First Encounter

Chapter 3: First Encounter

 

 

Everyone sprinted to the bridge. "What’s wrong? ", "Something to kill? ", those were the questions asked. "Look at that…" Pilot pointed through their front window. There was a huge ship-looking thing standing there. It was not moving. "It looks like a ship and it wasn’t there when we got here. It probably warped as soon as we got here, just on the opposite side of the planet. But the strange and the scary fact is that it’s half organic. ", "Wait, you want to say that that thing is… alive?! But that can’t be, I mean, something big like that can’t be organic, it couldn't survive in vacuum and… it probably has to, you know… eat…" said worryingly Rasp. "I don’t think it’s organic to the point where it’s self-aware or needs food. It’s more half-organic half-mechanic… We should inform our planet of this kind of existence. " Pilot turned to Cap, waiting for response, "Yes, indeed, you should contact them as soon as possible. ". On those words Pilot turned to her keyboard and started typing a message. After a few minutes she sent it and said that the response will be there in around two hours. She also said that they would try to keep a distance from the thing and will stay off scanners all the time. That would increase warp drive cooldown as it's pulling power from generators, but would keep them invisible.

Everyone agreed. Rasp and Crazy left the bridge and went to living quarters. Crazy proceeded to one of the rooms and Rasp asked if she could come in. Crazy nodded.

"What do you think that thing out there is? " asked Rasp. "I really don’t know, I never saw something like that… half biological, half mechanical. That’s scary. ", answered Crazy, "Well, you know what, as long as we keep away from it, I’m all good, and of course, as long as it keeps away from us. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty confident in Light and her Ion cannon operating knowledge, so I’ll take a quick nap. I didn't sleep for days, and now I feel like I could fall asleep in seconds…"

"Alright, as you wish. I’ll leave you now. Should I awake you to inform you about the response about the thing? ", asked Rasp, on what Crazy nodded and dropped onto the bed. Rasp took a moment to look at the room. It was a small room with even smaller bathroom. It couldn’t support two residents in it, it barely supported one. It had a bed for one in it, and a desk in one of the corners which had a computer on it. It looked like the computer was connected to the main system on the ship, because it didn’t have its own system hooked up, just a keyboard and an user interface (monitor).

Rasp left the room and walked across to her own. It had the same layout as Crazy’s and probably all the others'. She sat in front of the computer and woke it up. She started looking throughout the files in search for something interesting that could kill time. She found one folder with some random movies, and played one of them. They were just normal movies from their planet. This was an old one, because men were main actors in it, and there were no females to be seen. It was about a man that had problems in his life, but he meets a girl and she helps him through them. Just an ordinary movie. But Rasp was thinking of something else. She was already a twenty-three-year-old girl, real woman tomorrow, but she actually never had a real boyfriend. On Luna, only twenty percentage of population were men, and they were used for repopulation. They were politicians and high ranks involved in these processes to insure more females are born than males, to insure their position…

Rasp knew about this but she, even if she wanted, couldn’t do anything, she was one in a million. High numbers of females on Luna were homosexual, because of the lack of males, but Rasp never thought about that, and she always wanted a man, but they were so hard to find, especially in military.

She was watching the movie for about an hour when she heard Cap’s voice through the speaker, "The response arrived, long story short, there are good news and bad news. Good news are for Rasp, she will get to use our mech, bad news… we have to board and investigate the ship. ".

Rasp flew out of her room, and Crazy left her in the same moment. They looked each other and ran towards the bridge. Light was already there and when Crazy and Rasp arrived they started talking, "How do you mean we have to board it?! ", "What are they thinking about?! ", "Are they crazy?! "…

They were talking in the same time and Cap had to stop them. "Enough! Yes, we have to board that thing and we will, it was a direct order and we cannot disobey it. As they stated, it is probably empty and was orbiting around the planet, It is definitely dead. ".

"What about the planet? Who do they think had wiped it out? ", "The planet is not our business. As it looks, it has not stepped into space exploration age and that thing is, so we will go and look if we can retrieve any information from it. ", answered Cap to Crazy’s question. "No more questions. Everyone get ready to start this, Rasp get to the mech and you will be deployed, Light and Crazy, get your armor and weapons, you hook up on Raps’ mech and go with her. Pilot and I will stay here and coordinate you. "

Nobody liked the commands, but they had to do it, and they all went to get ready.

