December 6, 2111
James Stone
My unit was somewhat naked as we traveled in our escape pod down to the unknown planet below. That was the feeling I felt after using most of my ammunitions and equipment during our last battle. Since none of us had the luxury of resupplying, we all were low on ammo, save Brad Swift.
Having the right sense of mind to remove his power armor while we were stranded, Brad's suit of armor had juice to spare. Knowing him, he probably even had a spare power source tucked away, too. Having taken substantial attacks from Ghost, it was bruised up. Shortly after our battle with Airra in Garatopia, Brad's cyberwatch was damaged as well. To that end, he was able to repair his cyberwatch with parts around our starship. As far as I know, that was the extent of wear and tear Brad had collected.
Jay Bridges, better known as Frost, still held on to his swagger for clothes. With the exception of some dirt and mud on his pants, his outfit was still fit for use. He even managed to hang on to his fedora through it all, which was a feat in and of itself.
Valiic and Shadow-Walker were not as lucky. Valiic's armor had various dents, and both had stains covering their respective outfits like a pattern. They managed to hang on to their gear, though; Shadow-Walker had his custom scout rifle, and Valiic had his handy-dandy shield.
Worst of all was me. I no longer carried the weapons I had originally brought to Idor all that time ago. My current weapons were barrowed, though I doubt I'd be able to return them. While my stasis shield was undamaged, it was low on power. None of that even holds a candle to my clothes; rips, tears, and holes a plenty. I no longer had my upper armor vest, and my military pants were falling apart. Only a black tank top filled with holes covered my torso, and that thread was barely hanging on.
My torso, head, and arms alike shook like a tree in an earthquake. It had nothing to do with fear or anxiety. I shook for one reason alone: Our escape pod had just entered the atmosphere. And I could hear the raging fires roaring outside the pod like a lion. Every one of us could. All of us, so snug together. A bond with your squad runs deep. Only, I never expected I'd have my face rubbing against Valiic's side with each bump. But that's what happens when five people are forced into an escape pod made for four.
As for our situation, it was a matter of zero choice. All of us were lost in space with our location unknown to the ARW. We were MIA and had no way to call for help. When our food and water rations had run dry, I made the decision to escape from the dropship, hoping to find aid on the planet below us. And it was coming in on us fast.
"How are you handling yourself down there, James?" Valiic looked down to me. Valiic Bessile was my closest friend, one I've known all the way through legionnaire training, and my unit's lieutenant.
"I'm as good as any man can be with my cheekbone this close to your ass. And you?"
"The broken seat has found its way between my armor and is pinching my side." Though Valiic answered the question, he didn't give me the answer I was looking for. With him being apart from his soulmate, Narrisa, this long, I know it's eating him away. And he may be avoiding the topic through his answer.
"Yo, this, ah… this is kind of awkward, but I gotta piss," Shadow-Walker, just behind me, called out. He is my unit's engineer, sniper, and self-designated spirits-lifter. In other words, among his talents as a soldier, he loves to crack jokes. As a male of the dor'o species, Shadow-Walker has his fair share of charm.
"If you don't hold that shivf, I'll cut your damn balls off!" I cursed, but in jest.
"I second that, uzzo!" Frost, across the pod, added. "For real, though, you should've handled your business before we abandoned the ship."
"Yeah, well… shivf, I was bored and decided to look at the stars alone in the cockpit and--"
"And you had a date with Peachy Palm and her five daughters, shivf we get it," I teased.
"It is called a cockpit after all," Shadow-Walker laughed.
There was a responding eek of disapproval.
"Now hold your bones, Shadow, I was only joking. You saying you actually milked the eel?"
I saw him give a sly smile, and he shrugged. "We've been away from the Whispering Dragon for nearly a month." He laughed. "At least in our first drought, I had Erryn to fall back on."
"Mother of God, I knew she didn't want to see you for a strategy meeting." I shook my head.
"And if you thought that was my idea, you'd bet wrong," he added, with seconds of laughter.
And Frost and I joined in, catching the disease of a good laugh.
Valiic shifted uncomfortably. "I knew that woman was too coquettish for her own good."
