Volume XXIX

Antithesis-B

 

A squad of humans lay waste to an alien planet, orbited by three moons, in preparation for terra forming. Their next project, in a distant solar system, requires laying waste to the third planet from the sun and its viral indigenous life form.

 

O2-32784.93 is a planet inhabited by a destructive silicon-based life form, until Ewan and his crew obliterate every trace in preparation for an Earth-like utopia. Their assignment, including terra-forming, takes seven days, as prescribed by the gods. They lose a single crew member, yet all memory of this loss is obliterated before they tackle their next planet, in a distant solar system of nine planets, which orbit a yellow sun.

 

The alien virus that has devastated this system and its home planet proves to be formidable, with technology undocumented in a planet scourging life form. Ewan and his crew attempt to establish a base, as usual, only to have their ship torn apart before landing. Ewan finds himself in an odd world, encased by a metal exo-skeleton, devoid of the oceans and land masses the archives suggest were once here, only to find himself looking into a mirror of his own past.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

 

First Element

Genesis

 

 

Chapter One

Window in the Sky

 

 

...on the second day

 

Blood red the moons rose over New England, the shadows of the two smaller satellites deepening the largest to vermillion as they nestled across its sphere.  A portent in ancient times, Ewan did not believe in superstition and sighed at their beauty.

“If only I could commit this evening to memory.”

The chip in his brain clicked into gear and he realised the futility of this errant thought.  There had never been a moment quite like this and perhaps there never would be, yet he knew the phenomenon would be repeated in 8,544.37 hours, judging by his quick calculation.

The waters of the lake at his feet were ripple free, ideal for the perfect figure-skater’s twizzle, if the lake was not pure mercury.  Its silvery sheen mirrored the triumvirate of lunar orbs, framed by age-old crags on three sides, and New England’s eastern edge sublime in its celestial window.

Ewan counted the stars through his window in the sky, as he did every night.  His mind a web of images, preventing sleep.  Scarlett lay motionless in his lap, her blonde hair eager to be teased by a wicked zephyr, but with no breeze here and no promise of one, New England was a ghost, stripped bare millennia before.  Time had no relevance here.

Scarlett’s eyelids flickered, their erratic movement much as Ewan expected.  He had witnessed this pain in many a comrade, living and dying, recalling the days’ action.  They were not supposed to remember.  Trained only to recall information deemed useful.  A difficult task, despite their training.

The blonde-trimmed eyelids flickered again and, with a twitch at the corner of her mouth, Scarlett’s eyes were open.  Blue turned to grey in the mercury light and the memory vanished.  Ewan ran his fingers over her eyes, sliding them shut, the blank stare of sleep beyond recognition, chilling.

“There you go my sweet Scarlett.  I fear you were not made for these times.  It’s all gone now.  This is my burden.”

Ewan rolled his companion onto her night kit and stood, stretching his arms skywards, one with the atmosphere trees that nurtured the sky over the soldiers’ camp, operational name, New England.  His fingers reached out to the star-encrusted galaxy, unimpaired by the long-set light of the sun, and with no atmosphere to speak of, he felt they were within his grasp.  Alas.

The marvel of the atmosphere trees was a sensory pleasure for Ewan and a scientific necessity.  Its spectacle wrought a smile he saved for himself.  The thin sphere of atmosphere the trees created for this camp would expand on the morrow as his platoon continued to eliminate all viral life in preparation for the terra forming.

Ewan kicked the lifeless rocks at his feet.  Their task seemed endless, yet something promising caught his eye amidst the shades of black and grey.  He bent down and plucked up a jagged rock, all silica.  The edges were sharp, uncompromising, much like the natives who had despoiled this landscape.  He threw the rock into the lake.  It consumed the projectile in a gulp and, with barely a ripple, settled back into its mirror-like celestial image.

The solitary ripple rolled across the surface of the lake, settling on the silica shale beneath the sphere of the atmosphere trees.  It did not register with Ewan as he bent down again, attracted by a single strand of colour; green.  Life had begun to germinate here in New England, on planet O2-32784.93.  His desire to pluck the blade of grass twitched at his fingertips.

“Look at you growing there, all by yourself.  What an adventure you’ve embarked on.  Take it from me, it’s as amazing as our window in the sky here, but that won’t last.  Not once we give life to the atmosphere, so hold on tight.”

Ewan kicked at a few more stones, shards rather than pebbles, tearing at his boots.  His team, a crew of twenty-one, slept, scattered about the silicon beach, restless in their nightmares.  All but three indistinguishable; Ewan the leader, Arnold tonight’s watch, and Jenna M.I.A., as usual.

