Future Winds (21 page)

“Can you levitate us back over the gap?” he questioned, looking back across the large void in the tunnel that carried them safely over top the path below. “We could try to make it back to the surface in time to get the message out.

“I can only levitate you the distance I can glide and that opening is fourteen feet wide with a thirty-seven foot drop below,” she pointed out.

Frustrated, Tyler pounded a fist down on the cold stone floor. Blood quickly began to trickle down his fingers and through his glove as he pulled his hand back and twitched his lip in anger. Helplessly he watched the battalion below march forward with aspirations he could only assume were to kill off his friends, while he continued to save hers. 

Turning away from the horde of insects below, Tyler stood to his feet to inspect the opening that hid himself and Aries. Lit up by more of the colorful glowing flora, another tunnel could be seen about three yards away that descended further underground. Due to the height of the tunnel, he and Aries would be able to walk down, instead of crawl.

“You said the radiation from the bombing is interfering with your com systems?”

“Yes,” the bot said, blinking ahead.

“Well, what is stopping the radiation from poisoning me?”

“Nineteen years ago the decorum treaty was signed. This made radiation as a result from a blast considered to be war crimes along the lines of chemical warfare.

War crimes, what a ridiculous concept,
Tyler thought
. Throughout the history of man, since the very beginning, when one held a club and another fixed a rock to better bash in the skull of his brother, there has always been a vile struggle to one up your opponent to ensure they are eradicated before you. The turn of the twentieth century, countries began calling foul on one another for dirty tricks and plays, as if there is a right and wrong in warfare. It’s all genocide at the end of the day.

“Before the treaty was signed into law,” she said, continuing with her history lesson, “Popular weapons left over from the twenty first century would subject blast survivors to radioactive fallout. This had various life shattering effects on all organic creation. Reactions differed based on how close you were to the center of the blast. After the signing, all weapons of mass destruction had to be redesigned so that fallout radiation levels could be within an acceptable level.”

“Nineteen years ago,” Tyler considered out loud. “That was the end era of the onyx wars and the resistance at the time was known to have had a stockpile of old school nukes.”

“That is correct, Tyler.”

“The decorum treaty was put into fruition to place a mark on the backs of the resistance, another tally in justifying them as the evil side. Political warfare at its finest. But what about you?”

“The damage to electronics via fallout radiation is not protected under the decorum treaty, for we are not considered to be living organisms.”

The awkward silence that followed her statement was cut short when the tunnel they walked along opened up into a large room. The size of a warehouse, the room held nothing but bare stone and darkness. Small pockets of the illuminant blossom were found in well placed corners of the large room which allowed for a bit of visibility. Requiring a bit more light, Tyler flipped on his flashlight. He quickly spotted what looked to be human beings off in the distance. “Are those people?” Tyler choked as he squinted to make out the blanched white humanoids ahead.

Tyler led the way in curiosity as the two crossed through the massive room towards the people, but the closer they got, the more Tyler realized that the beings he thought to be human were not such a familiar species. They looked like men and women but had ears, noses, and faces that were far pointier in their shape. Their bodies were naked and pale. So pale that there was almost a transparentness about them. Their veins could be seen clearly through their skin.

They looked over to Tyler and Aries. Tyler froze while gazing within one of the being’s eyes that consisted of pure black. There was no sclera, no iris, only a pupil, permanently dilated and broad--it embodied the eye as a whole.

After a minute of Tyler’s frightened stiffness, the creatures simply reengaged in their conversation--not caring for the man with the rifle who had come from the surface accompanied by a drone.

Reaching to disengage his flashlight in a frightened clumsy fashion, he snapped off the switch, forcing the light to be stuck in the off position. No longer would he be granted the luxury of having his own portable light source in their journey below the surface of the planet. “I... um, do not know which way to go, Aries,” Tyler said, admitting he no longer wanted to take the lead--let alone hold any desire to further approach the creatures.

***

Ness did not return to work, in fear of repercussions against his abandonment. While he wanted nothing more than to find where his brother had been taken away to, the hopes of getting any answers were evaporating quickly under the hot sun radiating heat down onto planet Flare. Instead, knowing the soldier that had abducted him wandered off in this direction, he stayed put figuring this to be the best location to wait for the man in the orange and white armor.

While waiting he conversed with the guard who stood at the entrance of the warp gate. Being alone for some time, the man didn’t seem to mind the company, though frequently he suggested Ness likely had someplace to be.

“What kind of military member wears white and orange armor?” Ness questioned the guard.

“Orange and white, huh? Well, that would be for spec ops guys. Never seen one myself, but they were the first men to land on this planet. The warp gate was constructed by design using the engines of their ships.”

