Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (16 page)

The
first injection hurt like hell. Tapped into the back of the spine from
a three inch needle and then wrapped in a thick white bandage. The second
injection was painless compared to the first. A one-inch needle stuck into
your ankle. It was an artificial dog tag tapered to the bone. Then there was
the third. The one you had to be asleep for. Placed inside beside the heart. It
was a microscopic container that would give you a mad dose of adrenaline
when your heart rate dropped below a certain point. All of this made you a
soldier. I had the training, been through the simulations and more. Inside the
nexus I even managed to pick up a few things they didn’t teach. It had been
weeks since I had seen Balkava. I was no longer allowed use of the nexus. I
was out and as far as they were concerned I was no longer a user. There were
others that would replace me. I doubt I was their first choice in the first place.

I would have been in stasis if Celes hadn’t been wrong. Killing the men
and women inside stasis the way he did was done for a greater good. A
greater good that never came. The plague he had tried so hard to contain
began to spread. People were waking up from stasis sick or dying. The
medics on the ship traced the cause to a poison inside their blood. It was a
potent toxin that would slowly melt the insides of those infected until there
was nothing left but bone, marrow, and blood. It wasn’t a plague though, that
is were he had been wrong. It was an attack. So many parts of the ship had
gone unchecked over the years. That was our first mistake. We thought we
were alone in here but there were monsters breeding in the dark.

I was with Hayden when we
first got wind of the attacks. It wasn’t the
Skrav, Trepp, or any of the other alien species killing people in stasis it was a
monster of our own creation. They were called antliods. Three hundred years
ago when we left Earth humans weren’t the only creatures aboard the
Erebus. There were dogs, cats, and a few smaller animals people kept as pets.
They weren’t the problem either. It was the few bugs and rats that managed
to find their way on board. The antliods were a hybrid, an evolution of a flea
and an antlion that grew and adapted in the shadows. One began mimicking
the other and soon a new species developed. First they fed off the rats that
came aboard and when they weren’t enough they began feeding off the ship
itself. It was an unlimited food source. Most of the inside of the ship was
biomass. It was easy for them to adapt. Feeding off the ship had another side
effect. They mutated. The change in diet also meant a change in size. Three
hundred years of change and development and now they had finally
outgrown their supply.

Why or how they began to feed on people in stasis we don’t know. We
guessed the Erebus wasn’t enough to wet their appetite anymore. All we
know for sure is that it began in the underbelly, the lower decks. Stasis pods
that had been untouched for centuries; humans that slept for hundreds of
years were dead in hours from a bacteria that was the byproduct of the
antliods piercing fangs. All the stasis pods were connected. The water used in
one was recycled and used in another. This meant the disease spread quickly.
The woman Celes brutally killed was nothing but a victim, the latest in a long
line of unfortunate citizens. The only thing we could be grateful for was that
none of them woke up or suffered any pain (aside from the woman Celes
killed).

The
first thing we did when we realized what was happening was wake
everyone up. The Erebus was now at maximum capacity. The crew that was
awake before was only a few hundred but now we numbered in the
thousands. Our resources were few. The old, the young, the antliods didn’t
care. They didn't care we were starving, tired, sick. They didn’t care about
anything. The antliods were out for blood.

We planted auto turrets and bio-rigged weapons around the Chev. We
turned its den into a fortress. It was the one place we couldn’t let the antliods
get too. It had become our main source of food. At night sometimes you could
hear it scream in pain as third shift went into the mess. It had never needed to
give so much. The doctors fed it painkillers but they couldn’t give it enough.
They couldn’t numb it in a way that would have been humane because it
would affect the food. We couldn’t risk the entire crew digesting a handful of
pain medicine with every meal. When it was too weak to eat we forced a tube
inside one or two of it’s several stomachs force-feeding it while the labs
worked on breeding other ones and searching for other ways we might be
able to survive.

