First Life, page 20
part #1 of River Saga Series
The lamps kicked off, and we felt something streak across the room. Franklin took an errant shot, and we heard the bullet strike the distant wall. “I thought they said this wasn’t real,” I hissed.
More noise drew our attention from the corridor on the edge, and when the lights came back on, there was Des, shooting at the target while in motion. He moved with competence, firing in bursts. I gaped at the monster. It was nine feet tall, long arms thick as tree trunks. It bellowed a war cry, swinging a wide blade at Des. He ducked and dove, rolling to his feet, but his gun was on the floor beside him.
I didn’t wait. The beast had the sword up, ready to pummel Des, and I crouched on my knee, firing at the creature. It flashed brightly and vanished from the room. For digital imprints, it looked so real.
Des climbed to his feet, dusting his uniform off. “I had him right where I wanted him. But thank you, Beck.”
“Where are Steven and Adley?” I asked.
“They must have entered the tunnel already.” Des ran for the left side, and we trailed after. The walls were twenty feet high in the main room, but here in the hall, they were cut in half, making the space feel cramped. Franklin bumped into me as the corridor curved inward, and we saw Steve sprawled on the ground. Adley stood over him protectively, firing at two more of the monsters. They had different melee weapons, swinging wildly. The closest drooled from gray lips, big lower teeth jabbing upward to meet its wide nose.
Des was in his element. He shot the second beast’s kneecaps, then aimed for its head, quickly putting it out of commission. Adley and I fired at the other monster, killing it.
“There’s more,” Franklin whispered while we all listened. My breathing was ragged, and I noticed the familiar tension rising in my chest.
Not now. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply.
“Come. We have work to do.” Desmond crouched over Steven, who remained on the floor.
“I don’t know, but with a touch of that blade, I was paralyzed,” Steve managed to croak. “Keep going. Get the rest of them for Team Blue.”
I didn’t love leaving a man behind, but this was only a training program, after all. The four of us continued, heading deeper into the facility. We faced two options: an open door and a closed one.
Des pressed his ear to the sealed slab and lifted a finger. “In here.”
We blindly obeyed, and Franklin took the lead, gun raised. The lights dimmed, and we heard the hum of what sounded like an engine revving. A big, powerful machine, probably fueling a spaceship’s thrusters. I wondered if we were close to Palora’s engineering room, or if this was just part of the simulation.
The place was otherwise empty. Another noise carried past the constant hum. It sounded like water running.
No. Not water. Something else.
“They’re coming!” Adley said, her shock of hair a beacon in the dark room.
And I realized what the commotion was. Footsteps. Hundreds of them. And they were moving fast.
“What do we do?” Franklin asked.
“Normally, I’d suggest caving the place in, using a thermal detonator, but since we’re limited in our options, how about this?” Desmond pulled the energy cell from his weapon and threw it across the room. “May I?” he asked Adley, and she gave her weapon to him.
“Everyone back!” Desmond shouted, and we obliged. He waited, softly muttering to himself. The scrambling feet were coming closer. They scratched and clawed on the passageway floor. The far door was still shut, but soon they were barreling into it. For a digital program, this felt too authentic. Sweat beaded on my forehead while I stood there, waiting for whatever was on the opposite side of the door to barge into the room with us. We were only thirty feet away, nervously anticipating their arrival.
Desmond flipped a switch on the gun, and I read the display. Plasma.
More of the creatures banged now, screeching their anger.
“The Angor sure went all out.” Franklin swallowed, but kept his gun aimed across the space.
Finally, the metal slab was breached. A few dusty brown claws tore through the material. Was that digital? I didn’t think so. How could it be? My heart kicked up a notch, and my hands shook as I kept my weapon on target. It was growing heavy in my leaden arms.
Fear was a formidable enemy, but I was determined to do my best on the very first weapons training for Team Blue. I wouldn’t disappoint my friends.
The creatures were hideous. Six legs, giant mandibles snapping, tiny mouths screaming in fury.
“Now!” Desmond called, and Franklin and I opened fire.
Des took aim, and the far side of the room erupted in plasma. His shot hit the energy cell from his own weapon, creating an explosion that rocked the entire training facility. Pieces of the monsters dropped everywhere, raining down on us. A couple were unharmed, clawing toward us past their dead allies. Without thinking, I shot three of them, striking one in its ugly smooth-shelled face, and two in the torsos. I tore the leg off another, and between the three of us, we killed the last remaining ten adversaries.
Then it was over. The lights came on, a beeping noise indicating our time was finished. I stared at the carnage.
“You have a little something on your…” Adley reached for my face and plucked a chunk of bug guts off my cheek. I recoiled at the sight.
It reeked in here. Desmond strode deeper inside, surveying the damage. The walls were actually buckled, the door torn to shreds. One of the creatures was still alive a short distance from me, and I carefully crept to it while it twitched in spasms. The legs were three feet long and had clumps of hair on them. Sharp claws jutted from each appendage. The head was small, no neck separating it from the main structure of the body. It was probably as long as I was tall. I kicked it slightly with my foot, rolling it over. It squawked and shuddered before leaking more green ooze and dying.
