Future Winds (4 page)

This sickness was a race of pale, wretched creatures. Though Kio-Kai had never laid his eyes upon them, it was known that they were little sacks of flesh and meat who declared themselves to be Gods. Blackness, greed, and envy filled their hearts. They overtook the most powerful of queens deep within the hive and in doing so earned control of the Vai-Zik.

In the beginning, there was a rebellion within the hive. Clans broke free, gaining their own will and freedom of thought. They unified against the virus and fought it off, liberating queens from the maleficent grasp of their new found overlords, but these lords were smart. They chose the most powerful of clans to control and used them as a defensive strategy to win the long, bloody war. After doing this they used the Vai-Zik to bleed the planet dry of near all life--for gluttony was one of the many defining desires of the small pale lords that now enslaved the Vai-Zik and, in turn, this planet.

“Should we wait for Leon to get back to activate the warp gate?” Abram asked without looking directly at Tyler.

He knew the answer but was obedient to the navy’s chain of command, even if he thought Tyler a weak leader.

Tyler marveled for a moment over what the three of them had accomplished in just a single afternoon.

“Na, we have to get this bad turkey going. Aries start it up,” Tyler commanded.

She hovered above the three massive turbines calling out in robotic frequencies. The giant gate sparked to life and listened to her commands. Its’ defensive shielding kicked in--a clear ball of magnetic based energy encompassed the large gate.

Three massive turbines began to twirl around the center tower which gave off an eerie wobble sound. The amount of power the device generated was enough to vaporize an entire country.

And once, not too long ago, one of these devices was used for just that. It is what fueled the research for true, reliable artificial intelligence. Mankind could not be trusted with such a tool on its own anymore, so expert systems of limitless knowledge controlled the operation of these types of gadgets.

Abram despised the fact that the team had to be accompanied by AI drones. It was like forcing an adult to hold hands with an elder, as a child would. Way he saw it, these glorified calculators were good for two things: cleaning and gambling.

This was supposed to be humanity's last stand at existence--the will of billions united for one purpose, survival.

God knows we don’t need robots to survive. Lived without them for eons. Their very creation in the late twenty second century has always been the defining moment of society’s undoing. The transition into dependence on technology,
he thought.

His assigned robot was the ground based unit, Taurus, that had four large metal plated shields sticking out from a torso of tan and brown that rested atop a caterpillar track. A type of tank tread made popular in twentieth century warfare.

Taurus’s specialty was to take a beating and still pull through just about any scenario. Despite Abram’s distrust in artificial intelligence, he had a certain admiration for Taurus. It resembled a piece of machinery from a better time. One where a machine was man's tool and not man's friend.

***

Kio-Kai heard something lingering in the dark. It was a familiar sounding voice. Someone was there, conversing with one of the drones.

“Lai-Kai?” he called out.

From the shadows emerged a female huntress. Her appearance was much like Kio-Kai’s though being effeminate granted her a much thinner and more attractive frame. Her wings were a bit longer and more narrow. Her antennas were much larger than his and when standing upright she was a little shorter.

Lai-Kai bore the same surname as Kio-Kai; this meant they were of the same clan and a clan was defined by its queen. In the case of these two it meant Kai-Zul was their queen. All the children a queen bore inherited her first name as their last. This was tradition. One day Lai-Kai might be a queen and that would spawn a clan of Lai.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she pointed out. “What are you doing here?”

“I just delivered a catch,” he explained. “Was something strange I have never seen before.”

“Where is it?” she asked.

“Ground up now.”

“Hmm well, I am about to go down to the amphitheater and watch a fight, want to come with?” she asked.

Hunters rarely partook in watching arena fights. It was mostly drones who fell for such theatrics.

“Why would I want to go watch Vai-Zik clans kill each other?”

Lai-Kai ignored him. She had a habit of tuning out the things she did not want to hear.

