Tergoza War Excerpt: Dunis Excursion Part II

The sun over Dunis’ western hemisphere began to dip low in the sky as Zeema and Roken found themselves at the Tergoza Military Command Base at the top of Outpost Zeta, waiting for the one in charge of the base to arrive with the newly captured prisoner. Sitting on a hovering bench outside a door, the two looked around while watching soldiers walk back and forth through the halls. They didn’t know how long the wait was going to be, but it had already been an hour, and a long wait was something both of them were not very fond of.

“So, you like films?” Zeema asked, “While on leave after the mission to Ca’zara, I found myself watching the Or’theora Trilogy. Long movies, but worth watching. I also watched a historical documentary talking about the evolution of the Rilazonians and Tergoza from dragons a long time ago, and how the Tergoza and Rilazonians share the same evolutionary ancestors despite being from different planet-”

Roken sighed, “We’ve been fighting alongside each other for over a year and you never bothered to ask if I like films? Why bring this up?”

“Well I noticed we don’t talk very often. We banter out on the battlefield while taking out the enemy, but I don’t think I’ve ever even had a full personal conversation with you. So, what kind of music do you like-”

“I don’t like to chat,” Roken stated bluntly, “Nothing against you, or anyone else aboard the Advent, but my day-to-day is shooting enemy soldiers in the head with accurate precision from fifty meters away. Interpersonal communication kind of takes a dip in effectiveness due to that.” He then shrugged while looking off into the distance, “I’ve been a sniper for so long that I don’t even remember my life before I picked up the rifle. I don’t want to remember it.”

Curious, Zeema leaned in next to him. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t want to remember’? What happened?”

Roken looked out the nearby window, making no noise. He then closed his eyes and leaned back on the bench, a cold, upsetting look on his face.

Not seeming to take the hint, Zeema scooted a bit closer to her. “Did I ever mention how I got into the military?” Roken shook his head, keeping his eyes closed, and Zeema continued. “I was seventeen years old when the EOE first invaded Tergoze. As a result of my age, I wasn’t even enlisted. During the invasion, I made my way into a forest military camp where I begged, pleaded for the military to let me enlist so I could help fight off the EOE. At first, they stated that no person under the age of twenty-one could enlist, but I stuck to it no matter how many times they denied me. Someone higher up soon made a special case for me, and just like that I was a soldier.”

Without opening his eyes, Roken spoke up. “What’s your point?”

“My point is while that was a long time ago, I remember my life before this war. I remember sitting on the grass in front of my school, picking flowers. You’re saying that, as soldiers, we shouldn’t focus on anything else than picking up a rifle. However, if we let our nature as soldiers disconnect us from the people we’re trying to protect, why would we even bother to fight?”

Roken opened his eyes and looked outside again as Zeema knew that he was contemplating what she said. Zeema then looked at the time on her VEV and realized that they were sitting there for quite some time. Making sure no one else was coming, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

----

Opening her eyes again, Zeema looked around and found herself back on Ca’zara, sitting crammed into an armored personnel carrier with about half a dozen other soldiers. Outside, she could hear ships flying overhead, and seconds later could hear and feel the reverberation of nearby explosions as the ships dropped their payloads on enemy craft.

The back door to the APC opened, and Zeema ran out with the rest of the troops. She looked up and saw large capital ships firing wildly at each other high in the air, the debris from the devastation raining down on the battlefield in front of her. The sky above the ships was dark, with swirling green portals opening up just below the black cloud-lines. Perpetual flames raged in the distance as explosions of all sizes deafened the area around her. Another Tergoza vessel flew overhead and fired a missile at a tank squadron nearby, destroying most of it.

By this point, the rest of the soldiers that accompanied Zeema in the APC were gone, most of them given a different mission structure than her, so she walked towards the damaged tank group by herself. When she approached the burning wreckage, she aimed and fired a few rifle rounds at an enemy soldier who emerged safe from his tank, dropping him before he could aim his pistol. Another EOE soldier quickly got the drop on her and kicked her in the stomach, pulling his own pistol out at the same time. The force of the kick forced Zeema to drop her rifle and fall to the ground wheezing, but she quickly grabbed a knife from her boot and stabbed the enemy in a soft spot of his armor. The soldier grunted in pain, and she pulled her knife back out, then used all of her strength to punch him in the face so hard that the glass of his helmet’s visor shattered into thousands of pieces. The enemy soldier fell to the ground, and Zeema picked up her rifle.

