Xenophobia

Chapter 1

Dark clouds rolled in, blotting out the dim star that lit the little backwater planet. Rain, just a drizzle at first, increased to a steady downpour just minutes after it began, and intermittent, almost rhythmic, flashes of lightning traced the darkened afternoon sky.

Moisture: such a simple thing with such enormous importance. Without water, carbon-based life would never have existed. Our chemical processes require dihydrogen oxide in order to make energy, and without this unique molecule a planet is considered uninhabitable. Even Radical Environmental Restructuring Teams couldn't simply create an Earth-like climate without naturally occurring water vapor.

Human colonists had no trouble settling on this little shit-hole of a planet, however, and as Raymond Schaffer lay prone in the waist-high grassland that New India was most famous for, he contemplated the pregnant clouds from the corner of his eye.

“No amount of moisture is going to keep this planet habitable for much longer,” he thought, smirking slightly despite having been frozen in the same position for nearly seven hours. His mind continued to wander.

“New India,” another smirk, “I swear to God: the more planets The Company colonizes, the stupider the names. Last time I checked the history holodecks, India was a lush, tropical country, not some grassy wasteland. Not that it matters. Jungles aren’t exactly common on Earth anymore…”

Slightly disheartened by this new train of thought, Raymond turned his full attention back toward the task at hand. Several hundred yards ahead lay an abandoned Atmospheric Adjustment Station: its titanium alloy walls slick with the product of the current deluge. Various antennae adorned the roof of the station, some twisted and bent out of shape due to the tiny planet’s unusually strong winds. Dwarfing the antennae stood the station’s “chemical cannon” as the engineer boys back at home used to call it. It was an old magnetic accelerator rig. Mid-2097 design. Boy that baby was old. Atmosphere technicians used to build them for launching explosives seeded with different chemical cocktails (CFC martini anyone?) into the stratosphere. It was an old technique, but it revolutionized how humans regulated climate on newly colonized worlds.

The building wasn’t exactly condemnable. It had been sitting out here with nary a visitor for several years, its deep underground network of laboratories, maintenance shafts, and offices left to be reclaimed by nature. And it certainly was reclaimed: with interest. On the day of the grand closing of the site, the left portion of the pneumatic door must have malfunctioned. It stood wide open to the emptily undulating sea of tall grass. Ray could make out several clumps of yellow foliage spread like a cancer in the shadows of the lobby from his position. The place looked like a graveyard for lost weather engineers: a vast emptiness whistling in the wind.

According to Ray’s contractor, however, the abandoned station was no longer devoid of life.

Sheets of rain continued to soak into his body armor -- already heavy with perspiration. The grass bent under the weight of the downpour, almost to the point of buckling. Back stiff, arms tingling, Raymond continued to gaze ahead, alert to the slightest change in the sea of grass. He had been laying stock-still like this since he had arrived after his drop two miles to the east. A single movement could give away his position. He didn’t even have to imagine what kind of hell he would have to go through if that happened. He’d seen it firsthand.

He was quite practiced in the art of the human statue act, and he had quite the incentive to be good at it. Years of training, both on the planet he called home and in the field, always took hold in times like these and distractions just seemed to… melt away.

Rain began to collect on the visor of his Mark II Camouflage Helmet, and, responding to a quick blink of Raymond’s eyes, an almost invisible line of plasmodized rubber began to move up the Plexiglas view port, wiping it clean.

Ray tightened his grip on the stock of his weapon, giving the blood that had settled in his fingers a chance to move on. In his tingling hands he held his pride and joy: a Cobalt Systems Computer-Integrated Long Range Pulse Rifle. He had named it “Wrath.” The name seemed to fit pretty well, considering Ray’s occupation. Jer said he babied the damn thing too much, but Raymond didn’t think so. It had been his first real weapon (besides the BB gun his father had given him as a kid), and it had gotten him out of a more nasty scrapes than he cared to count.

Ray’s COM link crackled.

“Rise an… n camp… s!”

Speak of the devil…

Ray clicked his molars together and tuned the frequency on the comm. Immediately a raspy, overly-enthusiastic voice vibrated against his right ear drum.

“Elmo, this is Big Bird, come in Elmo. The package is almost ready for delivery. See anything interesting yet?” the voice crackled. Ray could hear the smile radiating from his unnaturally genial face.

“How come you get to be Big Bird, Jer?” Ray answered, a rare chuckle escaping his lips.

