Not now, damn it!
“Everything okay, sir?” a rich baritone seemed to query from slightly behind him. But wait ... that was wrong ... not behind him ... it was actually in his head.
Thorsten half-turned in his seat to see a man emerging from the shadows of the facility’s central lift. His skin-tight, blue-tinted bodysuit made of interlocking pieces of hexagonal armor was barely visible in the dim light.
“Correlli, get out of my mind,” Thorsten snapped. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to see the strain on your face and know that your ulcer is bothering you, Colonel,” replied Correlli mentally, cradling his tactical helmet in the crook of his left arm.
“Well, you can take your BLUE MONARCH voodoo somewhere else; I’m busy.”
“Yes, sir, I can see that, but this isn’t a social call,” responded Correlli audibly, surprising many of the command staff with his sudden appearance.
Thorsten wearily drew himself up ramrod-straight, and stood face-to-face with BLUE MONARCH Anton Correlli’s nose.
“Aren’t any of you short?” Thorsten demanded, eliciting a few stifled laughs from the command center.
“Some of us are, sir,” said Correlli, treading carefully. “I’m actually fairly tall for a BLUE MONARCH. But really, Colonel, your psych profile didn’t indicate a Napoleon complex—”
“Yes, yes, what was it you came here for?” said Thorsten.
“It’s Doctor Avery, sir. He wants you to come down to the Circus.”
“He could have just called me,” said Thorsten, waving his wrist comm in Correlli’s face.
“No, sir, he said it’s too important for any comm channels.”
“Fine. I’ll come down. Anderson, call me immediately if anything changes,” Thorsten ordered.
“Aye, sir,” replied Anderson, stifling one last chuckle at his Colonel’s expense.
4
Dr. Richard Avery, chief xenobiologist and head of all scientific research on Entropia, sat with his elbows resting on his desk. Palms planted firmly on the sides of his head, his visage was that of a man with many problems and few answers. The deep lines on his forehead and fierce steel gray temples attested to his many dilemmas. A pounding headache drove a wedge between the hemispheres of his brain and blurred his vision. He pushed away from the black monolith before him and settled back into his chair. Staring at the ceiling, he cursed the lack of windows in the underground facility. Knowing all the reasons why was no consolation.
“Computer, resume,” he sighed, and his computer obediently chirped that it was again ready to take dictation.
“Subject A has become increasingly agitated over the past 72 hours. He refuses to take any food and very little water. At this rate, we might have to force feed him intravenously, if that is even possible with his physiological differences.
“He also refuses to communicate in the Terran Standard we’ve taught him, and has reverted to his natural language, of which we still know very little, even after all this time. I do not understand this regression considering the progress we had been making up until now.
“Cranial scans do not show any unusual brain activity, but what we would equate to a human pituitary gland is showing increased chemical output, and his adrenal levels are rising slowly but steadily. This has been reflected in his increased strength of late, and we do not dare enter the Circus without a BLUE MONARCH to restrain him and protect the staff.”
The soft chime of Avery’s office door interrupted him and he paused recording once again.
“Please come in.”
The door slid open to reveal Colonel Thorsten with Correlli in tow. Thorsten seemed to have a pained look about him. Correlli stepped aside so the two men could talk, and stood at parade rest a few paces distant.
“Jeez, Richard, you look like I feel,” Thorsten said by way of greeting, extending his right hand to Avery.
“Thanks, Adriene. You always did know how to brighten someone’s day,” Avery answered, returning the firm handshake.
The two men had crossed paths on several different assignments, so their working relationship was genuinely respectful and free of the usual mutual distrust military and civilian types had for one another. It almost bordered on real friendship. Almost. They knew one another’s boundaries and when not to push the other too far past them. Avery was worried this might be one of those times.
“What’s going on, Rich?” asked Thorsten. “Correlli won’t give me any intel.”
Correlli’s face betrayed no response. In fact his eyes were closed and he was breathing in a slow but measured rhythm. Thorsten glanced over curiously.
“He’s giving us privacy, Adriene,” said Reed.
“Understood. But can’t he hear us?” asked Thorsten while looking incredulously at Correlli.
“Only at the most subconscious level. He’s taken himself offline, so to speak,” Reed explained.
Thorsten’s right eyebrow raised slightly. These people are such an enigma ...
“But if you were to draw your sidearm, he would be awake and pointing his assault rifle at you before you could even get the barrel of your weapon past the lip of its holster.”
Thorsten thought about it for a nanosecond, but decided to pass on testing Reed’s claim. People had died in training accidents from things far stupider than pointing a supposedly unloaded weapon at a comrade—only to end up putting a hole through their head.
“Okay, so Correlli’s given us the room,” said Thorsten as he placed his hands behind his back and began pacing. “How serious is it, Rich?”
