Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (31 page)

‘The Praxis alone waited for our arrival. It held us the way a mother
would hold her newborn. We were no longer a crew of criminals we had
become something else something much more. Our first day awake was spent
catching up. The Praxis had apparently not gone unseen during our two
thousand year journey. Inside the immer it had been attacked by something
that could only be described as a massive beast. A giant creature that
resembled a shark but with multiple spider like limbs and faces that stretched
and waved behind it as it swam through the energies that made up the immer.
These energies could not exist long in our world without self-destructing. The
Praxis had survived but only by leaving the immer for a short time. The
fallout from a short time out meant that we would all be too old or dead
before we reached our destination. A destination we were still very unsure of.
For all we knew it was another world wiped away the way our Earth was.
For who are we to be given and to beg for life when so many had been lost.’

‘A few went back to sleep. For those of us that remained awake we
discovered the ship was just as alive as any world. It was even more alive then
some of the colonies settled on the moon and Mars. For years people in those
biospheres had breathed dry recycled air pumped through giant cylindrical
vats but here the ship replenished the air. It was still all recycled but it was so
natural and pure at certain times a deep enough breath was enough to make
your head spin. You could spend an afternoon floating through the clouds.
The ship had even developed its own biological clock. Walls illuminated with
petals of coral and bright white light in what would have been our day and
slowly dimmed and
011100110111010101100011011000110110010101100101011001 000110010101100100
during the night. This was the ships way of recycling and adapting energy.
Scientists on Earth had made breakthroughs creating bioluminescent plants
and microbes found deep beneath the ocean floor. These revolutions
continued to evolve and one day they will even outlive us. I wondered if the
Praxis itself might one day become a creature of the immer.’

‘We spent the next year awake before
finally drawing straws. Scile lost.
Scile was once responsible for killing a man in a bar fight. The poor man
struck down in his prime, he had a son, a daughter, and a loving wife. Scile
had anger problems to say the least. It was a part of what made him a good
soldier but when not on a mission he was a monster. Now he was the calmest
kindhearted person I knew. He welcomed the idea of staying awake while the
rest of us now only twenty or thirty went to sleep. I imagine he spent the last
of his days in meditation. He sought forgiveness for his crimes. Though the
world ended had he not taken that man's life he could have had that much
more time with his family. This was something Scile would have to live with
knowing. None of us should be here. It felt like we had been forgotten.
Humanity was eradicated while we lived out on the edge. We are not the best
humanity has to offer and none of us deserved this second life.

‘We woke up a few hundred years later. The ship hadn't changed too
much. New fauna and areola sprouted here and there and there were pieces
of coral that had hardened itself into a bone like structure helping support the
frame of the ship. We got up and ate. We speculated what our new lives
would be like. We found the remains of Scile and as we did with the others
we prayed, wrapped them up, and shot them out an airlock. I have taken a
liking to a girl named Ada. In a past life she assassinated the head of some
small corporation robbing charities out of the Middle East. People praised
her. She was considered a hero by many even some of those that put this
project together. I had even heard she had a meeting with an old war hero
Devon Cross before he passed away. We made plans to spend the rest of our
days together.’

‘Days have turned to weeks. We were now only hours away from dropping
out of immer and descending down to our destination. The Praxis had spoken
of the possibility that there may be other humans out there. We may not be
the last after all. Once we were safe the Praxis will give itself a new mission it
was going to head towards the void. If there were others out there it desired
to find them. This was its objective after all, the safe travel and protection of
the human race.’

‘We came out of the immer into turbulence. Immediately the Praxis began
spiraling out of control. Gravity fluctuated off and on. Everywhere people
were shouting. Ada, a few others, and myself had been on the bridge. We had
no choice but to do what came next. The Praxis, aka XA-1 had no weapons of
its own. In a battle it could only run. It was an experimental ship and yet it
had already become so much more. For a group of criminals it had become a
pathway to repentance and for the human race it had become a wandering
testament to our will to live.’

