Story #4
Strangers in a Stranger Land
Smiling silver eyes gazed up, into a sky that had shifted, over the course of a few days, from an eternal lapis to a promising proper blue, with the responsible atmospheric converter station looming in the seemingly boundless distance. Bringing her attention back down, Scout Vanguard Vesper Raine peered below, at a small grazing horde of newly discovered majestic creatures her team was observing.
Her slimmed-down medium-frame stood tall on the hill, twin submachine energy-guns magnetically locked to either side of its hips as it held an energy-halberd, taller than it, like a flag placed in the ground to stake ones claim to it. The frame’s base-color, a dark, glossy purple, was made iridescent on its armored shoulder-pads, the expensive paint shifting from purple to orange, like violet-honey, the same scheme as her padded geesuit that was zipped open at the top. From between fair but firm mounds, a thistle plant’s flower reached up on pale skin, just below her collarbones, with a string of larkspurs and black knights of delphinium running up, on the left and right side, framing a strong, square jaw, nearly touching her ears and her swept-back, jet-black locks tucked behind them.
Another of her squad was safely lying in wait, down in the valley, a mere frame-leap away from the dozen or so scaled antelope-like animals. Unmoving, she was cloaked by her light-frame’s adaptive Chameleon Coating that did as its name suggested, without drawing power from the core to sustain its effect. A ping on the Fabric was felt before the message appeared to her.
“Ts.Ts.” The sound of someone trying to get the attention of a cat. “How’s it looking down there, munchkin?” Came more text from Vesper.
“They’re beauuutiful!” Was the enthusiastic response. They were the likeness of Earth’s gemsbok antelopes, but the size of its moose, with greenish-brown scales, instead of fur and a pair of branching antlers that gleamed white-gold in the sun. Dozens, if not hundreds, of butterfly-like insectoids fluttered around them, many perching on their antlers. It did not seem to bother them and some of the small critters were even attached, sticking to their scaled backs and sides for reasons unknown. Another tingle came on the Fabric with a ping.
“They look like the giant lizard-like species we scouted out the last time. Except for their lack of stripes and tail. They’re still trying to give those a name.” A third person joined them on the Fabric and a third frame, another medium-sized one, a vibrant green, like sunlit moss, with darker, digital-camo patterns, quietly settled on the edge of a rocky outcropping, overlooking the presently dry swale that had evidence it used to have water running through it. The pilot in the cockpit, behind the invisible shield, was a nubile woman, with a spiky pixie-cut; her ebony skin, covered by a matte-green geesuit, perfectly emphasized her excited emerald eyes.
“Not going near those, again!” said the second one.
“These look like they could be their distant cousins.” Vesper remarked.
“Only a lot nicer and they can’t accidentally squash me, either.” Spoke the second with the voice of close experience.
“Reem, ma chaton, for someone who always plays chameleon, you nearly get squashed, a lot.” The third teased and the Fabric’s translation software appended her message with *my kitten.
“It’s not like we know how the animals, here, behave! All those biology classes they made us sit through are useless!” The one named Reem Rafiq irately replied. “What’s the point, anyway!? Allaena, we’ll never going to see the colonies they’re at!” They could imagine the dejection in her voice. *Damn it
“Don’t bring the clouds back, now, hey!” Vesper consolingly told her. “No class can top field-experience, anyway. And Nika and I won’t let anything happen to you.” she assured her.
“All of our codices are always up to date. Not that it helps when we’re first to discover something and any new entry is based on our report, afterwards. Speaking of which, from what I can tell from here, these things seem to be…living in symbiosis.” Véronique Duval hypothesized.
“Oh, you and your fancy words. Bookworm!” Vesper teased.
“Like you weren’t up there with her, top of the class!” Reem reminded her.
“Pah! Ves only did it to impress Miss Ardell.” Véronique knowingly sent.
“Xenobiology looked good on my resume for the Scouts.” Vesper virtually shrugged.
“Yes. You can make an educated guess as to what you’re encountering for the first time. And then shoot it full of holes. If you have to. Youpi!” Véronique was not actually thrilled about such an outcome. No translation was necessary, either.