“Because I’m piloting your ticket off this grassy horse’s ass. Have you seen anything or not?”

“No. Not yet.”

Technically that wasn’t true. Three hours ago a prairie cat, one of the few predatory animals that roamed this small planet, had slunk by his position. The creature had startled him slightly as it padded by, moving silently like a panther, even though it more closely resembled a wild boar. Its thick hide had been the same golden color as the grass in which it stalked its prey, and as it passed Raymond caught a faint whiff of carrion through the air filters in his helmet. Luckily, Ray’s training paid off, and, not having noticed him, the predator merely continued on: heading west.

“That’s unfortunate,” he replied, his disappointment telegraphing quite well over the COM link, “I was hoping that we could get this party started. I’m just about finished cutting the fission rods for the main event." Ray could almost see the manic glint flash across his partner’s slate-gray eyes.

“Remind me again why we don’t just use the company-issued nukes?”

Jer giggled in his own special, almost frightening, way.

“Because making the baby’s the fun part, Amigo.”

“Just let me confirm an infestation before you come blazing out here with that thing,” Raymond cautioned, letting out a small sigh. Gerald always got like this while bug hunting. Not that he wasn’t always a little off…

“Don’t fret young one,” Jer huffed in his most convincing high-class accent. “I’m nothing if not patient.” He paused a moment for effect. “This COM chatter was brought to you by the letter ‘E’. Big Bird out.”

Another sigh escaped the prone man’s lips.

“That man needs counseling…”

“It’s the end of the world as we know it—and I feel fiiiiiine…” The song faded into static for a moment before the DJ’s gravelly voice cut in.

“You’ve been listening to K-Rock 104.4 out of Delphi,” the man, who apparently had dubbed himself “King Kody,” growled.

“Do I sense a bit of job dissatisfaction there, Kody? Cuz I’m lovin’ mine.”

Gerald Hanes sat hunched over a workbench, separated from the icy void of space by nearly two feet of tempered steel and carbon fiber. Another song, the newest hit by an aspiring electronic artist, began to reverberate within the confines of his skull and the opaque, faintly glowing concoction sitting before Gerald began to take on a sickly yellow hue.

The young man sat up a little straighter; a drop of perspiration rolling down his lightly pointed nose, and a look of manic glee overtook his already affable expression.

“This should burn a bright purple,” he muttered to himself as he began stirring the mixture with a lead rod. Jer didn’t know about the radio DJ, but he sure as hell enjoyed his line of work. He carefully poured the mixture over the nuclear fuel rod he had securely clipped to the firing mechanism of his specially constructed warhead. After filling the casing to the brim, bobbing his head to music only he could hear, he stepped back from the bench to cast an appraising eye over his latest creation.

He had set the device using a simple push-button firing mechanism that would allow his waiting comrade to key as long of a countdown as they needed to move to the optimal viewing distance. He wasn’t going to miss this baby’s début if his life depended on it.

Hanes moved to the seven-inch thick glass viewport at the rear of the vessel and looked out into the starry void, away from the dim red star that lit New India. The ship had been orbiting the small, yellow, ocean-dotted sphere since Gerald had dropped Ray off ten clicks from the abandoned AA station. The fuzzy music became more distinct when he neared the window as the chunk of metal embedded in his skull picked up the stronger frequency. Jer smiled. He liked hearing music in his head. It complimented the voices quite nicely.

Crackling erupted from the COM link sitting in its special slot near the pilot’s seat.

“Gerald. I think I may have something down here.”

“Wonderful,” the grey-eyed man cooed to himself.

He turned back to the workbench and grabbed a can of yellow spray-paint.

“Just one final touch…”

The tall grass to the west of the AA station bobbed and twitched against the wind. An ebony figure prowled out of the grass, dragging a thrashing white bundle behind it. The figure was generally humanoid in stature, but looked almost skeletal: its vertebrae jutting prominently from its back and its ribcage clearly defined even in the half-dark of the storm. The creature’s legs bent back like those of a dog and it sported a long, segmented tail tipped with a wicked barb. Four horn-like appendages extended from its upper back, giving it an almost dragonfly-esque appearance. The most distinguishing feature of the beast, however, was its head.

The beast’s long, phallic cranium swiveled about atop its shoulders, reflecting what little light escaped the cloud cover. As the being scanned the surrounding sea of grass for other forms of prey, its tongue, tipped with a second, smaller mouth, lolled out between its larger pair of metallic jaws and stretched weakly. Though the creature had no eyes to speak of, Ray felt its gaze pass over him in its search.

