patch of land with short trees on a declining slope. The boy walked on toward a grouping of steep hills without ever looking back.

  “The Detonans told us you did it and sent us here to find you,” Loris said, calling ahead. They were having trouble keeping up.

  “Like yours, this atmosphere is toxic to them. It has long pained them that they could never set foot on this land. All of the instruments they devised to withstand the air would instantly corrode. But now they will never need to come here.”

  While all of the boy’s communications seemed to be uttered calmly and evenly, they still had a melancholy note about them, as if they covered a secret pain. They continued on down the slope and toward the hills, where similar wide eyes appeared partially hidden among the brush.

  “What do you mean that you’ve seen us before?” Loris asked.

  “We’ve watched you from here as we’ve watched countless organisms rise to dominance on their planets. Their differences belie their similarities, common marks and attributes. But we’ve watched you with interest. Sometimes it is the fool who performs an accidental master stroke against all odds.”

  It was hard not to wonder what he meant and what this was all about. If the Detonans had lied, Loris wished this boy would go ahead and articulate it so they could get back in their ships and start blasting more of them out of the sky. But the urge to follow continued even as the boy walked into a tunnel that happened to be at the perfect angle to catch the fading light. Loris and Brina exchanged a glance before ducking in after the boy.

  “Where are you taking us?” Brina asked. Her voice seemed loud in this confined space. As they descended, fluorescent lichen appeared on the surface of the tunnel to guide them.

  “This is a path none of us have traversed for thousands of years. Only in this grave hour, long awaited, do we bear witness to what has been buried within. Even some of the things I need to say, you will not believe without proof.”

  The descent continued and Loris began to worry about being cut off from the Magellan, or even the surface. The floor of the tunnel was soft and seemed prone to a cave-in. If it didn’t, the only way up might be crawling on hands and knees.

  “My heart is pounding,” Loris said.

  “Mine too. I’m afraid I won’t want to know what’s down there,” she said.

  But came to the end they did, where the tunnel fed into a room large enough for all of them to stand comfortably in. The lichen cast everything in a glow, including many sets of bones of similar stature to that of their guide. Two large, black objects occupied space next to each other near the rear of the room. One was instantly recognizable, while the other was of a similar material but clearly had a different purpose.

  “This is something you are familiar with,” the boy said of the probe. “You now know that it designates a moment in time in which a species will perish. This one was meant for us.”

  Brina’s eyes widened and she reached into her pack for her papers.

  “I’ll save you the trouble of deciphering it. The time stated on this probe, which has sat in this spot for over a hundred thousand years, is identical to that of your landing here just a short while ago.”

  His mouth growing dry, Loris began putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and although all of the details were unclear, he could tell they added up to something very wrong.

  “If you weren’t responsible for the destruction of Earth, you have nothing to worry about from us. I promise you that,” he said.

 
The child’s pained laughter echoed in their heads.

  “If only that were true. We’ve spent all this time wondering what our calamity would be, even as we watched others on planets far away reduced to ashes in countless ways. But we were never able to figure it out. Perhaps the Detonans themselves didn’t know, hoping that in your blindness you would cut our throats. It has come to pass nonetheless. Would you like to know how you destroyed us?”

  Loris was leaning toward the negative. As best he could tell, nothing had changed about the creature in front of him since their landing.

  “One thing we could’ve never known was that our reproductive capabilities were designed to be dependent upon being the planet’s apex predator. That’s not saying much, since there is little in the way of animal life around. But as soon as you arrived and I first set eyes on you, it rendered us all irrevocably sterile. Our lifespans were designed to be approximately one-year in length. In that time, we will cease to exist.”

  It was sobering to hear talk of one’s entire species perishing in such an even tone. Loris felt responsible, and it twisted his stomach into knots.

  “You keep saying designed…” Brina said, nearly in a whisper.

  “We were made.”

  The boy went over to the other object in the room. It was the same size as the probe but clearly more mechanical. At the push of a button, the front of it separated like doors to reveal molds for two shapes of identical size to the boy.

  “The Detonans made you,” Loris said, though it felt like his throat was closing up and making any sounds proved difficult.

  “Excellent deduction,” the boy said. “As best we can tell we were their first foray into creation of life on a grand scale. They made us more intelligent than they are, but they prudently included safeguards relating to our lifespan and reproductive capabilities that I’ve already described. But that wasn’t enough, and with our creation they also developed an algorithm to determine when we would pose a threat and require euthanization. Thus, the probes.”

  “Why even send the probes at all? Why not just carry out their death sentence without warning?” Brina asked.

  The boy looked at her intensely. Loris sensed that the others around him were fidgeting and uncomfortable.

  “It is a quirk of their nature that they have a strong aversion to the unexpected, rivaled only by their instincts of self-preservation. To put it in a way that you might commonly use, they hate surprises. Each trial is carried out in a very thorough and orderly fashion with a designated beginning and end.”

  Loris had heard enough to know what was coming. The probes did signal more than an end; they pointed to the beginning as well.

  “You’re saying we were made by the Detonans.”

  The boy produced a weak smile. He seemed to be growing exhausted quickly.

  “Our knowledge suggests they are the only real organic life form with consciousness in the galaxy. The Detonans, as you call them, created many variations after us. What they were trying to achieve has been unclear, as most species are left alone until their sudden extinction, but never again did they place such an emphasis on intelligence.

