Anlov Record

Book, Chapter 09

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Glimmering bands rescinded to reveal a sheet of inky grey.

Below was the dismal planet of Waake. Colonized by the Ing people, and eventually granted its independence, it had remained on good terms with Anlov Home and its own cradle planet.

True to form, it didn’t last. Ing weren’t normally ones to take such an avid interest in militarization and predation of resources. But hunger and fury consumed the residents of Waake. Hunger for war, hunger for more.

Anlov didn’t interfere with the affairs on Waake, though they expressed regular disapproval. Soon even the Ing cradle planet was denouncing the actions of their colony. Wars became almost every day occurrences and resources were plundered with utmost disregard to their source.

As the frenzy consumed the new colony, Anlov withdrew all support for the world unless drastic changes to trajectory was made.. But it was of no avail.

What emerged over nearly a hundred years was a horrific system of mining and resource corporations setting up shop on wherever they wished to fund the war to fight any other competition. War became the end and the mean.

Eventually, their new home that hosted these painful expeditions and pilfering went into an environmental free fall. War broke out over the evacuation from the planet and only fueled further environmental disaster.

Now the world sat in the dilapidated state. The sky was dark with the constant dust storms. Storms also brought tarry rain, turning the surface below into an endless quagmire.

Very few of the massive population on Waake were able to flee as their world fell out from under them. Survivors were riddled with the crippling regret one feels when they realize just how much they ate at the buffet. Though, this was a world and countless residents dying as a result of your hunger. Looking back from their fleeing ships, the survivors were finally free of the grips of their blindness and could now saw how pointless their actions were. Nothing was gained, and so much was lost.

Ing took the survivors back in, but most were the very warmongers and monsters who perpetuated the endless strife. Ing responded quickly and stripped these barons of their wealth. But the money was an illusion. Without war, their wealth was meaningless.

With the little funds the Ings could scrap together, they beseeched the Anlov to help them make amends. Anlov had a terraforming program that had unparalleled success in bringing planets to life. Usually, Anlov preferred to leave colossal mistakes visible as a monument to the foolishness that brought them. But Ing insisted, guilt wracking from the inexcusable actions of their child, the ravenous colony.

Using what pieces of actual monetary value brought back from the dead world, Ing beseeched Anlov to rebuild the planet of Waake. Since Ing couldn’t possibly pay the entire bill they supplied most of the flora and fauna to propagate the planet, plus the majority of the ship transports and equipment. Ing wasn’t wanting to let this shortcoming of their history be a stain on their pages. Anlov helped reluctantly; terraforming used an astounding amount of resources. Anlov didn’t see it as their responsibility to allieveate the grief of Ing with colossal construction projects.

Being granted trajectory clearance by the acting copilot, the probationer pilot nudged the craft closer to the orbiting station. It was composed of two spheres connected by a humongous cylinder. This bridge pushed through the atmosphere linking the two large docks. Duplex stations like this one enabled materials, ships, and personnel to be moved back and forth rapidly between planetside and orbit. While most ships could simply enter the atmosphere, it could be quicker to have ships unload cargo on one side and quickly depart, allowing a speedy organized flow. Normally such terraforming projects would see several of these stations, each bustling with activity. However, the Cardboard Box didn’t have to contend with much traffic before a panel lifted along the station’s side. A bright strobe beckoned them to land. With landing confirmation relayed, the copilot confirmed the pilot’s planned action, and allowed the pilot to put the ship through the wide opening into the spacious hangar bay.

Every single action was recorded and monitored as no chance was left for the pilot to again act recklessly. The Kriovitl flew nearby, still providing watch over the ship, while Ayabegei and Cisimi kept watch within. Feelings of being constantly micromanaged were often a strong punishment. With the copilot confirming the action to deploy landing gear, the Cardboard Box finally sat to rest as the large shutters sealed behind it.

“Welcome aboard,” droned the voice over the PA with the intensity of a sleep deprived parking attendant.

“The foreman is awaiting you on deck 7C,” the intensely thrilled officer continued. “We’ll be moving your ship down planetside?”

“No, we’ll be taking it down ourselves,” Geib replied. 

“Affirmative,” yawned the voice over the PA.

Shy of Ayabegei, Cisimi, and the supervised Nuta, the crew stood at the main hatch airlock, when the inevitable yap flapped.  

“That guy sounds fun. We should really bring him aboard,” Dogot joked, again failing to liven any mood.

“Say, why are we even making this stop? We could just brief through holographic display and keep moving,” he continued as the crew stepped aboard the station’s tram.

“Oh right, that whole Anlov thing about the aesthetics of face to face discussions,” Dogot continued, “Am I the only one talking here?” 

“You have a great skill at having whole conversations with yourself,” Kazochi commented.

“Just trying to strike up a conversation,” Dogot muttered. “You all don’t mind sitting around in awkward silence, I guess.”

“There is a certain joy in the silence,” Suge whispered.

Nothing silenced the talkative communications officer like the words of the upperclassman.

Gliding slowly over magnetic repulsion tracks, the tram passed through a large transparent tunnel. Teliar’s eyes lit. Past the walls, out spread a full sized construction hangar. Sparks created a dazzling show of light as numerous torches welded and cut through sheets of materials. A symphony of clangs and scrapes, pops and grinds echoed through the hall and into the tram.

Face and hands pressed against the windows of the tram like a child gazing longingly into a candy store.

“Can we stop? Can I get off here?” Teliar asked excitedly.

“What? No,” Ocura quickly dismissed.

Robotic legs shrugged with the careful keying entered, perfectly showing a defeated stance.

Slowing, the tram pulled up to the stop for the construction hangar. Perking up, Teliar again smashed his face against the tram’s window.

“Why are we stopping?” Ocura asked, turning to see Geib had pressed the halt command on the tram controls.

“Specialist Teliar Reezmin,” he opened, ignoring the elder sister’s question. “Go help adapt and convert those vehicles to use planetside. We’ll come pick you up on the way back.”

Bouncing with delirium, Teliar spouted affirmations.

“I said he shouldn’t!” Ocura retorted.

“He isn’t yours to command anymore, remember?” Geib replied softly.

Ocura’s feathers rustled slightly. It was impossibly difficult to separate her protective instinct from her obligation to distance herself. Part of her, screamed silently to scream loudly at Geib.

“How dare he undermine you,” her internal voice squawked.

“Don’t do anything you know you shouldn’t. Don’t go talking about things that aren’t anyone’s business,” the Senior Lieutenant ordered.

“Got it. I’ll just show these guys how it’s done,” Teliar replied as he bounced ahead with elation  

“He’ll be fine,” Kazochi consoled Ocura as the tram resumed its movement.

“There’s no need keeping them cooped up in briefings if he can be helping elsewhere,” she continued as Ocura didn’t turn her gaze from the window.

“I suppose,” Ocura sighed.

“Then why do I have to go?” Rio spoke up.

“Yeah mom, you’re so unfair!” Dogot added facetiously.

————————————–

Wide doors to the foreman’s office slid open. Out spilled a sticky wet heat, drenching the entering crew.

Only light from the outside hallway lit the office, save a few small lamps. At the back of the room, an indistinct silhouette of a lone figure stood over a table.

“Enter,” the figure commanded loudly, not changing its shape or position even slightly.

Stepping inside the sizable office, they were slightly blinded as more lights came on.

“Sorry about the dankness,” the foreman chuckled.

“Foreman” was a bit of a misnomer. Being of the Sahdlf species, and what looked like the Hug ethnic branch, it was androgynous and reproduced in a way similar to spores.

Suge’s face quills twitched even as he spoke. “Is the temperature and setting evidence that you’re the traditionalist Hug-Bind?”

Smiling through its inverted V shaped mouth, the foreman strode closer while rubbing its wide arms in a fanning motion.

“Oh a Teseg. The Ultraverse sure is with a humorous memory,” the Hug began with a cheerful disposition.

“I prefer to have my office as much like the planet I’m working on as possible. It helps me think,” the Hug explained.

“I’m Foreman Au-Ju-Gen Jik,” the foreman introduced. “And I’m a Hug, but only so Bind as my own laziness will allow.”

Younger faces of the group showed the all too familiar looks of bewilderment.

“Perhaps this Hug and this Teseg could give a brief history,” Jik chirped.

Measuring out carefully what to say, Suge opened up.

“The Hug and Teseg were interstellar neighbors and each other’s first contact. We didn’t have the best of relations but I find the fault lies with leaders on both sides. The Hug had a particular ethnic branch, the Bind, who were stern stoics that would often subject themselves to the elements.”

Jik nodded and added. “Yes, the Bind were notably more hostile to outsiders and specifically the Teseg. So I can understand the caution.”

“We need to have more in-depth history lessons available to our education suite,” Wits commented, voice box hissing with the moisture in the room seeping inside. 

“For the show!” Jik exclaimed. “It does us no harm in recounting our histories.”

Suge had remained standing while some of the crew had tried to sit on furniture in the office. Almost all quickly stood back up when the felt the damp condensation of the chairs.

“You seem unusually cheerful, Foreman. The report said progress was poor,” Kazochi began.

“Just like how I keep the office similar to the planet, I’m trying to keep myself positive so that I might actually be positive,” Jik explained clumsily. “I called for the help as our efforts have met with strange resistance.”

Startled by shattering glass, all eyes went to the drink glass that slid through Jik’s damp hands and into a mass of broken glass. Jik didn’t even flinch, but just used its boot to brush the shards together into a growing pile.

After this task that Jik must’ve grown inured to, it waved to the wall. A damp suit clung to the Hug’s frame. Jik pulled at his uniform, trying to accomplish the impossible of giving itself some relief from the conditions that were self-imposed.

This stuffiness, this fluid clingy heat, this sweltering misery was really what it was like planetside? Each crew member could feel their skin belching up sweat or their species’ equivalent, and their suits clasping to their bodies like vacuum wrap.

Following a few more exaggerated waves from the foreman, a nearby projector flickered slightly and projected a two dimensional animation. Riding the waves of oppressive heat, the image distorted occasionally.

An ocean manifested from the projection. A digital sky of blending grey flew above the sea. Greys blended together in all its various shades from grey, to slightly grey, to extremely slightly more grey. Sky so effectively mirrored the sea below that it was quickly disorientating and mesmerizing. It reminded of muted shades of paint spun about in a blender.

“Spectrum and movement paths” Au-Ju-Gen Jik requested aloud.

Tilting, the psychedelic artwork mess shifted into separate layers of brightly contrasting colors. Orange seas thrashed wildly into the air as its crashing waves battled with the sky. An indigo sky, filled nearly fully with a bright green cloud, retaliated against the warring sea with strafing storms of dark red streaks of rain. A previously colorless spiral now became a kaleidoscope of hues and sprays.