He smiled, saluted the watch, and climbed the mound at the western edge of New England’s perimeter.  Jenna lay just beyond, restless in her eyelids, visions of the days’ slaughter fresh, yet to be erased.  Ewan sat, close enough to observe, but far enough not to wake her, drew out his notebook and began sketching her hourglass figure.

Jenna lay on her side, accentuating the curve between shoulders and hips, hands cupped beneath her head.  The faux atmosphere was warm enough to sustain life without a thread of clothing, and she preferred to sleep threadbare.  Ewan had sketched her before, but never by a mercury lake beneath a trio of blood moons.  He spread her supple form across two pages, rubbing in the edges with a dab of spittle from tongue to index finger, shading further with his pencil in the clefts that formed her breasts and the curious Y-shadow between her thighs.

Jenna’s lids flashed open, all doe-eyed menace set in an impossibly round face.  “A girl could get paranoid with you lurking about.”

Ewan did not bite, yet to finish fleshing her out.  His pencil the perfect shade for her brunette locks, long enough to cover her shame, if she was at all embarrassed; an impossible state for this woman.  The final stroke done he ventured a rebuke.

“Not if she enjoyed scanning the finished product into her memory chip.”

“Who said it was for me to enjoy?  Besides, what’s the point of having the package if you can’t enjoy it?”  She rubbed her legs together making sure Ewan noticed.  “Talking about packages, have you got a titanium implant in that thing of yours, or what?”

Jenna dragged herself up on all fours and nodded him over.  Ewan did not need to be asked twice, but he did fumble his notebook into his body suit.  The remaining actions were so formulaic that he found himself inside from behind before anything else registered, his fingers grazing Jenna’s hips, sending a ripple of goose flesh across her bottom and up her spine.

“I didn’t know you liked it rough, Ewan.”

“Just… like… being… in there…”

“Well, I like it rough… on you.”

Jena threw herself back against him, catching Ewan off balance, his mind elsewhere, and he toppled onto his back into a field of silica shale, which cut into him like a hundred jagged rosaries.  She straddled him before he could recover, wedging her knees into the serrated stone with an orgasmic groan.

“The Gods, Jenna!”

“You wish!  Don’t worry, I won’t shag it off.  Just lay back and think of New England, big boy.”

“I could lose myself in our window in the sky, with all its atmosphere, the moons, the stars.”

“I think someone’s got stars in his eyes.  I’ll make you forget the slaughter, Ewan.  Just in time to do it all over again tomorrow.  If there is a tomorrow on this planet, forsaken by the Gods.”

“They may have forgotten, but they did send us, their loyal Guardians, to regenerate this place.  I suspect this planet will have a sun rise, just like the others we’ve saved.”

“How about a bit of planet-shattering sex first, that’s if you’ve got protection?”

“I’ve got you, isn’t that enough?”

Jenna slid her hips down and dug her nails into his chest.  “Maybe out there, but here?  I think I got you covered.  How long can you keep it up, until the third sunrise?”

Ewan laughed, although the joke wore thinner than the atmosphere; three moons do not equate to three suns.  It was an interesting idea, one Jenna rocked out of existence, faster and faster, until satisfaction overwhelmed her.  She collapsed on Ewan’s chest, his fingers tangled in her hair.  His lips met the top of her head with a gentleness that stirred the beast of a woman.  She propped her head on her hands, digging both elbows into his chest.

 

 

“What do you think this is, love making or something?”

“I…”

“It’s just a fuck, Ewan.  Can’t you guys hold your load?  Do you have to let your emotion seep out?  Is this what a girl has to go through to get a decent orgasm?  Aaauugghhh!”

Jenna climbed off and flopped spread-eagle on her back, asleep before Ewan could arch his back and relieve himself of a dozen silicon spores.  He sat by her side for a while watching the transitions of the moons, while Jenna’s eyes examined the dark deeds beneath their lids.  The dead would be buried within her id by morning; his would be saturated in their grief.

 

Chapter Two

No Line on the Horizon

 

 

...on the third day

 

Ewan closed his notebook, his vision of Jenna complete in graphite, laying amidst the jagged spores in sympathy.  The eastern horizon glowered and she stirred beyond eyelids at ease with this world, while he held her grief in the palm of his hand.

The galaxy above, a rainbow in stars, faded with the sun.  A bolt of lightning shattered his vision, followed by a second.  There were no clouds; the sky above bereft of atmosphere, the source of the electrical storm a mystery.  Ewan had witnessed rejuvenated atmospheres explode to life, but never before their imposed state had taken hold.  The third day loomed; one day to establish a foothold, another to create a perimeter and atmosphere trees, and a third day to cleanse to the horizon.  They had so much work to do today, and much ground to cover.