“Hey, if the thing wants to kill me, I kill it back, first.”
“Or just leave it alone.”
“Doesn’t always work. You know I don’t wanna harm them if I can help it.” Vesper kept sending.
“I know, ma chère.” Véronique calmed her. “You don’t need-…” Her thoughts and the words being transcribed from them halted, as members of the horde suddenly pulled their heads up from the green pasture, alarmed, the insects on their antlers exploding into a swarm around them, clearly agitated.
“Reem?” Both Vesper and Véronique prompted her for an update, since she was close.
“Wasn’t me.” Reem was quick to clear up it was not her who spooked them. She wondered what did for no more than a second, when the air started to get charged with electricity. Arcs of it flickered and flashed all throughout the valley, making the animals scatter in fear. Oddly regular shock-bursts began propagating through the valley, in a far too fixed pattern for them to not be deliberate. Vesper de-powered her halberd, folded it up for storage on her frame’s lower back and readied her SMGs. Véronique brought out a reinforced, thermite-infused net-cannon that could release an incendiary solution, when cut or torn, to injure the captive and discouraged any further escape attempts, unless they wanted to sustain severe, potentially lethal burns, in exchange for their freedom. However, seeing as there was little chance they would have time to capture a live specimen of the hostile xenos, in whatever chaos was about to ensue, she put the trapper away and opted for her standard assault-rifle, arming the sonic-disrupters on her shoulders to fire disorienting and debilitating bursts of her own.
“What the…?” Vesper whispered out loud and through the Fabric, as the cascading blasts reached Reem’s position, whose light-frame flickered into plain view, its nanotech coating short-circuiting. Applying it to anything larger than a light-frame quickly proved to make little sense, both tactically and financially. Once revealed, larger frames made bigger, slower and easier targets that sustained far more damage than the considerably smaller, faster and more agile light-frame and even a simple touch-up to reapply the coating put a considerable dent in the finances of pilots. It was simply far too costly. Therefore, the Chameleon Coating had been restricted to light-frames and geesuits. And apparently, localized EMPs could temporarily render it inactive, as Reem found out, much to her surprise. Snowy, tufted ears perked up and pale-red eyes widened as she looked herself and her frame over. Her skin, which would have had a tanned complexion, was white as snow, from albinism. A trait she never felt was something she should get a treatment for. Her geesuit was Anti-Reflective white, with grey leopard patterns, whereas her frame was “A-R” dark-grey with faded-black spots.
Visible holes, in the very fabric of space-time, tore open the air above and spikes made of rocks, with metal tips, fell, embedding themselves in the ground with enough force to severe even a frame’s limbs. Like a hare or, indeed, the animals that were there a minute ago, Reem bolted for the hill to regroup, quickly discovering the discharges were wreaking havoc on her jump-jets, as well. Hoping it would not affect any other systems, mainly her servos, she kept dodging more spikes, as they continued to fall. Véronique also knew the drill, without any communication and her heavier medium-frame was trudging along the slopes, steadily moving closer to Reem, in case the latter needed assistance. Reem’s gait started to falter, her frame’s footfalls turning heavier, as though they were her own legs. It was no longer any EMP that was at work, she realized. All of their sensors were picking up heavy magnetic fluctuations in the entire area which felt markedly stronger, causing spikes in Reem’s readings, whenever she passed close to the actual spikes themselves. They began to hum and resonate, both effects intensifying into a note that grew higher in its pitch.
“GET OUTTA THERE!” Vesper was frantically trotting downhill, caution to the wind, even while seeing how Reem’s frame was being affected. Whatever the spikes were building towards seemed to near its peak and Rimm’s legs gave out at the foot of the hill. From the side, Véronique came bounding towards her, with as much speed as her frame was capable of and as the high-pitched note reached a head-splitting height, she slid in, tearing up the soil, right next to Rimm and detached a contraption from a shielded compartment in the hollow part of her frame’s inner-thigh. She threw it to the ground and the deployable projected a single-use multilayer barrier which would have been large enough even for the three of them. All of the spikes shattered into dozens of simultaneous shockwaves that - although they cancelled one another out - still managed to lay Vesper flat on her back, on the side of the hill and stripped the barrier from around the remaining two Reapers, with their force mitigated just enough not to cause any harm to them.
