I hope this piece of work occupies your mind and impacts your outlook on life for years to come. I seek to inspire you to do great things. The power of the mind is extraordinary and you are capable of anything.

Chapter 1
Salvation

Tyler reluctantly peeled his eyelids open for the first time in two years. The light from his newfound planet’s primary sun was no different than that of earth's, but his eyes had to readjust and adapt to once again being awake and alive. He had been in a cryosleep where his entire body was submerged in a thick goo that consisted of tiny microorganism sized robotics that would slow down his heart rate yet keep him alive, fit, and healthy for his voyage.

Tyler was part of a globalist planetary expansion project. Earth was no longer inhabitable going forward. Her oceans were as toxic as the race of men who dwelled on her surface and called the blue planet home. Humans lived in poverty, struggling with disease, famine, and malnutrition for decades leading up to this point.

The corporate elite lived on space stations orbiting earth along with the core military establishment that governed the planet. Mining expeditions were under way towards the edge of the solar system where crucial gases and minerals could be harvested to maintain the very existence of life.

Like most technological advances in the past thirty years, galactic travel saw a dramatic jump in overall functionality with the breakthrough of the warp drive system. The research science fiction once dreamed of, many generations ago, was now a reality. A trip to a cluster of space stations outside earth from Washington, D.C. would only take about twelve minutes. A ship’s warp drive mathematically required more time to cool down than to actually maneuver from one planet to another.

At the turn of the century humanity mustered up the funds to conduct expeditions deeper into space than ever once previously explored. These series of delicate missions were nicknamed Project Salvation.

Ty chuckled as it dawned on him the irony in the name chosen by his cynical, political leaders. Humanity had lived in its sad, disgusting famine infested world for decades. Only now that the solar system they called home was imploding in on itself, threatening the elitists
perfect
little lives on their
perfect
little space stations, did they actually decide it necessary to take action.

For generations, scientists believed earth's sun to be too small in size to ever risk heading into super nova status. But sometimes, that which is unknown can stir up change in that which is known. At this point, humanity knew much about other stars, galaxies, and solar systems, but the small yellow dwarf right in their own back yard had a couple secrets up her sleeve in her dying days. Slowly pulling the solar system in on herself was one of the many ways she cried out in pain.

Many didn’t believe it to be true heading in. Thinking the official story to be nothing more than an excuse to push some secretive agenda forward, but in the end, being shamed by science, humanity banded together in looking to the stars for expansion.

Project Salvation was fairly simple: six separate single-manned ships each equipped with a warp drive would spend three years traveling out to a cluster of planets and set up a warp gate. This, in a sense, was a glorified magnet that would home in on any incoming vessel and work with a ship’s onboard drive to pull it through space and time, thus warping it into the desired planet's atmosphere at a much faster rate. While the six ships made their travel, the globalist assembled massive carriers and filled them with the resources needed to begin terraforming the planets. This was phase one.

"Good morning, Tyler."

Tyler was accompanied in his ship by an artificial intelligence drone named Aries. The bot was a large floating box of circuitry. She had a physical shield positioned in the center of her crown with two thin rectangular antennas protruding underneath. Below her shield resided her weaponry; consisting of one rail gun positioned on the left side and two lasers on the right. This powerful and accurate weapons-build was best suited for close combat. At the cost of distance her guns were superior in their close quarters destructive right. Her rail gun could penetrate just about anything man-made and her lasers were fast and accurate to a needle within a city block. The drone had its inner chastise shielded from electromagnetic waves, eliminating a potential and untimely death by possibly unstable Sun/Star activity. By means of magnetic suspension, Aries drifted into the room behind Tyler.

His increase in heart rate summoned her up and out of her standby mode. Tyler's organs and nervous system were synced to the drone via wireless communication so that if something were ever to happen to his heart, brain, or lungs, the robot could kick start and maintain his animation until it could physically respond and repair whatever might be wrong with him. Tyler could tap into the robot’s inner server database and have anything displayed up on a HUD that was linked deep within his inner eye sockets. The ability for a manual override of a synced drone even existed--though difficult and not at all recommended due to the dramatic strain put on the human nervous system.

Aries was as much a part of Tyler as his fingers, toes, and feet, but she still maintained her own unique personality. Artificial Intelligence was so advanced that people debated the existence and connection of souls within robots. A large portion of humans on earth followed in the teachings of Dr. Vince De Luther founder of Veneration: a sometimes religious extremist group that believed the human soul was a frequency that entered the body upon birth and left it in death. This group preached the idea that a robots AI was advanced enough that upon spark -or birth- it could capture a soul frequency and use it as its own until death. Tyler never really sided with the theory but the belief was interesting at least.

The ship began to shake violently and suddenly Tyler felt queasy. After such a long time in cryosleep it would take his body a bit to get readjusted to being awake. The sway of the ship reminded him of his sailing trips with his father when he was but a boy. His early love for naval ships had influenced him in joining the (UIGN) Unified InterGalactic Navy. Instead of crossing the Atlantic sea with his father, he had just crossed an entire solar system with his robot.