"Look at my li'l uzzo here," Frost teased. Though this man is not a part of my legionnaire unit, he has become close to us all the same. I was only introduced to Frost about a month ago by Kalvin Keefe. Recently, I have made peace with Kalvin, the man whose hand was partially responsible for my traumatic past, and have come to accept Frost as part of my family. Like me, he is an ace - the name for us supernatural folk. Furthermore, he carries energy in battle and brains everywhere else. Even though he is Kalvin's apprentice, he holds his own liquor as a soldier.
Wiping away a joyful tear, I caught it. I saw Valiic's expression. Though his eyes peered through the hard-glass barrier at the fire around our pod, I could still see it. Shadow's words sent his mind to thoughts of the love of his life, Narrisa. With no way for them to contact each other, I knew this must've been torture on his poor soul.
The moment was interrupted by the escape pod's thrusters suddenly blasting. The ship's momentum was brought slowly to a halt as the measures designed to give us a soft descent took place. There was a thud. We had landed.
Out the window, I could see a forest of gray leaves and thicket so impenetrable, I couldn't even glance meters beyond the wall of the forest line. Between the trees and us was an ocean of sand mixed with mud.
The escape pod door depressurized and opened.
"On me, boys." As captain and the leader of my unit, I took the brave first jump out of the escape pod.
I met the wind head on, greeting it as a welcome friend. That seemed to be the only greeting I would get. Only seconds after I touched down, I heard yelling from the left. I turned to see new creatures unlike any I'd ever laid eyes on, but my gut told me they were amphibians. Each had dark purple eyes as big as a softball, with a gathered tangle of flexible tentacle-tresses extending from their heads and long enough to reach halfway down their backs. They were alarmed, hands waving and pointing past me. Their words were lost over the thick winds. Then came the alarms, blaring over and over.
The creatures pulled up weapons! But not at us. They fired past us. I turned my attention to that direction. Out of a forest of darkened gray trees, dripping of black goo, came creatures almost as large as maelkii. The creatures shrieked and trampled the ground as they stampeded for us all. They didn't seem to have a face, just a jumbled mess of vein-like stems around where a face would have been. Shadow-gray with a violet accent, the creatures, looking metallic and robotic in nature, gained speed with their powerful legs oozing with putrid goo. And while one arm was as thin and weak as a twig, its other arm was disproportionately big for its body. It had a pillar-like claw where its hand should be, and its shoulder extended over its head, like armor. Needless to say, this beast of a machine was not something I wished to do the hard tangle with.
Not itching to meet these things face-to-face, I pulled my weapon off its mag lock and fired my get-the-hell-away bullets, hoping the thing would get the message.
"Enemies coming in hot!" I warned my unit, who was already popping off rounds at the dozens of creatures as they neared us.
The rounds hit and shrieks, loud and ear-piercing, rattled me to the bone.
"James, they aren't dying! Why… why are they not dying?!" Shadow-Walker called. And he was right. Every bullet fired, every plasma burst, laser, and even the shock rounds from our various arsenal of weaponry only delayed them. Sure, it took chucks off their robotic bodies, but more metal was produced to replace what was lost, and they kept pushing toward their prey - us!
"Hot damn! These things made of iron or something?" Frost hollered.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked back to see an amphibian creature from before handing me a pistol-like weapon. Teal-blue, glowing, and it looked like some kind of endothermic weapon. I fired my new gift multiple times at the creatures and shells of crystalized water exploded on their skin, drenching them and, to my surprise, melting holes in them like acid until they were nothing more than a gooey grave. I kept firing, backing up with the new crowd of allies. If it weren't for the looming threat, I would've given them a firm hug right there. Our new allies were leading us to their gates, on top of which sentries fired weapons to cover us from above.
The thirty meter tall gates opened, and a couple soldiers came towards us, pushing what looked like wheelbarrows with a turret of some kind on top. They passed us and planted the wheelbarrows into the mud, activating them. Then those machines started firing a hailstorm of endothermic projectiles at the crowd of enemies coming at us from the trees. When the deed was done, the guards rounded up with us as we entered the gates. Once clear of the archway, the gates slowly closed us inside the walls of this unknown place.