Seeing the sky, again, was much less pleasant, from her current position and Vesper was quick to get to her feet and used the FineWield-tech built into her frame’s hands to summon her side-arms, making them float back into her hands. She should not have lost her grip on them, in the first place, as the same strips they magnetized, at will, to use as holsters, were also used on their frame’s hands. Any weapon could be magnetically locked into one’s grip to prevent exactly what happened to her just now. Combined with the gravity-manipulation from FineWield and a further scaled-down version of the quantum-entanglement used in instantaneous communication, a dropped or even a thrown weapon, such as a halberd or spear, could be recalled into its wielder’s hand from a distance to save time on recovery and reengagement in battle. Effective telekinesis was no longer the stuff of science-fiction and Vesper’s weapons were held at the ready, before she even straightened up with her frame. She only guessed that the magnetic interference destabilized the locks. Her voice rang inside the frames of the others, no longer through the subtle Fabric.
“You okay!?” she asked, able to see them inside, but still afraid, as she waited for the belated response.
“Reem?” Véronique asked in return.
“Y-yeah.” Reem’s voice was shaking, more from shock than fatigue. A series of energy-weapon shots pelted their still active shields then. “Or not!” Reem curled up, as did her frame and Véronique turned to look in the direction the shots were still coming from, placing herself between them and Reem. Her eyes and retinal-HUD adjusted to tag half a dozen of the xenos strafing swiftly down the hill, spreading out with the obvious intent to surround them.
A stream of plasma bolts from Vesper riddled one of the aliens’ body with blisters, turning it into a charred corpse, before it even slumped to the ground. Véronique opened fire on the rest as Reem attempted to stand and aid them, but was still hobbled and could only kneel next to her, firing both of her forearm-mounted disk-throwers that she aimed in front of the advancing hostiles. The disks bounced off the ground hitting one in the chin and one in the ribs, with explosive results. Véronique and Vesper kept trying to lead their targets, but the remaining three picked up their pace and did what they all dreaded, shifting into their bestial forms, frenzied for a melee.
Moving much faster now, their leaping and zig-zagging, though predictable, did not make them any less difficult to hit, nor any less able to take a hit. Their durability allowed them to close in and force the three young scouts into close-quarters combat. Véronique reached for her assault-rifle but was grasping at empty air at her side. It was then she saw both of her weapons were on the ground, behind her. They also detached from the interference. One beast jumped at her and she threw it over her shoulder, giving herself just enough time to secure her net-cannon and equip her rifle, activating its sizable energy-bayonet, as the beast twisted in the air and landed on its feet, facing her. Rimm produced three retractable laser-sharpened metal claws from both fists and Vesper holstered her SMGs and learning from Véronique, kicked away her own quarry and called her energy-halberd back into her hands, a second before the beast came within clawing-distance of her, again.
Of course they all knew from classes, from experience, that even feral animals could be cunning. The medium-frames could more than handle them and were only nudged around, but light-frames like Reem’s had to be more careful. But, in the loud, snarling horror-reel of teeth and claws, all the knowledge and training, any careful strategy they may have practiced, quickly took a backseat, behind the aggressive flow of adrenaline that heightened all their senses and focused their attention, but not necessarily on the most obvious of goings-on. Still, they managed to wise up to the fact the seemingly single-minded monsters had been driving them apart, from the start, to divide and conquer. And it was working. All of them were being drawn farther away from one another, fast.