Zeema held on to her stomach with one hand and lifted the rifle with the other, firing at two enemy troops. She took one down, but another threw a small explosive which detonated close to her, the force of the explosion throwing her back and knocking her into a nearby destroyed wall. Zeema fell to the ground and looked up as the surviving EOE soldier walked over to her, aiming his rifle at her face while she helplessly tried to stand up.

“Goodbye, lizard,” the EOE soldier said as his finger pushed down on the trigger. Within an instant, however, a single green bolt of light came out of nowhere and hit the enemy square between the eyes, not stopping as it continued its trajectory. The soldier fell to the ground, dead, as Zeema weakly stood up, looking around for her sudden savior. When she didn’t see anyone, she passed out and fell to the ground, surrounded by dead soldiers of both sides as the war raged on around her.

----

Zeema opened her eyes again to see that she was resting her head on Roken’s jacket, while he stood nearby. One of Dunis’ moons was rising off in the distance, and Zeema looked at her VEV again to see that another hour had passed.

“What were you dreaming about?”

“A memory,” Zeema said. Before she could elaborate, however, she noticed two Tergoza walking down the hall with a human who was visibly beaten and covered in blood. He was walking ahead of them with his head down, as though he was ashamed. She angrily sighed as both her and Roken stood up, walking over to the three.

“What is the meaning of this? Do we always treat prisoners like that? Because unlike the EOE, I know the Tergoza have some kind of ethics code.”

“What do you mean? Who are you, anyway?” One of the Tergoza asked. Zeema looked at his nametag while he did so.

“Well, Private ‘Rorik’, my name is Commander Zeema Jetrel. I want to know who gave you authorization to injure this human. He looks horrible!”

“Ma’am,” the other soldier named Falron replied, “we didn’t do anything. This is how we found him. He was outside of his transport, shivering and covered in blood. There wasn’t anyone inside the ship, either.”

“What? What happened to him, then?”

Falron shrugged, “we don’t know. He either won’t speak to us or he can’t speak at all.”

Rorik chimed in. “We took him to the medical lab to figure out what happened. The doctors did a scan on him and said that the blood covering his armor was composed of seven different DNA patterns: One of his, six of other humans. We don’t know what happened to him.”

“Well someone has to figure it out!” Roken exclaimed, “It’s either something out there attacked him or he killed his companions in a bout of insanity.”

Zeema looked over to Roken, “there is a war going on out there. Nothing’s as black and white as that anymore.” She then turned towards the two soldiers while keeping watch of the human in the corner of her eye. “Where is the commander of this base? I want to speak to him, or her.”

Falron turned towards a large window, pointing at the planet’s now-rising largest moon. “Commander Vorla Kolroc? She left a few hours ago to attend a command summit on Oro. She will be back later tonight. In the meantime, she left Captain Tolmo in charge.”

“Where’s Tolmo, then?” Roken asked, “May we speak to him?”

Rorik lowered his head and sighed. “He was injured. Badly. Tolmo was heading back here from a scout mission earlier today and his ship was shot down by a pair of EOE missiles. We’ve been trying to get in contact with Commander Kolroc to inform her but the EOE must have established some sort of jamming device since taking down his ship. We don’t know who is in charge now, everything’s been in chaos.”

Zeema shook her head when she thought of the crashed ship, knowing that it was the same one she dreamed about, and sighed again, “I guess I’m the highest ranking officer in this room, then. Look, let me talk to this human in a smaller, more comfortable room and see if I can figure out what happened.”

“And how will you do that?” Roken asked.

“I don’t know, charm him I guess.”

Roken slightly smiled. To Zeema, even that small gesture seemed to be the first time it had ever happened in his life. “With all due respect, I highly doubt that would work. You don’t seem to be his type.”

Zeema chuckled, “Roken Zalikor, was that a joke?” Roken shrugged and turned around. Zeema, now focused again on the human, turned back towards him as well as the other Tergoza. “Is there any room we can go to? I need to talk to him.”

Falron nodded and gestured towards a door near the other end of the hallway. “Yes ma’am, follow me.”

Zeema, Roken, Rorik, Falron, and the human turned and walked down the hallway. As they did this, Roken whispered quietly to Zeema.

“Aren’t we deviating from finding Cordon Sorokanos?”