Shadow-Walker collapsed to his ass, then lay down completely, with his custom weapon over his chest. His stomach ballooned with each of his rapid breaths. "Frak, I'm getting old."
The rest of us stood there, looking from eye to eye at the dozens of guards around us. Each of them stared with the ever so expected glances of curiosity, but with no fear in their expressions. A surprise given strangers just strolled in through their gates, and rather loudly I might add. Some even seemed to be quite cheerful, like we were long lost buddies.
We were surrounded by two rows of houses, one on each side of us, inside a tightly laced base camp. Over us was a fabric-woven net that shaded the small camp and blurred out the towers beyond the net. Stoned-carved refresh stations flowed through the camp with much more water than I sure expected.
Before I finished taking in the embrace of our new surroundings, one of the guards came up to me. He bore the valor of a few more stripes on his cloth than any other guard I saw. "Who's in charge here?" he asked me.
I pointed at myself, and he nodded.
"What's your name?" the guard asked.
"James Stone," I responded.
His friendly expression clouded with hints of confusion. "Why did you come here?"
"Well shivf, as choices go, we had a large number of just one. Our dropship was subject to a major technological screw up of its nav-systems. We were unwillingly warped over this planet… which, by the way, what is this planet anyway? And why do we get no intergalactic service on our cyberwatches here?"
The guard looked at me with a long, wordless face. He stared as if he understood nothing. But that, of course, would be impossible unless--
He finally spoke. "You can understand me, correct?"
I nodded with a smile and thumbs up for extra emphasis. "I do."
"To us, you speak gibberish. I'm not quite sure why that is, so I would like you to wait by the visitation barracks over there." He pointed to the building. "I'll be back later." He then wandered off.
I waved my hand toward the barracks, and my crew followed my order. As we made our way over, I was still in my head about the strangeness of everything.
We entered a single room full of a few bunk beds. Waterfalls rushed from the sides above the beds and poured over them like a fountain. No mattress; just water over sand. And the floor and walls alike seemed to be built of some oddly teal and patterned stone. Such a room sure wasn't my keg of beer, and I sure as hell had not a hint of interest in staying in this room for a night.
"Ain't dis some shit," Brad clicked his tongue. "Shit if Imma 'bout tah stay in dis bitch," He shook his helmet in disapproval. "I'll catch yah outside if yah need me." He marched back out of the house and waited by the door.
Shadow-Walker headed to the wall in-between the bunks. A waterfall was coming from the wall and collecting in a bowl-shaped cauldron, which seemed to be flowing down a drain at the back. Shadow unzipped his leather armored pants and added some water of his own to the fountain. "Does it strike you guys as weird that they didn't take our weapons from us?" he asked over his shoulder.
I leaned against the frame of one of the beds. "And they couldn't catch the words I was throwing them either."
Frost pushed together some sand and sat on it, with his back against a wall. Valiic joined in-between me and Frost.
"I must ask, did any of you recognize them?" Valiic asked.
"No, but not recognizing other species is fairly standard with me. As you remember, traveling the galaxy was off the table when I was still finding my way into adulthood," I admitted.
"Never seen them in my life," Shadow added. Which surprised me, given his years of experience traveling the stars as a mercenary. We waited for Frost to respond.
His gaze was toward the bottom-right; he was thinking. "They didn't recognize us and we don't recognize them. Uzzos, I think there's a monster-sized pickle on the table and we've stumbled onto it."
Valiic tensed.
"How big of a pickle are you talking here? Shadow-sized, or James-sized pickled?" Shadow joked.
I laughed. "I'll whip this enormous cucumber out right now and put you to shame, Shadow."
He chuckled. "Sure. Whip it out in the company of men. You'd feel at home."
"Really, uzzos. Pisser jokes. That's like the knock-off brand of humor. I thought your two were better." Frost sported a teasing grin.
"Now you're just being a gray sprinkle on a rainbow cupcake," I shot back, with a laugh.
Valiic jumped in. "I agree with Frost, you guys have had your jokes." He had a point. Of the group, Shadow and I had a tendency to get carried away and came off crude at times. Chalk it up to life as soldier or twisted up wiring in our heads.
