Exile

Rain as thick as blood coated her exosuit. Dozens of footsteps thundered behind her, a cacophonous stampede that almost drowned out the heavy downpour. Andramare fired a few laser bolts over her shoulder, but she didn't have time to look back and see if she hit anything. She just needed to slow them down, get a little more distance. Her muscles screamed in agony as she willed her legs to pump faster and faster.

Tall, colorful buildings made from galvanized plastic swayed above her like pink-robed worshippers reveling in praise to an unseen god. Narrow streets of cracked haxtra stone echoed the sounds of her pursuers, amplifying their shouts and her fear by magnitudes. The scene went by in a blur of speed and viscous rain as she skidded down an alleyway and ducked into the open door of an abandoned warehouse.

Andramare doubled over. The tumultuous rainfall slammed against the plastic exterior of the building with a million muted thuds. She'd lost the Keronagans for now, but that wouldn't last long. They must be tracking the Eye.

Her breath still coming in frantic gasps, she stood up straight and began recalibrating her light-jumper harness. Moving the three intricate dials proved too difficult with the Eye in her hand, and she wasn't about to holster her weapon, so instead she clipped the artifact to her belt. With her left hand now free, she set the jumper dial for the jump pads in the Mercurius Space Station.

Roaring shouts split her focus. She wrenched her neck around and saw a squad of Keronagan foot soldiers a dozen strong in the warehouse's open door. They screamed and leveled their blasters at her. This was bad. She wasn't finished recalibrating the jump drive yet.

Laser fire erupted. The pitch-black warehouse lit up with bright red flashes. Andramare ducked and returned fire. She quickly glanced around, but there was nowhere to run. They had her cornered.

There was no way to tell where the jumper would spit her out, but she no longer had a choice. She slammed her fist into the activation button, and immediately felt her body splitting apart as her atoms were thrust into space at lightspeed.

Searing pain exploded in her mind as her nerves were methodically picked apart and put back together again. Her bones knit together, and her fragmented skin grafted back onto her skeleton as she reconstituted. All five senses returned in a rush. Oxygen coursed back into her desperate lungs, and then it was all over.

The bright lights of hyperspace faded. The landscape that slowly came into focus was not the ITO light-jumper launchpad. It was a barren wasteland.

Red sand stretched over rocky earth. A young sun beat scorching rays onto the baked soil. The horizon stretched into an endless infinity, miles and miles of that scarlet soil splayed out before her across the expansive flat plains, the blanket of sand broken up only by rocky bluffs that dotted the landscape.

Andramare checked the locator on her holopad.

C O O R D I N A T E S U N K N O W N

Great. An undiscovered planet. That was just her luck.

Could've been worse. It could've been deep space.

An alarm went off in her helmet. There was a system malfunction. Her jumper harness sparked and spat. The glass orb in the center of the dials cracked. Blackened scorch marks marred the side of the dial and part of her chest plate.

Shit shit shit.

She twisted the dials, trying frantically to lock in the coordinates of the Mercurius. As she began turning them, the harness began whirring, a rising pitch that climbed towards a feverous scream. Panic ripped her insides apart like she had consumed a grendorian meat grinder whole.

The buzzing glissando got faster and faster as she yanked at the harness's buckles. Straps fell away from her shoulders, her fingers sweating inside her gloves as they moved from one clasp to the next. Just as the harness reached a high-pitched screech, the harness slipped off of her exosuit. She arced her arm back and threw it as far as she could. An explosion interrupted the peaceful silence of the red plains, and a dazzling array of colorful lights twisted into a chaotic orb of energy. The throbbing orb surrounded the air where the harness had been, constricted, and imploded into nothingness with a whoosh of air.

Andramare breathed out a sigh of relief. That was entirely too close.

She did a quick systems check. All functions normal. Evidently the light-jumper was the only thing damaged in the firefight. Comms weren't working, but that was normal. If this was truly an unexplored planet, it stood to reason that there weren't any satellites close enough for her comms array to piggy-back off of.

No light-jumper. No comms. No way off world. She was completely alone on an alien planet.

By nightfall, she had found a place to camp. There was a rocky bluff with an overhang that was as close to a roof as she would get. Exo Bellators were not given very much nature survival training, but they were all adept at managing difficult situations and adapting. Improvidus, Apto, Quod Victum. Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. Those were the core tenets of the Exo Bellators. She was trained for discreet infiltration behind enemy lines. A night under the stars was nothing.

Finding the bluff was step one. Step two was building some protective covering. This grassland must not see much rain. The earth was every bit as hard and cracked as the rocks themselves, so there was plenty of dry sticks and grass for kindling.

The shelter didn't take long to build. A handful of sticks and some grass made for a decent enough tent for the night.She was putting the finishing touches on it, tying the support sticks together and nestling them in a crevice against the bluff, when she noticed something smeared along the rock.