What would a spec ops guy want with Lucas and where could he have taken him?
Ness contemplated, looking off into the desert.

“What ch’ya think of them clouds, kid?” the man asked, gazing up to the darkness that crept its way over nearby range of mountains. Red lightning and fire dropped from the sky, pelting the sierra with a barrage of loud and violent hatred.

“You think it is coming this way?” Ness said with concern.

“I don’t know, but if it does, I guess we will see how well these energy shields hold up.”

Energy shields,
Ness thought,
I never really could understand how exactly they worked. They seem like something out of some sci-fi novel.

Suddenly, movement below caught his attention, sapping his train of thought. It looked to be a muscular man that was made entirely of stone. He was running in towards the city and the workers who constructed it. The closer he got, the better Ness could make out the figure to be at a height well over three times that of a man.

Behind him charged a swarm of the insects that had attacked the first day Ness was out on the planet's surface. They rushed forward at such a speed, Ness wasn’t sure anyone in the city had even seen them come until it was too late.

“Woah, what the fuck?” the guard that stood at the gate with Ness blurted out in shock as he too noticed there was a full blown onslaught unfolding before their very eyes.

The golem wasted no time gripping workers and slamming them into one another, breaking the bones in their bodies with ease, before dropping them to the ground to move on to his next set of victims.

Witnessing a man fall to the ground, still alive, but with no bone structure intact was a horrifying sight to see, but still Ness kept his eyes glued to the scene that played out below.

The locust like insects leaped and fluttered over one another, sticking their blades into the faces of the unsuspecting civilians, while the maggot like creatures wormed through the crowds, spewing acid onto clusters of bunched up frightened people. Screams and gunfire were the only sounds Ness and the guard could hear, as they stood and watched the one sided battle spread like a plague across the land below.

The creature of stone pounded fleeing civilians into the ground like a man bothered with the annoyances of a fly buzzing loudly. Only these flies were not so agile in their retreat and in no time the golem left puddles of mush as he battered away, single handedly clobbering and killing one after another with ease.

A group of soldiers began focusing their fire on the stone golem, but coming to its defense, a swarm of the insects flew through the air, landing on the array of soldiers, dismantling them into heaps of shredded kevlar, and flesh.

Ness couldn’t believe it. He wanted to flee, but nowhere would be safe from the invasion.

Qaz-Kai came to a halt as the highway broke off into close to a hundred smaller channels that twisted their way upwards towards the surface. Three of them had torches aflame laid out by their entrances. “Our scouts appraised the tunnels about an hour ago. Only three are still intact and suitable for our attack. Would like more, but this should do so long as we keep quiet,” he announced without looking back to address his officers directly. “Split ‘em up neatly. We need all of our grinders in the front so that when we reach the surface, we can get straight to burning our way into one of the hatcheries. It should only take us a few minutes to reach the surface and by now, Brutalius and his troops should already be engaged on the front lines.”

Kio-Kai wasn’t sure if it was luck or by the will of some greater power that the humans, of all places to land on the planet, chose the outskirts of an entrapment field.

These fields were basically a cluster of tunnels that led to the surface in a location designed for ambushing and hunting prey. Almost all of the Vai-Zik’s entrapment fields were abandoned and collapsed due to neglect. There simply was not much use for them when most of the planet was starved for life from the overfishing of prey.

It was never like the Vai-Zik to overstretch their reach in acquiring more than they needed. But when the overlords came along, the attitude of the queens shifted their thinking, along with the will of the hive.

It was also never like the Vai-Zik to engage in all-out war. Where they fit in the food chain called for killing of those below and sometimes even those above. But to organize a small number as eighty thousand in the name of vengeance and self-preservation against an enemy that didn’t kill them for food, but rather sought to eradicate their very existence like some undesirable pest, was a new concept entirely to the hive.

They sounded their drums with the intention of playing by the rules of the humans, seeking to kill and destroy every last one until none lived to walk the surface of Flare.

Qaz-Kai was first to enter one of the channels. Forty thousand, split evenly into the three canals. They began their final push up towards the surface where they would reclaim their planet from these vile foreign invaders.

***

Following Aries into a hallway that twisted down lower underground, Tyler found himself entering a room where three of the bleached skin humanoids, girls, danced together nakedly in a corner lit by candle light. Their bodies were thin and frail yet somehow sexually appealing. One girl in particular swung her hips provocatively and ran her left hand down her small, but curvy frame as her right hand caressed her inner thigh. She made eye contact with Tyler and his spine went cold. Her black eyes seemed to pierce through his being and wrench his gut into liquid. He slowly came to a standstill, simply floating out of his body and into hers. In that moment she was everything he had ever desired. Lusting to hold her, grasp, and kiss her neck, he shook his head and disengaged eye contact.

