Europa

by Stan Butler

  Chapter 12

  The Admiral’s name was Franco Sceratis and he was afraid. He had just received a transmission from D28. No-one wanted to be contacted by D28, the shadowy secret projects division of the military was feared by all and now they wanted him to bring them a test subject for ‘decommissioning’ after a failed test and to hand over all the survivors for debriefing. The Admiral had seen the survivors themselves and they were a group of tired, worn out and exhausted civilians almost destroyed by their ordeal. He knew that had they been in anything but cryo-sleep they would all be having nightmares right now.

  He also knew that should he hand over the survivors they would never be seen again. D28 was meticulous in its cover-ups, they would probably imprison him and most of his crew to make sure their secret stayed secret. This was the reason everyone who had heard of D28 feared it.

  He also had another problem. He had run a lifeform scan of the entire ship to see how contaminated with alien microorganisms they were.

  He had found a lifesign the size of a person.

  That lifesign had wiped out an entire squad of EX-180’s, four AN-150’s and a team of marines he had sent to kill it.

  He knew that it was highly trained in melee and ambush combat and in the rather cramped confines of the ship he and his crew were doomed. He had read the reports of the Moran incident and thought that he had been prepared for this eventuality but after reading the reports of how much damage two of these creatures could do he realised he had still underestimated their power.

  There were also reports of another similar but invisible creature somewhere in the ship but he could not pick it up with any sensors so ignored it, a completely undetectable creature was impossible.

  He slipped the disk containing the data on the test subject into his uniform and headed for the life support core. One of the survivors had mentioned something about them trying to destroy active fusion cores, another detachment was sent to the main core.

  The life support core was just behind the bridge, next to the crew quarters, behind both was the main core and to either side of that were the hangar bays, turret controls and cannon. The rear of the ship was taken up by droid storage, the cryo-storage room and the engines.

  Even if the creatures managed to kill the guards around the main core they wouldn’t be able to get in as it was protected by plasma windows, thought Franco as he stood in front of the otherwise undefended life support core.

  The marines in front of him knelt in the ready position, the EX’s and AN’s had their weapons trained on the door.

  The room seemed to grow cold with anticipation and fear.

  Very cold.

  Cold enough for ice to begin to form and breath to rise in clouds of vapour.

  Rex’UmbraKar’Elv smiled as he continued the activation of the endothermic glands that covered his skin, storing heat within him for the second part of the act, the droids could see him but they had been deactivated by the snapping of wires as they contracted or the fusing of supercooled metal together, they were no threat. Most of the humans were suffering from hypothermia or ice damage to internal organs.

  A bolt of plasma blazed past his head, almost shattering his concentration on the heat sink and he looked up to see the admiral of the ship aiming at his form that was picked out by the mist around him.

  He reversed the reaction.

  All over his body, the glands that had once drawn in heat released that heat along chemical conduits, focusing the heat into a concave organ on the inside of his right palm that was still endothermic.

  He raised that hand and switched the reaction.

  The heat had nowhere to go but to blast out from his palm in a semi-directed burst that turned the air into plasma and struck the admiral with a glancing blow down his left side. It was however enough to incinerate his arm, the gun he was holding and set fire to most of his body.

  A quick stab with his right shoulder blade finished the admiral off.

  The core was soon deactivated and warning lights began to flash.

  Sakara woke in the cryogenic storage room, emergency lighting in effect and knew instantly that the Tor’Karians had followed them. The other survivors were waking up and whilst waiting for them to recover their wits Sakara put the enviro-suit back on just in case the main or backup core failed.

  “”What’s going on” asked Othella.

  “This ship is under attack.” replied Sakara, locking the helmet into place, “We need to get to the hangar and commandeer one of the spacecraft.”

  The group set off and stepped around the shredded bodies all fearing the answer to the unasked question.

  It was Lara who finally broke the silence.

  “What did this?”

  “A rogue Tor’Karian warlord and an Umbra by the looks of things.” answered Sakara

  “Umbra?”

  “Wraith.”

  Lara was about to tell him about what he was but it was then that they reached the hangar.

