Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (33 page)

We were still miles away and had no way to carry our supplies on foot.
The season around us was changing. If we had arrived here during the winter
it was now turning into spring. I wonder how hot it got here. Were there
summers or would it just get cold again? The Erebus always had a constant
temperature it was never too much of anything. The orbital’s weather seemed
so exact. We orbited a star in the perfect Goldie locks zone but yet the air and
everything around us was controlled perfect. We weren’t tidally locked or
tipped too far to any side. I could only imagine what it was like building this
thing. Carving the caves and mountains from planets and asteroids. It must
have taken centuries to pull it off. The icy rivers were melting and in the
water we began to see new forms of life. Massive whale like creatures
surfaced coming out of hibernation. We watched as they moved in the
massive river in the direction of the bridge.

It gave Talon an idea. Around us buried in the snow were pieces from
the hull of the Aelita. While most of it was thick and made from exot metal
there were pieces small enough made from light organic sheets light enough
to float on water and tough enough to withstand anything the current could
throw at us. We stripped the sheets from the pieces of hull and welded them
together with some of the supplies. In hours we had made a raft five by fifteen
feet across and three feet tall. We had a barge built well enough it would take
us to the bridge. Using our rifles we shoved off and let the current guide us
occasionally using some of the two handed blades we had looted off the Skrav
to position ourselves and steer through the waves.

Along our way we drifted through a small ravine. The walls of stone
were hundreds of feet high and the sides were layered with eggs. The same
eggs I stumbled upon in the hellbeast hive. We were surrounded on all sides.
Each egg was ready to hatch we could see the small beasts about the size of a
dog moving and beating against the membrane of their sacs. The Zeesk that
Aira had adopted was growling at the edge of our barge. It moved itself in a
way lifting its face and shoulders so that it looked bigger and fiercer then it
was. Each of us stood with our rifles ready as the barge turned in small
spirals. Round and round we went. We were nearing the edge of the ravine
hoping we would just float by all the horror that surrounded us when we saw
a massive hellbeast crawling down the side of the cliff. It crawled like a spider
down a web it’s legs clinging to the rock like it was nothing but a flat surface.
It lifted one of its eggs into it’s mouth tearing apart the membrane and
releasing it’s small youngling. It’s eyes looked at us and we watched as its
massive body began to straighten ready to leap into the water and kill us all in
an instant. It never took its eyes off us. Slowly round and round we drifted
out of the shadows under the hellbeast’s watchful gaze.

The bridge was the border between Skrav territory and Balkava’s new
empire. It was dead center in the battle and while Balkava’s forces never
seemed to attack it was already under siege by alien forces by the time we
arrived. I could here several resistance soldiers shouting and screaming as
waves of fire filled trenches they had dug into the melting snow. Several caves
in the area were used to store supplies set up as small command posts. It felt
good to be reunited with two of my friends again: Meddix and Trevor. They
both knew the truth about me and had no doubt I was on their side. They
had heard and seen first hand the escape Hayden and I made. They were
happy that at the very least one of us was alive and looking well. They were
the ones in charge of the small command post. Trevor looked very much the
same as before only he was wearing a bulkier set of battle armor that seemed
to make his face seem small and out of place. Meddix was strung out. Balkava
had killed his family after impact, a power play few on Erebus expected.
They were a family that slept in stasis during much of his life that he was
more then ready to meet on Eden-3.

Meddix was broken and torn with revenge. The trenches were under
constant attack by the Skrav and he was always the first to fire back. I
watched him several times grab hold of an automatic bio-rigged machine gun
and fire projectile after projectile tearing the enemy apart. The look on his
face when he imagined every one as Balkava was disturbing. He was eating
something called worms when I sat to talk to him. It was our third night at
the bridge and the first one on one time I had with anyone. He offered me a
handful and I politely declined. During their first few days at the bridge there
were only a handful of soldiers to protect it and they were low on supplies. It
was a soldier named Cree that first suggested they scour the snow and dirt to
see if there was anything they could eat. The worms had an interesting side
effect. During moments of intense rage or pain they would show you the
faces and bodies of the ones you loved. The bodies would whisper into your
ears the things you want to hear, things that helped you move past the pain.
Every battle Meddix took part in he was hearing the voice of his little sister.
A small child he had only met a half a dozen times. She moved through the
battlefield with him like an angel telling him she was ok, telling him he was a
hero.

Meddix shrugged and continued to eat them. He cut his arm with a
small knife about seven inches in length and began to smile. I could only
wonder who was talking to him now. I didn’t bother to ask. We had all but
noticed the Zeesk under our table was eating some of the scraps Meddix had
dropped. It looked up at the two of us stoned. Aira came inside our makeshift
room and smiled asking what the hell we had fed it. It licked her palm as she
stared down at it’s two round eyes ablaze. That night I thought long and hard
about trying the worms. I wondered whom I would see. Would Hayden come
back and tell me everything was ok? Would my mother answer the many
questions I had for her? Would Lore appear in his human form and
apologize? I had had enough visions for one lifetime through the nexus, I
didn’t need a hallucinogen to tell me the world would be fine when I knew
very well there was a battle coming and nothing would be the same.