“This is not good,” Des whispered.
Bootsteps echoed behind us, and Desmond swung his gun around while four Angor and two Vezo entered. They examined the carnage, strange expressions plastered on their faces.
“It’s okay, Lead,” Plarse said. “We’re here now.”
“That’s why I’m aiming my gun at you.” Des stepped closer to the newcomers. “Now explain why you gave us live rounds and why in the hell we were just attacked by… giant bugs.”
Plarse glanced at me, then at his Vezo companion. I finally recognized that it was Leruf, my new friend. “You weren’t supposed to make it past level one.”
“Level one?” I asked. “The thing with the orcs or whatever those were?”
Plarse nodded. He’d lost all sense of his entitlement and looked reprimanded. Des didn’t falter, unwilling to take his weapon away from the Angor. “No one has ever defeated them so easily. We had a glitch in the programming. This is the advanced training level. You skipped to level five.”
The options. This door had been shut, and I bet it was supposed to be locked. “You’re saying this was an error?” I demanded.
“That’s correct. Please, lower the weapons. The embedded chip alters them from practice to live, depending on what level you are on. It was an oversight.” Judging by the remorse the Angor was showing, I believed him.
“Des, put it away,” I said. He glanced over, a toothpick in his lips. He nodded once and dropped the gun. It fell onto a corpse.
“You might want to have someone clean this up.” Desmond walked by them, and Adley ran to check on Steven.
Franklin kept his gun, choosing to exit the room, until there was only Leruf and me. “You did well.”
“If that’s a compliment, you can save it. We could have died,” I said.
The shelled man nodded grimly. “Angor training isn’t for the faint of heart.”
I cringed at the thought of him mentioning my condition, but doubted he realized as much. He was just using a human phrase. “Did you go through this?” I pointed at the mess.
“We did.”
“Are you better for it?”
“We lost some good people,” he said.
I took a final look at the dead creatures, wondering what other surprises were in store for us.
____________
Everything was different. The mood changed after that first live training. No one believed that was an accident, not on Team Blue or Orange. Steven had survived. His glasses had been cracked, but an Angor had reproduced the lens with a 3D printer the next day, after he declined their laser surgery once again. I was on edge, vividly recalling the scrambling monsters every time I closed my eyes.
“This isn’t any normal colony, is it?” Willow asked. Miya sat close, holding her tablet.
“I saw the plans. It looks legit,” I told them.
“Then why are we preparing for battle?” Franklin asked.
We had access to other parts of the ship, but in the two weeks since we’d almost been killed, we’d stuck close to our quarters. I hadn’t seen or heard from Indie, and that concerned me. Hell, this entire Expedition had a strange aura surrounding it. The more I thought about how it went down, the worse my stomach hurt. Ten thousand volunteers, picked and rushed to Angor City. There were people from all around the world, yet they still shared the same inexplicable faith. They were proud to be citizens of Dicore.
Were they seeing something we weren’t? They’d bought in, but our side was starting to second guess everything. It left us feeling alone. We couldn’t broach the subject with any other teams, because they might turn on us. I’d tried to speak with Leruf about it, but he wouldn’t discuss the Vezo’s path to their Unity partnership. He kept saying that things would unveil in time. That I’d learn firsthand. No comfort came from hearing that.
Desmond stroked his mustache and drank a sip of his coffee. “They’ve done this before. Eleven times according to what our friend Colton has learned, right?”
I nodded in agreement.
“Then maybe we should stop worrying so much. We know the Angor are different. We’ve struggled to believe the training issue was an error, but perhaps it was.”
“That doesn’t explain why they had live alien bugs on board,” Willow said.
She hadn’t seen them, but she was correct. It was a question no one would give us an answer for.
“I’m sick of this.” Miya had her tablet out, and she worked on it. “I’ve been trying to access their network again, and I think I’m close, but there’s something blocking me. If only I could…”
“Stop right there, squirt,” Des told her. “The last thing we need is for you to get pinched. We’ll require that brain on Dicore. We’re only a few weeks away from the colony, so let’s keep our focus and survive this trek, okay?”
Desmond had been on the fence since our incident, but he was slowly lowering his defensive position against the Angor. It was unlike him. Had he forgotten recent events?
“If each of these Unity partners has an Angor City on their planet, how many Angor are out there?” Adley asked.
“They have a firm foothold, that much is clear.” Willow rubbed the fuzz on her shorn head. “I wish we were done with this part of the Expedition. The speculation is killing me.”
“What did you learn today?” I asked her.
“We’ve gone through the four weapon types and have started survival. Food preparation. Water filtration.”
“They’re preparing us for alone time in the woods,” Franklin said. “I took some classes like that after my wife passed. When I decided to live off-grid.”
“What were the main points?” I asked.
Franklin counted them off on his fingers. “Clothing. Water and food. Poisonous plants and predators. How to stay warm and build shelters. Navigation. Medical.”
“That’s sensible.” Desmond glanced at Miya. “Anything relevant to Dicore?”
