Location: East of New Athens
D:6
M:3
Y:5044
Out on the
cold and arid landscape of Mandallass, over small rocks and around huge
boulders, a shadow moved stealthily under the dim light of the smallest of the
Three Sisters, small moons that orbited Mandallass at great distances. Color was washed away by the night, rendering
the terrain in shades of black and gray.
The shadow was rectangular and seemed to bounce as it moved across the
bumpy terrain. It moved swiftly along
the ground and stirred up a long cloud of dust behind it, which quickly
dissipated into the darkness. The
shadow, actually a darkly painted cargo truck, ran with the headlights and the
running board lights switched off and only trace amounts of light emerged
through the glass of the cab. It was an
old truck that still had headlights, but they were unnecessary and furthermore
undesired.
Thomas, the
driver-captain was stone faced and peered intently through the recently
upgraded front glass, which now supported night vision mode. He could see everything in front of him
almost as if it were daylight. Light
blue digital readouts imbedded in the glass showed speed, fuel level, and
distance to any objects large enough to damage the truck. Thomas’s scraggy gunner, Seph, sat in the
co-pilot chair in near total darkness with his eyes glued to a small round
radar screen. He fidgeted nervously with
a shiny metal trinket he kept for good luck.
“I don't
like this Thomas,” exclaimed Seph.
“You already said that,” replied Thomas.
“Well...I'm saying it again.
We should turn back.”
“I told you before, we are not turning back. We're out too far now. There'd be no point turning around now.”
“It's shorter back to New Athens and nothins happened
between there and here.”
“That doesn't mean something wouldn't happen if we headed
back,” Thomas replied impatiently.
They stayed on their present course. After a short moment's pause Seph started in
again, “We shouldn'ta taken this one, they're gonna come and we're goin to
regret this.” Thomas looked at Seph for
a moment, grim faced, but conceded, “You may be right, but if they come, we
won't be around long enough to regret it.
If it will make you feel better why don't you go up in the turret and if
it comes you can at least shoot at it.”
Seph didn't respond at first, he just eyed Thomas
coldly. “Even if a wraith doesn't get
us, we shouldn't be doing this. We'll be
caught going out at night and they'll ship us off to Baliel,” Seph moaned. Thomas glanced at Seph in disbelief. “They don't really ship people off to Baliel you yalc! That's just something parents tell little
kids to get them to behave! Honestly,
what's wrong with you?”
“We’re not supposed to go out at night.”
“I told you, we’d never make it past the marauders with this
load. We couldn’t risk doing this during
the day. There’s too many credits riding
on this.”
“Rather face the marauders,” mumbled Seph under his breath.
Thomas
turned back to the windshield and Seph the radar. The illuminated line on the radar display
rotated clockwise with a faint smudge of light trailing behind it. It continued to spin unperturbed. An empty pass, another empty pass. Seph would not let it go. “You know they don't leave nothin, no body,
no blood.” Another empty pass of the
radar line. “Drop it,” Thomas ordered.
Another empty pass and anoth ... blip.
A small, but bright round patch of light lingered at the bottom of the
screen after the radar line passed by.
It stayed for a couple more passes, brightening as the rotating line
passed by. The bright spot was
accompanied by an audible beep every time the line crossed it. “There's something out there Thomas!” Thomas peeked over at the radar, but the
panel was clear. Now there was no
audible tone and no more bright spot on the radar. “It was behind us, it's one of them,” Seph
exclaimed nearly crying.
“Calm down Seph, it was only there for a moment, it could be
something else, like a glitch in the equipment or something like that.”
“The radar never glitches, it's out there.”
“Well maybe it didn't see us, maybe it was just crossing
behind us and the radar picked it up for that second and now it’s gone.”
Seph considered this for a moment. “Yeah, maybe that's what happened, we're
probably fine,” he reasoned, not sounding too terribly relieved.
They
trucked along in the dark for a while longer before either of them spoke again,
both of them on edge. Seph went back to
fidgeting with his metal piece. Thomas
seemed to be agitated with the navigation equipment. Something didn't seem quite right. “Seph, look at this,” said Thomas, pointing
to a global positioning panel. “This
look like it's working to you?”
“Looks fine,” offered Seph after glancing at it.
“No look, it's not moving.
We've driven far enough in the last few seconds for it to have moved by
now.” The two men watched the screen
intently for a while longer and sure enough, the image on the panel remained
static.
“It's froze up!” cried Thomas and looked up in time to see
that they were rapidly approaching a steep drop off. He slammed on the breaks and stopped them within
a couple of meters of going over the edge.
“What are you doing? Don't stop!”
cried Seph.
“I had to stop. Look!”
argued Thomas pointing out in front of them.
“There's a crater big as Alresst!
Blasted navi system is junk! Who
knows how long we've been off course!” exclaimed Thomas as he reset the
navigation computer. The two men
remained silent for a few moments trying to wrap their brains around their
situation while they waited for the system to come back up. “We gotta keep moving,” declared Seph.
“Just wait a minute.”
The navi system finished booting and showed their true location. Thomas' shoulders slumped and he exhaled,
exasperated. “We have to shut down.”
“What?” asked Seph excitedly.
“We have to shut down, we don't have enough fuel to get
there.”
“Then let’s go back.”
“We go back and we get caught.”
“Better to be caught than killed.”
“The Guild would bust us both back to level one. Besides, back there is where that blip was.”
Seph hadn’t thought of that.
His mouth hung open as it often did with his severe overbite.
“Listen Seph, I know you’re worried, but we'll shut down. In an hour we'll be cooled off and we'll be
fine. In the morning we'll go on as
planned until we run out of fuel. Then
we can set the distress beacon and that way we don't go back tonight and get
caught and we don't go back to where we saw that blip.”