A deep red substance coated the rock in long streaks and slashes. At first she thought it was blood, but a closer look revealed the streaks were dry and grainy. Here and there, large clumps of it clung to the rock, as though the dark splotches were made from a paste comprised solely of the red sand that proliferated everywhere.

She traced a finger along the edge of a particular patch of sand. It curled and swooped over the rock in a nearly perfect arch. It was too perfect to have been the result of a sandstorm. Andramare backed slowly away from the bluff. As she did, the sandy patches began to take shape. Alarms went off in her suit. Her heart rate jumped dangerously in a matter of seconds.

WARNING: HEART RATE INCREASE DETECTED.

The slashes and swirls created a complicated geometry. Intricate patterns that seemed conflicting in one place combined once the picture was viewed as a whole. Somehow the patterns fit together in a beautiful display of artisanship, depicting what appeared to be a straw hut village. Hairy, stooped residents crowded around the center of the neolithic town. Long ribbons engulfed a tall pole in the middle of the street, trailing up along adjacent roofs and across to the pole like branching spiderwebs. The beasts appeared to be dancing and swaying. They were having some sort of celebration.

This planet was inhabited.

When night fell, Andramare sat with her back against the craggy rock wall, her eyes constantly scanning the horizon. Her nerves were frazzled. After discovering the cave painting, she checked her entire surroundings for signs that the creatures depicted in the picture might still be in the area. She found nothing. With the perimeter secured, she cautiously settled in and built a campfire.

Her shadow danced and stretched against the rock outcropping above her, distorting her image into a titanic demon with sinister proportions. The geometric ridges and sharp angles of the Keronagan Eye caught the flickering firelight in even stranger ways. Shapes and patterns which had appeared normal when she first laid eyes on the diamond-shaped artifact now had an alien quality to them. They were somehow...wrong.

She didn't know how to explain it. Shapes were shapes, whether two-dimensional or three. Yet the corners and degrees of this device didn't make sense anymore. It was as though the fire revealed the artifact's true shape, and it was wholly unlike anything that the natural world could produce. This relic did not belong.

Andramare...

Her arm jerked upward, blaster at the ready. The campfire's orange tongues licked at the encroaching darkness around her. That voice couldn't be here. It belonged to a dead man.

"Visor lights," she said.

Powerful side-mounted lights activated on her helmet. Their beams pierced the murky shadows. Something slipped behind a rock at the edge of her camp.

WARNING: HEART RATE INCREASE DETECTED.

Andramare was on her feet in an instant. She held her blaster in front of her and moved towards the boulder. Sweat trickled into her eyes, clouding her vision with stinging salt. Her distorted shadow lurched with her sudden movement, stalking her through the night like a hungry predator.

She took a deep breath and leaped behind the boulder. There was nothing there.

Relief washed quickly over her. She lowered her blaster and braced a hand on the rock while she caught her breath.

Something moved out of the corner of her eye. Her head whipped around. The visor lights illuminated the dead, grey visage of a human in a cracked exosuit.

Andramare screamed and tripped over a rock. Ringing sang in her ears as her head bounced off the hard earth. She lifted her blaster from the ground, but the phantom was gone.

She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the sky. Constellations she didn't recognize lined the inky canvas like winking elder gods mocking her plight. Searing fingers clamped around her heart and squeezed as his face danced through her mind's eye. Darkness engulfed her vision as her consciousness faded.

When she woke, she was still staring up at the stars in the sky, but now there was a crushing weight on her chest.

Something massive eclipsed the stars, obscuring an entire corner of the galaxy from her vision. It was bulbous and covered in fur. For a moment she thought it was one of the ancient gods that certain races believed in, a great leviathan returned from legend to consume the stars. As sleep cleared from her mind, she realized it wasn't a face in the sky. It was that of a creature standing over her.

WARNING: HEART RATE INCRAESE DETECTED.

Her hand instinctively reached for her blaster, but it wasn't next to her. There was another creature to her side. It was wearing a roughhewn leather loincloth and bracers. A crude bow and arrow was strapped to its back, and in its clawed hands was her blaster gun.

Andramare watched helplessly as the primitive beast turned the weapon over and over in its hands, examining the alien technology. It paid her no mind as it studied a weapon that was probably unlike anything it had ever seen. She started to lurch upwards, but the one standing on her chest leveled a jagged spear at her neck.

The beast's face was mostly obscured by coarse orange fur. She thought she saw eyes lurking beneath the thick mane, but there were too many of them. It's gaze carried the uncomfortable weight of being observed by dozens of eyes, as though she was being paraded around as merchandise during an Ondorian slave auction.