“This is normal here,” Jik began. “This world’s demise left an endlessness. Storms of boiling acid, sludge, and dust have coated the planet with an encompassing ocean. What stands out are the occasional swamps, but they’re flushed out as the storms eventually hit them. Just as quickly as the ocean relinquishes them, they retake them.”

Lacking the previous facade of cheer, the foreman’s eyes cast downward.

“When the self-admitted parasites finally jettisoned from this host, it left behind a poisonous husk, drowning in its own blood.”

Looking back up to the assembled crew, Jik quickly snapped back to a cheerful face.

“I think I’ve been stuck in here too long,” the foreman dismissed. “We’ve tried at least three times now to deploy the beginnings of the terraforming on the surface. As is the general strategy, we warden off huge areas off with shields and cultivate one area at a time. We aim to set up the surface positions in the swamp, as it’s as close to solid bed rock as we can get.”

Bringing up several more images, the projection displayed a relatively calm scene of rolling hills of drab colorlessness. Overhead, the sky didn’t scream of fury, but did roil in the distance. As said, the hills rolled. It was no optical illusion; the semi-solid land gently sloshed with its contents of acid, grime, and stone.

“The ever-present dust is very toxic and corrosive. Combined with acid, our ships simply can’t deploy shields and platforms quickly enough before they’re overwhelmed. We target the marshes that form as the oceans move, but it’s only a matter of time before the storms bring back its oceans with intensity.”

Projections of weather patterns across the globe highlighted the point as the colored areas swung about wildly and insanely fast.

“If we had enough ships and personnel, we’d send a whole armada down to construct our start with higher speed than our small task forces could. But we just don’t have those kinds of resources,” Jik lamented. “What’s worse, we’re losing a lot of ships and people to these storms that can erupt out of nowhere. What few survivors we have retrieved show delirium and gave some truly bizarre reports as to what happened.”

Ayabegei and several others could almost hear the eyebrows rising on Kazochi and Geib’s faces.

————————————–

“A beast… a beast. It was a beast of some. Some beast.”

“What kind of beast? You keep saying that…”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. It just appeared from around us. It was attacking our ship before it was even there.”

“Even there? Was it attacking at range?” 

“You must stop. She’s in shock. She needs time to recover.” 

Replaying the recording over and over, Kazochi kept listening with the hope that one more time would clarify something, anything.  

Grey rain and dust whipped across the monitors. Acidic rain splashed against the shields, bathing the monitors with a glaring light. As all extra power was diverted to the shields, there was simply too much shielding for the rain to penetrate. Monitors occasionally brought up different vision outputs, yet it often showed more or less the same images. Thermal, ultra-violet, sonar assisted, and so many others showed a grainy and barren world. Even what could be seen through all the dust, soot, rain, and muck wasn’t much worth looking at. Though this storm was of the lighter intensity, and you could actually see a good distance, what was there to see besides a dreary and impenetrable vista?

Many found rain soothing while some found it depressing. Black rain, the blood of a dying world, screeched madly through the sky’s twisting throws. How anyone could find this type of rainfall soothing is beyond sense.

“So what do you think it is?” Mahie asked, finally breaking the symphony of the screams on the recordings and the raging of the storm.

“I keep thinking about what the foreman was saying,” Kazochi answered distractedly. “When it was characterizing the planet as an animal…”

Unable to divert her gaze, Mahie stared at the passion emanating from Kazochi as she scrolled through screens and old books. Everyone aboard this ship had such intensity, Mahie noticed. You wouldn’t think it possible to look like you’re passionately researching. You don’t see a person reading, and think they’re intensely and aggressively reading. It wasn’t like you saw their eyes rip from their skull and puncture through the book, demanding information.

But Kazochi and the others just brought an atmosphere with them. Even the most mundane tasks, done by someone who put their energy into it, take a certain glow.

Perhaps it was a Gyedth thing, Mahie wondered. They were very social creatures. They could pick up on outrageous levels of subtlety. Mahie saw Kazochi, and didn’t see a scholar perusing through books. She saw instead a delighted bibliophile reading books by flashlight under a tent of bed sheets.  

There were some elements that weren’t as subtle. This story lover brought stories with her. Kazochi wore, atop her standard uniform, many trinkets and accessories from a wide range of cultures and groups. They only accented and didn’t cause problems, only giving a distinct appearance all her own. She wore the thin ribbon choker typically seen on Gotah, and the scarlet arm bands of Hayopal people. Mahie was unsure where Kazochi’s stockings came from. The pattern looked unfamiliar.

Across her body, Kazochi wore worlds of culture.

Tilting her head, she wondered about that time she heard Kazochi slip about her first family. Could it be that this folklore and cultural enthusiast was seeking for a family lost?

No, Mahie dismissed, shaking her head. That was the navigator’s own story.

Seeing the shaking head out of the corner of her eye, Kazochi turned towards the navigation station.

“Something the matter?” Kazochi inquired.

“No, just marveling at you. You know you glow so when you’re looking through your books.”

Blood rushed to the bibliophile’s face in a faint blush, supplementing a nervous laugh.

“I love the tales of all who have tales,” Kazochi laughed.

“It shows more than you think,” Mahie laughed back.

She quickly shifted to a feigned frown. “You have all these clothing items from different peoples. Yet you have nothing from the Gyedth? I’m deeply offended.”

From her behind her crossed arms and disapproving scoff, Mahie let slip the faint upward turn of the corner of her lips.

Kazochi had her smile return. Mahie was catching on to the “best form of lying” that Dogot once alluded to.

“I do! Or did. I had this beautiful traditional Gyedth cord mid-corset. I tore it though.”

“How’d you manage that? It takes incredible determination to tear those.” 

“Or an unscheduled combat exercise.”

“We’ll have to get you a new one then,” Mahie cheered. “Or maybe we could fix it.”

“If we fix it, I want to use genuine Gyedth fibers,” Kazochi replied cheerfully.

She needed this distraction. It was endlessly better than letting the storm’s constant presence dampen her spirits.

————————————–

“Sitting in the dark again?” Nuta shouted as he turned on several wall monitors and overhead lights.

Pip-is cursed in surprise and dropped his bowl of stew into his lap, eliciting a laugh from Nuta

Glowing monitors faded as it resolved into a real time image of the outside. Pip-is turned from the screen he had been focusing on and watched the world outside.

“It’s a bit of a lateral change.”

Pip-is jumped again at the sound of the voice synthesizer.

Wits strode in quietly. Despite the large size, Hifinifs could move very quietly, and Wits was quieter than most.

Mesmerized, the three watched the slurry. It was an unsettling feeling to be so close to such a harsh world. Beyond the screen was the hull of several meters in length. Past that was a small gap and then a few meters of high density shielding. And just past that was an unforgiving nightmare.

If you were unfortunate to be outside, your skin would boil and melt while you fell through the endless sky. Bits of rock and stone would punch through your body with extreme speed. If you were unlucky enough to survive the bath of killer fluid and particles, you would land in the endless molten ocean, where you would be thrown about with the endless waves. Fiery fluid would seep into your every pore, cooking you alive. Your screams would be muffled by the sloshing slime and would hopefully drown you before you suffered any longer.

Finally, the unrelenting destruction would end when you finally sank into the dark fathoms. This was all if you were unlucky enough to have lived through the endless anguish for that long.

Nuta pressed a command into a nearby panel and shut off the live feeds.

“That’s enough of that. It’s bumming me out,” he declared. “How could they just destroy their whole world?”

“The thing we take the most for granted is the ground we walk on,” Wits commented. “We always expect there to be land to stand on, even when one destroys it.”

“I guess I just don’t see how you could keep ignoring the problems you create. How can you keep convincing yourself that everything is ok?” Nuta continued. “How can you sit there, with your house on fire, and say, ‘seems good’?”

“Speakin’a bein’ good,” Pip-is chided, spinning around. “Aren’ you s’pposed t’be with an adul’ present at all times? Where’s yer baby sitter?”

“Hilarious. I can’t take you seriously with you wearing your lunch,” Nuta countered.

“Any word from the foreman?” Wits asked, turning to Pip-is.

“Jus’ th usual chatter,” Pip-is absent-mindedly replied turning back to his computer and the game it showed. “Last I heard, it’s gonna be‘nother couple hours.”

“So about that, we’re just following them down?” Nuta quizzed. “They’re going to send in one last large effort to develop a staging point and we’re just going down to watch? I mean, if they get knocked out like the last attempts, we can help recover survivors, but in general, why’re we even here?”

“During the briefing, we all put it together when we heard the foreman mention ‘monsters’,” Wits replied.

“Yeah, we’re jus’ sent on chases,” Pip-is concluded. “That Admiral guy jus’ keyword searched ‘monsters’ or ‘abnormal’ or ‘par’normal’ and sent us to th’first result’in the briefing logs.”

“So he’s just shuffling us around,” Nuta sighed. “It’s probably my fault.”

“Prob’ly,” Pip-is interrupted.

“Right. But seriously, I do feel bad that, not only did my idiocy get us this punishment, but that I could’ve killed all of you,” Nuta continued, voice trailing down with his gaze.

Both Pip-is and Wits turned to face the brooding pilot. What could they say? It was pretty much entirely his fault. He actually could have gotten them all killed. Or at the very least, the first ship in a long time to have to deal with the embarrassment of having to be recovered by the Anlov military.

Even if it worked out in the end, how could they use that knowledge to justify his actions?

“I can forgive you Odeylum. It seems everyone has,” Wits finally broke the lingering silence. “You heard what that thing said. It had planned to kill us anyway, but your determination deterred it. So, it worked out this time. Fortunate really.”

“Almos’ gettin’ us killed ga’ us not killed,” Pip-is added. “But please, don’ do tha’ shit again.”

“I still feeling like jumping out of the airlock,” Nuta mumbled.

“Stop your whining.”

Once more, Pip-is startled. He only ever startled when he was gaming out and someone popped in.

“Come on you,” Geib ordered, gesturing outside the room. “You’re on my watch. And I’ll watch my fists fly into your face. We’re sparring.”

“I guess I’ll lead the way then,” Nuta replied, stepping out of the lab.

“You might think of joining them,” Wits suggested to Pip-is. “It has to be more productive than your game.”

“Gamin’s my exercise. It works m’ brain,” Pip-is rationalized.

“An excuse I’m familiar with,” Wits commented through pops and hisses from her voice synthesizer.

Leaving the computer room, Wits laughed in her thoughts.

“A shame I can’t make him go play outside like when I’d hear that excuse from them,” Wits mused as she descended the stairs to the silent catacombs of the record room.