Véronique took careful swings with her bayonet, whenever her quarry came in its modest range, able to cut flesh, without getting hit herself. She tried to use her sonic blasts on it, but their waves were refracted, scrambled and rendered useless by the shifter’s bizarre tendrils and skin. Her sonics were designed to pacify aggressors, wildlife, but not this kind. Reem might as well have been dancing, bare-foot, on hot coal, barely able to leap away or over her opponent, with her still slowed movements, but she was able to give it a few bleeding cuts and came close to her shields being torn down by ones she received. Vesper easily had almost thrice the range of her two companions put together and carved wide arcs to force her target back. Once it goaded her into a forward thrust, it ducked, moving on her left flank and sprang toward her unguarded side, only for Vesper to timely step back and give it a knee. With a painful, canine-like whine, it briefly went airborne, before being bifurcated, hitting the ground in two pieces. Vesper assessed the situation of the others and went for a field-kick on the upper half of dead beast’s body.
Flipping the script, Véronique made her target get overconfident in its attacks. It pounced at her, but she leapt back, fired a burst into its face, before her frame’s feet even hit the ground, eliciting a furious cry, which she silenced, lunging forward to feed it her energy-blade. Reem was firing off a few disks, having switched their mode from single-bounce to explode on first hit, to restrict her opponent’s movements and was actually grinning to herself, enjoying the control she had over her situation, despite how vulnerable she was. Her expression flattened when her opponent was hit by one half of another’s body that slammed right into it. Miffed for only a moment, with a quick frown at Vesper, she took advantage, nonetheless and jumped with her spring-spike heels on the still living beast’s face, crushing it to mush.
They barely had time to celebrate their relatively quick victory, when more tears in the dimension opened and three more xenomorphs ran out, on all fours, in their beast-mode, right of the bet, followed by a forth that was larger, with undulating, segmented plates of organic armor on its already enhanced body. It was two-thirds the size of a medium-frame, distressingly bigger than Reem’s light. The smaller three moved to surround the alpha, circling it, when Vesper landed from a running booster-assisted jump near the closest one and thrust her halberd at it. It leapt back, a few meters from the tip of the top blade. Vesper had a wicked smirk and took a step forward, with one hand, giving another thrust that discharged the generated power of the weapon’s projected blades in the form of an energy blast she shot at the beast, melting its metallic head and fusing its howling mouth together with the rest of its face, as it died. The remaining three were momentarily fazed by the sudden loss of their pack-member and Vesper took the opportunity to fire her boosters for a quick retreat, with the beasts already fanning out under her, with not a moment’s rest and her halberd’s power-cell still needed a few more seconds to recharge the blades.
Upon landing, the two regular-sized cybernetic hellhounds seized her by her weapon’s depowered staff and got into a tug-of-war with her frame. One of them was ensnared by a net from Véronique, the other quickly let go and started moving to avoid a similar fate. Véronique would have given chase, but saw the larger one set whatever eyes it had, and wherever it had them, on Reem. She fired a net at it, just to see if it would, at least, slow it down, immediately switching weapons, after the shot. The larger one sliced through it with its bladed frontal legs, the spilling thermite doing little damage to its body, while the smaller one was already screeching an otherworldly song of agony, struggling to cut and gnaw its way out of the net that kept burning its body. They were clearly bioengineered organisms, but apparently feeling and reacting to pain was still a part of them. Whether that was an oversight in an otherwise cruel creation was anyone’s guess. Vesper’s power to her halberd returned, as she watched the bigger beast shrug off the net. She flipped it and stabbed down, putting the still trapped wailer, at her feet, out of its misery, then, ran at the alpha. The single remaining small one was skulking behind it, dodging shots from Véronique. Reem’s speed was nearly back to normal, as she circled around them.
To their surprise, the larger one moved with the smaller, shielding it, the kinetic damage having little effect, at least, on its fluidic armor plates, where the bullets melded into its body and the wounds left on its unprotected skin seemed to rapidly heal themselves, as if it was using the mass of the bullets to reconstitute its metallic flesh and skin. Véronique realized it and fired at its face, instead, hoping to blind it, if nothing else, as it attempted to lead the smaller beast closer to her. Reem was at its back and Vesper launched herself through the air, her halberd flaring an arc of light as she brought it down on the bigger of the bestias. The flowing tendrils on its back hardened, like ferritic fluid, becoming solid spikes, as it arched and Vesper only succeeded in slicing off a few of them, as the beast turned, moving its face away from Véronique’s shots and its body into a spin, shaking Vesper’s larger frame off and over itself, the moment she landed on it, followed by a swipe of its naked tail that sent Vesper staggering into a complete fall on her side, paint peeling off her dented arms and torso, with her cockpit’s shields also taking quite a hit. But, it gave Reem just enough time to close in on the straggler.