Movement in the darkness caught her eye. The bonfire had long since fizzled out, and the ensuing darkness largely obscured her immediate surroundings, but something else was out there. More of them, no doubt, standing just outside her sight. She tried to steady her nerves before her heart rate got too high, but the reality of her situation was a heavier weight than the creature on her chest. Red-hot bands of iron wrapped around her armor and squeezed, pressing her breast plate into her ribs, constricting her lungs, burning through her armor and cooking her heart inside of her chest.

She had to do something.

The savage on her right was still studying her blaster. She got its attention and mimed pulling the trigger. It looked confused, but she did it again with more urgency, then pointed to its hands. If it wasn't for the thick blanket of hair, she was sure she'd be able to see realization dawn on its face.

It repositioned the weapon, adjusted its grip, and pulled the trigger.

Blazing red light lit the night like an explosion. The laser bolt tore into one of the aliens that lurked in the darkness. It shrieked, and for an instant the shadows were dispelled and the others revealed. There had to be at least seven or eight of them.

The others screamed in fear as the one who got hit grabbed at its seared shoulder. Even the one on top of her shifted its weight in surprise. That was all the opening she needed.

She grabbed its leg and twisted. It dropped to her side, and she rolled deftly away. The other one had dropped her blaster when it went off, but it saw her going for it and tried to grab it first. Her shoulder slammed into the beast, knocking it aside as she swooped up her fallen weapon.

Andramare spun and aimed the blaster. She shouted, "Visor lights!"

Powerful beams sliced through the darkness like plasma through flesh. Several of the monsters had started sprinting at her, but stopped short as her helmet illuminated them. They all drew their weapons. Swords, spears, bows and arrows were all out and ready to tear her apart. They snarled at her, but did not advance.

She turned and ran.

Shrubs and brush appeared and disappeared in her bouncing helmet lights. With no regard to what lay ahead, Andramare charged forward, dodging rocks and hurdling crevasses as she sprinted away into the night. The sounds of pounding footfalls hammered her eardrums for the second time in less than a day.

WARNING: HEART RATE INCREASING.

When she chanced a glance over her shoulder, her heart slammed painfully into her ribcage. All the beasts were sprinting at her on all fours.

She didn't look back again.

Shapes slowly materialized out of the black bog of shadows ahead. Tall figures reached up from the ground like the teeth of a fallen titan. As she neared, the teeth widened and sprouted hair on top. Huts made of mud and sticks appeared, with grass roofs and open, gaping maws. Andramare didn't stop. There was nowhere else to run.

WARNING: HEART RATE APPROACHING DANGER ZONE.

Dozens of gazes slid over her skin like dirty oil. A fuzzy face lurked beyond the doorway of the nearest hut. She kept running. Another oozing finger of filth traced her skin as a second face appeared in a nearby house. Her legs kept pounding. A third doorway, another face, but this one different than the last. Was that him? She passed too quickly, and anyway it couldn't be, he was dead. She made sure of that.

More and more huts appeared, and with them more and more sets of eyes obscured but somehow known, and always watching. Footsteps thudded behind her like an earthquake, a cacophonous thunderstorm of malevolent nature determined to deliver her penance for a great many things.

She recognized this open space. There was the pole in the center, and the colorful silks strung along it and connected to adjoining roofs. Here there were even more huts. Those terrible faces approached from the dark doorways, and then their hairy bodies followed. She turned one way, then the next, but she was surrounded.

WARNING: HEART RATE HAS REACHED DANGEROUS LEVELS.

Andramare swung her blaster around, but this time they didn't stop. Their approach was slow and menacing, like alien wraiths that lusted for human flesh. She pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. They dropped one after the other, but each was quickly replaced.

One of them was wearing an exosuit identical to her own. Through its broken visor, familiar eyes gazed balefully out at her. She blasted its head off.

Another Emmett drew near to her. This time he raised a dirty, worn spear. She broke his neck with tears in her eyes.

WARNING: HEART RATE MUST DECREASE. CARDIAC EVENT IMMINENT.

Five more Emmetts fell to her blaster, then ten. She threw the Keronagan Eye at his feet and screamed that she was sorry. Or at least, that's what she thought she screamed. The deafening roar of her pulse was drowning out all other noises now.

She spun in a circle and killed more Emmetts. Some of him had strange fur covering parts of his face, and others had too many eyes, way too many eyes, but they were all him, and they were all looking at her, looking with that same hurt expression she saw the last time, but she was just following orders. He had to know that, he had to know it would always end that way, it always had and it always will.

Something loomed behind her. She could feel its presence. She spun, pulled the trigger, and through the haze of blood pumping through her veins she heard the click. Emmett raised the Eye of Keronagal high above his head, and brought it down hard on her visor.

The ground caught her. Her visor was cracked. The oxygen rushed out of her suit as a thousand Emmetts descended, and brought the Eye up and down again and again.

ALERT: HEART RATE NOT DETECTED. ALERT: HEART RATE NOT DETECTED. ALERT: HEART RATE NOT DETECTED.