Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (2 page)

The Skrav always came. They were always chasing us. They were
always hunting us and we were only ever one step ahead. Every stop
humanity made we would be forced to retreat and run again. Every wildcat
colony would be destroyed or never heard from again as ‘the Trinity’ ran
away leaving thousands on Earth-like worlds. The journey to Eden would
continue and the cycle of war would continue over and over again.

The Erebus was mostly silent now. Just another part of that cycle. There
were no communities, no parties, and no such thing as civilization left to
thrive in it’s hallways. Most of mankind slept the ‘deep sleep’. Some who had
become quite strange maintained the ship inside and out. Society had broken
down and the only ones that were awake were the elders, pilots, soldiers,
users, and a few scientists/researchers here and there that fixed this or studied
that. A repairman would work tirelessly on an auton fixing it as he waited for
his next meal. There were no wages, no rewards, everyone had their job and
everyone ate the rations and protein that they were given. That repairman
would never see the surface of a real world, the inside of a starship is all his
body, his mind, his soul will ever see or know. When his hands tremble and
he picks up his tool whether from old age or work-stress the quiet stillness of
it all will swallow his mind and he will retire to sleep or tell himself how his
work is for the greater good. Though he may just be a cog in the machine
without his trembling hands the machine would fall apart and humanity
would become extinct. The pilots and soldiers were trained to give their lives
practicing daily in simulations, virtual reality, that trains them to battle the
Skrav (and other hostile alien races). The elders were the ones that developed
strategies and commanded the ships, they were the judge, jury, and
sometimes executioners that guided humanity through the dark.

Just like several hundred others awake onboard each ship (aside from
the elders) everyone was nothing more then a puppet or caretaker. The only
other ones that mattered were the ‘users’ (who had the second job of being
soldiers). Users were mostly addicted to the visions the nexus gave them, day
in and day out they were pushed to their limits searching for answers,
questions asked by the elders or forced to seek out signs that humanity was
moving forward into the future in which they so desired. Why are we here?
Where are we going? How close are we to Eden? Answers that never seemed
to come. Those that saw the future would lose pieces of their mind or worst
only catch a small glimpse of something, a blur; others saw something that
broke them down to the point in which they refused to share their knowledge
even going as far as to take their own lives. Those that saw the past often felt
sick and depressed over what was left behind, they begged to be given more
time. Seeing the Earth through someone else’s eyes was far better then their
own existence inside the ship.

Living inside a starship was haunting and unnatural but for many of us it
was a way of life. It was something we forced ourselves to get use to. This is
why the Erebus was created, to deliver the human race from one end of the
galaxy to the next. Those born into its womb are nothing more then the blood
that flows through her beating heart. It is our ark, our mercy, our comfort,
salvation, and at the same time our greatest mistake.

It was the second wave of attacks that ended the lives of everyone on the
planet. In eight minutes the mega-cities of Earth, the colonies of Mars,
Jupiter, and past that the outposts on Pluto as well as every world in the Sol
system, the birthplace of humanity became swallowed by the darkness. The
Skrav destroyed our sun and with it had made us an endangered species. We
no recourse but to flee into deep space. Eden was the only option we had left.
It was there that the prophets (the ‘users’ that were a part of the original
‘Sons of Sol’) said we would start over. Looking back it’s hard to say which
was worst, the destruction of our home, the genocide of our species as billions
died because we lost the war or the fact that we knew it was coming and we
did nothing to defend ourselves rather we did nothing to stop it and made the
conscious choice to run.

History will probably say we did the right thing but anyone that has ever
seen the blue sky of that pale blue dot will tell you that we should have fought
for our home. I can still hear the words of Devon Cross, “Cut the head,
another takes its place, so let them bleed and break until we sever every limb
and there are no more parts for them to replace,”spoken during the first
invasion. Devon Cross was one of the Earth’s greatest heroes (more on him
later). We had come so far before the exodus, our departure into the
unknown and we have done so little since. From World War I and II to the
Resource Wars that nearly destroyed us all the way to the first invasion itself
we held our ground and united. It was right before the first invasion we
began colonizing our solar system creating colonies on the moons that
surrounded Mars as well as Mars itself. We were at the dawn of a new space
age, the future was bright. When the Skrav attacked we fought hard and
won. Their technology allowed us to expand ever further (obviously as the
Erebus itself is reverse-engineered from that technology) all the way to the
fringes of our solar system and beyond.

The Earth had it’s hegemony (though many countries still governed
themselves as seperate nations as did colonies) and the human race had it’s
own unified army, the Terran Military (at least that is what we know it to be
called now). The future was ours because we had fought for it and after the
defeat of the Skrav it was destiny.

I was not quite myself - a vision as seen through a user’s eyes - I was at
Freedom park walking with a woman whom I assumed had to be my wife. I
was standing holding hands with my son - who was not my son but rather my
host’s. I can still remember watching the smile on his face as we looked
around ready to play games in the park. I can also remember the moment the
rocks began to rise off the ground, my body as it became light, as the wind
picked up and lifted the sand from underneath my feet. I can remember the
look of fear in the child that was not my own but rather the stranger whose
body I had latched onto. I could remember the sense of dread I felt, the
shame of not being able to do anything, not being able to save anyone. I felt
for a moment as if that child WAS my own and I wanted to cry. I felt
ashamed I couldn’t explain to either of them what it was that was happening.