————————————–

Air filled with smoke and shot. Many factions fired upon each other, none the wiser if they were shooting accurately. What all could be seen was the charred rubble and burning ash of war consuming them. Only the flashes of their weapons lit the world, only temporarily as the dark fog gripped them again. A chorus of discord composed of screaming, explosions, munitions fire, wailing, swears, and shattered bone and armor created the soundtrack for the endless wars.

On this date though, the smoky air parted suddenly. Given clarity of who they were fighting, all of the warring forces froze in their places. This cease fire ended as quickly as it began as each faction cut each other down with newfound accuracy and efficiency.

New visitors walked into the fray, striding right between the hail of cross fire. They were shaped like the others fighting around them, but looked like pillars of soot and dirt.

They didn’t hold the conventional weapons of any of the different forces. Rather their weapons were fused with their own bodies with blades extending where hands would be. Corpse like in gait, their heavy footsteps sunk into the ground, and pulled the caked earth back up with the upswing of their step.

Hollow faces were worn on the heads of these shuffling mounds. Their drooping jaws and empty eyes were locked in a perpetual state of woe.

This woe spread.

All the soldiers of all the factions were set upon by these shades. Rending bladed arms tore throw armor and body with ease. Soldiers opened fire into these unknown hostiles. Munitions punched holes into them, but they quickly filled with the same gritty substance that composed the bodies.

Rumors quickly spread amongst the survivors that the new threat was a secret weapon used by one of their foes. But the official records of these hostiles were slim. They lived in myth and in the nightmares of the soldiers.

————————————–

“You really think that’s what it is?” Geib asked excitedly.

“It sure seems like that. I don’t know… the whole elemental creatures idea strikes me as a possibility,” replied Kazochi with her nose buried in her book.

Kazochi and Geib turned as their doctor started laughing.

“Just what’s so funny?” inquired Kazochi quietly.

An ambiguous smile was Ayabegei’s weapon. It was hard to distinguish if it was the mark of honest joy, or the more common sarcastic grin of dismissal. It was the ultimate illusion.

“You two are really quite funny. The whole range of plausible explanations and you choose that one.”

Kazochi wrinkled her nose a bit before responding, “It’s just an idea I’m entertaining. And what’d you suggest?”

Ayabegei put on her glasses and shifted her legs a bit to alleviate the fatigue from sitting too long.

“It could be easily explained as war fatigue. All the different reports about these elementals always take place during hotly contested battles wherein the participants are already exhibiting high degree of psychological strain. Often those legends were born of conflicting reports from different factions so it is very likely they are all mistaking many aspects into one barely tangible entity. My guess is that it is simply a case of mistaken identity and misattribution,” she carefully explained.

Kazochi sighed, lowering her book.

“Yeah. That makes sense. Besides, many of the stories were spread by the various groups, with their own propaganda reflected within,” she conceded. “If there was any source of these stories, it’s too muddled by the opinions of their reporters. Combined with that observation that it was likely just fatigue…”

Kazochi’s shoulders slumped as reality crushed through fancy.

“We cannot have fantasy be an initial guess. It warps our perspective just as these historical soldiers brought their prejudices to whatever it was they thought they saw,” Ayabegei justifiably lectured.

“We cannot be doing that. We have to remain objective in our analysis, cursory or otherwise,” she continued. “As you may have read on one of our reviews, it cannot be our primary focus to be myth chasing adventurers.”

“She’s completely right, unfortunately, damn it,” Geib relented. “Everything’s unique in their way, so it does us no good to expect a certain kind of special.”

“Perhaps we should go study the weather and atmospheric projections,” Kazochi replied, standing up from her seat and pulling her book to her side. “The Lieutenant is already doing the analysis on the sediment samples.”

As Geib and Kazochi left the lab, Ayabegei sat quietly for a moment staring at the door where they left from. She frowned a little, but then nodded her head soon enough.

Going back to her work, she took some comfort in hoping the ship will be more the atmosphere of studious scientists.

Pulling away from the eyepiece of the microscope, Ayabegei lowered her gaze. With only a slight hesitation, she went back to work again.

————————————–

Hypnotizing through the monitor screen, the world of swollen morose fury scoured itself. Like watching someone go through self-destructive spiral, it was painfully difficult to watch, but impossible to divert your interest. You want so badly for it to end, for things to come about to a peaceful end. How often does that wish go fulfilled? Instead, it lashes and plunges into cyclical despair. The very hand that reaches out to help gets clawed.

Mulling over the screen projections in front of her, Ocura’s sweat coated palms slipped from her wrench. Popping off the bolt as her hand slipped past, the wrench caught Ocura in the side of her head.

Harmonizing with the clattering of tools traveling downward through the scaffolding of the hangar bay, Ocura swore and cussed as she rubbed her wounded head.

“Trying to read here,” Rio announced.

Turning to the uppermost catwalk, Ocura spotted Rio sitting on the edge, dangling her legs over the side.

“Get down here and help me with these!” Ocura shouted.

“Nope,” Rio chirped, swinging her legs and turning pages in a book she held in her lap.

“The hell you say?!” Ocura snapped, stomping her foot down, rattling the catwalk she stood on.

Continuing to look through her book, Rio showed a rare ease.

“You aren’t even doing anything. You’re just tightening bolts that are already tightened,” Rio noted. “You’re just going to break something. Teliar would tell you that.”

“Have you gotten any messages from him?” Ocura asked suddenly.

“That’s what’s wrong with you,” Rio chimed. “You’re just doing mindless work because you keep thinking about him.”

“You should too! He’s your brother!” Ocura shouted back.

“Worrying ain’t going to do him much good. Or anyone,” Rio snapped. “I can just sit here pissing myself, or I can do whatever it is I can do. And since no one needs me, I want to read this.”

Looking around the hangar, Ocura noted the medley of bolts she had tightened absent mindedly. She closed the monitor projection and it faded away. Standing and stretching, Ocura leaned back against the railing of her catwalk and ruffled the feathers on her head.

“You alright?” Rio asked quietly.

“Yeah, I hate sitting around and waiting,” Ocura replied. “It was only supposed to be two hours. We’re going on three waiting for that construction armada.”

“I meant your head,” Rio clarified.

“Oh,” Ocura toned. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Craning her head to look up to her sister, Ocura tilted her head slightly.

Rio’s legs were kicking, and she was even smiling slightly.

“What’re you reading?” Ocura asked.

“I was in the learning pods, but I got pissed that there’s nothing on Senguins. So I asked La-Naraz-“

“I hope you apologized to her for last time,” Ocura interrupted.

“I did. I did,” Rio snarled. “Anyway, she told me that entire histories weren’t available, so she pointed me to Huhoff-Ye, who pawned me off to Edesium. She had plenty of books on them available. And all species, but I don’t care about them.”

“Wait a second,” Ocura paused. “Where’s she storing all these books? We only get so much space allowed for our personal stuff.”

“She has this thing that rapidly prints paper books using ones she’s stored digitally. She recycles them by having the ink wash out or whatever. I wasn’t really paying attention,” Rio explained. “She was going on about how real books are so much better than digital and so on. I was tuning that all out.”

“You’re so charming,” Ocura retorted.

“I don’t have to be,” Rio added. “This book even says so. Senguins are solitary, independent, and distant by nature. I’ve been that way all along. I’ve never known much of how Senguins are and now I learn I’ve been like one all along. And Fire-Wings are even more supreme, the most supreme of all the Senguins. We don’t have to care about the feelings of others. And they’ll respect us for it, not that we need their respect.”

Ocura’s feathers rustled slightly.

Closing her book, Rio turned to look down on her sister.

“You’re holding Teliar back by being like this,” Rio chastised. “Smothering us is wrong. Fire-Wings are supposed to burn brighter than the sun. You should know that too, or don’t you know anything about who we are? Being stuck on Midin is to blame. Still, why aren’t you reading these books too?”

Feathers rustling again, Ocura scowled up at her sister.

“You’re learning what you want to learn,” Ocura chided.

“I mean, you’re just looking for the OK to be a jerk,” Ocura clarified.

Opening her book back up, Rio shook her head dismissively.

“You definitely need to be reading this,” Rio scoffed. “You’re not like you should be.”

Waving a disgusted wave at Rio, Ocura slid down the sides of the ladder off the catwalk.

Leaving the hangar, Ocura’s feathers again shook. It was so hard for her to believe that the sickly little child she knew had become such a caustic person. Ocura wanted to just beat her sister senseless, but senselessness was already there.

She feared for what things Rio would learn from her pursuit.

————————————–

“Chief Engineer, how may I help you?”

Engineer Hannory stopped in her tracks. It always startled her how Captain Melina could identify her crew by their footsteps. Resuming, Hannory stepped up next to the Captain’s chair.

“Captain Melina, I wanted to confirm that we aren’t to deploy assistance. We have plenty of support craft available for sortie and we should be able to fit them with specific role modifications within minutes—“

“We have our orders,” Captain Melina interrupted. “I shouldn’t have to remind anyone of this. We’re just to monitor the Cardboard Box and the closest we’re getting is low orbit.”

Standing up, Captain Melina straightened her uniform in a few swift swipes, and then sat back down with all of the ordered grace of a seasoned commander.

“We’re already closer than we were originally planned to be,” she continued. “For this entire trial period, we were only supposed to be outside of the galaxy that the Cardboard Box operated in. Now we must shadow them completely.”

“It seems like a waste,” Hannory commented.

“It’s an immense waste,” Melina corrected. “While at the galaxy edge, we could at least be mobilized to respond to other high concerns. Now this entire cruiser, its equipment, and the hundreds under my command are just baby-sitting.”

“I’d rather us help the terraforming effort, but we’re ordered not to. No, we’ve devoted all of our resources to just watching,” she continued with growing tension.

“We’ll be able to help in the recovery effort if the terraforming fleet comes under attack, yes?” Hannory inquired.

“Yes,” Melina quickly replied. “Return to your post now.”

Without a witness present, Melina was now free to dig her fingers into the armrest of her seat.

Beyond her ship, consuming a large portion of the surrounding monitors was the moribund planet of Waake. Something about the swirling vortexes of drab shades let loose the trickles of discontent.

“What’s command thinking?” Melina grumbled internally.

“They don’t need an entire cruiser just sitting here? Can’t they get a more suitably sized ship? There are twice as many people on my ship’s bridge than in that entire ship. Why not just send an entire fleet?! I’m really hating this ‘Novelties Within’ program. It’s just sitting around and waiting for these long stretches!”

Reflecting in her brown eyes, the planet of Waake mocked her with its bland color. Greyness was in store for her.