Ewan roused Jenna, rocking her hips gently with a sympathetic hand.  She did not complain, not when it concerned duty; she saved her moans for horizontal activities.

The perimeter beyond her seemed peaceful compared to the action down by the mercury lake.  Nineteen comrades stirred, stretching tired sinews and rusty joints, their minds clear and ready for a new day, a fresh onslaught.

Scarlett held a one-armed pushup, scrutinizing Ewan’s approach as she lowered herself with the precision of a hydraulic lift.

“You owe me a hundred of these, or did you manage yours overnight?”

“I was laying back, thinking of New England.”

“Ew, way too much information.”

Ewan dropped onto all fours beside her and began his count before responding.  “You asked.”

“And regretting it.”  Scarlett lifted herself up on two hands, her legs perfectly horizontal above the shale biting into her palms.  “What do you think we’ll find out there, beyond the perimeter?”

“Same as yesterday.”

“More silicon?”

“Pretty much.”

The theory behind the Gods’ strategy was clear in moments like this.  Fear did not inhabit Scarlett’s eyes, not like the night before.  He knew she remembered the terrain, understood the substances involved, yet the opposition and the battle to quell the virus that had infiltrated and corrupted this planet were memories erased.  Ewan recalled every moment, each near miss and point of destruction.  He would lead them into the fray again, totally aware of the dangers, prepared to direct each member of his patrol to where they would be most effective and most in danger.

The soldiers in his unit held no fear in their hearts, each comrade robust with invincibility.  Whereas the life forms in their wake knew only the destruction of the previous day.

Ewan completed his morning set, careful not to be seen to reflect or rub his sleep-starved eyes.  His comrades were suiting up, checking weapons, and scanning the horizon.  Jenna had joined them, without a solitary blink of recall in his direction.  He tapped the pad on his chest and those memories pertinent to the days’ duties were projected onto the shale.

“Reconnaissance.”

Arnold stood, weapon over his shoulder, the modern scythe.  His muscles rippled beneath his mercury coloured jump suit, its pigmentation adapted from the surrounds, for camouflage, his eyes less assured of the image Ewan’s suit projected.  “I thought you were boning Jenna all night, not working.”

The silicon shard that embedded itself in the side of his head did not surprise him, its velocity fueled by Jenna’s sass.  “Might be time to grow some muscles on your head.”

“Only if it’s possible to match the one in Ewan’s pants?”

“Bastard.”  The second shard wedged beside the first, the battering bleeding into Arnold’s eye, yet he smiled.

“I’m sensing an injury, could this data be pain?”

“Enough, you two.  Study the images.  The datum has been uploaded to your suits, so plug yourselves in.  Tom!”

The soldier in question slid in across the shale, the bottom half of his suit currently standard issue Y-fronts, his charismatic smile disarming and purposefully full of cheek.  “Another impossible mission, Ewan?  I’m your man.  You know my motto… live, die, repeat.”

“No one will die if we all study the intel.”

Tom slapped a hand on Ewan’s shoulder.  “That bad, eh Boss?  What viral bastard created this shit hole?”

“A silicon based life form.”

“The lowest of the low.  So, no plant life, no atmosphere, and few competing species.”

Ewan nodded, relief in the action, acknowledgement his comrades were on the same page; switched on and prepared.  “Just keep a sharp eye, and ignore the scopes.  The composition of the virus mimics the surface shale.”

Tom stowed his scope, the objective clear and Ewan’s strategy simple.  Tried and true on dozens of terra formed planets; at least that’s how he recalled previous forays into the unknown.  The reality of his memories another question, but one he had no time to contemplate.

His twenty comrades set themselves into position, stationed in an arc, on the limits of the current atmosphere dome, with the mercury lake on their right flank and the rising sun at their backs.  Ewan scanned the horizon, rolling hillocks of shale, rising to silicon crags, deserving of a layer of heather.  There was no movement.  He waved his troops onwards, the atmosphere trees stretching out, supplanting their lifeblood, extending the habitable atmosphere and the advance.

Ewan pondered the weapon in his hands.  Its true nature not in doubt, but it had been dubbed ‘Cleanser of the Gods’.  The Cleanser had three primary functions; a 180º force field, a matching disintegrating laser in the lower spectrum, and a simple blaster.

“Set your Cleansers for radiant laser.”

“Even rocks can be blasted, Ewan.”

