Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (11 page)

My eyes were not shut. Instead I was a boy sitting at a table resting on a
beach. The sun was overhead. Far brighter then the sun on Errikus. A red
ballon was tied around my little wrist. I must have been nine, maybe ten years
old surrounded by the strangest things I had ever seen. The table was
covered in wrapped boxes, food, and even more balloons. There were dozens
of other kids alongside me. Some were the same age and others older - all of
them laughing and smiling. I felt happy, euphoric. My eyes blinked
involuntarily. Another image washed in. It felt wrong. I still couldn’t move or
feel my body but I could see the world around me. I could only watch
helplessly as I moved through it.

I can feel my heart beat. I feel like I can just about move my hand. I feel
like I’m being held down, choked even. I can smell copper and metal plating.
There is a stench of sweat in the air, the smell of the wounded, bleeding, and
dying.

Another
flash, another drowning.
I’m holding a gun. I can barely tell underneath the length of my sleeve
how thin my arms are. I know I am starving because I feel the gnawing, the
intense hunger. I can’t see clearly. My host’s vision is blurred. I’m holding the
gun out in front of me, staring down at a man I do not know. The stranger is
well dressed in business attire. It’s like something I watched in a movie. The
helpless stranger begs for his life. “Please stop! Please I’ll give you whatever
you want! Take my money, my car, take anything you want,” he pleads for his
life. I can feel rain against my skin. I hold out the gun and take a deep breath.

‘Why can’t I stop this?’
I pull the trigger. There is a wide bust of blood
that sprays from the back of his head. The man’s body lays out bleeding
before me. He isn’t dead. He is continuing to beg. I (no, not me but whatever
demon whose eyes I am borrowing) reach down and grabs the man’s wallet.
There is only a few dollars in it. Nothing more, just enough for a one night
fix. In frustration the demon tosses the wallet down on the ground. Minutes
pass, the demon I inhabit doesn’t bother covering up the corpse or go for
help. He just watches as the man bleeds out finally passing his last breath.

I wake up in my room and I am naked. Covered only by a white sheet. I
can feel my body but it feels broken. My arms feel numb and my legs feel like
I have been running for hours. There is a foul smell in the stale air. There is a
cup of water sitting on a grey table next to my bed. I immediately reach for it.
I almost smile, relieved that my body is listening to the commands my mind
sends out. My throat feels like I have been inhaling fire. My gums hurt. I feel
like my teeth haven’t been brushed in a week. The water hits my tongue but it
doesn’t taste like water. It tastes sweet like tea. I drink it fast, too fast and
begin to choke. I clear my throat and keep drinking and finish the entire thing
before I even realize it. It does nothing to quench my thirst. I feel dehydrated,
dizzy. I fall back into my bed and fall asleep.

I wake up again in the white room. How many times now, three, maybe
four. I feel like I’m being tortured. I lost track of time. Every moment seems
to blend into the next. I a father, a mother, a child. I am a soldier, a warrior, a
doctor. I am a beggar, a CEO, a banker. I am living in a house. I am staring at
a mirror. I am driving in a desert. Time blends. There is nothing important
and nothing in particular to focus on. I am drowning, watching the lives of
strangers flash before my eyes. How many now? Hundred? More?

I’m standing in combat armor holding an M44. This feels more recent.
I’m not alone. Other soldiers dressed in simlar garb surround me. We are
doing survelliance through an alien ship. Something appraches. It doesn’t rely
on sight to see. A giant spider like limb stretches out from the darkness. Then
another. Both limbs reach out grabbing the soldier next to me right out of his
boots. We fire our weapons but nothing happens. Then I see the monsters
tusk. There is blood all over my suit. There is blood all over the ground. I
must be hurt. The monster grabs me and pulls me closer to its face and looks
me directly in the eyes. It is an antliod. The vision ends. I’m floating through
the darkness again trapped in my own thoughts. Is this what it means to be a
‘user’?