Within a few weeks the antliods had begun backing us into a corner. Several
corners of the ship had fallen into ruin. The Erebus itself was becoming sick
with disease and slowly starting to slow down. We sent the autons into the
underbelly fully armed. I watched Hayden himself reprogram several with
the antliods description and targeting information. We watched through holos
and projectors in horror as the autons walked into the darkness blind. Antliod
limbs tore and mangled the mechanical bodies as soon as they showed they
were a threat. They scratched and tore through their metal torsos until not
one was left moving. To the antliods they were nothing more then a
distraction.

“It’s time,” the order came from Balkava. She had retreated deep into
the core of the ship, a place only the elders went. Many thought she and the
other elders that made up the consul, the governing body of the Erebus had
abandoned us. Soon though Anathem, the leading member of the consul and
an elder for over fifty years had decided we needed to take offensive
measures. We could no longer wait for the antliods to attack us. They were
beginning to break through barriers we placed in the surrounding halls and
were closing in on us more and more. It might be days, weeks, or years but
sooner or later they would have us. Even worst it seemed the ship, the Erebus
itself would die of toxic shock - poisoned from the inside out by the parasites
within. Our quest would be over and we would never reach Eden. Anathem
spoke how the elders had tried contacting the Aelita but when they heard
what was happening they immediately swept their ship and told us we were
quarantined. They could give no soldiers, drop ships, no provisions, and no
way out. We were trapped inside our floating tomb with creatures just ready
to suck the marrow from our bones.

It was late in the evening. I had been walking the hangar helping out some of
the men and women who had just woken up when an officer came and asked
me to Balkava’s chambers. “How are you Sev?” Balkava had taken me inside
her quarters and asked the guard to leave. She was wearing her causal attire,
which included a low cut top and dark pants. I was still in my uniform and
tact vest from training earlier that day. This was the first time we had seen
each other in a close setting since my torture. I was not ok.

“I’m
fine, Hayden had been helping me recover and my instructor Duv’Mir
has said I have a natural talent when it comes to piloting inside the
simulation. “

“You always have, you’ve been piloting in simulations since you were a young
child – I’m more curious how you are on the ground,”
“I’m as good as anyone else, I have my experiences on Errikus to thank for
that,” truth was I hated being on the ground. The simulations were like a
video game. Run with 'rift' technology you put a visor over your head and
clip a few wires to your fingertips and you see and feel everything. Most
simulations covered tactics, working in a group, fighting the Skrav and
various other creatures. They were the violent video games of our time. I
hated being on the ground. I was constantly freezing or collapsing suffering
flashbacks of the things Aira and I fought through. I shared none of that with
Balkava. Whatever trauma I had I knew I would have to face eventually.

“What I am about to ask you is going to be hard” she paused.
“I have a request I need you to take a team of soldiers and escort one of our
researchers into the underbelly. You are to capture at least one antliod... if
you cannot capture one you must at the very least extract its toxin. We need a
fresh sample from the parasite. If we have that maybe we can make an antivenom.”

“I know and several going along are well trained for a mission like this... you
can say no. I just wanted to give you the option. The researcher going is
Hayden.” She froze. I stared at her. I was speechless. All the times Hayden
and I have continued to meet and he not once mentioned he was planning an
assignment like this. He must have known I would try and stop him. He must
have known he was like a brother to me and this was a suicide mission.

“I knew you would say that, you leave tomorrow.” “Thank you.”
“I have one more request Sev,” she paused.
“What is that?” I asked unsure what she might say. “Will you stay this night
with me?”

I stared into her eyes. I wanted to say no. Our relationship whatever it was
had been over for what felt like an eternity. Instead I didn’t say anything.
Balkava moved forward and pressed her body into mine. I had never realized
how much taller then her I had grown since the time we had met. She seemed
a whole different person now. We were different people now. She looked up
at me and kissed my lips.