“I thought you said not to break in.” Miya blew at her blonde bangs. Her jumpsuit had the patches from her jacket sewn onto it. Apparently, no one cared, because she’d been wearing it like that for a week.
“I changed my mind,” Desmond said.
Miya went to work, and the moment her eyes brightened up, the screen went black. She tapped the device on the table and dropped it. “Great. Look what you made me do.”
I tried to restart it, but nothing happened. It was fried. “This proves we’re being monitored.”
“You knew this was going to happen?” Miya asked Desmond.
“I had an inkling. These Angor are clever.”
Willow looked thoughtful. “I wonder how much of your knowledge will be transferable, Franklin.”
He rubbed his beard. “Some things may translate, but it’s difficult to guess. I don’t think vegetation will grow the same, and I don’t need to worry about disrupting a hornet’s nest.”
“Yeah, it might be ten times that size,” I added.
“What do you mean?”
“If Dicore is habitable, other life will be present. There’s no way we’re dropping in on a deserted planet. If that was the case, none of us would be able to survive,” I suggested.
“Good point.” Desmond set his cup on the table. “We have to stick together. Orange and Blue. Let’s meet every day after training and discuss what we learned. And ask questions. The more we inquire about Dicore and our future, the more likely someone is bound to screw up and give us information.”
We had a plan, and eventually, we all returned to our cubbies for the night. I was exhausted, but when sleep found me, so did the strange dreams of Dicore.
____________
“When you discover the pocket of water, use the drilling drones to run the tube into Dicore’s surface,” the Angor woman said. Banca held the palm-sized device level with her hip, walking over the training grounds. It beeped, and she showed us the readout on a larger screen, visible to everyone.
“The drill-core unit is simple.” She used the device’s controls and activated the drone. It was the shape of a water bottle, with a spiral auger on the bottom half. “It will keep going, leaving piping behind it. The unit can go as far as fifty meters. Choose wisely. Anything lower will not register on the program, so you should be safe.”
We had countless water containers. I’d read the manifest while working in the warehouses outside of Angor City on Earth.
“Is this all precautionary?” I asked Banca.
“We’re on a new planet, Mr. Beck. Issues arise. Palora is carrying the goods for the colony, but the teams will be going to the surface first. You will have supplies, but you must learn how to survive, should there be any complications.”
There it was. Complications. I didn’t like the sound of that word. For a brief moment, I had a sinking feeling that the Angor were going to drop us off at Dicore and vanish, though I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. Why would they uproot us, spend all this time and energy to do something so meaningless?
“What about food sources?” Franklin asked. Good. He was getting the point. Question everything. See what we can learn.
Banca glanced at one of her Angor companions, and the man shook his head. “We aren’t certain what Dicore’s surface holds, but we’re confident there’s nothing to be concerned about.”
“Then why do we require the GR-852 and the frags, as well as the rifles and magma handguns?” This came from a member of Team Black. The man was gruff, with white stubble and a patch over one eye.
“As we said, we’re preparing you for any complications. Though we don’t expect any,” Banca said.
“Are you coming with us?” Miya raised her hand and dropped it.
“No. We are not.”
“We? There are no Angor joining us?” I inquired.
The Angor man near the exit turned the lights on and walked to the center of the room, hands behind his back. “I see you are an inquisitive bunch, but we have a strict mandate, and you’re delaying the message. Would you prefer to have conversation hour, and never figure out how to find drinking water?”
That shut us up for the moment.
We were a week away from arriving at Dicore, and somehow the anticipation had melted from my tense shoulders. A week from Dicore gave me a month or two to live. The estimation by Dr. Balder was just that. An educated guess, which came with an asterisk beside it: *Give or take a month.*
I listened with interest, learning everything I could about the function of the drill-core, and it ended an hour later. When we left, I found Indie Hart waiting for me outside the training facility. She appeared calm and controlled. Her expression was alive, her smile sparkling when she caught sight of me. My heart pounded.
“It’s been a while. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me,” I said.
“Can we go for a walk?” She waved at my friends before heading in the opposite direction of the departing trainees.
“Where have you been?”
“Colton, I have to admit something.”
I didn’t like where this was going. “What’s that?”
She stopped when we crested the corner near the sealed side of Palora, and she waited for an Angor woman to pass by. “I won’t be coming to the surface. Not for a week.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to be careful,” she said.
“On Dicore?”
She sighed. “There’s so much I want to say to you right now. But I can’t. I might not see you again.”
“Until a week after we land, right?” I asked.
Her cheek twitched, and she nodded. “Correct. A week.”
“No big deal. We’ll scout the colony site, prepare it, and then you and the Angor can assist us.”
“That’s exactly right,” she said, but I could tell she was holding back.
“What is it?”
She took my hands. “I hate seeing you.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“Because it reminds me of everything we lost.” She darted into the locked Angor entrance. I tried to follow but didn’t have the access codes.
FOURTEEN
Nightmares plagued my last few nights. It was usually the same thing. A barren world. Skeletons. Fires.