Zeema glanced over and noticed a figure standing near one of the hall’s windows, a blue cape and hood illuminated by the rising moon as two blue eyes looked right at her. “I don’t think we have to worry about finding him. We’ll question this human and maybe find out what happened to the rest of his squad.”

“Why are you so adamant about questioning him?” Roken asked quietly, “it’s not part of the mission.”

Zeema looked over at the human, who looked off in the distance blankly as he walked with shallow steps on the marble surface. “Something’s wrong with him. I don’t know what or why, but I have a feeling that he’s involved in the reason for why Cordon Sorokanos is on Dunis in the first place.”

“Well hopefully High Commander Xerec doesn’t find out about this. We already have enough problems with that pompous arrogant fu-”

“Here’s the room.” Rorik said, interrupting Roken and Zeema’s conversation, “Commander Kolroc will be back soon, so make it quick. We have to report back to the Outpost’s doctor, he might have more information on what happened to this human by now.”

Zeema and Roken nodded as they walked into the room, escorting the human in at the same time. Just as Zeema closed the door, however, she turned and noticed that the blue-clad figure was gone from where he was standing.

---

Zeema and Roken sat on a couch in a small room as the human sat unrestrained on a chair in front of them. Zeema looked around and noticed that the room was perfectly comfortable for being part of the military, with off-white walls and a nice carpet. Resisting the urge to take her shoes off and feel the carpet between her clawed toes, she sat up and looked the human in the eyes.

She wished that the soldiers who escorted him to the room would take the opportunity to clean the blood off of him or even synthesize him some better clothes to wear. She didn’t even know what the color of his blood-caked hair was, but could see that he had peach-colored skin and dark blue eyes. He was tall for his species, almost as tall as a Tergoza soldier, and had an average build.

“Can I ask you for your name?”

There was no response from the human. He instead looked at her with a blank, cold, emotionless expression on his face that unnerved even a solider such as Zeema. Although she had been fighting in a war for over four years, thinking that she had seen the worst of humanity in the sights of her rifle, there was just… something about this human that scared her.

“Your name, please.”

Again, no response. He just kept looking at her, staring past her VEV into her purple-colored eyes. The rapid heartbeat picked up by her scanner and the occasional blink of his eyes indicated that he was still alive, but aside from that Zeema was unsure.

“What happened to you?”

The human blinked a couple times and breathed in heavily, then spoke in the most monotone voice imaginable, pausing every few seconds. “Two weeks ago. We unearthed a stone. This stone was black. This stone was beautiful. One by one. My soldiers fought. One by one. My soldiers died. For the stone. The blackest heart. The darkest stone. My soldiers. Dead. I. Last. One. Stone. Mine.”

Without any other words, the human then fell forward and onto the ground. Zeema’s VEV scanner picked up his heartbeat as it peaked well past the safe range, then flat-lined. Zeema yelled as she leaned down to help the human. “Roken! Get someone who knows human biology! I’ll stay here and do what I can!”

Just as Roken was about to do what she asked, the human stood up despite having no pulse. He lifted his hand to reveal that he was holding a black, diamond-shaped stone within his armor.

“Veshka dol shelti!” He lunged forward, his eyes turning black as the stone wrapped around his hand and covered his body. Zeema jumped out of the way and punched him in the face, causing the human to stumble back. Seconds later, his skin turned pitch-black and he gained a few more inches of height, his neck elongating. By now, he no longer looked human, and looked more like an onyx-colored monster with spines protruding from his arms and his teeth turning inward and razor sharp. His mouth made a sickening “crunch” noise as it pushed forward, and his eyes went from black to a piercing blood red. At this point, the human was completely changed into a black-skinned creature that hissed before lunging forward again, its fingers now turned into razor-sharp claws.

Zeema dodged the initial attack and jumped forward, grabbing the monster by its neck. Roken took out his sidearm and shot it in the head, but the creature shrugged off the small plasma projectiles and turned quickly, using its momentum to throw Zeema across the room before hissing and walking towards Roken. Realizing she needed more help, Zeema ran over to the door, but the monster lunged at her again, its hand clinging to her right arm while shoving her into the wall. With her free hand, Zeema grabbed a combat knife from inside her jacket and stabbed the creature in its right eye, freeing herself from its grip but at the same time receiving a deep scratch across the forearm by black claws.