That settled it. New India had a bug problem.

Satisfied that it was alone, the monster, a sterile drone connected to a much larger hive, resumed dragging its prize toward the open door to the station.

Ray gazed down the electronic scope of his rifle, hoping to get a better look at the drone’s prisoner. He was awarded for his perseverance. Blinking rapidly, he zoomed in on a pale, bearded individual with a bit of a paunch, the beginnings of a fierce set of jowls, and mussed white hair. The man was wearing a lab coat and seemed to be shouting indignantly at his emotionless captor.

Ray glanced at the bottom left corner of his HUD, staring at a small microphone icon until it was surrounded by a blue, electronic aura. He blinked once, enabling his helmet’s directional microphone. He turned his gaze back on the unfortunate scientist and was immediately greeted by his furious squawking.

“Put me down this instant, damn you!!! I’ve worked on revitalizing the ovaries of your queen for far too long to be carried about by the likes of you! I’m the reason you exist! Dammit!”

The man began to thrash wildly, a look of pent-up anger and fear crossing his face. Ray sighed. They just never learned did they? There’s no reasoning with a bug.

Ray took a deep breath in, sighting down his scope at the prowling drone, tracking it as it slithered toward the door with the still-struggling wannabe god. The crosshairs settled at the base of the brute’s neck, just above the shoulder.

One final thought flitted through Raymond’s head: “The rain’s stopped.”

Sure enough, it had. Only a few drop continued to plummet from the heavens.

Ray exhaled… and fired.

There was a muffled cough and a geyser of yellow ichor bloomed from the bug’s throat, painting the right door of the station in a modernistic spirit that rivaled the work of Jackson Pollock. The door began to sizzle and spit despite its rain-slicked surface, steam rising from the dissolving titanium alloy.

Missing most of its throat, the bug could no longer support the weight of its parasaurian head and it slumped to the left, resting on its shoulder as acidic blood continued to spray from its almost entirely exposed inner-throat. The drone slumped to the ground in front of the open door, still barely conscious. Its humanoid forearms scrabbled in the dirt of the New Indian grassland, clutching at dust. Its inner mouth lay in the dirt as well, chomping dispiritedly at nothing, as if gasping for air.

The creature’s former trophy sat up, his arm, clearly dislocated from hours of rough travel at the hands of the drone, hanging useless at his side.

“Thank God!” he cried. “Soldiers!” Another muffled cough reverberated from somewhere out in the grass, but the scientist paid it no heed. He struggled to his feet and began staggering forward, only to have his vision obscured by a warm river of fluid running into his eye sockets. He lifted his hand to his temple, expecting to find a nasty gash. He was surprised to find that half of his face had disappeared. He pulled his hand away, sticky with clotting blood, peeling with it a portion of his temporal lobe. The tissue felt like fine sandpaper. His left ear dangled from a thin strip of flesh.

The wannabe god stumbled, landing on his hands and knees. He felt no pain. Only emptiness. He began to get up but was punched twice: once in the chest and once in the stomach. The force of the perceived blows knocked him on his ass. His intestines slid into his lap. The man looked down, his expression somewhere between analytical interest and outright horror.

“I can see my lungs…”

Finally, a wall of pain slammed into the man’s already strained body. Unconsciousness took him and he slowly drooped onto his right side. His heart stopped pumping. Small flickers of neural activity continued, then faded away.

Rain began to fall once more.

Raymond stood and began to move toward the AA station. He looked down at the now saturated corpse, lying in a slowly expanding puddle of dark blood.

“He was right to hope for soldiers. They might have shown the bastard some mercy…”

Ray glanced about, looking for more drones that may have been attracted to the scuffle. Confident that the looming threat was still unaware of his presence, Ray began to strip the elongated barrel from his rifle. He clicked his molars together and radioed Gerald who was currently (hopefully) in orbit above his position.

“Looks like we got one Jer. God-complex scenario.”

The COM crackled. Ray heard something that resembled laughter.

“They just never learn, do they?” Gerald chuckled from wherever he was above the New Indian atmosphere. “You waste him?”

“Seemed like the thing to do.”

“It’s our policy.” The cruel edge in Gerald’s voice was palpable. They both had their own reasons to be merciless. “The bug bomb’s ready. I’ll be dropping it off shortly. Remind the former inhabitants that the home will be unsafe for a few days.”