  The marines had surrendered and had been forced to remove the cores from every spacecraft before being executed and the cores destroyed.

  “Damn.” hissed Lara

  “When all is lost and all that is left is a few

  Who know not how to fight and not what to do

  We must remember a fact or we will surely fall

  And even then only two will survive from us all.”

  Yuoi raised his head at Odis’s words.

  “The cores.” he exclaimed. “Nathan said that research gets dumped with the old tech. but this is the ISF Oblivion, the ship being used to test the Tier X fusion core meaning that we could transfer the core into any one of these gunships and fly out of here..”

  Sakara turned to him. “The Tor’Karians will be trying to destroy that at this very moment and the backup core cannot hold the hanger plasma window for long, we would have around ten minutes to get the core and leave.”

  He hesitated.

  “It is however the only way, get to the ship, I’ll get the core.”

  “What about the plasma window around the core?” asked Yuoi

  “How does a ship exit the hangar?” asked Sakara as he headed off.

  Yuoi smiled, “With a magnetic field.”

  Sakara slipped into the main core room which was almost identical to the one at the relay station on Europa.

  “How do we pass through the fields?”

  Sakara looked around to find the source of the voice and saw Vic’Fer standing on the opposite side of the core housing to him, seemingly talking to thin air but it was clear an Umbra was with him.

  He needed to move fast.

  “We could cut the power?” said the Umbra but soon discovered that the core itself powered the plasma windows.

  He activated the magnetosphere he had got the Tor’Kariansto install into the suit and walked into the plasma window. The magnetosphere pushed the plasma out the way allowing him to reach the core. He activated the vibro-cutter and sliced into the casing, carefully removing the core from its cradle.

  “Main power shutdown, backup core failure in ten minutes.” Blared the intercom before falling silent.

  Sakara ran as fast as he could which, incidentally, wasn’t very fast as he was wearing the enviro-suit. Therefore he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him over the noise of his own. As he headed for the hangar he passed the slaughter in front of the life support core and a voice called out weakly.

  “Sakara.” gasped the admiral, blood leaking from the charred remains of his arm and from a deep wound in his chest.

  Sakara moved over to him.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  The admiral removed a disk from his bloodstained uniform. “There is a war coming.” he gasped “It is right for you to know why it will begin, find the truth behind the lies Sakara, become the Hand… the Hand… of... G...God”

  Sakara watched as the admiral made his last breath then took the disk and slipped it into his suit.

  Lara saw the To
r’Karian as it entered the hangar, where the group of survivors were still waiting for Sakara to return.

  She dived down behind some cargo containers and got the others to do so as well.

  She then realised that the Tor’Karian had cut them off from the gunship.

  “Damn.” she whispered under her breath.

  Sakara ran into the hangar and saw the Tor’Karian as well

  “Vic’Fer.” he hissed.

  “Hu’Man.” hissed the creature back.

  The Tor’Karian slipped into a combat stance and prepared to attack, crouching and leaning his body forwards, drawing both of his shoulder blades and flicking his wrists around one hundred and eighty degrees backwards into his forearms to reveal the blades stored there.

  Sakara activated the vibro-cutter and fell into a defensive stance, at least as defensive as one can be with what was basically a wrist blade.

  The two warriors circled each other and it was clear who was the better prepared. Sakara was encumbered by the enviro-suit and had only a single blade with less reach than any of the Tor’Karian’s four.

  Vic’Fer attacked with a dual overhead thrust followed by a mantis style blow that tried to scissor Sakara’s head from his shoulders.

  But he dodged, rising from a crouch to deliver a diagonal uppercut across Vic’Fer’s chest, drawing a line of blue blood.

  The Tor’Karian fell back and re-assessed his opponent who was faster and better trained than he had expected.

  The bleeding had already stopped and Vic’Fer moved into a different style, launching himself into the air and then into a flurry of strikes that only a blade master or an Umbra could block.

  Sakara blocked every single one. He stopped thinking about the strikes and let his body flow with the rhythm of combat, faster and faster the pair danced, Vic’Fer twisting and somersaulting but never managing to break Sakara’s guard. Blows glanced off the enviro-suit but never with enough force or at the right angle to damage it.