Kio-Kai reminisced of a time when his elders would convey their wisdoms. Not to fall prey to this new society’s interest in self-pleasure was one of many great teachings. After all, they did not build such a large and powerful empire by taking part in the ways of the overlords.

“Stay unvarnished to your queen and your clan, self-preservation not of yourself but your clan is the only fidelity you need. Obey your queen and fulfill her will as she has fulfilled her queen’s and the queen before her,” Kio-Kai recited.

An elder hunter, now since passed, had once shared with him these wisdoms. It was presently a contradictory rule as the current queens in power mostly obeyed the overlords.

The colosseum did not exist before the great rulers that plagued the Vai-Zik came about because entertaining the masses was never really needed. The one true will to simply survive and provide for the hive and all the clans that comprised it was life’s great priority.

“Come on you haven’t much else to do. You just said that you caught food for the day,” she pointed out.

“Yea suppose you're right.”

“Bending one's will to my own, maybe I will make a good queen someday after all,” she giggled--taking flight down the tunnel.

“Maybe, but not my queen, Lady Lai,” He smirked following her.

***

Kaito watch through the scope of his railgun as Leon emerge from the wreckage of Valerie's ship. Empty handed, he shook his head up at Kaito. Leon spun in a circle observing the ground around him and looked back up to Kaito, signaling him down off the mountain.

Kaito rose to his feet, slung his rifle behind his back and slid down the summit. Libra silently drifted behind him. Towards the bottom, he lost his footing and face-planted into the dirt before rolling the rest of the way down. He stood back up to his feet. Now covered in dust and coughing, he patted himself off and spit out a mouthful of blood before limping over to Leon.

“Take lead and scan for life,” Leon instructed Scorpio before turning to face Kaito. “You alright?” he asked, noticing the dirt caking Kaito’s face.

Kaito nodded despite his body aching from his clumsy and embarrassing tumble.

“She isn’t here, but she was. There is blood on the soil about ten yards out and some marks in the ground as if she crawled or limped away.”

“But why would she go in the opposite direction of where we landed?” Kaito questioned.

“Her electronics are fried...must have not seen us land,” concluded Leon.

The two walked for some time following the small trickles of blood until reaching a cave. They looked at each other and nodded. Leon drew his two energy pistols, activating the flashlights on them while Kaito unslung his rifle and activated his own light.

The cave’s air was cool and a breeze suggested it had more than one entrance. Stalactites drip from above and chatter, from some type of bat native to this planet, echoed through the darkness. Kaito’s eyes scanned through the stillness of his surrounding until he spotted one. Sure enough it was a bat the size of a small child drifting by silently ahead.
Fuck that,
he thought while observing above with his flashlight. His eyes locked onto one of the bats who were upside down sleeping.
No fucking way
, he thought as his spine went cold in looking over the giant bat. This one was the size of a full grown man. It slept suspended fifteen feet up in the air attached to a crack in the cavern’s ceiling.

“Valerie,” Leon yelled, his voice echoing into the cave for miles.

Kaito’s stomach dropped in fear “What are you doing?” he hoarsely whispered.

“Not wasting anymore time looking for this girl,” Leon fired back. “Either she is alive in this cave or dead. The trail goes cold here with this puddle of blood,” he added pointing to a large red blotch on the ground.

“Yea, but you are going to piss off whatever could live in here,” Kaito choked out.

Leon ignored him and Kaito was grateful for that. Something about poking around in the darkness of a foreign planet made him uneasy, but he should have never shown his fear or lack of faith in an officer's decision.

“Valerie!” Again Leon shouted.

His voice seemed to echo again for miles off into the unknown darkness.

Then out of nowhere emerged a tall, deformed creature that looked like the dead corpse of a giant, rotting, hairless, cross between a rodent and a maggot. Holes in the face exposed dark mucus and membrane. Sharp teeth lined its mouth that overtook most of its face. Six small tiny arms resided curled up on its sides. Its many legs looked mangled and broken: forcing it to almost limp its way towards them.