I can remember my host grabbing the child’s hand and running. Looking
around for shelter, somewhere to hide. I couldn’t make it to the car and sure
as hell couldn’t make it inside one of the fallout shelters located in one of the
mega-blocks. None of it mattered. There would be no place to run. There was
nowhere we could have run. I could see the spire, the space elevator in the
distance collapsing as gravity fluctuated all around us. My wife -my host’s
wife - was screaming. She had been close to us but not close enough I could
grab her hand. Everything was going to hell and I watched as she fell to the
ground only moments before I grabbed my child - my host’s child - and felt
his chest, the two of us were breathing heavily and then everything went
dark. The sun had gone black. I can still remember speaking in a foreign
language, a language I couldn’t understand, a prayer muttered over and over
by my host.

The ugly truth was that the Skrav had collapsed our sun into a black
hole. Humanity had began constructing a ‘Dyson swarm’ around our sun.
Another one of the great projects we were heavily invested in during our
golden age. The ‘statities’ would have been suspended around our sun by
enormous light sails using radiation pressure to coutneract the sun’s massive
gravity. Each swarm would have collected an enormous amount of energy
from our sun and supplied humanity with ‘free power’. The Skrav had
sabotaged the project using the swarms against us.

In another vision my host was that of the child. I can remember
watching as my mother screamed staring into the sky. I stood alone next to
my father, not understanding at all what was happening. I could feel the hair
on my arm begin to rise before I closed my eyes and faded away into oblivion.
Another memory, the same memory, a third time in which I was the wife. It
must have been hours earlier. I was staring at the spire, smiling at my child as
he played baseball with his father in the park. I could hear a dog’s bark as it’s
owner threw a frisbee disc in the air. This was the second time I had ever seen
a dog (so different then the first - will talk about that later). The first time it
seemed so strange, dog’s were as I knew them creatures partnered with
soldiers, bred for war, bred to obey, a monster that walked on four legs loyal
only to their master. This dog was different. It was small, maybe fifty or sixty
pounds with black and white fur that blew in the wind. It looked soft and
majestic as it grabbed the disc out of the air and shook it as it’s front and back
legs hit the ground. It was so fragile and so beautiful.

Another time I was hosted by a stranger walking alone. I think I must
have been worried about my job, daydreaming about the future only to have
it taken from me as I spent those last few precious moments wishing I had
done more cursing the world around me staring at that father holding his son
for dear life. I could remember hearing the dog howl in the distance as all
things beautiful had come to an end.

The Skrav were vicious. Their culture as far as we knew was complex
but still somewhat similar to our own (though we have many cultures divided
between our own kind each have several key points in common). They were
somewhat polytheistic as we found the insides of their ships several deities
however we had no idea if they were ornaments or artifacts in which they
worshipped. They seemed to have some kind of chain of command, an
hierarchy with several ruling leader. When one leader fell another would take
it’s place. The Skrav were sentient beings, that was for sure. Though we
couldn’t open a dialogue (not without trying) and they looked at us as
something that needed to be wiped from existence. Elders theorized that
somehow the Skrav were afraid of us, that they saw other intelligent life
forms as a threat to their existence and so began a crusade to destroy
anything alien to themselves.

Devon Cross beleived that the Skrav were much like a hive. Like his
speech above he believed that if we slaughtered enough of them we would
break them down in a way that they would lose their chain of command
become feral. Cross led his team in several skirmishes against Skrav leaders
and it was his leadership and speeches that helped inspire troops and save
many lives during the first invasion. “Cut the head and another takes its place
so let them bleed and break until there are no parts to replace…” A sick
speech from a sick man. It was less about his ideas and more about his
fighting spirit. One of the reasons his words have been misquoted from one
place to another. He taught his troops that killing another sentient species
was the equivalent to killing bugs. This belief made it easier but desensitized
many soldiers and only re-enforced our hate for other alien lifeforms.

The Skrav were not hive-minded. They were just different. Each one
was just like us, an individual with a life, a family, and beliefs. Inside the ruins
of their ships we found families burned to death or crushed together no
different then how we found human remains in Pompeii. It was hard but not
impossible for us to sympathize with them. If we had known their reason for
attacking us maybe we could have worked out a dialogue not that any of that
matters now. They killed billions, committed genocide against us and are now
hunting us like wild animals. The Skrav are the enemy. We will probably
never understand them and if we ever do we probably won’t listen. Trying to
talk to a Skrav was like talking to dirt. Cross and his men had tried
everything. They bribed, tortured, drugged (mushrooms and psychedelics
alike) but no Skrav captured would break. Eventually most of the ones that
they did capture would find ways to sling themselves around so bad they
would break their own necks or they would die of starvation.

about the actual time and place are corrupted). It had only taken two world
wars and a resource war between several of Earth’s major economic countries
and few million lives before we found peace and began spreading outside our
pale blue dot but once we banded together setting up way stations on the
moon, Lagrange points and small settlements on Mars and it’s moons (and
eventually the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and a port on Pluto). It was during
that time of expansion when the Earth was becoming re-populated and even
the Arctic had become a fruitful paradise that the Skrav appeared in the sky
above.

Hundreds of Skrav ships each resembling a dark dagger covered in
sharp edges and black as the space they traveled in appeared. I have seen the
terror through a hundred living non-living lives (hosts). Pitch-black clouds
surrounded by sharp points and rays of light surrounded their ships trying
their best to pierce through. It was an evil silhouette, something you would
imagine inside a horror movie. The killer that stands in the doorway - only
this time the killer stretched across the horizon. We tried to make contact the
minute we saw them and for one instant we believed that there could be
peace. We didn’t want to fight them but we knew we had no choice. When
the moment finally came it was a single man that held his hand above a
control console deep within the crust of the Earth. Sweat ran down his palm
and dripped off his fingers and fell straight down on the number seven. Seven
was the first number in a sequence of numbers he would push. I can
remember seeing his reflection on the dials as he hesitated hoping someone
would stop him at the last minute, a blur and not as clear as most visions but I
knew there was no one there to stop him.