After a
pause Seph reluctantly nodded his approval and so Thomas backed the truck up
away from the crater ridge and drove until they found a couple of large, truck
sized boulders to park next to. The
truck rolled to a stop. The sound of the
rocks crushing beneath the tires dropped off and the dust settled. Thomas shut down the engine and the rest of
the systems. In the freezing climate the
truck would be cooled off in an hour. An
hour was a very long time. Neither of
them left the cab in case they had to move in a hurry.
Outside,
only outlines of rocks, large and small, could be seen in the dim
moonlight. They waited, listening,
trying to hear over the sound of their racing heartbeats. Barely breathing they sat in the surreal, not
daring to move, not daring to think about moving. A loud plink shattered the silence. The sound came from the front of the truck
making both men jump, but they both knew it was just the engine cooling off and
tried to relax.
They sat
without uttering a single word for forty-five minutes, listening to more plinks
from the cooling engine and exhaust, feeling better about the situation the
longer they waited. “There's nothing out
there,” said Thomas finally.
“Let's turn on the radar again,” replied Seph. Seph flipped the two switches that powered up
and started the radar.
Several passes of
the line and no blips. “There you see? Now turn it off,” said Thomas. No sooner than he had said it, a loud thump
came from the roof. It landed with force
enough to make the truck sway slightly.
The radar blipped, there was a loud bang from the roof, and then the
radar went completely dark.
Thomas
fired up the truck engine in a flash and floored the accelerator, doing his
best to dodge rocks that were too big to roll over. “We shouldn'ta stopped! We shouldn'ta stopped!” cried Seph. As they gained speed there was another loud
pop that came from the top of the truck and then another. And then a third loud and resonating slam that
finished with a high pitched plinking sound, the sound of metal pieces being
broken apart from each other. An alarm
sounded. Thomas looked at the gauges and
saw that the reserve oxygen level was dropping rapidly. The beast had pulled one of the metal tubes from
the external oxygen tanks.
Seph ran to
the back of the truck and grabbed a pulse rifle and turned it on. He waited for an electronic tone to crescendo,
which meant the release coils of the rifle were charging up. He then flicked
the switch on a laser target finder. A
red beam emitted forward from the bottom of the weapon. More loud clacks and clangs came from the top
of the truck as they rumbled through the darkness. The creature was ripping apart the topside
equipment. As more crucial pieces of the
truck were torn off, more alarms started to sound, adding to the clamor.
Thomas
steered into a rough patch of ground hoping the speed and the rough terrain
would knock the creature off. As they bounced
and barreled forward the ruckus stopped.
Seph stood holding a rail with his left hand for balance and the pulse
rifle in his right. He stood in the dark
looking up at the roof, mouth agape. He
waited and listened. A weight settled on
him, a suffocating weight of panic so heavy it forced every miserable thought
from his mind until there was nothing left but raw fear suspended in a
void. And then the void was shattered
with a loud slam coming from the turret.
The slam was so concussive that Seph strained his neck flinching. Another slam and then another. Then a new sound was heard. This time it was the low-pitched creaking
sound of bending metal. A loud hiss
accompanied the departure of air from the rapidly depressurizing truck.
The creature
was coming in through the metal door of the topside gun turret! Seph opened fire, letting loose a continuous
barrage of bright blue balls of energy directed at the door and then heard
Thomas screaming at him to stop. From
Seph's position, the direction of the turret also happened to be the same
direction as the front of the truck where Thomas was sitting. Seph stopped and
tried to look ahead, but it was too dark inside to see anything. “Thomas, you all right?”
“You shot me in the arm you yalc! Come around and check the turret door,”
barked Thomas. Seph moved around to the
front, careful to keep his balance in the fast moving truck. The door started rattling and the sound of
sharp claws could be heard desperately violently scraping against the metal. Seph fired again, this time towards the rear
of the truck. The door was about half
way open when one of the pulses met the flesh of the creature. The creature wailed, letting loose with an
incredibly loud and terrifying howl. The
sound electrified the spines of the two men, paralyzing them. Again, the clatter from the top of the truck
stopped.
Thomas
continued to drive. White knuckles
wrapped around the steering wheel. Seph
regained motor skills and approached the opening to the gun turret with the pulse
rifle aimed and ready. The red dot from
the target finder jittered around on the turret can. He tried to look through the half torn off
door but it was dark inside and outside of the truck. He could see only blackness. He was right in front of the turret door now,
his hands shaking out of control. There
was no sign of any movement, no sign whatsoever. He watched and waited until he finally began
to think that perhaps the creature had given up. A hairy arm shot through the opening knocking
the door completely off its hinges. A
clawed hand, fierce and strong, grabbed Seph and hauled him up and out of the
truck through the turret. His rifle clattered
onto the metal floor. There were no
screams.
A moment
later the creature dropped down into the truck through the turret opening. Thomas quickly engaged the auto-drive to keep
the truck moving. He grabbed his illegal
.40 caliber antique handgun in one hand and drew his pulse pistol in the
other. He spun around out of his seat
and opened fire with both sidearms. All
he could see was the creature's dark silhouette, whose outline would brighten
with each pulse of the pistol, each pulse revealing the face of a nightmare in
more and more detail as it lumbered toward him.
He emptied the magazine of the .40 cal into the creature as he
screamed. The beast stopped coming
forward. It slumped to the floor and was
still.
Thomas leaned
against his seat for balance in the swaying truck. He braced against the searing pain in his arm
caused by Seph's pulse rifle. The truck continued
to rumble forward as Thomas stood panting and trying to regain his
composure. A second creature dropped
through the turret opening.
The
truck continued to drive itself at a high rate of speed until it veered left
into a shallow ravine and stopped when it crashed into a rock face.