Jenna’s confidence irked him, as did her macho stance.

“Just bloody do it!”

“Who got out of the wrong side of the silicon this morning?”  Jenna’s ability to stalk a landscape with a quip second to none, drawing the eyes of each soldier in the arc while maintaining her focus.  She fired off a blast to her left, at Will’s feet, shattering a creature unrecognizable beyond a rock, besides its eyes.  The blast sat Will on his backside, the Cleanser in his hand cleansing the atmosphere, newly created above.

“Now that’s what I call a close encounter!”xx.

Ewan was not amused.  “Get your finger off the fucking trigger, get back in line, and cleanse the virus chomping at your boots.”

Will leapt to his feet.  Ewan as sharp.  The silicon life form, the virus blasted by Jenna, yet to be vanquished.  Its plethora of spores, were now individual entities, regrouping and rounding on the hapless soldier.  Finger still on the trigger, he lowered the arc of his Cleanser to the horizon, the line between sky and terra firma.  There was no line on the horizon when he had finished, only a silicon cloud, out of which emerged the main advance.

Ewan expected the onslaught to be stealth.  The distinction between rock and native virus indistinguishable until they moved.  The reaction of his comrades came as no surprise.  Pacing steadily across uneven terrain their Cleansers vapourized the oncoming hoard; tenfold compared to the previous day.  The soldiers’ inability to reconcile the two actions consolidated resolve.  Their advance proved devastating.  The purest of atmospheres stretching out in their wake, washing the sky clean of stars.

 

 

Calculations scrolled down Ewan’s ocular implant; territory accumulation, casualty numbers, infection predictions.  The comparisons between his team and the indigenous population were satisfying in their lopsided nature.  Line graphs splayed in opposing directions as he squeezed the trigger on his Cleanser, mopping up behind Jenna, whose predilection for the blaster created more viral spores than she cleansed.

Ewan opened up his mind to his comrades, replaying statistics of success, while requesting a halt in hostilities.  The silicon cloud settled on the fringe of the atmosphere trees’ dome and the Cleanser units recharged, sucking in the newly ionized atmosphere, converting oxygen and hydrogen atoms into deadly particle-charged rays of destruction.

Life creating death.

It was the one thought Ewan did not transmit to his unit, but one he had contemplated many times.  A dilemma quelled only by the knowledge that he acted at the behest of the Gods, the Creators.

“Jenna, switch to radiant laser.  I’m sick of cleaning up after you.”

“Not one for sloppy seconds, eh Boss?”

“Now!”

“What’d you do to him last night, Jen?  ‘Cause someone’s got his titanium rod in a knot.”  Scarlett traced her fingers up her hips and over her breasts.  “I think someone needs some decent curves to ride.”

“I do the riding on my kit, and I’ll do the blasting in my zone.”  Jenna turned her Cleanser in Scarlett’s direction.  Ewan tapped the side of his head, directing his next transmission to the two women at the expense of their comrade’s amusement.

“OK, ladies, I think we’ve had enough fun…”

“The fun’s just beginning.”

“Until the threat of danger on our readouts reads zero, we still have a task to perform.  Got it, Jenna?”  Her thought transmission remained static, so Ewan continued with his.  “Enough banter, switch to radiant.  It’s cleaner, painless.”

“They’re just a virus.”

“It’s still a life form, Jen.  And all life deserves respect.”

“Even one that creates a moonscape to live on at the expense of all other life?”

Jenna’s question had merit.  Ewan had often contemplated it.  What right did he, a mere Guardian and not a God, have to decide the relevance of any life form?  He drew a deep breath, the freshness of the virgin atmosphere confirmation.

“Especially… there is no need to lose our humanity.”

“They’re not human, Boss, just vermin.  They don’t care what the Gods gifted them.  They’re not worthy of your compassion.”

“If you believe that, why is your sleep so restless?”

It was another question Ewan had mulled over.  Did compassion compound with memory; the fingerprints of the Gods, those who remembered all?  Did the erasure make his comrades less human?  Would the fragments they forced him to endure eventually drive him mad?  He drew in a deeper breath and life coursed through him.  Why did the vermin fight on if they could not sense this, the beauty of existence?  Had he missed something, the antithesis to life as the Guardians knew it?

Jenna stepped about, refocusing on the wasteland beyond the atmosphere dome.  Ewan could see her fingers fiddling with her Cleansers’ blast control, in compliance.  The compactness of the unit displayed pure genius; a trigger for the index finger and modulation controls for each of the other three.  No need to drop one’s eyes to the device or lose focus, except when a unit did not respond.  Jenna dropped her eyes from the horizon.