  Then Sakara moved to the offensive, blocking a blow with the vibro-cutter he hammered an armoured fist directly into the Tor’Karian’s mandibles, shattering many of them, this was followed by an overhead slash that sliced one of Vic’Fer’s shoulder blades from his body.

  He followed up again but overstretched, leaving himself open and Vic’Fer ignored the pain, driving his remaining shoulder blade up into the casing around the vibro-cutter, shattering the vibration cell and causing the blade to fragment.

  The survivors gasped.

  Vic’Fer smiled

  Sakara staggered back

  The Rex’UmbraKar’Elv saw what was coming

  Vic’Fer rose from his crouch in an explosive attack with all three blades. ButSakara stepped inside the attack and smashed his armoured helmet into the Tor’Karian’s face, breaking the remaining mandibles and stunning the creature.

  He followed it up with left handed uppercut that lifted the Tor’Karian from the ground before finishing with a right hook that ploughed into Vic’Fer’s face before he hit the ground.

  The Tor’Karian collapsed on the floor and Sakara moved to finish the job.

  “Backup core failing, plasma window deactivating in ten seconds.” blared the intercom.

  Sakara signalled to the survivors who got the message and ran for the exit, only just reaching it before it closed.

  Lara was slightly behind the group as they passed through the airlock and was trapped inside as the other end sealed. In the room beyond the other three survivors collapsed to the floor, panting. All the doors had now been sealed and air was slowly being vented to the designated safe rooms where the crew were meant to evacuate to in this event.

  Neither Lara or the other survivors were in a safe room. Yuoi realised this and hacked into a terminal and deactivated the protocol but then began pacing out the room.

  “What is it?” asked Othella

  Yuoi finished his calculations, picked a gun off the floor and killed himself.

  Lara realised what he had done and began breathing slowly, she was in a room almost as large as the one the other survivors were in but she was the only one in the room giving her double the air supply and therefore double the survival time, Yuoi had killed himself to give the others a chance of survival.

  Othella did not understand this and began screaming.

  Odis however, turned to Lara and smiled.

  In the hangar everything happened quickly.

  The plasma window containment failed and the air in the hangar vented into space.

  Sakara launched himself at the gunship and grabbed the core housing, slamming the main core into the harness and initiating the setup, diving onto the top of the ship at just the right time to prevent himself being crushed against the wall, Vic’Fer landed on the ship, breath held and ready for combat, he had stopped bleeding and was enraged.

  Sakara launched himself over the Tor’Karian’s head, landing on the cockpit of the ship.

  He ducked.

  Vic’Fer did not.

  The ship bounced off the hangar roof and spun towards the exit, leaving a blue stain on the roof of the hangar.

  Sakara pulled himself to the airlock of the gunship and slipped inside, clambering into the pilot’s seat, too tired to remove the enviro-suit. He grabbed the controls and got the craft under control, piloting it out of the hangar and into clear space.

  He remembered the disk that the admiral had given him and loaded it into the reader.

  “This is a level zero classified transmission for Admiral Franco Sceratis regarding a passenger he has picked up. Please enter your military designation to receive the transmission.”

  Sakara looked at the slip of paper that the admiral had also given him and entered the series of numbers written in blood upon it.

  “Designation correct, transmission follows:” the recording began

  “This is Seth Smith of D28, in a recent transmission to fleet command you said that you had picked up five survivors from Europa after disruptions to galactic transmissions in Morse code reading SOS. Among those you have picked up is a test subject in one of our projects and we need him returned. He failed the test and needs to be decommissioned. The other survivors will need to be debriefed so you are ordered to the D28 facility on Io where you will remain until it is deemed safe for you to continue. Due to department policy the details of the test subject and operation follow:

  Name: Sakara Frost

  Operation name: Trojan sword

  Operation brief: infiltration of extraterrestrial colonies via crash landings that seem to be accidental before sabotage and annihilation of said colonies.

  Reason behind operation: loophole in the colonisation law forbidding colonisation of already colonised worlds giving us the ability to colonise many more worlds.