‘We
finally managed to stabilize the ship we thought our eyes had deceived
us. Before us lay a planet covered in vast cities. Two rings orbit the planet in
the shape of an X. Hundreds of massive starships seemed to hover just above
the atmosphere surrounding it. Some of the starships were a quarter to half
the size of the planet. From the moment we arrived we were being been shot
at. It didn’t take long to put the pieces together.’

‘We had arrived at the Skrav home world. We only had seconds before we
jumped back into the immer blowing out a part of our ship's core. A few
drones had attached themselves to our hull and had begun tearing through
shredding the muscle of Praxis with their lasers and grip. - Those of us that
can have armed themselves firing into drones and the cold dead of space
above. If this is transmitting anywhere if anyone can read this please send
help.’

‘Bodies
flung through passages. Blood floated in spheres. The pressure
building up inside the ship alone had ripped limbs from those unlucky enough
to not be close to a warp field. It wouldn't be long before they sent their ships
after us. This must have been what they felt. They were an invading force
dropping into a massacre and now we were an invading force being
massacred. I feel as if I and I alone have become a historian, the keeper of the
events that are transpiring here.’

‘The Praxis quickly added up and analyzed all of the information coming
in calculating the odds of survival and attack. I am holding Ada close in my
arms. A small group, seven of us stood against the drones. We fired pulse and
after pulse. Metal shavings filled the air. I could feel the microscopic pieces
pierce my throat and lungs. Blood spilt from the back of my mouth and yet I
kept firing and screaming. I can still taste the small metal shaving.

‘The last thing the Praxis did was scream; they were the clearest words I
had ever heard, "Keep your eyes open." We did. Before us flashed
information, coordinates, strategies, weaknesses, the makeup of the planet,
the estimated number of ships. Exactly how much force it would take to
attack. The Praxis had analyzed everything. Then the immer opened up.
Around us we saw reality begin and end. We could see the planet in front of
us and then smaller pieces of the immer open around us. Human missiles and
bombs began to appear out of the thin air and exploded. Then even more
holes opened letting out giant spheres that seemed to form a grid. It was a
weapon of mass destruction. It was something I had only heard about in
theory. An attack sent from light years away that would gather momentum
and energy the longer and faster it went. What could begin light years away
as nothing more then a spark would become a tidal wave of fire; the Skrav
and any ship unable to jump away would burn.’

‘Their entire planet was destroyed in front of us. The human race had
spilled the blood of millions of Skrav once forcing us into a war and now we
had destroyed their home world killing billions.’

‘In dark corners there is talk. How did we know the Skrav were coming,
how did we know they were planning to attack? In those same corners there
is talk of a group of people called ‘users’, people who see the future. People
that look through the eyes of others and can change the outcome of a fight.
This is why Praxis wanted us to keep our eyes open. Even after all these
years this was still an experiment. Through our eyes somewhere out there
someone saw what we saw. They used us so they could destroy the Skrav.
This was our true mission and now we were scrap. There are others out their
and both human and Skrav will be at war together for a long long time. If you
ever wonder why well now you know. Now you know what we did to them.
They must have seen this future just like we saw ours. They weren’t attacking
first they were protecting themselves.’

‘My
fight had come to an end I won’t be leaving any more logs. I hope if
the human race is still out there that we have found sanctuary and may God
forgive us.’

01000111011011110110010000100000011001100110111101110010
01100111011010010111011001100101001000000111010101110011
Lore stopped and paused. For a moment it seemed as if he had shut down.

None of us could believe what we had heard. Everything the human race had
done for the past three hundred years had been because of this war; a war it
seemed we started, or didn’t start or could have found another way to end.
We destroy the skrav the skrav destroy us and then we destroy the skrav. All
our visions of the future had created a paradox. What would have happened
had the Skrav not seen us as a threat? What if we had let them live? The
nexus had done more harm then good. It seemed seeing the future was a
curse and not a gift as we had once believed.