“Rooting around in the dirt might be fun for them, but I’m meant for grander goals. I have shit to do! If they’d just quit screwing up! If they’d just be good enough to serve on their own! If command wasn’t so wasteful!”

“I should command the ship to attack and make this planet the Cardboard Box’s grave!”

Ripping through the plastic coating of the armrest, Captain Melina’s fingers stopped against the hard shell inside.

Pulling her fingers out, she saw her nails were dented with one even shattered down the middle.

Quickly scanning around the bridge, the Captain was relieved no one saw the mark on her resolute wall of attitude.

As she quickly straightened herself in her seat, she rest her damaged hand in her lap with the nails facing up.

A shudder trickled through the Captain. Fortunately, she hid it from her crew.

“What was that?!” her inner monologue yelled. “What’s wrong with me? Why was I even thinking that?”

Starring down into the fragments of nail and the skin underneath, a profound regret dumped upon her.

“How could I even think that?”

Looking up to the surrounding monitors, her eyes returned to the dilapidated sphere. 

She had never been so furious before, nor so entertaining of horrible ideas. What was it about this mission, or maybe this location, that made those vents open?

————————————–

Lights in the silent hall crackled and dimmed. Only by the strain of the ear did one hear the distant echoes of activity. Normally the interior could be illuminated or at least give a change of pace with live image feeds of the surrounding area. However, the crew had gotten tired of seeing the outside. One could only see the world weep and rage for its own past for so long.

“Wake up.”

Dogot bolted upright from his seat on the floor of the hall, laughing nervously. Suge didn’t need to say anything; his bemused face demanded an explanation from the loafing communications officer.

“I was… feeling so tired. More tired than I had in a long time,” Dogot explained in a disorganized mess. “I think I’m fine now. I was just watching the feed from outside and I just got so lethargic…”

Wanting to explain more, Dogot was silent and small in the presence of Suge’s unwavering gaze.

“We’re heading out soon,” Suge finally declared quietly. “You’re requested on the bridge.”

Even in the empty hall begging to echo the slightest sound, Suge’s voice didn’t bounce at all, but it always pierced.

Pausing as the quiet soldier passed by, Dogot hesitated before following behind towards the bridge.

Walking in silence save their slight steps, Dogot stared at the back of Suge’s head intently. Suge’s quills shook slightly and he turned.

“I can feel your breathing increasing. Is there something wrong?” Suge asked calmly.

Dogot shook his head a couple of times, “No no. Nothing at all.”

Entering the crowded bridge, the two took their stations.

Almost hopping into his station, Dogot started up his headset and communications system, forming first as a mist around his head and solidifying into a semi solid hologram.

“Hello there friends!” a familiar cheerful voice rang over the comm.

“You’re late,” Dogot replied.

“Sorry about that, but it’s your own fault,” the foreman replied with a laugh. “That boy you left is quite the expert. Helped us refit our rig craft to better filter all of that crap in the air. And better armor and shielding power routing.”

“We’ll try to get less skilled people aboard,” Kazochi joked. “He’s aboard one of your ships, yes?”

“Yes, my ship. I want to oversee this deployment personally. Speaking of ‘overseeing’, too bad your big friend, that cruiser, can’t help us any,” the foreman continued as large shutters opened on the lower part of the orbital station nearby.

“It’s only to help fish you guys out if you get smacked down, so let’s hope they won’t have to move,” Geib replied.

“Fair enough,” the foreman chuckled as the small flotilla of ships departed from the station and roared into the similarly roaring sky.

“We’ll have to move quick,” Au-Ju-Gen Jik resumed. “No telling when the next passive-aggressive, but mostly aggressive, storm will show up next.”

“Permission to follow the group?” Nuta called over from the pilot’s station. “Permission granted,” Ayabegei replied.

————————————–

Silhouettes of each ship flickered through the blindness. They sent signals of their physical position through to the HUDs of the others. A haunting darkness with glowing phantasms was illustrated across the bridge’s monitors aboard the Cardboard Box.

Drifting through the flurry, every sound was masked by the shrieking howls of the world outside. Loud, outdated engines lost the screaming match with the storms of Waake.

Relenting finally, the armada coasted into a spacious clearing.

Clearing is misleading. Everyone was still buffeted by the psychopathic winds and molten hail, but they could see each other, albeit roughly.

Below, surprisingly only a few kilometers down, was a pulsing and coiling strip of swamp. In a clear marked border, the ocean bubbled up at the edges of scarred land. Beyond the calmer skies, loomed the shade of endless tempests. Their stage was a murky dump while the curtains of the stage flanked them. 

Armada halting in a hover a few hundred meters above the semi-solid surface, the handful of larger ships opened their own hangar bays. A nest kicked over, dozens of tiny support craft darted out. Of all different sizes, the armada grew out from itself.

Armored skirts with tightly messed openings covered the certain sections of each craft. Each skirt looked different from each other and cobbled out of various pieces of material.

“I bet that’s your brother’s work,” Mahie commented to Ocura nearby.

“It sure is,” she replied. “Any chance he’s on any of those smaller ones?”

“No,” Ayabegei answered quickly. “I gave specific orders he stay on the foreman’s headmaster ship, and not do a deployed sortie.”

Ocura took some relief in this news, as she watched the smaller craft be slapped around by the torrents. Unhindered by the hostile winds were the larger ships, especially the headmaster ship.

A group of big ships floated down amongst the swarm, only a few meters above the acidic swamplands. Deploying from their sides, large metal cylinders folded upright. It could’ve been easy to mistake the giant poles as part of the ships themselves until they pointed the tips of these spikes towards the ground.

Rods with pointed tips stood threateningly over the boiling surface below as other ships flew aside. Hatches opened along their wide sides, exposing cylinder segments of the same width, but not pointed.

Slowly the spikes were pressed down into the yielding mess. Hissing, the acid welcomed the intruding piles the only way it could. Being composed of tightly woven micro-molecular fiber plastics, the acid slapped helplessly at the sides of the poles.

Support craft picked up pieces of cylinder from the opened ships and quickly flew them to the lowering spikes. Rapidly bolting them to the tops of the spikes, the support craft helped make the towering spikes more so.

This precision and speed of the smaller craft in keeping the descending piles far above the surface wasn’t unlike the quick scurrying of insects or other group species. Each craft stopped its task as the poles slowed in their descent to a stop.

On the ships that lowered the cylinders, a faint shimmer floated around sets of parallel magnetic rails that gripped the cylinders.

An ensuing sound wasn’t what stood out, but rather the absence of the typical sounds. Commanding the attention of all those around, and even the planet itself, a shredding silence deafened the howling typhoons as the spikes punched downward with a jarring shock.

Piercing into the bedrock below, the swamp released rolling tsunamis from each impact point. Cresting well over a few kilometers into the air, the rings of waves licked at the bottoms of many ships in the armada.

In this brief respite of sound and discord, the waves rippled out like the rings the emanated from thrown stones. They weren’t nearly as minute in size as the ripples of a lake, but, somehow, were still serene in some strange way.

Before the roiling waves even settled, the flotilla was back to work. Ships of varying sizes each descended upon the still growing pegs with the same vigilance as scavengers on dying carrion.

Quickly unfolding platforms onto the pegs, large broad ships deployed the staging ground for an ocean rig. Brushing only a few meters apart, other ships quickly flew past other retreating ships, intent to deploy their devices.

Spreading like maggots on an open wound of a dying corpse, the armada covered the scab in activity. Shield generators and emitters were quickly stacked on the platforms. Robotic arms, construction drones, and even the gnat-like support vehicles rushed to set up the generators and emitters. Not being composed of the same expensive materials as the piles, the rain carved rapid shallow cuts into the generators before they could emit their havens.

Slicing through the storm, a brilliant light blue glow shaped a sphere of protection around one of the platforms. Its staunch defiance stopped the corrosive world as an oasis in the wasteland. Finally, a solid stepping-stone in the sinking quagmire was established. This possibly final sortie of the terraforming project might be the success they needed.

Darkening storms in the far distance rumbled loudly.

————————————–

Chatter over the comm was constant as every ship issued orders, instructions, and the occasional vituperating to each other.

Pestilence metaphor continued, the crew of the Cardboard Box watched the terraforming fleet rapidly composed a sizable ocean rig as swarming scavengers consumed a freshly dead body. It was if you were watching a time-lapse video, but in actual speed. Videos that show population growth spreading out from a point over years had nothing on the speed this swarm of ships and their constructions.

All watched the feeds, but nearly all watched while propping their heads up with their arms. Sagging eyelids graced the faces of many crew members. Those not bored into lethargy were growing restless and aggravated.

Sitting.

Waiting.

Watching.

Spinning a pen around her thumb, Ayabegei spun it with growing tempo.

Quills twitching, Suge could feel the communication officer’s breath increasing.

Upper back heating from tension, Geib slouched backward into his seat.

Raking claws of boredom dug deep.

“Ok, I’m sayin’ it,” Pip-is opened over the ship’s comm. “How’ere they havin’ problems before? Looks’like they’re havin’ no problems’at all.”

Clattering across the floor of the bridge, Ayabegei’s pen bounced.

Annoyed sighs echoed amongst many aboard the ship, even though each was hoping for some kind of stimulation.

“Terraforming is expensive and difficult at the very start usually,” Cisimi explained, still with her cheerful voice she seldom lost.

“Once the ground work is established, it becomes easier as you go,” Cisimi continued. “Usually.”

“So why didn’ they work this’hard on the firs’ trips down?” Pip-is continued, providing activity that was wished for, but not appreciated now that it was here.

“They wanted to space out their available resources,” Cisimi clarified. “This fleet is essentially the remainder of their resources, and their vigor mirrors that desperation.”

“Then how’ll they keep goin’? They won’ave enough stuff to terr’form the rest o’the planet,” Pip-is continued interrogating.

“That was covered during the briefing,” Suge snapped with a louder whisper than usual. “If this deployment is successful, Anlov Home will divert more materials and equipment for the mission. I highly advise you to pay more attention during briefing.”

With a deep inhalation, he continued.

“From now on, for each question that’s already been answered, you earn two hours of intense physical training,” Suge declared.

“Junior Lieutenant La-Naraz,” Ayabegei spoke up. “That mega storm that just formed; estimated time of arrival?”

“From the few minutes it’s been around, I can’t be certain of its route and rate,” Cisimi replied over the comm. “However, based on the atmospheric data so far, I’d estimate it should arrive in approximately forty-eight minutes.”

“Ship crew,” Ayabegei ordered over the comm. “Everyone on ease for the next thirty minutes. Afterwards, report to your stations promptly and hopefully we will all have a better state of mind.”