It stopped dead in its tracks when the men and their drones, flashlights lit up the creature’s face. Kaito did not know what to feel. While slightly curious, the level to which he was sickened by the distorted appearance of the unknown alien prevailed as the dominant emotion in his current spectrum of being. Fear overtook and he began to slowly backpedal out towards the entrance of the cave.

Leon’s eyes and pistols were fearlessly locked onto the creature until Kaito began to backpedal. Glancing over without actually moving his head, he too began to slowly back away.

The beast raised its face up into the air at the site of the two men retreating and bellowed a loud nasally snort from its mouth.

It is calling for something
.
No, maybe it’s just trying to communicate,
Kaito thought, trying to comfort his worry.

The creature got louder, flailing its face up in the air and snorting about.

Definitely pissed off. Come on Leon, let’s get out of here,
he pleaded in his mind, wishing in that moment, his leader Leon was a mind reader.

The creature slowly approached and Leon stopped his backwards motion and stood his ground. His thumbs activated the laser sights on his energy pistols and he did not hesitate a moment longer to double tap both weapons.

Four shots total sprayed the creature’s bones and brain all over the wall of the cave and what seemed more intense than the disintegration of the creature, was the echo of gunfire down the cave’s tunnels.

Everything and anything alive in this cave heard it, had too. The bats above began to flee by the hundreds and, before the lower half of the creature’s now headless torso could fall to the ground and twitch out what was left of its existence, the two men and their drones turned, making a dash for the cave’s entrance and back out into the seemingly safe sunlight.

***

The warp gate rattled the soil in all directions as it homed in on a carrier ship that was well over half the distance away between Earth and Flare.

Aisha’s lips moved but no words came out. General physics would never allow the human vocal chords to be louder than the noise that erupted from the gate.

In an instant the three of them could be vaporized into oblivion.

“Here is hoping,” Tyler mouthed out loud, wordlessly.

The warp gate carried on flailing about, screaming up into the heavens for about five minutes, then it just stopped. It let out heat and cooled down but was seemingly inactive. Then superficially, out of nowhere, a massive carrier ship appeared high up in the atmosphere of planet Flare. It floated up there for a few minutes before engaging its thrusters and making its descension to the planet’s surface.

Astonished, the three watched the event play out over the course of ten minutes. Upon making landfall, the hydraulics kicked in on the giant quarter mile ship-- spraying dust and dirt in every direction. Taurus anticipated the dust spray and stepped up to shield Abram’s face.

Tyler and Aisha were not so lucky to be protected from the dirt and debris. Looking at Abram with their faces caked in dust, ears still ringing, the trio began to laugh.

A few minutes of camaraderie and cheering passed.

“Well, shall we go welcome these aliens?” Tyler said, wiping his eyes and before he could finish his sentence, Aisha was off and sprinting towards the carrier.

***

Kio-Kai and Lai-Kai reached the end of the tunnel. It opened up to unveil the city of Val-Muel--named after the queen of the clan who had her spawn construct it.

Val-Meul was not the largest of Vai-Zik cities by any means, but it was the largest major city to lay so closely to the land’s surface. Due to this, it served as the commoners’ metropolitan.

Now walking, instead of flying, the two passed a grinder drone arguing with two hunters. As things escalated, he spat acid in one of the hunters faces as the other hunter stuck him through the face with his blade.

The drone fell to the floor and convulsed out the rest of his existence alone on the ground. The hunter that stuck him payed no mind to the dying drone as he went on to help his friend who was screaming and holding his face as it melted away in his hands.

“It never used to be this way,” Lai-Kai claimed while walking on ahead. She payed no more mind to the rowdy outburst than a meager glance.

All his life, Kio-Kai knew nothing but violence, but Lai-Kai was right, the elders spoke of peace amongst the clans for many generations before the overlords split them apart.