Vendra

Vendra by Brett Tyndall

Pain jolted throughout my body, hitting every nerve end. I felt a dampness around me, but it was too dark for me to tell if it was rain or blood. I was buried in wet rubble and debris from the explosion. I needed to get out of this pile. I felt around my uniform, which was dying from a lack of solar energy. I noticed one of the vials around my waist was empty. I assumed the suit shot me with HE/LP, or Healing Emergency/Life Preserver. The serum was only good for broken bones and blood loss, so I guess none of my organs failed. The suit would tell me if it wasn’t running out of energy. I didn’t bring a backup vial. I didn’t think I would need it.

The darkness surrounding me was enough to make the suit begin shutdown protocol. It had enough energy for one more task. I managed to wiggle my hand to the small button at the nape of my neck. A voice came on.

“Hello, I am Soteria. How may I assist you, Vendra?” A robotic, soothing voice emanated around me.

“What are my options for getting out of this?” I struggled to speak as the rubble weighed down on me. Soteria paused, presumably to run calculations.

“It would seem you’re under a pile of rubble weighing the equivalent of 8,640 pounds. Your options, given these parameters, are enlargement, teleportation, or anti-gravity.” Soteria spoke in a friendly way.

Enlargement would allow me to be seen from miles away, which I didn’t want.

“How far can I teleport?” I asked because I wasn’t paying attention when I was told what this suit could do.

“Up to eighteen feet from your current position,” Soteria replied quickly.

“Does that get me outta here?” I breathed heavily.

“Not entirely, but you should be able to dig your way through the rest.”

I didn’t even feel like I could stand yet.

“Does anti-gravity work for surrounding objects?” I really should’ve paid attention.

“Unfortunately, anti-gravity works only for the person in the suit.” Soteria sounded heartbroken when giving me this information. So that was out.

“Teleportation it is,” I said, trying to match Soteria’s positivity.

“Teleportation in t-minus five seconds,” Soteria said seriously. I heard a ticking sound before seeing nothing for the briefest moment. I felt much lighter in the position I was in now. Light broke through the rubble, which began to recharge my suit. I parted the rubble, revealing the rest of the city.

Buildings were destroyed, toppled over in the cobblestone street. Destruction was all I could see. Thousands of humans lay dead around me.

“Soteria,” I called urgently, “what happened here?”

“I monitored the situation while you were unconscious. The humans fired a weapon so loud it killed every human in a three-mile radius.”

“How?” I asked.

“Due to the firing of the weapon, the surrounding area experienced the loudest sustained sound since Earth-year 1883, roughly 750 Earth-years ago. I clocked the sound at 194 decibels. However, the city was subjected to brief shockwaves, which I clocked at over 300 decibels. This is lethal to humans. As sound can be simplified to pressurized air, the pressure becomes too great and causes pulmonary embolisms in human lungs. Embolisms then travel to the heart, killing them nearly instantly.”

“So how did I survive?”

“Your anatomy is slightly different. While you have organs that have similar functions, humans require oxygen for their bodies to function properly. You do not. However, since the sound could still cause harm to you, I took the liberty of shutting down your body for the duration of the sounds, which was roughly 32 seconds. For all intents and purposes, you were dead for that amount of time. Then, I converted some of this sound into electricity in order to revive you and administered your HE/LP.”

“You make that sound so simple.” How was I never told this? That would’ve caught my attention, surely.

I stumbled around the ruins of the city. Bodies lay strewn across the streets. Were these people innocent?

“I have to find some cover. Got any ideas?” I had only just begun to comprehend the situation I was in. The rest of the Emissaries of the Alliance of Peace, Zanthanon, Mavra, and Kuvir, my comrades, were murdered. I heard it for myself. The ship’s destroyed. I’m marooned on a hostile planet.

“Scanning…” Soteria said blankly. After about twenty seconds, she spoke again.

“There’s a heavily-wooded area about 10 miles southeast from here. That may be your best bet for now. To avoid being seen, I’ll turn on cloaking after I’m sufficiently charged, which will be twenty minutes from now.”

“10 miles away? Can I not just stay cloaked?”

“Unfortunately, cloaking wears down the energy of the suit faster than the sun can charge it, so I can only do it for about four hours.” Again, her heart broke telling me this.

“Great, I guess that would’ve been too easy.” I began walking south toward the nearest body of water. Rain fell across the ruins of the city. Overcast met with the cobblestone and formed a sea of grey around me. Buildings must have crushed some of the corpses, as blood ran down the streets. I was bleeding myself, even after the HE/LP.

I could probably walk a couple miles before running into any living humans, so I didn’t bother cloaking myself yet.

The suit can communicate with base, but they’re not responding. Did the humans use the weapon on my home? This was bad.

I had dehydrated food stored in small vials around my waist. I had enough to maybe last me a week. From there, I guess it’s just me and Soteria. I didn’t have any more HE/LP. Where do I go from there? How do I get home?

I didn’t have time to panic. I stayed near the side of the road for a half-mile, making sure to stay close to any structurally sound buildings in case I needed to find cover quickly. Stepping over corpses and cobblestone, I stumbled upon a locket near the curb, its polished, silver exterior was in stark contrast to its dreary, matte surroundings. I didn’t recognize the shape, it was like a concave oval. When I picked it up, I noticed it was lying in a pool of blood just out of reach for an outstretched hand. A lifeless, haggard woman had her midsection crushed by what I can only assume was her home, left to rot in the street. I found a picture of a child clutching to a younger version of the dead woman on the street when I opened the locket. The child had a lot of hair and seemed androgynous, but wore the clothes fitting of a male. Likely a child or grandchild. These people had nothing to do with this disaster, but they were caught in it anyway. I knew very little about Earth and humans, but not all seemed hostile. There might even be ones who could help me.

After I had gone another mile, I found a line of trees to hide behind. I surveilled the area. I could see several pristine buildings no more than a quarter-mile away. Still, no one was around. Not even up ahead. An eerie silence surrounded me as I hid. As I left the town, the road sidewinded into a line of trees. It wasn’t a forest, but it should provide sufficient cover.

What happened to everyone? I was several miles away from where I started. Were these people outside the fallout a part of the bloody mash near the epicenter or just in hiding?

The woods were not on forgiving terrain, as they stood well above the highway. I was winded when I felt like I got to a good spot.

“Okay, Soteria, what now?” She was kind of the brains of this operation.

“We have to assume something happened to base, so we have to get in contact with another Outreach Beacon.

“How do we do that?”

“It’s a long shot, but there’s a comms building about 12.5 miles southwest near the town of Fregenae. We may have company there, but if you can just send a quick signal, the Alliance could maybe pick you up.” It was a good enough plan for me.

The sun was lowering. Maybe it was from the fact that all my colleagues died in a terrorist plot or the ten-mile walk I just completed, but I’m very tired.

“Soteria, I think I might go to sleep. Can you turn off major functions for about four hours? I don’t want you to lose power too quickly.”

“I can do that. I’ll turn on body heat stasis so you don’t freeze. Sunlight still reflects off Earth’s moon, so I’ll charge as much as I can.”

I got a little further away from the road before gathering a pile of leaves. I didn’t want the gloss of my suit to give me away.

As I got comfortable, I saw bits of the night sky through the narrow-trunked trees. Stars seemed to stand on little branches as the trunks stood like dark pillars, preventing me from seeing the rest of the stars. They were almost configured like bars in a jail cell. I started to drift off, my eyes unable to support themselves any longer.