Relieved from their stations, each person hoped to relieve the pressure this world dragged on them.

Its repetitive gales, burning winds, and endless blandness wore on any soul and mind. Just as it wailed on itself, it brought everyone with it.

————————————–

“Such excellent progress!”

Cheering in excitement unbound, Foreman Au-Ju-Gen Jik slapped the side of Teliar’s power legs.

“I owe it to you boy. I’m sorry. Not boy,” Jik rambled. “But nonetheless, you’ve helped us immensely.”

Shrugging, Teliar closed his notebook full of schematics and designs.

“I just did what you guys would’ve figured out if you had time,” Teliar humbly replied. “Maybe.”

“Which isn’t a resource we have an abundance of,” Jik replied. “We barely have anything. My company dug these relics up from their warehouse and said ‘here, use these clunkers.’”

Leaving little time to reply between the foreman’s statements, Teliar learned quickly to just wait until after all the comments ended before speaking up.

“Is it why you were assigned to that clunker? To make that old thing function as well as newer ones?” the foreman asked.

“My sisters and I did what we could,” Teliar answered carefully, remaining vague.

Saving from further unbalanced conversations, the console nearby rang with an incoming call.

A strong voice sounded through the comm.

“Foreman, we have an update on that super storm,” the voice announced.

“What is it Manager Tev?” Jik answered, pulling a chair up to the console.

“It should be entering our cleared area within minutes,” Tev reported.

“Understood. ‘All units!’” the foreman called over the comm to each ship in the fleet. “Super storm is now here. All units, take cover. Dock with your source ships or take cover in the shielded areas. Shielded areas, continue assigned construction projects.”

Birds scattering to the sky due to the sound of a gunshot, all of the ships instantly ceased their tasks and darted through the air towards the larger docking ships and to the safety of the hangars. Each ship could withstand the attacks of Waake of only so much intensity. Without larger generators and their output, Waake’s weather would cut through the shields of smaller ships. Furthermore, their anti-physics shielding could be over powered, putting the ships at the mercy of merciless winds.

Below, past the spheres of shielding, crews were still at work within. On foot, technicians and engineers were quickly setting up generators and small reactors to boost the power of the shields.

Shutters of numerous ships closed right as the full fury of the storm crashed into the fleet. Oceans formed instantly as sweeping waves, fueled by endless downpour, barreled towards the exposed swamp.

Fearsome winds and their airborne particles blasted into the ships and platforms. Bright lights flickered in the sheet of darkness as shields repelled the barrage. Beacons of light in a hostile world. If only the planet could understand what was being attempted, it would perhaps calm itself. As you can see, anthropomorphizing the planet was easy to do. Something so easy to do is try to ascribe a story or a personality to those that have none. It’s what one does to try to make some sense of the senseless.

Ocean levels unleashed wave after wave of dark, tarry mess into the platforms. Cutting into the spires holding the platforms up, the waves could find no purchase. Frustrated, the waters rose and bounced harmlessly around the energy shielding. Bending around the densely packed shield, an ocean enveloped the shielded bubbles, unable to penetrate, and instead giving the ocean a strange warp.

Inside the shield, the multitude of workers had waves towering over them, but weren’t swept away. Standing on the rigs, your heart seized each time you saw the cresting giants roar towards you. Each time, you saw yourself in the shadow of the violent sea, you thought this one, this time, you were going to die. This time, the shields would fail, and your screams would be brief before your mouth, your lungs, and your life was consumed by the ghastly fluid. Only when you saw the waters part at the glowing walls did your heart resume its rhythm. Each time, you considered your mortality, and each time, you took temporary relief it wasn’t this time.

Frustration.

You could feel it!

In sweeping blur, the beacons in the dark storm quickly faded from the visual screens of the armada. Only by switching to the other spectrums of vision could the faint outlines of the platforms be seen. Drop by drop, the darkness washed over the globes. It buried these light-bulbs with every bit the wrath of the storm had in its wings, entombing them in soot and ash.

Stomping feet thrown by the storm’s tantrum battered the fleet.

Reports flooded through the comms that their shields were weakening from the intense attack of the typhoon.

As the young Senguin advised the ships on how to maximize their shield outputs, the foreman stared, transfixed, on the world of death.

Boots of countless armies had grinded the world to dust. Hatred from countless conflicts scorched the sky. Endless use of biological and radioactive weapons had made a toxic stew that purged life.

Though he wasn’t of Bind that acted like shamans, Jik could almost feel the heartbeat in the storm. A lagging, labored heartbeat. A world so content to die.

“Maybe, just maybe,” Jik thought to himself. “Maybe we should just blow this planet up and put it out of its misery.”

“Comms are breaking up,” Teliar announced, snapping Jik out of his stupor. “And visual systems are getting even blurrier.”

“Yes. Another reminder of our funding shortcomings,” Jik replied. “With all of the pure shit the inhabitants put in the air, communications and visual equipment used by these older units get muffled. Your ship is probably the only one that has any idea what’s going on.”

“The darkness is coating us. All we can do is wait again. Wait and hope as hard as we can.”

Waiting amidst helplessness again.

————————————–

Heated air shot from the rupture. Looking up at the split in the shield generator, Engineer Sambson lowered his face mask back down over his face, eyes scanning for anyone noticing. It was a good thing it ruptured up there instead of right in front of him.

He jumped out of his skin as he heard his supervisor yell his name nearby.

“Yes Super?!” Sambson yelled back as he scrambled to his feet.

“Patch that!” Supervisor Sodeyum hollered, poking her head around the corner and pointing to the new opening with hot air blasting forth.

“Yes Super,” Sambson acknowledged, hoping on the mobile lift nearby.

Lifting towards the opening, Sambson grumbled under his breath.

“Oh, that opening?” he mumbled to himself. “I don’t know; I like that one. I’m going to let it go and get us all killed.”

Lifting to the side of the hole, Sambson lifted up a large panel from his kit with his heavy gloved hands. With his shoulder, he pushed his comm headset up to his ear.

“Sambson, platform two. I’m needing some coolant pumped into the number three shield generator,” he reported over the pops and hisses of him welding the panel over the breach.

“You rang?” a voice shouted from below, almost causing the jumpy engineer above to drop his torch.

Hauling a cart behind him, Engineer E’Kyoju rushed up to the shield generator.

“About time you got back,” Sambson shouted as he went back to work.

“I was putting this together,” E’Kyoju replied, pulling a large modified pump hook-up off his cart.

“That tech kid designed it, but we couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was saying through the comms,” he continued. “So he had to route his signal through the new ship, and I was instructed on how to slap this thing together.”

“So they can get comms out clearly?” Sambson yelled down as he finished patching the gap.

“Not quite,” E’Kyoju replied, hooking up a set of tubes to the new pumping hook-up.

With its multiple openings and spiraling spouts, this new piece would allow coolant fluids and the other necessary fluids to all be pumped in more efficiently.

“It still sounds like they’re speaking with farts, but at least you can understand it some,” he explained.

Lowering the lift back down, Sambson raised his face mask and wiped the pouring sweat from his face. Caked grime rubbed off his gloves and onto his forehead.

With a chime, the pumps stopped, and Sambson assisted his friend in unhooking everything and pilling it back onto the cart.

“Cheers friend,” E’Kyoju thanked. “Gotta run to emitter four. Their triangular shields are dying.”

“Both of you!” Supervisor Sodeyum called from the bend in the trenches between generators.

“Get to emitter four! Several of their shield panels are going critical.”

She wasn’t even done delivering her order and already the two had thrown Sambson’s tools onto the cart and were rushing in the direction of the failing emitter.

Squeaking wheels of the rushed cart accented the sounds of constant yelling, tools grinding, and heavy boots on heavier floors.

Lighting their shadows was the heavenly glow above. Shielding the horrific elements, inky darkness coated just past the shield. There was the occasional flicker from one of the shield panels as the world outside laid siege to them.

Washing over the panels was a sight similar to bringing your vehicle into an automated wash. You gaze up into the bottom of an ever flowing pool. In a busy life, watching the water roll down the other side of your window could be the only brief relaxation you get.

Certainly not the case here. This was more like your vehicle crashing into a lake. The water pushes at your window, and you fill with dread for when the window finally gives.

E’Kyoju and Sambson would do what they could to lessen that dread as much as they possibly could. Barreling into the large chamber with the central monolith of the emitter, they pulled their tools and equipment from their cart while it was still rolling.

Belching in distress, the emitter poured smoke and sparks into the hot air. Technicians patched holes and repaired failing power-lines as quickly as they could. E’Kyoju dragged his pumps over to the valves, and started pumping coolants through the custom rigging Teliar had designed. Meanwhile, Sambson hopped into an open lift and quickly scaled the side of the obelisk shaped emitter. Stopping directly below the emission beams, Sambson could feel the smoldering heat right above his head. Turning away from the emitter, Sambson lifted his mask briefly to wipe away the gushing sweat on his face, and again succeeded in getting more dank grime on his head.

His eyes teared up as smoke and heat accosted them. Slipping his mask on, the internal goggles sealed around his eyes, keeping the omnipresent aerial afflictions at bay.

Opening a panel on the emitter, a cushion of scalding air rushed out. Bouncing off his heavy clothing, it still cooked him slightly. It didn’t put off nearly the temperature that lingered above him.

Beams shooting from the tips of the emitter fanned out upwards into the glowing ceiling. Each beam lead up and shaped into flat geometric shapes that interlocked with each other. A collage of connected flat geometric shapes created the faux sphere the shield resembled.

Creating a shield of parts had its advantages over the standard solid shields typically used. Usually a ship either needed its own shields to get through, have the defending shield shut down even momentarily to let it through, or pass through  layers of shielding like the locks of a canal.

With a polygon shield, just certain faces could be momentarily shut down, with various size openings for any size object or ship.

As with all things, there were drawbacks. Composing a shield of such high density was draining enough. Composing a bubble using panels of this shielding was enormously taxing on energy systems. Every single power source was being dumped right into the generators and emitters, which is more or less the only course of action given their limited resources.

Closing the panel on the obelisk, Sambson followed the glow of its beams leading to solid walls of energy.

Satisfied, he reached for the lift controls, but a flicker in his eye stopped him in his tracks.

Faint shadows wrapped around outside the walls of energy.

Squinting, the engineer leaned forward and upward to try and get a view through the glistening walls.

Twisted and gnarled, an appendage slammed into the shield.

Falling back on the hard floor of the lift, Sambson’s arms, coursing with fear, scrambled against the surface. Desperate to find a solid hold to pull himself back up, his skittering hands knocked several tools off the lift. 

Bracing against the rail behind him, the engineer panicked, searching for what he was beyond the shield.