A week passes. I’m sitting in the chair in the white room. I can feel my
body again. I never realized how much I would love to get my senses back.
Slowly I start to feel like myself again. “Mental conditioning is almost
complete,” I hear a voice say. A black veil is covering my eyes but I can still
see the silhouette of several figures surrounding me. “Has he seen a Skrav
yet?” another voice asks, “No but we suspect he will soon. He’s already had
more then a dozen visions. A few we are sure come from the future. I doubt
he will be able to tell us anything but who knows? Maybe it won’t all be a
blur even if he doesn’t survive the next few days.” The voices continue to talk.
‘Survive the next few days?’ Am I going to die like this? Are we, ‘users’
nothing but cattle. No this is just training, they are getting my body use to
what it takes, if this kills me I was never going to survive anyway. I will
survive. I wish I could cut them out. I don’t recognize any of the voices. They
seem to only grow more and more distant. I can’t take anymore. I’m not
seeing what they want me to see. Much of the rest of my week is nothing but
the same and then I see a Skrav.

My name is Devon Cross (well, at the very least that is my host’s name but
my real name is obviously not Devon Cross - I am Sev, a user, a soldier serving
under orders to peer into the past as humanity struggles to survive) I am a
commanding officer in the Terran Military, the military branch of the Hegemony
and it is my job to protect the citizens of Earth, Mars, Deimos, Phobos, Europa,
Pluto, and all the colonies of the Sol System from the alien force known as the
Skrav. Why? Simple… they would see us die. We have no choice but to fight if
we want to survive. The galaxy is a dangerous place.

It only took a day for me to make up my mind, I resigned my position as
an officer and re-enlisted as a soldier. In spite of a lingering hangover and
high I volunteered to lead Alpha Squad, a group of Terran Marines to do a
head on attack against one of the few Skrav daggers (a nickname we gave the
Skrav ships based on their looks) that didn’t totally burn up in our first
offensive. We nicknamed the Skrav crash site “Hastur”. It only took two
hours before I was in my gear sitting in a drop ship ready to be deployed.

Our starship, the New Hope (should have been called ‘Jaws’ if you ask
me; it looked like dark gray metal shark tooth) tore through the man-made
atmosphere on Deimos, a colony we only recently terraformed. I get the call
and begin running down the hallways of the ship grabbing my prototype M17
and checking my suit. The military sees this as a great opportunity to test
some new, more experimental weapons. Every Skrav we find living or dead is
a corpse to test our technology on. We were also told to take no prisoners.
Not like we could talk to them anyway. The M17 is an energy/projectile
weapon that runs of electric and kinetic impulses. The more it fires the
stronger it becomes. I grab the latest in military protection, black body armor
and a gun that resembles an old world chain saw. Others in my unit carry
much the same gear all of us well armed with a vast assortment of automatic
weaponry. M16s, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, etc… all set and at the ready
to be used. Each of us also has a silver magnum at our hip.

My anxiousness makes me fumble. I tend to get a little clumsy before a
big game but I am all action once they let us play. I trip going into the hangar
but my second in command, Lieutenant Chev grabs me. “Not getting too old
are you Cross?” I wanted to tell him I was, I wanted to turn back. I wanted to
scream, I have seen too much blood and I want to give up on war, this is
pointless, this is meaningless and I can’t go on but I knew otherwise. I knew
why it was that I had enlisted my services. The Skrav wanted to kill us, all of
us. I had the necessary skills needed to protect the human race, protect the
ones I care about and love. “Never too old lieutenant to kill some Skravs,” I
answer with a grin. In spite of myself and my own insecurities I get myself
situated inside the skiff we are going to ride down to the surface. The skiff
looks like a small silver platoon boat with a metal shell covering the sides. It
holds seven troops. This feels familiar, kinda like D-Day but we are hoping
all the Germans will be dead.

Within moments we are ready for take-off. All the soldiers in the unit are
fastened in their seats. Some are looking off at the wall. Some are whispering
low, grumbled prayers. Some are trying to control their breathing. Each of us
do whatever we can to focus and get our heads ready as we make our big
play. All of us are scared. We are the first to face an enemy we know little to
nothing about.