  “In fact, they developed a preference for straddling intelligence and ignorance. Forgetfulness, gullibility, a dependence upon logic despite narrow perceptive abilities, crude mental tools for reasoning, self-defeating recency and proximity biases, a predilection for addictions, a raft of crippling psychological disorders and tendencies, long periods of youth and old-age with even less cognitive faculties, and that’s just the beginning. These are the defining characteristics you were imbued with.”

  Loris didn’t know what to say, and Brina appeared similarly speechless. The conversation, always mostly one-sided, now took on the qualities of a person talking to a plant.

  “But what’s interesting is that the time of our end still came after yours,” the boy went on. “Somehow you were perceived to be a greater threat to the Detonans in a fraction of the time we had. And they were correct. You have created something that poses a great danger to them. They are aware only of your potential to disrupt them at this point in your development, not that you actually have something with you capable of causing great harm. The threat we pose to them is in telling you…”

  The voice in their head stopped suddenly as the ground shook for a moment. Dust and then stones came loose from the ceiling with enough weight and force to cause serious injury. Loris looked to the tunnel and knew they had to get out. Some were already starting to scramble up toward the exit. He put his arms over his head instinctively and glanced back in time to see the boy receive a blow to the head from a falling rock that laid him out on the dirt floor.

  “Get out!” Loris called, but instead of racing for the tunnel, he went for the boy. He had to know what it was they could do to the Detonans.

  “Loris!” Brina shouted and then coughed. The air was getting thick with silt.

  Dropping to his knees, he saw that their guide was unconscious and bleeding from the head. Loris picked him up and started for the tunnel, unsure how he was ever going to climb out while keeping the boy with him. He slung the small body over his shoulder in an attempt to free up both his hands, but he never was able to crawl more than a few steps before needing to catch the body from falling off.

  Shouts from farther up the tunnel made Loris look up and see that the latest tremor caused a partial cave in, narrowing the space and slowing their ability to get out. Loris’s wristband squeaked, an attempted communication that couldn’t get through. Something was going on with the Magellan and it couldn’t be good.

  At the same time, another voice entered into his mind.

  “Leave him.”

  Loris looked at the boy to see that he was still breathing lightly. At first he shrugged him off and continued on without the burden as the voice commanded, but because their progress was slowed, he wouldn’t be able to get out much faster anyway. He strained and fought up the slope with the boy on his back even though there could’ve been dozens of his kind at the top who could tell him.

  The pinch in the tunnel was the hardest to get through. He needed the help of one of his companions to pass the boy’s body through first before squeezing through himself. From there it was a straight shot to the exit, which seemed so much darker than it had been when they’d first entered. Already some were emerging onto the surface.

  Gasping and straining, Loris pulled himself up the slope. He was covered in grit that even seemed to be filling his mouth. As far as he knew, he was hauling a corpse for no apparent purpose.

  The ground shook again more violently than before. He heard a crashing behind him down the tunnel as he was only a few meters from the top. A hand was there to help him take the last step onto the exposed surface. He coughed and clutched the grass before struggling to his feet.

  “There’s word from the station,” Redhook said. “The Magellan is under attack from the Detonans. They were hiding their strength before and are coming on much stronger. We don’t have any time to lose.”

  Loris sensed the boy breathing against his shoulder. He was ready to run with him back to the Hudson, but they were suddenly encircled by dozens of the natives, all of whom were glaring at them with eerily intense and youthful eyes.

  “You can’t leave.”

  It was impossible to tell which one of them uttered the words in their heads. A girl seemed the most likely candidate based on the tone of the voice, but when they didn’t have to use their vocal cords to speak, it was possible any of them could sound like anything.

  “We don’t have time for this. We’re getting out of here,” Loris said. He stepped closer, but the small bodies blocking his path didn’t move an inch.

  “To do what? Fight and die? The one you carry has given you false hope. He is a troublemaker that has misled you into thinking you have a chance against the Makers. But even to fight them is an error. They gave us all life—for that we owe them—and it is their right to take it away.”

 
Loris squinted at them, appalled at the words appearing in his mind. He’d barely been able to process all that he’d heard at the bottom of the tunnel, but it sure didn’t make him resigned to his own demise.

  “That’s ridiculous. We’re not going to stand by and let them slaughter us. They’re bombing your land. They’re trying to kill you as we speak. And you don’t see any reason to resist?”

  Loris had to stop. They weren’t moving. Crackles and blips of speech were coming in through the communicator on his wristband.

  “Intelligence often seems like idiocy to fools. Consciousness is a temporary state anyway. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter if it ends now or later. You need to be thankful for the time you had without meddling in things that are beyond you.”

  Loris could only take hearing how little they valued their lives for so long before realizing that he need not respect them more than they respected themselves. Leading the way forward, he walked straight into the crowd before them, indiscriminately slamming into whoever was in his way. Many of them fell over and could’ve been trampled to death by those behind, but from the sounds of it they wouldn’t care much either way.

  They pressed on, away from the jagged hills and up the long slope toward the Hudson. Along the way, in the brush, they saw countless pairs of eyes that seemed able to peer into their souls. Loris felt exposed and embarrassed, like he couldn’t even hide in his own skin. Unbidden thoughts bubbled up that he was really only doing all of this to live up to his mother’s reputation, or to secure more sexual satisfaction, or because he still felt inadequate and in over his head.

  It was almost enough to make him stop and give up on everything.

  “I’m sorry that I don’t love you and I’m not as smart as I pretend to be,” Brina said to him.

  He turned to look and saw she was on the verge of tears. It dawned on him that all of them were undergoing some kind of psychological attack from the children on the planet. With his free hand, he put his arm around Brina and squeezed her close.