The next morning I met with Duv’Mir and several others in the ships veranda
who were all preparing various gear and rations that we may need. Duv’Mir
was ten maybe fifteen years older then I, shaved head, and several tattoos
along the ridges of his face. He had told me once every tattoo was a story; he
had served under Balkava as both a soldier and pilot when she was a soldier
fighting the Skrav so I knew he had plenty to tell. We had a medic coming
with us too who simply called himself Meddix naming himself after his
profession. I would never know nor ask his real name or why he changed it.
The other soldiers that were going with us were named Trevor, Slade, and
two Drok Stath, Mak’r. Each one had their own unique scars and aside from
Trevor and Meddix they all had a special black star tattoo under their eye.
They were special ops. They were born and bred for missions like this.
Hayden was the last to show up. Apparently he had gotten into a fight with
some humans who were more then a little irritated about being out of stasis.
They had demanded he give up food for them and when he declined they
tried to take it. Luckily security was always close by and the fight ended
before he got seriously hurt; nothing but a black eye.

There had already been two teams that were sent down below but never
returned. The first team was called Alpha; it was a small group of humans
accompanied by some autons. The second was Paladin; they were supposed
to be a hardened group of soldiers that had fought several Skrav battles
including the Battle of Colony-5458, the last human colony to fall to the
Skrav before humans made their way to Errikus. They were all assumed
dead. We would be going another into the underbelly by another path that
was yet to be explored. The consul hoped this would make us victorious.
Anathem was hopinh his mistake was the pathway he sent the first two teams
on.

First we would have to crawl inside a small maintenance tunnel only three
feet high and wide under the veranda to make it to the eight foot by eight foot
shafts that made up the route to the underbelly. Each of us put on body armor
that covered our bodies from the neck down in and took a M77 rifle loaded
with alloy shells. Meddix took a M302, an automatic rifle that looked like a
M240L from the days before space travel. We didn’t want to risk using
energy weapons and blowing a hole inside the weak walls in the underbelly.
We also put silencers on them to make sure we didn’t draw any more
attention then we had to. Our mission was to bring back a body or head with
fangs intact. If we were lucky we would find one by itself kill it and make a
clean getaway.

It took us an hour to make it through to the
first shaft. By the time we
reached the blast door to the underbelly we had already seen signs the
antliods had been closer then we thought. Star jelly. That was what we called
it. Named after some of the exotic creatures humans discovered inside the
immer that resembled Earth jellyfish. It was a clear liquid that seemed to like
sticking to our clothing. Hayden took a sample on the spot and tested it for
toxicity and found nothing. It was merely a secretion, he said more then likely
it could have just been a waste product. There we were crawling through bug
piss. The day could not have gone better.

“Riots have just broken out in the veranda. All the elders are being called into
an emergency council. We are working to contain the situation. Antliods have
begun breaking through the barriers in the hangars.”

Duv’Mir ordered us to turn our comms off. We were to stay within viewing
distance of each other and use sign language when necessary to talk. Meddix
and himself would take point.

Meddix sprayed a lime green gel around the blast door. In seconds it melted
away the metal and biomass and the door fell to the ground. The ship was too
sick to open it for us and had even begun cutting parts of itself off as a sort of
immunization. The Erebus herself was fighting back the infection. Inch by
inch we continued through the darkness using only the light from the edge of
our rifles to see. The light pierced the darkness like scissors cutting through
paper. A few hundred yards inside and still we found nothing. The walls all
looked the same. They were rounded with grooves every few feet. These
shafts were originally meant to be access tunnels, quick and easy ways to get
from one end of the Erebus to the other but over time they had became
abandoned and ruined. The biomass that made up the ship had begun to
cover parts of the wall from which it was indistinguishable unless you felt the
cold slick texture of it. It felt like warm skin. It felt almost like it was
sweating. As I ran my hand against the side wall I could only wonder if it was
another side effect of the ship being sick.