There is a slight jerk. We could feel the ship steady itself as it began to
rise from the cargo launch bay. The bottom of the skiff floats several feet off
the hangar floor and moved towards the open bay doors. I could count the
seconds before it clears the bay,. One. Two. Three. We are approximately two
feet out from the ship. Sweat pools down soldier’s faces, especially the
newbies. Fresh meat. No question about it. It hovers for ten seconds in midair
before we begin our descent dropping straight down. The descent is quick,
instantly turning the stomach to knots. You immediately feel the air pressure
drop and breathing becomes almost unendurable. You feel your ears pop and
the world around you goes quiet. Anything wrong with the skiff then you are
dead. Our lives are in technologies hands. Depending how far you are seated
up front you can’t even hear the roar of the engine over the roar of the fall.
When that first breath of air leaves your lungs you feel like you are choking.
Many expel hacking coughing trying to suck the air back up. Its best to just
let it go. Others swallow their tongue choking on it. The captain steadies the
skiff and glides us towards the Skrav. A few of the newbies pass out.

“What do you think they will look like?” Justin asks me, He was one of
the newbies that didn’t pass out. “Intel says they will look like bugs. Didn’t
you do your homework?” I replied. The recruit shrugged, “I thought the
mines were a sure thing,” he says. The mines
were
a sure thing, which is why
our mission is to explore the destruction and kill anything that’s still
breathing. “The only thing for sure is one day we all die, aside from that
nothing is for sure… and if I’ going to die brining down some alien scum is
one surefire way to go about doing it,” Chev chimed in. “We think they are
going to look like bugs but for all we really know they could look like Teddy
bears, soft cuddly Teddy bears, hell they may look like something far worst…
they could look like us,” Chev added. I look at both Chev and Justin and take
a deep breath. What did I just sign up for?

“They are bugs,” I said, “as tall as humans but still bugs and what do you
do when bugs infest your home,” I raised my eyebrow towards Chev, “you
bomb them, call an exterminator and wipe them out!”

We were halfway to the rally point. We could see the ruins of the Skrav
ships. It looked like a pile of spires stretching out across the sky, dragged like
a dagger across the sky. Silent like a corpse. No human had witnessed
anything like this before. We made first contact and we were ready to kill.
The shadow of Mars was behind us and the light of the monring sun was
rising.

Just a few miles out the Skrav ships
filled the horizon. Breaking away
our skiff landed straight into the dirt. Three of my men were killed including
Justin. Poor kid, another volunteer and a pilot. In the distance a mushroom
cloud hung out over where the Skrav ship use to be. They had activated a
self-destruct.

“Who the hell blows up their own damn ship!” Chev yelled out. Half of
the volunteers were already too close to the Skrav ship to be saved. The rest
of us were stuck on the ground waiting for our weapons and gear to reboot
from the blast’s EMP. This was the first time I saw a Skrav. The rose up from
the ground. The must have buried themselves right after the crash. They were
waiting for us, trapping us. Some were a foot taller then us but for the most
part it seemed they were around our own height. Their armor was black and
grey full of solid silver edges that outlined their chests, knees, and elbows.
The armor covered their hand that varied from four to five fingers. They were
bony, pointed like tortoise claws. Their helmets were pointed at the front with
two sharp points flowing outward were the mouths should have been. They
had two round spaces poking out where their eyes would, same place our
eyes were. It seemed possible we could have worn armor similar to theirs.
Our two species weren’t too different form one another at least in this
context.

We were ambushed. Waiting for our weapons to reboot we dug in and
took cover behind the broken marred skiff parts not buried in the ground.
Lucky for us the Skrav weapons were also affected. Realizing this we
watched as they came for us with only their strength. Two of my men were
choked to death. Chev managed to use his speed and not get caught. I was
lucky. I should have been dead but my prototype M17 rebooted faster then
anyone else’s weapons. I was able to fire point blank upward at the Skrav
who’s hands were wrapped around my neck. The blast tore through the
stomach of his armor and past two smaller claw like arms and into its gut.
Black blood poured out. ‘They bleed like bugs’ I thought aloud to myself.

I wish I could have shut my eyes. I watched as Devon Cross made
first
contact. First ground kill. He sprayed bullets like wildfire into and around
every Skrav in sight. Thirty seconds a voice came over the COM issuing a
retreat. Orders to fallback to a rally point under New Hope’s instructions fall
on deaf ears as another voice comes through not a moment after. It is the
voice of a female soldier and leader of another squad posted up a few
hundred yards away near another crash site. A cry for help. At about forty
seconds Chev’s gun reboots and he along with another newbie were running
towards an open shaft leading underground taking the fight back to the
Skrav.