Jer’s satire was not lost on Raymond. Unfortunately, he’d heard that joke before… about sixty times.

“All right Jer. Just don’t create too much of a disturbance. I want this to just be a quick in and out, no manual extermination.”

“When have I ever let you down?”

Ray held his tongue; though he honestly couldn’t recall any time his anarchic comrade had ever failed him.

An hour passed. Reluctant to take shelter in the infested AA station, Ray stayed outside. He had moved back to his former position several hundred yards away from the station and was currently keeping watch on the silent building.

Lightning continued to flash. Rain continued to fall. Ray was beginning to warm up to the bleak little planet: ominous weather notwithstanding. It reminded him of home. After scanning the roiling sea of golden foliage for the seventieth time, Ray realized he had been completely soaked through to his undershirt. So much for environmental protection. Cost-cutting sure had become a nuisance on Nerobi: the center of the Company’s industrial supply chain.

“I understand why Jer buys on the black market-"

An impatient tapping on his shoulder interrupted his train of thought.

Ray flinched and whirled around onto his back, rifle raised… to find a completely dry Gerald, wearing his own special “work clothes,” crouching behind him, eyes directed at the seemingly peaceful adjustment station. Jer was the only man alive who could sneak up on Raymond, and the former Colonial Armada Marksman was never going to get used to his friend’s uncanny stealth.

The makings of a smile twitched at the corners of Ray’s mouth while he watched the crouching man gaze hungrily at the yawning portal into the station.

Gerald hated being the getaway driver.

Turning his attention back to his partner, Gerald handed Raymond a fairly heavy satchel.

Ray accepted the offering and gave his companion a slight nod. Gerald gave the marksman a mock salute, then merely melted back into the semi-darkness provided by the still overcast New Indian sky.

The sniper turned toward the no longer empty climate control center and began to crawl towards the semi-darkness of the entrance. Into the hive.

Raymond made his way down the elevator shaft quickly and quietly. There were still no signs of the major infestation he had expected to find. The walls, corroded though they were, still could be seen in the near pitch darkness.

“Bitch hasn’t had time to start decorating yet. Good.”

Having made his way down the ladder, Ray switched on the night filter in his helmet. What was before a husky silhouette took the form of an empty maintenance room. Old industrial chains and a tattered pornographic poster appeared in the sharp contrast of green light displayed in his visor.

Noticing a doorway to his left, Ray exited the maintenance room and made his way down a narrow corridor that stank of mildew and fossilized cigarettes. He turned a corner and was met with an abrupt change of scenery.

The hall ahead narrowed, but not due to human engineering. Bug resin coated the walls of the corridor, perverting it, turning it into what looked to Ray like a funhouse tunnel. Stalactites of alien excretion dribbled from the ceiling, occasionally meeting with stalagmites of the same nature rising from the uneven floor. Intricate, skeletal carvings dotted the walls, marking xenomorph drone’s respective territories.

“At least they don’t piss everywhere,” Raymond thought to himself for the fortieth time. “These hell holes smell bad enough.”

Ray moved down the tunnel, boots occasionally crunching on loose resin. He flinched at every noise, freezing, listening for movement. Eventually, the tunnel opened into a chamber that Ray recognized as the former chemical storage center for the station. It now served as the hive’s nursery.

Several fleshy eggs protruded from the ground ahead: some clustered around columns of bug goop, but most evenly spread throughout the chamber. Ray would have to be extremely careful as he made his way to the chamber beyond that, which, hopefully, contained his ultimate objective: the Big Bitch herself.

Ray took a step forward then froze once more. He glanced at the walls, noticing humanoid figures encased in the sticky resin that made up the now confirmed Class III Bug Hive: a reproductively successful colony.

Boiling anger welled up inside the young man as he scanned the seven bodies lining the walls of the chamber: three young women, two men, an elderly person of unknown gender, and a child of no more than six years. All wore looks of bewildered pain: faces contorted in agony beyond imagination. Gaping holes in their chests left Ray with an, unfortunately, excellent view of their ravaged insides. Anger turning to nausea, Ray’s stomach turned over unpleasantly. He was never going to get used to this. Ever. He gazed at the little boy encased in bug shit and began to feel rage roiling up from the very depths of his soul once more. His hands tightened on the grips of his pulse rifle.