“The hell’s wrong with you?!” came a gravelly voice from below.

“You almost hit me with that!” Engineer Syivi continued, raising her lift near Sambson’s.

Noticing he was frantically searching about, Syivi’s gaze traced her colleague’s.

“What is it?” she asked, unsure what she was searching for.

No answer, just Sambson’s continued duress.

“Sambson!” Syivi hollered, pulling him from his trance.

“There’s…there was something out there,” the frightened engineer muttered.

“No kidding?” Syivi mocked as she threw a few of his dropped tools over at him. “There’s that storm that’s trying to kill us! Get back to work!”

Shaking his head of the clutter, Sambson moved his lift towards the next section in need of repairs. Sneaking a peak back up, he watched the flooding torrents splash against the shields above.

Tricks of the mind. Seeing what wasn’t there only in the random patterns of swirls. Fists of a natural pugilist continued to pummel the shields.

————————————–

“Ready the piping! Get the shielding active!” the foreman yelled over the orchestra of machinery sounds.

Crews finished hooking up long, thick cables to some of the smaller single person support craft. As the pilots of each started up the ships, they lifted, hovering in the air. Normally these ships, as many ships using anti-physics, were essentially noiseless. With the extra generators, shielding emitters, and other modifications, they were anything but noiseless.

“I tell you what,” the foreman cheerfully opened to the borrowed technician working on finishing another emitter. “You might be too clever for your own good.”

“Not really,” Teliar retorted, growing tired of the foreman’s constant admirations. “This is all stuff done automatically for you if you’re using newer equipment. Not sure why you didn’t just do this all manually.”

Leaning back up with his powered legs, Teliar waved over the crew and its powered lift to take the ship with its new mods over towards the bay doors.

“That should be the last one. Let’s get going,” Teliar stated with an exasperated breath.

Taking the large lifts back out of the ship’s enormous hangar, Teliar and Jik heading back to the staging deck to monitor this next idea in action.

“Helm, take us over the four platforms. Equal distance between us and any of them,” the foreman ordered as he took his seat at the command chair.

“Affirmative,” the pilot dryly acknowledged as he pressed into the controls.

Teliar had to simply assume they were moving. From the screens around the bridge and the staging deck, the storm offered no features to convey movement. Only by watching the navigation station’s blurry holographic projections of the ship edging closer to the outlines of the platforms did he get any sense of their position. Even switching between vision modes improved the visibility from looking through chocolate milk to looking through regular milk. So filled was the sky with all manner of garbage, that only through advanced laser guiding by the navigation team could any sibilance of vision be granted.

“Flotilla, organize on my position.”

“Routing fleet,” ordered Jik over the comm. “Launch when ready. Shielding, began coating transfer.”

With acknowledgements sounding from the comm, the ship’s bays opened slowly. Watching the depiction of the ship and the platforms below, the members of the bridge crew watched as wiggling tendrils swam out from the ship.

A team around the projection communicated directions to the single occupant crafts that flew blindly through the super storm.

At the controls of one of the craft, Pilot Ensign Anhelia Odoroki flew cautiously through the screaming sky. She swam through an impossibly dark abyss with no lights or frame of reference. She had to just hope her seeing eyes above didn’t throw her right into the shielding.

“Stop now!” the navigator ordered.

Pulling back on the throttle, she could swear she felt the custom attachments wobble. If that shield relay snapped off, her ship would be exposed to elements her own shields would be helpless against.

“Stopped,” Odoroki reported over the comm line back to the main ship.

Refreshingly clear, these direct comm lines carried the voice of a relieved navigator.

“You’re just about to collide with the shielding. Couldn’t you see it?” the voice sighed in relief.

Looking around the darkness, Odoroki strained her eyes to see anything standing out from the vast backdrop of colorlessness.

“I don’t see anything,” Odoroki reported.

“Huh? How’s that possible?” the navigator asked aloud. “The shield should be bright enough to see even through this muck.”

Not a single light besides the large flood lights on her ship could be seen in the swath of grey. Even with their radiance, she couldn’t see even a meter ahead of her.

“Oh, right, I actually forgot to tell you,” the voice stumbled. “We patched through some of our vision modes to your ship. See if you can get a visual with those.”

“That would’ve been excellent to know,” the Pilot Ensign commented as she switched through vision modes not previously available.

Switching between spectrums that could see squat and those that could see nothing, Odoroki tried to discern any sign of the shielded dome that was apparently right in front of her.

With the toggle of another switch, a vision mode showed a dark mass directly to her left front. It formed a geometric shape, reaching down into the increasingly unclear distance.

“I see it now,” the Pilot Ensign reported.

She began preparations to emit a shield around her ship that would match the size and shape of one of the shield panels. When it was up, one of the panels on the sphere would go down right as she would make contact, so there would be no gap through which debris could enter.

As she passed the switches that effected the vision modes, she stopped on one in particular. Looking at its description, and back to the screen, she quickly put the pieces together.

“Something odd,” she started over the comm. “I’m using scope 5-C, but the geometric shield isn’t orange like it should be. Instead it’s a dark brown color.”

On the other end, there was distant chatter and whispers that sounded like they were speaking with a hand over the mouthpiece.

“Hello? Something I should know about?” Odoroki asked loudly over the comm.

“Yes, we’re getting the same reports from the other ships. Standby,” a more authoritative voice sounded.

Shrugging, Anhelia Odoroki tried to continue setting up the geometric shielding and energy relays, but couldn’t pull her eyes away from the brown shape.

The more she stared, the more she saw what couldn’t be.

Leeches, writhing and devouring, were coating a surface so completely that they became a surface layer. A living, pulsing mass vulgarly twitched and slithered.

A heavy gale blew through. Patches of whatever was stuck to the shield whisked away towards her ship.  Splashing off the shields, the slathering of oily grime smeared and slid away. As it peeled off her ship’s shields, Pilot Ensign Odoroki saw it vanish quickly into the howling silence.

Looking back to the geometric shield, Odoroki witnessed the exposed patch of pulsing shielding be retaken quickly by the sediments tossed about by the storm.

Going back to her work, Anhelia Odoroki dismissed what she thought she saw. Staring at anything long enough had strange results on one’s perception.

Stories of people sitting in the dark and staring at a mirror only to see a ghoulish figure had some basis in reality. Eyes and their processing structures in the brain got fatigued when presented with no change in stimuli.

Maybe, your brain and eyes were just as susceptible to boredom as yourself and reached for any chance to find something to stand out from the bland view.

————————————–

A constellation of luminescence strobe brightly on the screen. 

“Isn’t that a pretty sight?” Dogot asked with delight.

“Why they hadn’t implemented this before, I’ve no idea,” Cisimi commented, switching between vision modes.

What was once a collection of dull brown blobs refined into an orange silhouette. This silhouette was a moving beast resembling a cephalopod sea creature. Its head grew larger as more and more of the larger ships huddled together in a collection of shared energy. Flowing in the stormy winds, the beast’s long tails lead right into large sphere shaped feet.

A communal sharing of energy routing, heat sinking, and resource pumps created a nigh invincible structure to stand vigilantly against the vengeful planet.

“It looks like we will be done soon,” Ayabegei announced. “They just needed to borrow one of our prodigies to put their efforts back into shape.”

Sitting up from a drooped position, a goofy face crossed the Cardboard Box’s commander.

“What’s this?” Geib started shrewdly. “We have ‘prodigies’ aboard? I thought they didn’t meet your expectations.”

“On the subject of expectations, I guess it is outrageous for me to expect you to be less annoying,” Ayabegei scowled.

“Too bad there are no bizarre creatures or supernatural forces after all. You must be devastated,” she continued.

Her ire was largely understandable. Every time her idiot crewmate could, he would spout some nonsense just to get a rise out of her. It could be for absolutely nothing, and yet still he would somehow find the need to be a pain.

“Every report of possible encounters has been cleared up with the improved communications given by those umbilicals,” Dogot commented, unknowingly giving Geib some respite from his comeuppance.

“Pilot, approach the headmaster ship. Await further orders,” Ayabegei ordered.

“Specialist Ocura Reezmin and Junior Lieutenant Edesium, report to the main airlock,” she called over the comm. “When we dock, you will go over to retrieve Specialist Teliar Reezmin.”

Edging towards the huddled armada, the Cardboard Box moved slowly even though the visibility of the ship outlines had drastically improved.

Visibility improved again. Incredibly.

Tightening the nozzle above, the storm ended its downpour. In a falling ceiling of fluid, an entire sky fell past the ships. Below, the ocean grew considerably less ‘below’. 

Below the tarry ocean, not even the faintest light of the submerged platforms pierced the veil. Reaching into the dreadful sea, the umbilicals still proved the lifelines for the submerged to survive.

For once, the world fell silent. Unceasing torrents, finally free of their pent rage, now rolled into a silent onyx sea. Above, the sun shone through the grey filter of lingering clouds, but finally enough light was able to pass through that you could see to the edge of the world in the empty sky.

While the world fell silent, so too did its visitors. Communications between all the ships, platforms, and crews ended. Only the hissing silence of an unoccupied comm was present across all ears.

Slowly the chattering of animals returned to this forest. Comms slowly built up with questions upon questions to each other. Meteorologists aboard some of the ships were dumbfounded, and provided little answers against the firestorm of questions.

Even in orbit, the crew aboard the Kriovitl wondered why a large swath of the storm just disappeared.

“This will make things easier now,” Dogot finally commented, looking around the empty and fairly well-lit expanse.

“Those shields’ll hold up an’ be impen’trable even unde’water?” Pip-is asked over the comm.

“Absolutely,” Cisimi answered cheerfully. “In fact, the shields should be even more stable since the ocean isn’t thrashing about like the storm was.”

While delight, mixed with confusion sounded about, slowly, beneath the perceptual threshold, the ocean lowered in level.

A small hill bubbled up away from the cluster of ships and its lifelines to the dome below.

Silence filled everyone on the planet once again as the ocean quickly receded into this growing mountain of slime. Sucking upward into an ever growing tower, the sludge gave the domes a new view at the planet’s growing wart.

Unfolding like a coiled digit, a mountain of Waake’s burning tears now loomed over the armada. Denser balls of soil and mass dripped from this hook and splashed right into the base of the expanding pile.

Everyone watched into the sky as the hooked spire grew coiling protrusions from its sides that reached out to circle the fleet.

“Shields! Shields up in power!” the foreman screamed over the comm. “Link all shields!”

Jik’s screaming orders were eclipsed by the roar.

Gapping, dripping jaws snapped open from the face of the hook, spewing forth the fury of the planet’s storms. Sinking into its face, empty sockets of dark abyss glared at the pests on its surface.