Entering the darkness of the mine a
flashlight at the end of the M17
comes on automatically. Chev follows behind as we jog at a steady pace for
ten, maybe twenty minutes. The mine walls were light brown and stripped
bare. Resources mined to terraform the moon. Taking point we find the
female soldier. I wish I could recall her name, and her squad what is left of
them. Of seven only four of them had survived. “Better then our three,” ICross said.

“We didn’t think anyone was going to come, we heard the retreat right
before we sent our message. What the hell happened?” she asked. “They
surprised us. I guess no one saw this coming,” I-Cross replied. Chev shrugged
his shoulders. “Maybe they didn’t. Won’t know until the bullets start flying,
maybe this is suppose to happen.” We agreed to head deeper into the mine
hoping we could find some answers, maybe an escape close to the New Hope.
We were wrong, very wrong. We proceeded in the wrong direction. The walls
of the cave were widening. We should have known better but we didn’t. We
were lost in a maze. My light flickered. If there was ever a reason for humans
to be afraid of the dark this was it.

Chev checked the GPS on his wrist to make sure we were going in the
right direction. It glowed green. Five white dots blip on the screen. Zooms
out and two silver pulses appear that represent us while another, a giant white
star appears to show us the location of our rally point and the location of the
New Hope. I looked over Chev and read the ordinance. We were three miles
away. When we fought the Skrav earlier the entire GPS flickered red. We
wrote it off as a glitch because of the reboot or maybe some kind of
interference. We weren’t even sure if the Skrav would show up on our radar
or not. After all it wasn’t like we had a way to test the technology on an
unknown alien species.

Chev took point. He had adjusted his light to shine over a wider area.
Mine and everyone else’s was more focused and could reach out further. It
was my light that startled the beast. If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I
would not have believed it. I was thankful for once that our suits had micro
cameras recording everything that happened. We were attacked by what
would later be known as an Eel.

Named after the eels in the oceans of Earth, the name was chosen for
this creature by the soldiers rather then scientists (who probably would have
called it something strange like wormus-ellipicus) hidden way in labs and
bases. The name was chosen because the alien creature looked like just that…
a giant eel. It was grey with small glowing blue veins, two giant white eyes
and sharp pointed teeth. - The Eel was a native of the Myra, at least that was
the world they originated on. We would learn this from ciphering data
recovered from another Skrav ship who’s wreckage and bodies were
recovered in ruins in orbit around Earth. Myra itself was a planet conquered
by the Skrav. From what we learned, the Myra were once very similar to us
in their way of life. Their world was full of humanoids who had integrated
their technology with the environment and eco-system of the planet. The Eels
were genetically altered weapons of destruction the Skrav had created from a
species of wildlife on that planet. How or why we had no idea, but we did
learn how they controlled it. They used pheromones. The Skrav wiped out
the Myra hundreds of years ago and had integrated their technology for their
own.

My light had startled the beast but it was Chev the Eel went after
first.
No sooner was it right in front of him as Chev squeezed off round after round
into its gaping jaw. Blood stained its teeth. The bullets from Chev’s antique
M16 ripped through its left eye socket. The creature was blinded. We ran and
ducked behind some old mining equipment that littered the area. Wood
planes, boxes, things of that sort were scattered about alongside drills, rock
crushers, and cranes that stood thirty feet high rusted and forgotten. We soon
found ourselves climbing the crane in an attempt to escape the creature as it
attacked the ground like a feral child. The rusted equipment in the mine had
become our Alamo.

The Eel slithered down the dark mining tunnel, shook in the dirt and
began wailing with a sound that could only be compared to that of a myth, we
called it the ‘wail of a banshee’. It threw up more and more mud as it thrashed
around looking for us, seeking its revenge. At this point we had already
climbed half way up the side walls of the crane, doing anything we could to
evade our aggressor. We were covering a lot of ground as quick as we could
and in a matter of seconds Chev and I were already three quarters of the way
to the top with the female squad leader and her teammates trailing close
behind us. We had planned to reach the top and unload our grenades, bullets,
anything and everything we had at the creature. Unfortunately we weren’t
fast enough.