Claws out, she pounced and buried both sets into its neck, getting a gurgling death-rattle and gushing blood as she pulled out and narrowly avoided a slash from the alpha’s bladed feet. The attack deceptively flowed into another swipe that hit Reem, mid-jump, squarely in the midsection, sending her flying. Instinctively, she tried firing her boosters, which luckily regained enough functionality to give a few brief bursts that broke her fall and carried her to drop to the ground, on her back, at twice the distance she would have ended up otherwise. She still landed hard. Her systems screamed that her cockpit’s shields were completely depleted. She was exposed, not to the altered, now quite tolerable climate, but to the beast that began charging at her, before she even hit the ground. She knew she had no time to even get to her feet. Véronique panickingly fumbled for her net-cannon, fully aware she had little chance to lead a target that fast and even if she could hit it, the beast would not be slowed down enough for them to close the distance, before it reached Reem. Vesper pressed off the ground with one hand, holding her halberd in the other, teeth gritted, sweat running down her face, pupils dilating and all they could see, in slow-motion, was their friend in mortal danger. From the unfavorable angle, she needed quite a few running steps to increase her chances and the world did not speed back up as she switched her grip, again, her core diverting all power to her boosters. She took off, propelled forward like a bullet, running almost parallel to the beast and jumped, turning towards it and threw her weapon, like a spear, barely keeping herself from slamming face-first into the ground with her palms. Her vision was shaking and her halberd was still soaring through the air so slowly, even the torn blades of grass and kicked-up soil seemed to hang, suspended, as though nature itself was holding its breath. Her mind barely registered the sound and sight of a bright blue shot that pierced the air from high-up, behind her.
The alpha’s head violently jerked to the side and before its legs could even slow themselves half its face and jaw vanished in an outward explosion of vaporized flesh and metal. Its body tumbled and ground to a halt, at Reem’s feet, who dumbly stared, along with Véronique and Vesper, whose halberd flew past, passing right where the beast’s neck would have been, had it made it that close, showing that her throw would have quite possibly beheaded the beast in the last possible moment. She would not have made its day any worse than it already was. Its maimed head twitched, along with its whole body as any remaining life in it was quickly draining with the unnatural blood that gushed from its ruined maw. All three scouts finally regained enough of their faculties to look for the source of the critical shot, in its general direction, when a voice through their comms called for them and they could see four familiar-enough frames, two of which were making their way down to them.
“Are yew kids, alright?” came from inside the heavy, glossy-crimson frame of Fiadh O’Deorain, who was easily twice their age and though her concern was not motherly, it was still genuine and without condescension. They still had some lag processing anything that was being said to them.
“Easy! Take yer time, now.” Dylan Morgan, from his medium, steel-blue frame, did not bombard them with questions, yet. Out of the two staying on the hilltop, they only recognized the medium-frame of Jim Santiago, whose name came up increasingly more often in the roster, but not so much in reports, mostly due to his recently developed habit of keeping his account of missions brief, so he could move on to the next faster. The last frame, the smallest of them, was actually the one with the smoking barrel. Chase Cullman took a semi-relaxed stance, as Santiago somewhat impatiently glanced around, ready and hoping for an encounter, any chance to find a trace of her missing wife. Reem managed to stand, wobbling even with her frame and she looked at the damage.
“W-what the hell was that?” she asked, looking up at Cullman.
“A mean little somethin’ R&D and our Forgemaster cooked from some…special ingredient.” Dylan said. Reem blinked at him, clueless.
“Magic ore, luv.” Fiadh stated, as if that was normal. “You’ll get the crash-course.” she winked.
“More crash than course.” Dylan glanced at the results. They heard the servos of approaching frames, as Vesper and Véronique came to kneel on either side of Reem, to be at face-level with her.