I was standing next to Hayden and Aira was off in the corner. Lore
looked like a statue as if he was in some kind of deep trance or meditation. He
was still talking to the ship. We saw his body turn and lift as he moved his
rifle into the air. At first he was aiming it towards Aira and then he aimed it at
me. Hayden moved himself in front of me and in front of an energy blast that
tore a hole through his chest and into my side. Without hesitation Aira lifted
her rifle and fired on Lore ripping through his armor at close range using the
full force of the trigger. Lore sat against the console and the broken monitors
in pieces. His body had become a shell. Aira knew exactly were to hit him.

Hayden lay in my arms dead. I stood in shock not from the pain but from
the loss of my best friend. I will never forget his eyes the moment his life left
his body. I was too injured to move. Aira pulled me away dragging my body
as a trail of my own blood covered the ground behind us. The whole thing
must have happened in thirty seconds or less. She shoved my bleeding body
inside one of the few stasis chambers that was not completely bashed to
pieces. I still remember the pain as the cold liquid oxygen covered my wound.
Every breath I swallowed more and more. Drowning in liquid oxygen. We
had no idea if this was going to work. I didn’t even care at the time whether I
lived or died. Hayden was gone. Dom was gone. Hera was wounded. Balkava
was apparently going to kill us all or turn us into slaves. I was staring into
Aira’s eyes when the chamber froze around me and I became still.

I feel a shimmer of light hit my eyes and gleam off the stasis chamber
door. Slowly I can feel my heart begin to beat and my blood begin to flow as
each and every muscle in my body tenses as I scratch away the crust on my
eyes waking up for however long it was that I had been asleep. I could feel
the shards of nexus inside me like small splinters or glass. Some of the protein
wall must have broken down from my injury but now it was sealing itself
once more. I could still see a barrage of surreal and blurry faces and images in
front of me like I was waking up from a long dream. A few of them I seemed
to recognize but or the most part I saw bits and pieces of the lives of
strangers, victims of attacks, victims of terrorists and the Skrav. What was it
that had driven Lore to fire on us? It had to have been some kind of code
written into the machine that saw the information we had gathered a threat.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Errikus. Ten years since the fall.

Humans now calling they the forgotten search for food amongst the
ruins of the Tritan. The great starship had been torn apart like it was nothing
by the Seraphim. It laid in pieces overgrown with the last of the aeouril
biomass that once covered the place I had called home. Because of the
biomass the area around the starship had ironically become one of the few
places a human could still breathe in the city. Caretakers struggled with
themselves over what to do, they no longer have a ship to maintain and life on
a planet was never an option for them. Some of them crawled the ground
with the husks of dried up ticks attached to their spine while others walk like
zombies and fall into piles waiting for the Tritan to speak to them. Like
monks having lost their religion they were without hope, without purpose.
Eventually they will die out never able to fathom what has happened to them.
The few humans left behind by the Erebus and Aelita struggle to survive
gathering anything they deem remotely edible and raiding shops, guard posts,
markets, and even old nursery’s still lined with the ashes of those passed
away. A middle-aged man named Elante wore nothing more then a hazard
suit and breather stapled together with various clothes and riot gear walked
through what could only be described as a refugee camp. Homes rigged with
biomass and mud stitched together by veins drug from the ashes of the tower
and fresh water pumps rigged patched together flowing in and out of crevices
towards the canal and undertow where Dom died. Off center from the heart
of the city and to the side lay a crater and the bones of the seraphim. Part
demonic creature, part human, and part leviathan it’s wings shed on the
ground poisonous to the touch. The crater itself was full of radiation spikes
and since the days after the fall rumors of people disappearing into thin air
have spread around the various human and eek camps. The Eek maintained
their own refuge amongst the hill some even scattered about across the world.
They blamed us for everything that happened but never once did they try to
hurt the ones left behind.