Shadow fired back, "Hold still, Valiic. I'm trying to imagine you with a sense of humor."
He didn't laugh at Shadow's friendly poke.
After a moment, Frost continued. "The point I was trying to get at is this: I believe we are on a planet that has yet to achieve slip space tech."
Valiic agreed, with a nod. "It would explain why they didn't understand us. They wouldn't have render chip as we do."
"And without knowing what language they speak, we can't communicate with them!" Shadow-Walker realized.
Frost looked to me. "You realize what this means, too, right?"
I sighed. "We are technically breaking a pretty hard-set law by being here."
"Law? What law?" Shadow-Walker asked.
"Since the beginning of the ARW, it has been against the law to intrude on the development of species without slip space technology. Though the law is official in the ARW, it reaches beyond our alliance. It is an unspoken understanding that relatively all species in the galaxy abide by, even to the point that our enemies in the Wersillian Legion respect this," Valiic informed.
Frost squinted with skepticism and a smile. "Most of the time," he added.
Shadow-Walker gave himself to wry amusement. "You know what sucks? This whole breaking laws and orders thing is becoming a theme with us."
"Just another day tittering on the edge of a cliff, I suppose," I chuckled.
There was a moment of silence as we each took in a few breaths.
"Well, then, what's the game plan, uzzo?" Frost asked.
"Sit on our asses until that soldier comes back," I shrugged. What else was there to do?
Shadow-Walker stopped slouching. "I hate waiting." He was shifting around quite a bit. Looking from here to there and there to here. Getting all squirrelly, I wondered what was going on in his head. Seems I wasn't the only one to pick up on it. After a moment of silence, he started, "I, uh… I've been thinking. Been really, uh… really mulling over a thought over the last few days. It's… It's just there's been a lot of it lately. A lot of--" Shadow's jaw and eyes winced, and he circled his wrist repeatedly, "--shivf happening to us lately. When it was just Clover, Bremco, and me, before all the major integration in our militaries, we did our share of missions. But that was it. Nothing spectacular. Lately… lately there's just so-somuch. You know?" Shadow expressed, with visible confusion.
"Death. You mean death?" Valiic mumbled, trying to add reason to Shadow-Walker's ramble.
"Yes. Yeah," he said, softer. "That… a fair share of that and more." He forced a wry laugh. "The thing is, most squads spend years without ever seeing a warlord. Not us. No, we've had the displeasure fighting off multiple. And it's a lot. I just feel… I feel like a lot has been put on us lately. And I wonder, luck be on our side, if this place-- Could this place be right for us? Could we maybe just stay here and let whatever happens out there happen?" He gestured to space.
I felt the weight of his words. Weighed heavily under truth, the words he spoke carried logic. And really, who was I to say it was a bad idea? At some point or another, I knew I had those thoughts - thoughts of just leaving it all behind. There was no way I was the only other one who had thought that before.
Frost finally spoke, with words calmer than usual. "I can't, uzzo. I got a girl to go back to. A mother, a mentor."
Shadow brushed it off, swatting his hand towards Frost. "No, you're right. Never mind me and my dumbass rambling."
"You alright, Shadow-Walker?" Valiic asked.
He was silent a moment. "Well, you guys… you all have something, someone to go back to. As Frost said, he's got people. Valiic, you have your cohinla, and James has that scrawny kid… that--" Shadow-Walker snapped his fingers repeatedly, "--Ben-something."
"Ben Cross," I said. Fond memories of hanging out with him during boot camp training and before a few missions crept back to my mind.
"Yes. Your friend, Ben Cross."
"You always have us. We'd never turn you away because you're family."
Shadow-Walker turned his head. "You're real embarrassing sometimes. You know that, James?"
I went over to him and gave him a bear hug with a few shakes. "You better believe it. You better fraken believe it." I caught the laughter from the others.
I let him go. Shadow-Walker put his hand to his face. "Makes me wonder, still, if we'll ever see home again."
I could hear Valiic sniff and sob. It was on those thoughts and sounds that we sat, waiting for the soldier to return.