It was then that he noticed something odd: the elderly host was without a birthing wound. Tensing, Ray inched forward and prodded the old one with the barrel of his rifle. The elderly gentleman (from this distance Ray could now make out his gender) had freed his arms and had subsequently clawed at the resin encasing his legs and upper body.

Blood stained the thick resin and several fingernails littered the floor below. Ray crouched and, with the barrel of his rifle, lifted a shriveled, yellow face-hugger, a spider-like parasite that inserted developing bug embryos into a host’s body via the trachea, from the ground below the old man. The poor SOB had definitely been impregnated. Ray checked his pulse and felt nothing but stiff flesh.

“Must’ve had a heart attack before the embryo fully gestated,” Ray mused. He was grateful the man had escaped the same painful fate as the other six hosts. He was also relieved that he had one less drone to deal with.

Ray turned from the bodies and made his way along the wall to the next chamber, keeping his rifle trained on the clusters of eggs nearest him. Luckily, none of them moved even an inch as he passed by.

He entered the next chamber and was met with a sight he had seen too many times before: a room he and his comrade had often referred to as “the royal suite.” Before him, supported by four lengthy resin ropes, hung the Xenomorph Queen. The Big Bitch.

The creature was of the deepest shade of black and had a body type much like that of a common drone, except ten times the size. The Queen’s head was also slightly different than that of the common alien drone. It fanned out along it’s length, resembling a medieval shield, and granted a formidable defense for her retractable jaw, which was currently pulled upwards in slumber. A bulbous, abdominally attached egg sac, resembling that of the common termite queen found on Earth, bulged and shifted. An egg was deposited on the ground below, accompanied by a faint slurping sound. The egg shone with amniotic fluid in the green light of Ray’s night vision.

Ray slipped the satchel containing the nuclear “bug bomb” off of his shoulder and gently lifted the warhead out. Jer had painted a bright yellow smiley-face on the grey casing, accompanied by a stenciled message: “Have a Nice Day in Hell.”

“When did he make this stencil???”

*Sluuurp* Another egg.

Shaking his head, Raymond carefully set the device down and extended a finger to punch in enough time for him to escape.

“One, Zero, Zero, Zer-“

The snapping of her highness’s resin tethers interrupted Ray’s careful button pressing. He snapped his head around, finger wavering over the zero key, finally descending on the wrong button. Ray didn’t care, however, seeing as he now had much bigger problems to contend with.

Momma’s awake.

Another tether snapped and the huge creature lowered its seemingly spindly, yet strong hind legs onto the chamber floor, supporting its own weight. The beast reached up with thin, angular forearms and snapped the last two tethers, fully trusting itself to the mercy of gravity once more. Only then did the Queen lower its face, adorned with a toothy, grinning maw, from behind its protective crest.

Ray didn’t think. He looked down at the bomb’s video display and noticed that he had inadvertently armed it.

“Well, shit… what am I sitting here for?”

Ray scrambled for the exit, catching a glimpse of the Queen using its massive barbed tail to cut itself loose from the still suspended birthing sac. The creature turned to face him, screeching with a characteristic bloodlust. Ray increased his pace.

As he passed from the throne room into the nursery, Ray began to spray the eggs in front of him with automatic gunfire, clearing a messy path to the corridor beyond.

He activated his COM.

“Jer, I’m gonna need an emergency evac… now.”

There was a brief crackle of static, followed by his partner’s raspy voice: completely devoid of concern.

“What happened to the ‘quick in-and-out’ plan?”

Ray breezed through the nursery, turning and taking up a firing position at the entrance to the maintenance corridor. He squeezed off four shots and scored three hits: two to the beast’s armored breast and one to its muscular thigh. Another inhuman screech emanated from the Queen. Ray fumbled for one of Jer’s specially crafted incendiary grenades, which he had clipped to his right hip-strap.

“Momma woke up and she wasn’t exactly ecstatic to see me poking about in her dresser drawers.”

“Get yourself out in the open and I’ll give you a lift good buddy.”

Ray finally ripped the grenade from his side and primed it. Big Momma was striding purposely toward Ray’s position, skeletal arms tensed. She had yet to cross the threshold into the nursery, however. Ray tossed the grenade at a container marked: THERMITE.

The metal rod bounced off the container and rolled to a stop two feet further along. Ray turned and ducked into the resin-clogged corridor, hoping to put as much distance between him and the coming explosion.