“Are you hurt?” Vesper was a little less on the verge of tears than during her last ditch effort. Reem shook her head, looking reassuringly at both of them. More servos could be heard.
“Alright, you three. What the hell went down here?” Santiago wanted to know every detail, in case it had any significance.
“Ease off, there, Jim! They nearly lost one o’ their own, if ya can relate. Aye?” Dylan knew exactly how to make the man more considerate towards the younger scouts and as much as Santiago felt a retort coming, he understood it was not meant as a low-blow. No one not inebriated and in full control of what came out of their mouth would dare to use what happened to his wife for a verbal gut-punch. The three young women started recounting what they thought was important, how Reem’s cloaking was counteracted by a directed EMP bombardment from the other dimension, as Cullman joined them.
“How did they even know your position, or that you were cloaked, or how to flush you out?” Santiago pressed Reem.
“The EMP they could figure out easily enough.” Cullman answered that to tick one question off. “But, that had to come last. They couldn’t have possibly known where to aim it or if there was even anything to aim it at.”
“Were you transmittin’?” Fiadh asked.
“Only on the Fabric. Not the comms.” Reem took care to point out.
“Standard comm-silence, according to protocol.” Véronique added.
“Right.” Dylan nodded, understanding they were careful enough. And yet…
“Could they’ve been watchin’ yew?” Fiadh wanted to rule more mistakes out.
“No. We were guarding from the hill. Nothing could’ve been close enough to paint us.” Vesper claimed.
“Nothin’ from this side.” Dylan reminded her. “But, the attack came from that other dimension o’ theirs. And we have no idea if they can cheat and sneak a peek at us.”
“They still couldn’t have made Reem, while she was cloaked.” Vesper argued. “And they wouldn’t have just wasted a whole…artillery strike,” she gestured wildly, “If they had no idea where she was.”
“Some of us do like to believe they’re more subtle than that.” Cullman was agreeing with her.
“So, aside from turnin’ into peepin’ ghosts, how else they could’ve pulled this off?” Dylan folded his arms and his frame’s.
“You said yew were chattin’, before yer friend even settled in ‘er spot to wait for that horde.” Fiadh was looking to confirm.
“We went on for a few minutes, yeah.” Vesper gave a side nod, not sure where the questions could even go, at that point.
“Fee, we’ve covered this. They were on the Fabric the whole time.” Dylan was out of ideas.
“Can they listen in on that?” Vesper incredulously asked.
“How would they know it’s even a thing?” Reem shrugged.
“And where would they have learned our language?” Véronique asked and with the exception of the three of them, everyone slowly turned to look at Santiago, their faces grim and his own darkening with both newfound determination and dread.
THE END
Author’s Note: BOOM! HEADSHOT! So, as you may have noticed, this was a 5 in 1 package.
1) A new species
2) New technology and the technobabble for it
3) New characters
4) New type of Tsi-Hu beast.
5) Tie-ins and Tie-backs to both my own stories and to the official canon.
The “artwork” for the new species will come. I actually wanted to create the animal revealed here, before the still unnamed kudu/komodo cross, but this way, it’s actually better for the continuity in my stories.
The new ones:
Reem Rafiq – Reem meaning “white antelope” and Rafiq meaning “friend” in Arabic.
Véronique Duval – French form of Veronica, through the Latin “vera icon” for “true image” and Duval meaning “from the valley” in French.
Vesper Raine – From the Greek hesperos, meaning “evening”, the Evening Star (the planet Venus) and
Raine, possibly from the French ”reine” meaning "queen” and a variation on “rain.”
The critical shot:
Phased-Ore Ammo (PO, but also definitely OP below Cat-1) would be specialized, very rare, very powerful, expensive, hard to make and volatile. Shaped into extreme-caliber rounds individually suspended in temporary containment fields inside the magazine. Rather than drawing from a finite ammo pool, it could be tied to an ability, with a cooldown. Upon activation it could allow for a single precision shot, could even slow down time, speed perception, to make it easier and lessen the chance of wasting the ability.
Likes:
Pandagnome