What the hell am I doing?

He slowly began pressing on and couldn’t get the desire he felt for the girl from his head. He felt her eyes burning into the back of his head and he wanted nothing more than to turn around and once more look upon her.

Turning the corner that led into the next room, his affectionate infatuation with the girl perished quickly when he saw two holes dug into the red rock floor. These holes shaped out couches where two creepy men, one thin with greasy, slicked back hair and the other short with a pot belly lay sprawled gazing up towards two naked young men dancing with each other. The two young men looked uncomfortable but their movements and thrusts were accurate and precise as if they had been partaking in amusing the eerie gentlemen on the ground for quite some time.

The shorter, fatter one took a sip from a chalice of red goo and smiled, for his entertainment was a pleasure of unmeasurable feats. His teeth were jagged with a sort of rusty appearance. He raised his long decrepit hand pointing to the young boys and ushered them towards himself. They climbed down into the hole with the man and lay on top of him just as Tyler turned the corner out of sight.

The fuck is this shit? Why do these people… these creatures pay no mind to me? Only Aisha and her drone are equipped for stealth so clearly these things can see me,
Tyler thought to himself.

Up ahead was a twisting corridor that did not grant much light to see what lay beyond. Aries silently drifted down before Tyler. She knew the routine. He closed his eyes and opened them anew through hers. He could see perfectly into the dark thanks to her night vision. He gave her a nod to signal he was ready to continue on as he adjusted his mind to walking behind his new eyes. Like a zombie with his eyes white, rolled into the back of his head, the experience of seeing through a drone was one he never fully got used to himself. It was a trip to say the least.

He followed the drone, twisting and turning from one tight passage into the next. Each one seemed to be stranger and more fluctuant in its layout than the last. Buried into the wall of this passage were bodies, well preserved and detailed. Most had permanent facial expressions of horror and pain. Tyler reached over to touch the face of a girl. Her nose had begun to rot out from her face, but her cheeks were still soft.

“This is insane,” he mumbled.

His eyes moved on while his body stayed behind, examining the dead within the wall. Quickly he again faced himself forward and caught up to his set of floating eyes.

Canals of what looked to be blood, slowly flowing like pipes carrying water, led the two through an opening out into a fairly large room, much greater in size than the first one they had found. Various fires lit up the area via torches, candles, and scattered piles of seemingly random flame.

Tyler's eyes rolled down and his vision was again his own as Aries drifted back up and into her position.

Screaming could be heard off in the distance and this broke Tyler into a jog to investigate.

***

Thousands of grinders spewed acid onto the outer shell of a carrier. The burning sound of melting steel being eaten away by the liquid, secreted from the glands within their mouths and beneath their tongues, was loud. But the sound was vastly outweighed by the screams of the humans preoccupied with the immediate conflict they faced in their front lines.

A line of hunters guarded the grinders as they continued crafting holes into the ship for them to enter through.

Fleeing from the battle, a human came blitzing around the corner as he huffed and puffed in fear for his life. Before he had a chance to comprehend what it was that he had stumbled upon, Kio-Kai fluttering forward, ramming one of the blades that stuck out from his arms clean through the man's face. Both he and the man fell into the dirt and Kio-Kai stood up, withdrawing his blade from the caved in skull. He looked around to see if any of the other humans had noticed the kill, but they had not. They were too busy still fighting in the front lines against Brutalius and his contingents, who were already engaged in their full blown assault.

“We are almost in,” Qaz-Kai announced. “Ready the dwellers,” he added, in reference to the troops that stayed hidden underground.

Kio-Kai ran over to the three large holes with two other commanders to relay the message to all that awaited a chance to come to the surface.

The grinders continued spewing acid onto the walls until there were holes burnt into the vessel large enough for the Vai-Zik forces to squeeze through. Qaz-Kai looked back to Kio-Kai and gave a nod before charging inside himself.

Half of Qaz-Kai’s battalion stayed outside and engaged in flanking the frontlines of combat while a stampede of Vai-Zik, hunters, and grinders alike, surged from the ground and made their way into the vessel behind their heroic leader who was not afraid to be the first to enter into the unknown.

Once inside, they burned and cut their way through thin walls to find rooms packed full of humans by the thousands. Caught off guard they were easy kills, perhaps the easiest of prey Kio-Kai had ever hunted in his entire life. They screamed and ran, but had nowhere to flee for safety. Most, if not all of the humans, were unarmed. None of them fought back and soon, room after room was filled with blood and corpses.