Rasp, Crazy and Light went to the ships hangar storage and where all weaponry, armor and one mech were resting. Armor that they started getting in was commonly used by drows and it gave very good protection from all kind of firearms and other threats. Rasp looked at her mech. It was quite large, around fifteen meters tall and had a pilot's cockpit above the middle of its chest. As Rasp got in it, she started checking its specifications. It had extremely good armor, shields but no onboard weapons. She had to carry one gun, specially made for her mech.

Everyone else got their armor and weapons. They all used military grade Pulsar rifles of the drows. The rifles used extremely compressed mana shot. Mana is inner energy and life source for drows, it's in their blood and body, and also in their planet. Mana could be found stored in Mana Crystal that appeared bellow Luna's planet surface. Drows refined those crystals and made them into some sort of magazines for their guns. Shot fired from guns chambered in this kind of ammo moved in very high velocity and had very low bullet drop, but quite a recoil.

Everyone got ready and went into the other part of the hangar. They had to push Rasp over the floor because she couldn't stand up in her mech. The ceiling was too low. Then they lowered her in the airlock chamber and they hooked their armor the Rasp's mech. Airlock closed behind them and the door to the space opened in front of them. Rasp immediately fired up her thrusters and began making her way to the other ship.

When they finally got close to the thing, Rasp grabbed onto something that was sticking out of it and started cutting a hole in its armor. Crazy and Light were still holding on her and scanning the area around them. As soon as Rasp cut the hole big enough for them to squeeze in, she entered the ship.

It was completely dark and they had to turn on their lights. They wished they hadn't. It was horrible in there.

"I think I'm going to puke...", said Crazy. Everything in there was covered in blood and what looked like body parts. But there was nothing recognizable, only that matter floating around.

"All right, command, are you getting this? ", asked Rasp. Cap responded via comm." Yes, we can see everything. It's horrible, but please, continue. Try to find some sort of a bridge. If it even exists."

They continued, going through hallways that looked the same as the first one. They stumbled upon something.

"What is this? It's some kind of four-legged creature.", asked Light. It was some kind of an animal. It floated in one of the hallways. It had four legs but no visible head. It looked like a crab but only with legs, no head or claws.

"I know what that is! Oh my god! It can't be! It's a Zerg!", said Pilot through communication.

Zergs were creatures that looked like bugs or some sort of animals with anomalies. You could think they were mindless creatures. However, they were quite smart beings. They couldn't make weapons or ships, but their plants and other creatures could capture a ship and entangle it, killing everything in and completely overtaking it. They were fearless creatures and just existed to kill and be killed. They also hatched. Which meant there was probably some kind of a queen hidden somewhere in there.

"We have to find the queen and kill it! Either that, or let her live and possibly hatch more than thousands of eggs that could infest the whole planet. " informed them Pilot.

"Well, it looks like we don't have any other options. We are going deep..." said Rasp.

"That’s what he said...", answer quietly Crazy. "Hey, I heard that!".

They started moving through all the hallways until they got to some sort of a hangar door. But it was heavily entangled in tissue and bones as armor and protection.

"It looks like something is heavily guarded in here. We will have to break through. Keep your distance.", said Rasp, "Fire in the hole!". She yelled and fired a powered shot from her gun's second barrel, that was a grenade launcher.

One concentrated hit in the middle of the door made a hole big enough for them to squeeze in.

"What do we have here? Oh, this looks important." said Rasp while shooting something that looked like hatchery. It exploded in pool of blood and tissue. Everyone started shooting towards everything around them until everything had bullet holes in it.

"Well this was fun. Sad it ended so fast...", stated Light.

"Why do you think it ended? Listen.", said Crazy.

Everyone stopped and listened. You could hear silent breathing and scratching. Something was trying to get to them in zero-g. It probably was using some kind of claws to push itself away from walls and was making its way towards them. Actually, you could here not only one sound. They were many more sounds coming from all directions.

"Looks like we pissed someone off. Brace yourselves!" yelled Rasp and clapped herself onto floor in guard mode, with her weapon in front.

Everyone did the same thing and waited... The sounds were getting louder and closer.

"Open fire!" yelled Rasp as soon as the first creature made its way through the door. Everyone opened fire and the first monster dropped down as soon as it got in, but more came in. Creatures that were attacking them had two back legs but in front, where should two front legs be, there were some sort of hands with long spikes at the ends. The creatures looked like big dogs but they had small heads and were of very low intelligence, but strong. It looked like they didn't have pain center in their brains, because they didn't react to bullet holes in them. As a matter of fact, they continued going until they were completely torn apart.