“Movement, Ewan.”  Scarlett’s voice fell short of its previous sarcasm.  “I have a visual.”

“Visual confirmed, scanners adjusted and also tracking movement based on the initial attack.”  The determination in Tom’s voice belied the cockiness in his smile.

The approaching silicon cloud blackened the horizon, voiding the need for a warning.  Rolling like a dust storm, defying the windless atmosphere.  He raised his Cleanser, the statistics in his ocular implant transformed to a target scope, each of his comrades mimicking his actions, except Jenna.

The silicon storm ripped through the atmosphere dome, exposing the galaxies above.  Respirator helmets activated automatically at the fracture in sustainability, encompassing the heads of the soldiers in a protective bubble.  These were flexible enough not to shatter upon impact, yet impenetrable to the average battle blow.

Cleansers reduced the storm to dust, the compost of a new world, while Jenna blasted her path forward.  The virus about her splintered, regenerated and attacked her from all sides.  Ewan ran to her, his radiant laser useless with his comrade in the centre of the target zone.

The silicon life forms spun themselves into a miniature tornado and ripped through Jenna’s jumpsuit, eating into the flesh at her thigh.  Ewan, joined by Scarlett, deftly blasted the creatures individually, scattering the vermin far enough for Tom to step in with his Cleanser – set to radiant, sending them into oblivion.

“Arnold, Will, Simon, close up the perimeter.  Scarlett…”

“I’ve already got the medical kit out, Boss.”

Jenna bit down on her lip, drawing blood, unwilling to cry out.  Ewan peeled back the blood splattered remnants of her jumpsuit.  The flesh on her thigh shredded, the glint of her titanium femur in harmony with New England’s mercury lake.

“It’s not broken, Jen.  We can patch up the flesh, right Scarlett?”

The blonde nodded, her facial muscles straining against the horror they wished to depict.  Jenna’s sinews were still attached at the patella and the pelvis, but Ewan had never seen so little in between.  He cradled his comrade as Scarlett administered a sedative.  Jenna clutched his arm.

“I can feel them, Ewan… they’re inside me… converting me.”

“That’s just the shredded nerve endings, the pain speaking.”

“Not… in my head… my chest… our skeletons are perfect… the framework for their conquest… our strength is our weakness.”

“It’s just the pain, Jen…”

“No!”  Jenna was not prone to exaggeration, only as complex as a silicon organism.  “I can feel them.  I’m turning into silicon… it’s what they do… to everything.  You have to vapourize me, before I become your enemy,” she grabbed at his jumpsuit and pulled him in close, “and you don’t want me as an enemy.”

Ewan ripped open her jumpsuit.  The flesh he exposed bore traces of mercury, tendrils of silicon.  Scarlett stood and stepped away.  Ewan followed her lead as he set his Cleanser for radiant.

“You were pretty good last night, Boss.”

“Not as good as you.”

He had lost comrades before, but never like this.  Ewan stood back, his fingers fighting the urge to depress the Cleanser’s buttons.  A single depression and Jenna was compost.  She scattered in the atmosphere as it delivered its first zephyr.

The effect on his fellow soldiers manifested itself instantly.  They had no memory of the fallen.  Their number had once been twenty-five.  The eighteen remaining advanced upon the silicon virus, pausing only to refuel.  They assimilated three times the territory projected for the day, often outrunning the atmosphere trees, and Ewan did not fire another shot.

Scarlett and Sigourney led the advance, evaporating the indigenous life forms in their thousands, until Ewan called a halt to their advance.  He had to physically restrain Scarlett, disabling her Cleanser, white hot at the tip.  Sigourney continued on as the sun set on eyes crying out for tears, a state Ewan had wiped from Scarlett’s face.

Catching up with Sigourney was not difficult; talking her down became Ewan’s challenge.  “Siggy, Siggy, the day’s done.”

“Take that you bitch!”

“Siggy, private, stand down… shoulder arms and stand down!”

She swung towards him with malice, her index finger cocked and ready.  “I’m gonna kill every one of those bastards and anything and anyone who gets in my way.”

“I know, Siggy, but we’re about to lose the light.  There’ll be plenty for you in the morning.”

“I’ve got night vision.”

“Sure, but do the other patrols?  I can’t have you storming around vapourizing other Guardians.”

“There’s no such thing, they’re just a rumour.”

“As we are to them, Siggy.  Do you remember how many we did basic with?”

“I… no…”

“I do.  I remember everything.  Do you want to remember this, your loss?”

“But Jenna?”

“Come with me and I’ll put it right.”