“Why do they not fight back?!” a grinder yelled after spewing acid into a horrified crowd who fell to the ground as their skin bubbled away.

“It is a hatchery. Perhaps these are nothing more than children and workers,” another grinder suggested.

“Kio-Kai, Nast-Kai, Drak-Zo, and Mala-Nan, with me,” Qaz-Kai called out to Kio-Kai, a grinder, and two other hunters.

The five of them veered off down a hallway that steered them in the opposite direction of the spreading chaos brought in with their invasion. They passed many doors and chambers, but they did not stop to enter.

A human exited one of the rooms and began to flee down the hallway. One of the hunters leapt up and fluttered over to the frightened man, landing on his fat back and crushing his bones as he forced him to the floor. The hunter thrust his blades into the man’s back, again and again, until the body went from flailing about in terror, to stopped limp in death.

“What are we doing?” Kio-Kai asked, as they passed more of the chambers they should be entering and clearing.

Qaz Kai was looking up to hieroglyphic like letters that were stamped above the doorways to each area they pass by. The rooms had been marked, possibly to better organize whatever the humans did natively within.

“Here,” Qaz-Kai said stopping at a door and pointing at the symbols above as if he knew their meaning.

The grinder that accompany them stepped forward and began burning away at the door, until its frame liquefied and dripped to the floor, exposing a room of frightened children.

Entering, Qaz-Kai quickly caught one of the unnerved boys. Gripping him by the arm, he inspected him for a moment before puncturing his blade with precision through the elbow whilst pulling on the wrist to separate it from the boy who flailed about in horror.

Slowly the wrist and forearm detached, exposing strings of tissue, muscle, veins, and blood. All the while, the boy screamed in agony for having his arm plucked away from his body. Qaz-Kai slid a piece of jewelry down the segregated arm and looked it over.

“Harvest them of their bracelets and be careful not to damage them,” he commanded. “We need every single one we can find.”

Kio-Kai watched as the two other hunters sprung forward and detached the arms harboring the bracelets, just as Qaz-Kai had shown them.

“Drak-Zo, come here,” Qaz-Kai said, summoning the grinder forward. “I am sorry my brother,” he muttered before gutting him from the belly up and cleaning him of his insides.

The grinder squealed in pain and confusion at being betrayed until his head was removed. Qaz-Kai flipped over the now calm, empty torso and continued with the fillet.

“Get their bracelets, Kio-Kai,” he barked, in catching the young hunter staring at him with a look of disgust.

Turning towards the cluster of humans who were now crying and cowering together in a corner, Kio-Kai saw half of them on the floor, still alive, and weeping with their arms ripped off.

He approached one, a young boy wearing strange clothing, with an ugly face. Poking him thru the face with his blade, Kio-Kai made haste in killing the child before severing off his arm and harvesting the jewelry.

“Throw them in here,” Qaz-Kai command, as he flipped the grinder’s belly inside out, to use as a large sack for safely carrying the contraband.

After they obliged, he buttoned the pouch together using bits of broken bone, and then slung it over his back before turning to exit the room.

“What use does the Vai-Zik have of these?”

“Kio-Kai, as much as I would like to tell you that our mission today was carried out in the name of vengeance, that simply would be untrue. We are here to collect as many of these as possible.”

“But why?”

“Because when a queen gives her command, Kio-Kai, we oblige. That is who we are, an extension of her, and only through her do our lives serve purpose and have meaning. We do not question her demands.”

The sounds of screams and murder could be heard just outside the door. The Vai-Zik militia had spilled over into the hallway where they were going from room to room, clearing out all life.

Exiting out into the chaos, Kio-Kai spotted a group of humans setting up what he could only assume were large, powerful ranged weaponry at the opposing end of the corridor. A storm of firepower quickly came billowing down the hall, and hundreds of Vai-Zik began to drop to the ground as they were pelted and ripped apart by the immense weaponry.

Retreating off into another hall, the horde was confronted with another squad of humans who began raining the projectiles down upon them. Hundreds of hunters heroically tried to fly forward through the storm, but that proved foolish as they were all but disintegrated within seconds. This was the most effective counter attack the humans had mustered yet. Close combat was an advantage served in favor of the Vai-Zik, but the positioning of the human’s weaponry against the congested horde of Vai-Zik troops in the halls were proving fast a victory for the humans. Now panicking, the Vai-Zik began to retreat, and in the chaos, Kio-Kai spun around to see he had lost sight of Qaz-Kai.