“It’s easier to show you than to try to explain it, Adriene,” answered Avery, who began dimming the lights in the lab. “Computer, reduce glass polarization by twenty-five percent and activate internal mics.”
Immediately the thick, blast-proof glass that separated Avery’s office and the rest of the Circus began to increase in opacity.
As Thorsten’s eyes adjusted, he began to make out a dark shape huddled against the far wall. Muffled sounds of heavy, rasping breathing filled his ears and two faintly glowing yellow eyes blinked in the growing light. As the light levels equalized between the lab and the Circus, Subject A slowly came into focus.
5
Emerson Avery and the Reed family had just finished their dessert of pineapple upside-down cake when the first few tentative drops of rain began to fall. The dark clouds from the horizon had been making their way relentlessly towards the colony residential zone all afternoon, but only the wispy tendrils of their vanguard had arrived thus far. Entropia’s sun was soon veiled by the intermittent layer of rain clouds, its usual warm yellow light exchanged for a pallid gray one.
“Well, aren’t we lucky?” snarked Dr. Reed.
Claire smiled warmly and collected her silverware. “Come along now everyone, let’s get everything inside.”
Emerson grabbed his and Ashley’s plate (Dr. Reed noted), while Branden gathered up several empty food platters and pretended to lose his balance, to the annoyance of his mother.
“Branden Reed, if you break those dishes, I’ll take it out of your hide,” Claire Reed threatened harmlessly.
With the happy party safely inside, nature’s courtesy succumbed to physics and the weight of the water within the clouds gave in to gravity’s inexorable pull. The ensuing torrential downpour soon erased all evidence of the warm and sunny afternoon.
While Mrs. Reed busied herself with the kitchen automate (she did not trust it with the dishes either), Dr. Reed prepared himself another iced tea—with stiffer ingredients this time. He switched on the living room comm screen for the daily news feed and prepared to settle into his easy chair. But instead of the day’s news from across all human-controlled space, he was greeted only by the hiss of static.
“Don’t they usually warn us when we’re going to have a blackout, Daddy?” asked Ashley from her spot on the couch (next to Emerson, Dr. Reed noted again).
“Yes ... they usually do
...” answered her father, not finishing his thought as he fiddled with the remote.
Emerson’s attention was piqued and he rapidly attempted to access the comm network on his datapad.
“See if there’s anything on the base status channel, Dad,” said Branden, trying to be helpful while simultaneously annoying his mother with his dish antics.
“My datapad’s negative too, Dr. Reed,” said Emerson, holding up a thin translucent panel that showed only the jagged dance of black and white static.
Thunder rumbled in the direction of the spaceport, and the pummeling rain seemed to intensify in response.
Dr. John Reed checked his wrist comm and looked out his large front room window, past his front yard and past the row of identical houses on the opposite side of the street that was now a river of swiftly flowing water.
The thunder rumbled again, but this time Reed felt it through the ground.
His house shook as if a shiver had run down its back.
“What the hell?” he muttered under his breath.
Then he noticed the clouds near the spaceport were all wrong. They were flowing up and curling into mushroom shapes that disappeared into the boiling fury of the storm clouds.
“John?” said Claire with alarm in her voice.
More thunder rumbled, but this time it was farther away. Muffled.
“Dad?” said Branden.
“Yes, son?” answered Reed, still trying to understand what he was seeing.
“Where’s the lightning?”
Reed half-turned from his front window to answer as the pieces began to click together in his mind.
He was just forming his words when Emerson blurted it out: “It’s not thunder!”
Emerson leapt off the couch and tackled Ashley to the floor.
Another massive, ear-shattering peal of whatever it was tore through the air, immediately succeeded by an equally massive shockwave. The glass in every window shattered and blew inwards, overwhelming the self-healing safety feature. The flying glass was followed by the driving rain and almost instantaneously everyone was wounded and soaking wet.
6
Colonel Thorsten ignored the thick red line and its “DO NOT CROSS” warning and approached the lab’s heavy glass barrier for a closer look. He glanced briefly at Correlli, who was apparently still “offline.”
Subject A’s saurian characteristics were readily apparent even to the untrained eye. The mottled green and brown scaly skin, cranial spines that continued down the center of its back, taloned feet, clawed hands, and writhing tail reminded Thorsten of the reptiles that had ruled the Earth millennia ago.
But this was a Triven child, most likely a teenager if Avery’s reports were correct. Any external similarities to Earth’s extinct megafauna were belied by Subject A’s intelligence and its race’s development of advanced technology. The boys in the Navy could certainly attest to that, both the quick and the dead. And there were plenty of dead.
Thorsten turned to Avery. “So what am I looking for?”