Morning came. Clouds blocked the sun and it seemed like it was going
to rain. Perhaps that meant there would be no barrage or firing today. Trevor
and I gathered water from the river as Aira, another woman named Vale, and
a Drok named Trey guarded us. One of our other jobs while we were away
from camp was to see if there were any supplies or dead we could carry back.
We gathered several swords and rifles from dead Skrav. Most of the bodies
had been washed away by the river. The water was cold and on occasion we
could still see small circles of ice floating through it. It was there in the
shallows of the riverbed we saw one of the drones Trevor had stolen from
Balkava, one of the engineers at the bridge had reprogrammed it to do recon
for us days before Aira, Talon, and I arrived. The drone was buried under the
thick mud and it took two hours for us to dig it out. Vale and Trey were put in
charge of hauling the five hundred pound machine back with us. Trey being
naturally strong did most of the carrying. When Trevor finally got the drone
hooked into one of our rigged holos we watched as the bulky machine
showed us an aerial shot of Balkava’s territory. The drone was soon shot at by
several humans. They were no threat. Balkava was more concerned with
wiping out the Tesh-Kar and mining for Lethe technology in the area
surrounding the Erebus then she was with the resistance she would soon be
up against. We could see the pain and hurt faces of the crowds digging in the
snow and dirt. Old men and women too weak to exist in Balkava’s new world
gunned down by deathsquads. The footage was haunting and it only got
worst. While Balkava was digging letting us hold the bridge something that
we had hoped would be to our advantage there was an army coming together
in Skrav territory. They wanted this world for their own and they were going
to do anything to wipe away humanity once and for all. The microphones
picked up the noise of the march louder and louder. We expected their
numbers to be on par with us, a few hundred survivors, maybe a thousand at
most. We thought they had sent at least half of their swarm to war with us in
space but the drone showed us different. There were a thousand if not more
heavily armed with blades and lancers, heavy weapons and exot laser rifles
rigged with out tech probably stolen from a world conquered years ago. It
was easy to see what the Skrav were now. They were a society bred for war
adapting and stealing technology and using their own nexus to maintain
dominance. We were there greatest threat and as far as we knew the only
other species that could see the future. The Praxis destroyed their world, an
inevitable outcome of a war we have been fighting on parallel lines for
centuries. One of the alien soldiers shot a blast at the drone and the footage
went black. It must have crashed in the river only hours later programmed to
report back at the first sign of any real threat. None of us were sure what to
do next. In days the Skrav would be upon us.

Each of us took time to think running over the situation in our minds.
There were only a few hundred of us to protect the bridge. If we were going
to survive we would need Balkava’s army, we had a neutral enemy in the
Skrav and she had all the heavy weapons. “We should have taken more when
we ran, at least if we had a couple drop ships we could bomb the hell of out
them,” Meddix said. “We took all we could, we had no time to think and no
way to know there could be that many of them left,” Trevor replied. Trevor
was the first to suggest we call a truce out loud. Meddix cursed him for it but
agreed. In the end we all agreed. Trevor pulled up a holo print showing layer
by layer the passages that could take us close to the Erebus. Once we
surfaced we would be near the front. When the Erebus made landfall it hit a
mountain causing it to turn to it’s left one hundred and eighty degrees. We
would have to rip a hole in the side and walk our way to the core. The next
image Trevor pulled up showed the Erebus itself layer by layer. Hundreds of
layers and corridors mostly stasis chambers, mess halls, armories, and datahouses laid out before us but a majority of it was blacked out etched from the
map. The Erebus was full of secret corridors and passageways only a handful
of which were still in use. Trevor mapped out our best route and transferred
the blueprint to our wrist PDA. Meddix and Trevor were going to stay and
hold back the Skrav as long as possible; Aira, Trey, Vale, Cree, and myself
were each designated ambassadors. Talon who had been quiet through most
of this was going to take point and take another group to the Erebus above
ground towards some of the Lethe ruins Balkava had been digging. If we sent
two small squads we at had a greater chance of one of us reaching her with
our plea.

If Balkava didn’t help us all would be lost. I said my goodbye to
Meddix and Trevor embracing them in a brotherly hug and handshake
something we never had enough of. I prayed they would not have the same
fate as Don, Duv’Mir, Brecca, Lore, Addax, and the others before. Meddix
once again offered me a handful of worms. I took them as a gesture of
kindness putting them inside the pocket of my suit. Worst comes to worst it
couldn’t hurt to hear some kind loving words in the end. In the end that is all
we want anyway, to be surrounded by the people we love; does it really
matter if it is a dream or a mirage?

I blacked out in the tunnels. The shards always seem to break at the
wrong moment. One moment I was walking and the next I was surrounded
by water and then I could saw the bridge. The Skrav walked like mindless
husks into a barrage of fire. They were empty devoid of emotion and life. If
they had any thoughts or desires they had shut them down and out for war.
Trevor sent several of his engineers up river not long after we left. He gave
them rifles and flares to grab the attention of the hellbeast and the hives. He
repaired the drone and sent it with them as a bodyguard hoping it would give
them enough of a distraction to make it back to our camp and if they failed it
was programmed to do the same. Shake the hive, disturb the bees halfway
through the battle I saw the drone fly its way over the head of the Skrav
followed by an array of beasts. Meddix, Trevor, and the hundred or so men
were doing better then we could have hoped. They blew the bridge to pieces
forcing the Skrav through the hollows and rocks of the river gunning them
from above and watching the injured drown.

Meddix was screaming
firing his turret across the air. He had lost his
mind; the voices and illusions of the worm were no longer enough. When
Skrav began crawling over the bodies of their dead in and out of the water he
shot at anything that moved human and alien alike. Trevor screamed and
cried for him to calm down but nothing changed. Meddix had already killed
half a dozen of his own men in the firefight and the cost was too great. With a
pistol Trevor fired a bullet into Meddix’s skull. I felt myself screaming in my
mind. For a moment I felt like the body I was in began to scream with me and
together in unison we cried out for Trevor and Meddix. When I came back to
reality Aira was sitting by my side. She laughed at me and said we all needed
a rest anyway. A part of me wondered if she knew or had any idea what I
might have seen. I didn’t tell her what I saw. Not enough time had passed for
it to have even happened yet. At that moment in time Meddix was still alive
and the future uncertain. We could ALL survive.