Its jaw opened so far, howling in its endless rage, that it fell off the body though it were a rotting corpse. Splashing at the creature’s feet, the jaw melted back into its body, while a new jaw slid out from the body to continue its deafening shriek.

Chunks of ice, soil, rock, ice, and burning acid shot from the beast’s mouth like semi-chewed crackers. Just as offensive as launched food, these bits of a broken world blasted into the shields of the armada.

With the painful ringing in their ears still afflicting them, the crew of each ship in the armada rushed back into action, taking control of their ships.

Shields burning with even greater intensity, the ships clustered together.

Clustering together also was the bones of the world around the right arm of the monster. Sucked up into the lifting arm, even pieces of the bedrock swirled around in a spinning amalgam. Raising to blot out the already fogged sun, the raised fist of the world came crashing down.

A bright flash surged from the armada’s linked shields as the sound of a titanic pound boomed through the air. Both senses beguiled, everyone watched as the crashing fist slid off the sphere-like linked shield of the ships. Plummeting to the ground, this appendage plowed into the small swamp below. Its impact sent waves of soft, running fluid pluming into the air.

From these waves formed hundreds of smaller humanoid shapes, flying through the air and onto the tops of the geometric shields around the platforms.

With savage strikes from these creatures, the shielded umbilicals were struck with scythe-like arms. Thankfully, shields resisted the concerted effort.

Unfortunately, the giant raised its arm again.

“Our shields can’t keep holding off those attacks!”

“We need something to stop it!”

“How about the cryogenic cannons?”

“They’re not possibly powerful enough to stop that thing!”

“We have to fall back!”

“And abandon the platforms?!”

Worrisome voices paused as their guest flew past their cluster towards the enormous elemental.

Gripping her test tubes tightly, Ayabegei let out her held breath.

“Pilot, I leave it to your discretion,” she announced over the comm. “No warps or jumps. Evade and annoy.”

“Will do,” Nuta replied calmly over the comm.

Taking her breath back in, Ayabegei resumed her frantic work to develop some sort of anything to stop the onslaught.

As freezing mixtures bubbled up in the lab, Nuta calmly flew the ship in rapid, random paths, circling the beast.

Flying above at a slant, the crew on the bridge felt their stomachs churn as they looked “down” while being seated. One would expect to slide down into the mashing mouth of the hideous beast that turned its head to follow you. Spinning around its body, the ghastly visage roared up at the pest that circled it. As its head was unable to keep pace, another face spouted from the back of its head. One slid along the body to spew a typhoon at the pest, while the other face screamed its hatred at the armada.

Both of its fists lifted as dozens of whipping tails slashed at the air. Towards the airborne pest, the tails slashed through the air with an audible slice. It’s very ringing could be felt in the bones of the crew as it sliced at the air around the evasive ship.

Nuta’s sleepy eyes and steady maneuvers bellied his intense focus and rapid responses. When he wasn’t personally challenged by the wilds, he looked like a man on the verge of falling asleep. That’s only a slight exaggeration, really. His head swayed to a side right before the ship tilted in the same direction. While others felt their breath catch in their throats as the whips and lances came uncomfortably close, Nuta just bobbed his head through the flight.

Down below, the fleet blasted thin trails of ultra-low temperature liquid helplessly into the outrageous creature. Where these strands hit, thin chunks of super dense ice formed, only to be swallowed back into the flowing slush of its own form.

Replying with its own brand of violence, the elemental pulled its fist back and shot it out like a cannon. Striking the front side of the armada’s shield, a ripping clap tore through the clearing, shaking even the ground. Shields on the platform fluttered like lightning.

This entity was the storm. Its roar, the screams of the wind. Its fists, the drumsticks of thunder. Its attacks, the lighting striking.

Fist sliding off the face of the fleet’s communal shield, it bounced into the sky whirling just shy of striking the Cardboard Box. Pivoting to fly sideways, the ship’s launcher pointed its attention fully at the screaming face that followed them.

Lifting back up, eclipsing the light again, the entity raised both of its towering arms, poised as an executioner’s blade over the neck of its prostrate victim.

Globules of spinning glass pummeled the arms and back of the entity. Roaring a deafening bellow, the beast recoiled in pain as his trunk and arms froze in a spreading fungus of ice. Crusting up along its body, the glassy substance froze the being in place. Its cavernous eyes glowered at its own appendages as they grew solid right in front of them.

Disappearing into the ground and reforming an ocean, the beast vanished as a trap-door hides a stage actor.

Icebergs in the shapes of the appendages and torso floated atop this newly churning ocean, and even slammed into the sides of one of the platform’s shields.

And then it was back. Ocean and earth forming up into the sky again, the gargantuan didn’t give anyone a chance to relax even their eyes.

“Lieutenant Mazoy,” Cisimi called up the ladder from the launcher. “We’re going to need more of that ice coagulant.”

“It takes a while to make even that small amount I sent you,” Mazoy replied over the comm.

She leaned over to switch off the monitors showing the outside world. Constant shots of the mad creature unleashing its wrath made her jumpy. And the constant spinning and evading performed by the pilot made her stomach protest.

She would leave the outside world to the pilot. She could only do what she could with the lab at her disposal. Forcing herself to not micromanage, she turned every bit of her focus to her work.

Good thing too. A jarring rattle went through the ship, sending a single drop from one of her test tubes through the air. Ayabegei’s widened blue eyes followed this drop as it floated through the air, bringing its prowess with it. Had she been still distracted, she wouldn’t have her other hand and the ingredient list it held out of the way. Splatting on the table, the single dab of fluid grew into spreading crystalline structure.

Quickly retrieving a small bottle of specialized phosphorus, she doused the bubbling structure. Shivering, the mass dissolved into a relatively harmless puddle.

“Damn,” Nuta muttered over the comm. “I lost my perfect score. Reset it.”

“Tell you what,” Geib replied. “Manage to avoid all of those hundreds of whips again like you were doing, I’ll declare it perfect.”

Exhaling to expel what apprehension she had, she inhaled new apprehension as she opened the comm.

“I will need some steady hands up here to help me make more of this mixture.”

————————————–

Shields still straining to return to full strength, the unified flotilla looked on helplessly as the colossus continued swinging in savage desperation at some gnat that launched debilitating shards of infectious glass.

Each time it was struck, it discarded its frozen parts and renewed with the earth and sea. What possible long term plan was there? All they could was wait for any sort of relief. How long could the ship with the child-like glyph on its hull dodge a tireless creature borne, and controlling of, the very planet itself?

How long would the monster’s attention be diverted?

At the edges of the horizon, the sky darkened once more. A storm of unnatural speed. Though, if you were expecting things to be “natural” given the latest aggressor, you’re touching the realms of insane sanity.

Circling the scene of this battle, the storm crushed in on the platforms, the cluster of ships, the Cardboard Box, and, of course, the monster.

Amongst the ensuing blackness, the roar of the storm danced with the roar of the colossus. Its ghoulish face screamed so widely, that its jaw fluttered in the gale.

Just as abruptly as everything happened on Waake, the new storm died into a new ocean. 

Clearly, Waake didn’t think one was enough.

A new storm birthed a new ocean which birthed a new giant. A duplicate of the first, it marked its arrival with a ground quaking roar. Sucking up into its body, the second form scooped up the now hardened crystal chunks.

Relaying along its body, the clusters swam up and into its forming arms.

Flying between the two, the Cardboard Box now had to try to distract two of these unstoppable giants. But this second one focused entirely on the large cluster of ships, while the first swatted at the fleeting Scholars.

Shooting a slathering of glassy fluid, the Cardboard Box tried desperately to stop the second one as it winded up what would be a devastating blow.

As the pest rapidly approached, the second couldn’t be forced to stop.

But it did change its mind.

It snapped around and lashed hundreds of whips out from its body right into the path of the annoyance. Evading in the nick of time, the ship’s expert pilot avoided the danger only to be struck in the side by a living flail with a crystal chunk at the end.

Cartwheeling through the air, the Cardboard Box had walls of snapping tendrils cut through the sky towards them. Dropping their defensive shields, the ship quickly regained its orientation with the rerouted energy. The particle filled wind slashed into the hull of the ship. Fortunately, that was all they suffered instead of being struck fully by the lashes that slung with the gales.

Fortune and time had run out. Below, the crew could do nothing as the first beast slammed its fists into the communal shield of the armada. Rupturing shields popped with a bright glare that lingered on the retinas.

This lighting flash bounced eerily of the faces of the titans. They smiled in hungered delight. Ghosts of the dead world, beaming with fiendish glee, longing to bring others into the eternal grave.

Cascading downward, the shields coating the umbilicals died out. The platforms remained shielded, but the waves of smaller creatures continued to spread across the surface.

Within the Cardboard Box’s hangar, the eldest Senguin, clutched her fists tight shut as she stood before one of the dropships. She didn’t have a projection up of the outside events. Instead, she listened with growing dread as the garbled voices of panic wailed from the armada.

This tension hit its highest point as both beasts struck into the cluster of ships. Thunder and lightning shot from the strikes. And then there was rain.

Falling from the sky, many of the larger ships plummeted into the swampy bedrock below. Smaller ships scurried outwards, hoping to get as far away from the onslaught as possible. Ships helped each other while they could, as selfish panic had still not fully set in yet. The Foreman’s ship lead this movement, descended on the surface and opening its bays to bring in survivors.

Below, on the hot, sticky ground, survivors crawled from the crashed ships that were rapidly engulfed in flames. Their health was further jeopardized as wreckage rained on them from above.

A few even dived back into their ships as looming shadows swallowed them. This shadows’ sources met the ground violently, adding more wrecked ships to the floor.

Crawling back out from the wreckage that threatened to cook them, another shadow drenched them. Looking up, the next sign of doom was expected.

Instead, a salvation.

Dozens of smaller ships flew out from the Kriovitl. Under the cover of its shield, these life boats flew down to assist in the recovery of survivors.

Finally, the visitors had a champion of their own. The Kriovitl, being nearly as tall as the monsters, dominated the clearing.

Cannons slid out from panels on its broad side and fired energy payloads right at the two closing leviathans.

Hisses from the energy weapons were easily washed out by the roars of anguish and fury from the planet’s creatures.

Another bellow was that of the elder Senguin.

“The Foreman’s ship is in harm’s way!” she pleaded with the others. “We have to save Teliar and the others!”

“Please remain calm,” Cisimi replied. “This work is dangerous; you shouldn’t be in here if you aren’t helping.”

“I’m calm as I can be!” Ocura retorted, restraining herself more than anyone could perceive. “We need to cover them. So can we please get to it?”