Before the scientist could answer, Subject A leapt from his crouched position and assailed the glass barrier directly in front of Thorsten’s face. Claws flashed and talons rent deep slices into the glass, but could not penetrate to their intended prey. Thorsten’s head whipped back quickly, but he stood firm in the face of the blunted attack. The glass had actually cracked from the impact of Subject A’s armored shoulder, causing fault lines to spread horizontally in two directions.
“Feisty, isn’t it?” remarked Thorsten as he tapped vigorously on the still-cracking blast glass.
“Don’t antagonize him, Adriene; he’ll just hurt himself more,” Avery chastised.
Subject A hurled himself again at Thorsten, its yellow eyes filled with a wild, intent purpose that seemed focused on him and beyond him at the same time. Green blood marked the second impact point and began to run down the glass, following some of the lengthening cracks.
“How long has he been like this?”
“A few days, three or four at most,” answered Avery. “Damn it, he’s reopened the wound on that shoulder. I’m going to have to sedate him again.”
Subject A’s tail lashed the glass repeatedly, sounding whip-like through the lab microphones, but causing only superficial damage. Thorsten noted with satisfaction that the blast glass was already self-repairing, and the cracks from the first impact were nearly gone. Within a few short minutes, the only evidence of the failed assault would be the green blood that was racing for the floor.
A series of sharp, guttural clicks and growls seemed to be directed at Thorsten in a different kind of assault. Unimpressed, he put his face an inch from the blast glass and replied, “Is that so? Well, you ugly little cuss, your mother mated with a T-Rex.”
Dr. Avery had to smile. “I doubt he understands you, Adriene. His Standard is very rudimentary.”
Subject A turned and faced the glass again, pointing at Thorsten with a clawed hand.
“Oh, it understands well enough, Rich,” replied Thorsten. “I think some insults are universal.”
As if to confirm the Colonel’s assertion, Subject A launched itself in another attack against the blast glass in front of Thorsten. At the exact instant Subject A impacted against the unyielding barrier, the entire facility shuddered as if struck by some gigantic hand. The lights flickered in the lab, creating a surreal strobe effect that encompassed everyone within, then went out. Feeble emergency backup lights struggled on, followed quickly by rotating red ones. In the chaos, no one noticed Subject A return to huddling in the corner under a table, covering its scaled head with its clawed hands.
Thorsten was surprised to find Correlli already standing next to him, his tactical helmet on and massive assault rifle unslung. His own sidearm had not even cleared the lip of its holster.
“You’d better get to the command center, Colonel,” said Correlli impassively as the red alert klaxon began to wail.
“They’re here.”
7
Emerson could feel the burning ingress of broken glass along his entire back. The pain was like nothing he had ever felt before, and it threatened to overwhelm him. He was shaking with fear and shock, but he managed to reach out toward Ashley who was splayed out on the floor in front of him. Fortunately, she seemed to have avoided most of the deadly projectiles. She grabbed his hand and mouthed words at him, but they had no sound.
Claire Reed had taken the brunt of the shockwave. Hundreds of needlelike shards had embedded themselves along her right side, some burrowing deep, the rest protruding from her torso as if she were some hideous porcupine. One had narrowly missed her right eye. She was screaming hysterically, but no one could hear her. Everyone’s ears were bleeding and filled with a muffled, hollow ringing sound.
Emerson saw Branden nursing a nasty gash on his forehead. His left arm hung limply by his side. He was trying to staunch the bleeding with a clean dish towel, but otherwise seemed as disoriented as Emerson felt. In his confusion, Branden had begun picking up the broken dishes with his good arm and putting the pieces away in the shattered cabinets.
In the front room, John Reed tried to clear his head, but could not shake the ringing in his ears or the nausea welling up inside him. His dinner returned in full force and hurled itself onto the debris-strewn floor in front of him. Once he had finished retching, he felt better, and rinsed his mouth out with a gulp of the stronger ingredient he had added to his iced tea. As he staggered towards the kitchen, his knees buckled at the sight of his wife thrashing around helplessly. She was covered in thin, streaming rivulets of rain and blood, and screaming.
Emerson Avery took all of this in, still holding Ashley’s hand—almost crushing it he would later recall—not knowing what to do next and hating the overwhelming sense of helplessness he felt.
8
Colonel Adriene Thorsten punched futilely at the control panel for Obsidian’s main elevator shaft and was bathed in a shower of sparks for his trouble. Slapping at some burning
embers on his exposed arm, he barked into his wrist comm.
“Anderson, I need a sitrep, and I need it now!”
His wrist comm only hissed with static.
“Command center, this is Colonel Thorsten. Acknowledge!”
“It’s no good, sir. Standard Triven battle tactic,” Correlli explained. “They’re hitting us with intense, broad-spectrum jamming. I doubt even their own troops can cut through this stuff without specialized gear.”
Cerulean Rising - Part I: Beginnings Page 2