“We are within the planet's atmosphere and will be landing in approximately thirty

minutes,” Aries said, interrupting Tyler’s train of thought.

***

The wind violently howled through the vast desert canyons that stretched across the planet's dry, hot crust. Temperatures scorched an average of one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit in the planet’s summer solstice months and dropped to, a not much different, ninety-five degrees on average in its winter months. Chaotic fire and shrapnel storms were frequent and about as random as they were deadly.

The plateau was a dark blood red with pockets of sand dunes and the occasional twisted Lak-Tou: an ancient cactus with no cap to its lifespan. The Lak-Tou was typically purple but varied in color based on the potency of the hallucinogenic toxins it contained in its thorns. It was lengthy and sprawled across the land in fissures, though generally within valleys where moisture was occasionally found. Rain was extremely rare but not impossible as the water found on the desert planet consisted of a slimy, gooey substance that kept it from evaporating too quickly. The planet’s water was a distant cousin to the H2O found on planet earth.

Kio-Kai's eyes scanning the horizon with precision, had the appearance of giant rags with scattered ink blots. Kio-Kai was a Vai-Zik. They would eat most anything, but primarily functioned off the fluids found in the spinal cord of living organisms. The Vai-Zik were arthropods with a hive mind. A telepathic based collective conscious group consisting of a four caste system. Twitchers dug tunnels and constructed cities deep beneath the planet's surface, hunters searched for food and defended the colony, grinders processed solids into liquids, and queens laid eggs and controlled the swarm.

This way of life was a dying one. The Vai-Zik species conquered most life on the planet, and in doing so, exhausted most of their consumable organic resources. This led to weaker queens and in turn more freedom of thought within the hive. Ultimately, a consciousness of self-existence had developed and been established.

Kio-Kai was of a young age in terms of a race that could live hundreds of years. Standing upright on his bipedal legs he stood an intimidating seven feet in height. His pincers protruded from his lower jaw about a foot--this length varied for most. Two dark antennas extended out of his spiky head and draped down the side of his eyes. Two massive sophisticatedly constructed sharp wings hung down to his lower legs. His body was a sandy brown, jagged with an overall appearance of violence. His arms were lengthy following the overall theme of being sharp right down to his ambidextrous six fingered hands. A long bone-like blade stretched from his elbow joint down to his wrist. The razor was capable of extending out roughly three feet when need be, and both of his arms were equipped with blades.

In the distance, a large capsule of silver and fire rained from the sky. Fire storms were common on this planet but this looked to be something different. Kio-Kai abruptly leapt up and took flight forward to investigate the falling object.

***

Tyler called out to Aries, "I’m getting a temperature reading of one twenty-five, the E.S.S. can handle up to what?"

"Your External Skeleton Suit can physically withstand heat up to a level of two hundred degrees and keep your body's heat index at a stable level preventing hypothermia. In case of any sort of malfunction or puncture I will override the suit and maintain your well-being."

"Yea, so you got my back, huh Aries?" Tyler said with a chuckle.

"I got you," Aries volleyed back.

The ship’s doors let up with the sound of hydraulics that howled dust and dirt into the quarantine lock. The bot veered outward and up to the left while Tyler started on down the ramp. As soon as he entered the sun’s rays, intense radiation began to slow cook his insides. The swelter was far beyond intense. While his E.S.S. suit had responded to the fluctuation in climate, Tyler's nerves flared out to the layover time he felt in the heat. A few milliseconds felt like a lifetime of being disintegrated by the inferno he just set out upon. Tyler opened his eyes and it was over. The scorching cesspool of a planet now felt like a breezy spring day back home.

Looking up, the sky was skewed red. In the distance churned dark firestorms. Tyler couldn't help but think that the firestorms that raged up in the clouds ahead sounded like demons being fed through a blender.

"Aries, what's the status on the other incoming ships?" Tyler demanded.

The bot’s antennas repositioned to scan the horizon and ping the drones aboard the friendly ships. Usually she was sharp and to the point with her calculations, but given the overcast, it was difficult for her to utilize her com systems.

"The next ship is entering atmosphere now and will land within two minutes. The other four ships, including squad leader Leon Fleischer, are projected to make landfall within fifteen minutes. They should all be clustering within a half mile radius of one another," she answered.

"Well, I guess that makes us the first motherfuckers to explore hell," he said with a smirk.

BOOK: Future Winds

5.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads

Other books

6 Under The Final Moon by Hannah Jayne

Salamaine's Curse by V. L. Burgess

The Answer Man by Roy Johansen

From Seduction to Submission by R.R. Greaves

Ralph Compton Comanche Trail by Carlton Stowers

The House of Storms by Ian R. MacLeod

Blood Ties by Gina Whitney

Of Machines & Magics by Adele Abbot

The Dark Side by M. J. Scott

It Had to Be You by Jill Shalvis