“The Kriovitl is covering them. We have to get those small things off the platforms before their shield ruptures,” Ayabegei reminded. “We cannot let them get through and start attacking the crew.”

“Your substance is just being re-used by them,” the older sister countered, still barely keeping herself in control.

“I am aware of its limitations,” Ayabegei replied softly. “It can stop the smaller ones. But it can only slow the bigger ones.”

“Doesn’t look slower to me,” Ocura huffed as Cisimi gently led her out of the lab.

Desiring to get back into the sealed lab, Ocura was stopped by Dogot, who came running up to her.

“What? What do you want?” Ocura snapped.

“I got a hold of Specialist Teliar,” Dogot announced quickly. “Sort of.”

“’Sort of’?” Ocura 

“I could only patch into the communication lines enough to hear their transmissions. They can’t receive,” he quickly explained. “I got this from the comm lines.”

Bringing up a projection, Dogot pressed a glowing key, starting an audio recording.

“… Foreman! —man?!”

“I’m fine. Where—Spe–ist Reezmin?”

“He’s help– —thers—off t —lifeboats. We — eed to g—now!”

Hearing these blurbs that confirmed her brother was alright relieved Ocura even slightly. But she had to hide that relief a bit. She had to maintain the illusion that was concerned for all life on that ship equally, irrelevant of her relations.

She still felt a great dread. These creatures could turn their attention to the Foreman’s ship any second. What would stop them?

Her hands clenched. She hated this distance she had to maintain. It was easy for the others to distance themselves. They hadn’t been a sibling to him at all. They needed to get down there and help now!

“Don’t worry. I won’t say anything,” Dogot whispered, seeing right into her.

It was so difficult to distance yourself from your loved ones. Even though she was under orders and constant reminders that she couldn’t let those bonds stand in the way, those bonds never truly disappeared.

This obnoxious character eased her by faintest of degree. His face showed the concern Ocura wanted to see. She had to trust in her brother. In his training. In who he was with.

It was so much to ask. Too much. She didn’t know how long she could maintain the illusion.

All that could be done was what could be done here. Running back to the reactor room, her fingers dug into her hands.

————————————–

Clashing against the geometric shields with their own sharp limbs, the horde of faceless shades sieged in unbound fury. Gnashing jaws of the corpses of the dead earth gored of hate.

Within the quickly depleting shields, the crew members took shelter in quickly fabricated bunkers. With the last workers scrambling inside, the large doors closed to the world beyond. But how long could these solid walls last when energy walls could be broken?

Watching from their visual ports, the crew on the platforms noticed bright white flashes just outside the shield. But they weren’t the failing of the shields, as the white color lingered.

Through the translucent surface, they saw an outline fly past overhead.

Outside the dome, circling between the platforms, the Cardboard Box slalomed, bombarding the sort-of-living coating the shielded platforms. As giant crusts of crystal imprisoned the smaller beasts, the glaciers slid off the shields and into the hard ground below.

Before the clattering of the heavy blocks of frozen shades ended, more forms moved to fill the gaps. Still the Scholar ship did everything it could to hold back an unyielding flood of deadly specters.

They must’ve been doing well enough. One of the two giants turned away from its attack on the Kriovitl and swam across the swamp freckled surface. As it crested into the air again, it scooped a piece of ship wreckage upward into its body.

Traversing the river up into its hand, the ship pieces were lifted high into the air.

Launching not nearly as fast as it would if it were intact, the ship tore through the sky faster than you would want.

The pulsating mass coating of one of the platforms parted right as the hull of a hopefully empty ship crashed into the geometric shield.

Darting between falling pieces of ship, the Cardboard Box dodged the hardened chambers that rained from above. It would’ve been better if the ship had been thrown at the Cardboard Box, for at least it could’ve dodged it. Instead, its impact was sending the shield into a sputtering mess.

Evading debris, the Cardboard Box splashed its crystalline weapon against the front of the beast. An equivalent of adrenaline must’ve been pumping through the monster as it didn’t even flinch or stutter as it slung over to the weakened shield.

Again lifting its arms to the heavens, the horror brought the heaven’s wrath down on the wounded platform.

Cataclysmic thunder and lightning tore open across the clearing. Snapping as a twig under the final strain it could handle, the shields faded with a world muting shatter.

Gates finally open, the waves of creatures swarmed atop the exposed platform. Barbarians cut through a city’s streets as the shambling creatures of grime and death destroyed wantonly through the rig’s equipment.

New rain showered down.

Stopping in their tracks, the creatures recognized these green droplets weren’t their own. They wren’t even droplets, but flakes of some sort.

Peering out through the viewport from the shelter, the crew of the platform watched as one of these green flakes fell into an outstretched claw of a smaller monster.

Passing through the permeable body, the flake fell onto the floor below.

Instead of being green, the leaf was now a sickly brown color. Passing through a wall of sludge and grime had destroyed this shrapnel of plant life.

Turning their sunken gazes skyward, the hordes of shades traced the falling of leaves back to the trail that fell from the lobbed ship fragments.

Intent on continuing its assault, the titan lifted up fragments of the ships it had thrown earlier. It stopped as it hoisted its weapons into the air. Turning to look at what trickled down its arm, the empty eye sockets followed downward to the broken hardened chamber on the even harder ground.

Dropping the fragments of the ships to clatter on the ground, the beast lowered its lofty head to hover above the wreckage.

This hardened chamber was holding a greenhouse for food and a storage bay for hydroponics and research. It held the future flora that would cloth this scarred planet.

Stopping its own attack, the monstrosity that was attacking the Kriovitl quickly turned about. Sprinting, or the equivalent of sprinting for a humongous shambling mass of muck, over to the wreckage, it bent down beside its sibling.

Reaching out with writhing thin tendrils, one of the monsters reached out to touch the plant life that jittered in the acid filled breeze.

All voices shut, and all eyes watched, mesmerized as these giants observed these tiny buds of the planet’s future.

Caressing a leaf ever-so slightly, the tendril quickly whipped back as its touch withered the leaves of an unpotted plant.

A brave mass of cells struggled to stand against the caustic winds, but died with a mere graze of semi-solid despair.

Crawling out from under the ship, a single bloodied and battered crewmember slowly stood up on his feet. Looking straight up into the sky, the crew member, marked as a botanist by his uniform emblems, stood in terror as the very sky was composed of the beasts.

Retrieval ships were already bearing down to rescue this pending victim. Passing through the giants’ own bodies, the small crafts hovered and opened hatches. Aboard, the pilots screamed at the botanist to get aboard.

Instead, the botanist scooped up samples and flora from their unsavory ground and ran them into the holds of the rescue craft. Fearing the inevitable wrath of monsters, the botanist ripped down a tarp from his wrecked ship and loaded as many samples atop it and dragged it to the recovery ships. Waving the rescuers to leave, the botanist ran back to get more of the plants behind cover and back in the wreckage of his ship.

Throughout this stressing ordeal for the rescuers, botanist and all of the Waake’s visitors, the mountains witnessed the scene unfolding at their feet.

They watched the rescue ships reluctantly retreat back to the Kriovitl. As the Kriovitl approached, ready to divert the attention of the entities, the monsters only observed. There was no storm in their screams, not that they screamed any more.

Leaning further down, one of the beings reached out for a potted plant. Just shy of touching it, the botanist reached out from behind cover and rescued the helpless life.

Recoiling in a sudden jolt, the entity leaned back and let loose a ground-rumbling roar. Not a roar of rage, but one of a ringing, consuming sorrow.

Turning away from the wreckage, the twin mountains shuffled slowly towards the platforms. Striding beside them, they draped their arms over the coated shields, many shades back into their bodies. The remaining forms on the platform leaped off and slithered eerily along the ground, melting into the feet of the beasts. These same feet carried the monsters to the end of the clearing and vanished into the storms beyond the borders.

Stepping out from behind their cover, a bright glare formed on the helmets of the botanist and crewmembers on the platform.

Above, warming them, the sky opened to relinquish the sun, lighting Waake’s visitors.

————————————–

Upping the air-conditioning in his suit, the greenhouse technician was actually excited for the heat. Beaming above, the sun cooked the tender leaves with its warm embrace.

A week had passed since the elementals departed, and great progress had been made. In fact, the weather took a strange twist on the possible. This clearing of around four square kilometers was somehow avoided by the weather patterns. Storms just completely avoided the area.

Within this oasis, the terraforming project had spread to several hubs, linking the platforms. Not far from this platform, near the center of the arrangement of platforms, an immense spire reached into the sky casting a bright beacon. Near the edge where the storm grazed the edges of the clearing, another tower was being raised. These towers would link into a wall of impenetrable light that would criss-cross the world.

Slowly they would turn an oasis of life into the norm by stretching outward slowly. With this much accomplished, it wouldn’t be long before the terraforming effort met their first progress goal, and would receive even more support. Both Ing and Anlov were immensely excited about the improvement, even if the reasons for the delay and surge weren’t fully understood yet. A new Scholar team had just been specifically assigned to study those elementals, but hadn’t yet arrived on Waake. Speculations ran wild, but the Lieutenant of the Cardboard Box, before the ship had left for its next assignment, stressed the importance in waiting for scientific understanding before sticking with an admittedly alluring fable.

Opening the channel on his helmet, the botanist asked for a progress on the new animal husbandry. With the ready from the overseer of the husbandry, the botanist gave the confirmation to his team.

Beside the massive greenhouse, another huge building parted its roof. Eventually the entire building folded out into large luscious lots of foliage and grazing areas. Leading through channels and trenches, lines of animals filed into the enclosures. They didn’t hesitate in the least as they ran right up to their feed troughs, which were being fed with freshly cut food from the greenhouse.

Soon there would be enough platforms combined together to have large sprawling living spaces and fresh food for the animals that be the ancestors of the planet’s life.

Alarms rang and voices started trading rapidly across the comm. There was even the mention of closing up the animal preserve and raising up the shield. Absolute befuddled as to what was causing the alarm, the botanist noted the growing shadow at his feet.

He knew what he was going to see even before he turned around, but that didn’t provide any more comfort.

Turning to see a colossal elemental towering above the geometric shield, the entire terraforming group held their breaths in their lungs and their fingers above their various buttons. As the colossal hands stretched out to touch the shield, other hands reached out for defensive weapons, lockdown systems, and shields.

Hands didn’t strike into the shields, but gently rested against the shield. Lowering its face, it pressed its hollowed face against the window and peered downward.

Even with the emotionless vacancy in its writhing face, you could almost swear there was some flicker in its cavernous eyes.

Pressing its face against the glowing “glass”, the giant’s face distorted as it pressed. That flicker. That look of hope.