  Test subject brief: Genetic re-engineering, bio-adaptation, nanomite repair systems, psychic abilities, tactical and military database, mental control package with initiator and detonator (overloaded and unresponding), telomeric regeneration and anti-cancer nanomites.

  History: The Frost family were paid thirty thousand credits to raise the child as their own, another thousand to send him to become a member of the church of blood and another thousand to take the trip to Exlixia. Plasma warhead in their quarters removed that loose end. Sergeant DavridTelod of the 59th elites and veteran of Moran (only survivor), sent to ensure crash landing near the research station and survival of test subject up until arrival there.

  Transmission ends.”

  The holo-log dropped from limp fingers, clattering against the steel floor and reflecting the brilliance of the white LED’s that lit up the cabin.

  His world was silent even his breathing stopped as he digested the painful truth of his life.

  He was a weapon.

  A weapon designed to wipe innocent species from the universe in the name of human expansion.

  Not even that, he was a failed prototype of that weapon, now scheduled for decommission so that another version, a
‘2.0’ could be rolled out to wipe out innocent lives all over the universe.

  His emerald eyes hardened, eyebrows dropping into a determined scowl.

  They would pay.

  He reached out to the navigation system to plot in the co-ordinates for Io but encountered a solid object in the way.

  An invisible object.

  An object that hissed in self-annoyance.

  An object that began to draw all the heat out of the cramped little cabin.

  As his suit began to freeze up, its heaters overwhelmed, Sakara moved.

  He flicked a switch and reached for the thruster controls.

  Ice crystals sliced through his flesh as he moved, his blood began to freeze and frost began to form over his eyes.

  In agony and almost unconscious from the cold, he hit the button.

  Chapter 13

  The gunship stopped dead, then shot forwards again as the reverse thrusters were set to full before deactivating. Inside the cabin Sakara acted fast. The Umbra slammed invisibly against the window before slamming back into the co-pilot seat. Raising one arm against the agony of ice crystals tearing through his flesh he activated a single command.

  The grapple head smashed into the Umbra’s chest at point blank range, creating a fountain of ice blue blood that coated the cockpit and Sakara’s enviro-suit, the Umbra became a Tor’Karian as his concentration faltered and the psychic pulses failed.

  “You... disrupted the plan.” it hissed “Why didn’t... you kill us all?”

  “You had every right to attack us as we had sent in marines to try and wipe you out before, but I do not seek to become a murderer even with my genetically modified heritage. I am not going to be the genocide weapon of Earth and I will have my revenge for then creating such a monster, but the question is why you followed me?” gasped Sakara as the cabin began to warm up.

  “Still... at the end... of it all...when you have... all... the facts... you...understand...n...nothi...ng.” sighed the Rex’UmbraKar’Elv as his final breath escaped his lungs and he slumped lifeless in the chair.

  Sakara collapsed back into his chair, clenching his teeth in agony and prepared for a long and slow recovery from the damage caused by the cold.

  “What did you mean?” he asked the void that surrounded him,

  “What did you mean?”

  Two days later a rapid response medical ship jumped out of the Krasnikov tube and sent recovery teams into the silent behemoth they found there having received an SOS message from the admiral of the ship.

  They found one survivor and an admiral who had died long before the message had been sent. The medical ship was then forced to take the survivor to an undisclosed destination for debriefing but was released after signing the official secrets act.

  In the adjoining room to the one she was found in were the bodies of two civilians, on the wall had been written a prophesy that read.

  “As the tongues of those who know are stopped

  As an unknown hero is from history dropped

  Another ship shall come to this world of snow

  And only one shall walk from shadows to earthly glow.”

  This was never publicly released.

  Two months later another ship was attacked in the moons of Jupiter, only one survivor was recovered, waiting on the ice wastes of Europa.

  His name was Sakara.

  And beneath the fiery surface of Io a transmission had been detected, translated and archived, originating from before both of the attacks.

  “Dor’LanthaPax’Bel, remember that in war some sacrifices are necessary. You are that sacrifice.”

  Afterword

  Thank you for taking the time to read my novel. Any reviews or comments would be greatly appreciated.

  Stan Butler.