"They just keep coming!", said Crazy. "My gun is almost overheating! I don't think I can keep firing for much more!", yelled Rasp. "This is bad, we need to get out of here!"

"Wait, Light, wait is that on your left?", asked Cap via comm. "Uhm, it looks like some sort of a computer. Why?", answered Light.

"Crazy, do you see that? Try to connect to it and get some info of it, we need to know what happened there.", said Cap. Crazy ran across the room and got in front of the computer. She connected herself through her small laptop she always carried around and started searching through the system.

"It's going slowly because I'm using my computers battery to power the system and I can only power one memory branch at a time. Hey, this looks like some sort of log files. Yes, they tell what happened. I'll take them and also everything related to it. It'll take few minutes."

"Rasp, why did you stop firing?" asked Cap. "My damn gun overheated. I'm going in melee!" said Rasp and went towards the door. There was a big pile of dead and blown up flesh floating around there.

She started punching anything that wanted to come through. "Hey, this is more simpler then waiting for them to come in." stated Rasp. "Yes, but you are not killing them, just knocking them out." said Light.

"Done!", yelled Crazy. "Now, how do we get out of here?"

"Rasp! Can you cut through the back wall to try to get out?", "Yeah, but then you'll have to cover the door.". Rasp went away from the door and the creatures again started going through. It was hard to keep them out without high caliber rounds Rasp's gun was firing. One of the creatures even pushed through and jumped on Light. "Get off me!", yelled Light while continuously stabbing it in the head with her hunting knife. It finally got off her.

"Hey, I'm out but this isn't the way out, it's just the back hallway, but we can use it to get to our opening, it looks like it's around the corner. Come on!" said Rasp and everyone hooked onto her. Rasp fired up her engines and started making her way through the hallway. The creatures were behind them, but they couldn't keep up. They got to the opening Rasp made early on and they got out in space.

"Finally! We are out!", yelled Crazy. "Now I hate bugs even more."

They got to the airlock on the their ship and it opened in front of them. They got through it and into the hangar. They removed their armor and went to the bridge. Cap and Pilot waited for them there.

"I want to blow that thing apart!" said Pilot. "I don't know if we have permission..." stated Cap. "Well, I mean, everyone's dead there. Nobody is going to miss anyone."

"I guess you are right. Fire a full battery of missiles." said Cap and Pilot did as she said. A whole bunch of missiles could be seen flying towards the black ship-thing. On impact the missiles exploded and the ship with them blew up.

"Well, that escalated. I don't see why we had to go to it." said Light. "From the info I scavenged, the ships manufacturer is unknown, at least I don't know it. It's called "Infected Corporations". Never heard of them. If it's from the part of the universe we don't yet know, what is it doing here? From the logs I can see that it warped for more the a hundred sectors. How? I don't know, but it warped for, maybe, even more than a thousand sectors." Crazy was reading through the logs and from its warp distance everyone was impressed. "How is that possible. I know that our technology is really remarkable and still we can’t do more than hundred of sectors at a time, but that thing could. Interesting. Maybe we were not supposed to blow it up." said Cap.

"Oh, hell no! I would not be the one that would need to go there and look at their warp drive. Hell with the orders, I'm happy it's gone. In pieces..." yelled, annoyed, Light.

"Well, our warp drive is almost ready to be powered up, but there is a small problem. Where we need to warp, at a near planet, our army is fighting against the forces from the planet. They are under control of Tarrens and you know what our military is like. It will ask for aid when they see we have Ion cannon and a mech. Also a crew of five that is one of the best out there. And we can't say no to our race." said Pilot.

"Eh, can't you jump few sectors away?", "I can, but our military has info about our position and as soon as we are close to the battlefield, they will order us to join the fight." answered Pilot to Rasps question.

"You know what, I say that we take a pause for four hours and sleep. If they still need help, we will join, if not, we will just pass them and continue our mission. What do you say?" asked Cap.

Little bit unwillingly they agreed and everyone went to sleep. Pilot hid the ship in cloak mode and also went to sleep, but said to Sara, if anything happens, to wake her up. In few minutes everyone was in deep sleep and, luckily, another of Infected Corporation ship that warped near them, also invisible, didn't spot them and saw their ship in pieces. They just warped out, without the warp drive cooldown, around a hundred sectors away... near the battle that raged on one of the planets there.

 

Author's Note

Thanks for reading! :)