The creature growled as it took the knife in one hand and crushed it into a crumpled piece of metal. Roken, using all of his strength, pushed the couch into the creature while it was distracted from the knife, pinning the creature to the back wall. The monster growled and pushed the couch back, knocking Roken to the ground and the couch on top of him.

Zeema, in the meantime, felt weak as she looked at her right arm. Her Command Interface Device was completely destroyed, and as such her Visual Enhancement Visor was not feeding any information to her. She ripped the damaged equipment off, then cradled her injured arm as she stepped forward. In her mind, Zeema could hear a series of voices hissing at her, telling her to “swear fealty to the shadows”. Feeling sick, she fell to the ground, her vision fading as she watched Roken and the creature fight.

“ZEEMA!” Roken shouted. The creature, only stopped by the couch between them, tried to stab him with its claws. He used his legs to push the couch off of him and shot the monster with his sidearm again. This time, the shots hit its already damaged eye, and the creature stumbled back with the plasma glowing in the eye socket as it slammed into a wall with a bright neon light shining directly on it. The monster screamed with a shrill voice as the bright light shone on its back, and

Roken smiled, “Light! These things are injured by bright light!” he told Zeema, who was still trying to sit up properly. He grabbed his sniper rifle while turning on the laser sights. He then aimed the focused light at the monster who hissed even more loudly. He kept the sights on the monster, but it lifted its palm and shot a black spike that smashed into the laser device. “Well dang.”

Hissing, the creature walked towards Roken, and lifted its claws to deliver a killing strike. As it did this, the door to the room sliced open and subsequently exploded, revealing the form of a Rilazonian, a Tilan in particular, wearing silver and blue armor as his cape flowed from the force of the blast. He had a blue, M-shaped symbol on his armor and a matching mask covering half his face, and held onto a sword with a metallic-blue blade in his hand. As he stepped forward, aiming the weapon at the onyx-skinned creature, he smiled.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it’s not nice to hurt others?” the Rilazonian said. The monster growled and jumped towards the new person in the room. With one swift action, the Rilazonian swiped his blade at the monster, then sheathed it as the monster stumbled past him, its head falling from its body a split-second after that and hitting the ground with a sickening “thud”. The Rilazonian turned and walked towards Roken, keeping his hand on his sword’s hilt while the blade remained in the scabbard.

“You’re okay now…” he said, then looked at the decapitated creature lying on the ground, “…but I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

“What. Was. That?” Roken asked, trying to let his thoughts catch up to him. “What’s going on? Who are you? What about- ZEEMA!”

Roken ran past the Rilazonian and knelt down next to Zeema, who was looking paler by the second as she faded in and out of consciousness. The Rilazonian walked over to her and, without any words, touched her arm with both hands. Roken widened his eyes as the Rilazonian’s hands glowed a bright blue across her arm, which afterward was covered in the same blue metal that made up the weapon he used as well as his armor. Zeema opened her eyes and looked at the two momentarily, then closed them again as her skin returned to its normal color. Even in the fog of pain, she could still hear the two in the room, and Roken sat on the ground while he elevated her head.

“So, what is going on? What was that thing, and what did it do to Zeema? And who are you?!”

The Rilazonian matched his sitting style. “That thing WAS a human, but he had a darkstone on him. That turned him into a Shadowmaster, one of Osiri’s combat troops. It scratched your friend and almost turned her into one, but thankfully I was able to help her out before the transformation was complete with this volinium patch. As for who I am? My name is Cordon Sorokanos, but you can call me Metallon. I’m an Ometa Guardian.”

Roken shook his head in disbelief, cradling Zeema as though she was his own flesh and blood. “You’re safe now,” he said quietly to her, “you’re safe.”

Metallon stood up and walked over to the door, picking up the dropped darkstone from the Shadowmaster’s corpse as the corpse itself began to fade into nothing. With one grasp of his armored hand, he crushed the stone into dust and let the particles drop to the ground.

“We can’t stay here.”

Just as Metallon spoke, Zeema fell asleep in Roken’s arms.

She found herself once again on Ca’zara from a year before, and saw a hooded figure in a green cape walking up through her injured daze. He was holding a freshly-fired sniper rifle, and knelt down next to hold her head in his arms. He then spoke gently to her as he stood up, carrying her to a nearby shuttle.

“You’re safe now. You’re safe.”