“That should slow her down,” Ray thought as he sprinted down the shaft, stopping only to blast a drone from the ceiling. The bastard had emerged right out of the woodwork, clambering toward Ray in the hopes of intercepting him. Now its acidic blood rained down, soon followed by a mangled, black body.

Ray’s night vision brightened dramatically around the edges and the underground facility shook with the force of the explosion in the nursery. Heat flared at Ray’s back and he shot forward, lifted by the shock wave.

“I’ll have to get the recipe for that shit from Jer,” the sniper mumbled dazedly as he lifted himself up and stumbled around the corner to the maintenance room.

Shaking his head violently to clear his mind, the marksman ran to the metal stepladder that extended up the elevator shaft and began to climb. Sixty rungs later, he looked down.

Glinting teeth and a green-tinged crest gazed back up at him.

Ray increased his rate of ascent.

“This is going to be interesting…”

Gerald sat in the pilot’s chair, checking the ship’s weapons systems. The re-fitted Colonial Marines troop dropship that served as their home away from home had been outfitted with a matching pair of gatling guns that fired incendiary or armor piercing ammunition and a high-impact rocket launcher. It also featured twelve cup holders and had been nicknamed the “Ugly Duckling” by her two young pilots on account of its awkward, boxy shape. A large, voluptuously depicted anthropomorphic duck had been painted on the left-hand chassis of the ship. The bestial beauty wore a very tight two-piece jumpsuit and held a can of insect repellant in one hand; in the other, a large cartoon grenade.

Gerald re-routed the armor piercing ammunition to the right-hand turret located just below the wing. Wings on these ships helped create lift when moving forward, but were mainly aesthetic since thrusters in the ship’s undercarriage allowed it to hover freely.

Jer remained hovering fifty yards above the spot in which he had met Raymond earlier to drop off his most recent masterpiece of the explosive arts. He looked on, sweat beading on his forehead, faint classic rock playing in his head, as a shape burst from the shadows of the complex door.

It was Raymond, and he was running all-out toward the dropship. Gerald quickly diverted power from the thrusters to the weapons systems and the ship sank to the ground. Jer cycled open the troop bay. Rain, loose grass, and an exhausted marksman quickly entered the ship. Without waiting for the troop bay doors to close, the pilot lifted off the ground, turning Ugly around so she was once again facing the old AA complex.

Raymond ducked into the cockpit, breathing heavily.

“Bitch was right behind me,” he bleated, trying to catch his breath.

Suddenly, there was a loud tearing noise in the bowels of the ship and the whole cabin tilted to the left.

Jer routed more power to the thrusters, causing the ship to rise higher in the air and revealing the indignant looking alien queen. It struck out again with its strong, whip-like tail, cutting a long scar in the underside of the Ugly Duckling’s right wing.

Ray glanced at Jer. An inhuman grin spread across his face and an insecticidal light reflected in his grey eyes.

“You scratched the paint!” he cried, firing the right-hand thrusters and circling around his prey. He armed both turrets and began to fire indiscriminately in the general direction of his quarry, hoping to play with the bug for a bit before killing it. Bullets cut through the waves of grass and spouts of New Indian soil rose into the air.

The xenomorph queen, leaping towards the ship, hoping to once again attack its underside, escaped most of the armor piercing rounds. A stray bullet had hit its left arm, cutting it off midway. Yellow ichor poured from its wound, searing the ground and starting a small fire despite the rain.

As Gerald tried to line up another shot, cursing and laughing hysterically, Ray remembered the bomb.

“Oh fuck… how much time did I give us?”

The ship shook and he stumbled forward, bumping against the co-pilot’s chair.

“One… Zero…Zero, Zero… shit…”

“Ummm, Jer? We have a situation.”

Gerald just smiled and laughed, continuing his mad pursuit of the queen, who had tried to run back toward the open AA station door.

“I only gave us ten minutes to get to a safe distance, Jer…”

“I’ve got a lock on the bitch,” Jer giggled, bloodlust overcoming all sense of caution. “This should only take a second.”

He flipped up the plastic cover on the rocket launcher’s firing mechanism and pressed the button.

There was a bright flash of white… and then blackness.

White light flashed in the sky above the Everfree Forest, a living, green desert stretching as far as the eye could see. A strange metal box suddenly streaked across the afternoon sky, trailing smoke.

Three young fillies, eyes wide, watched in trepidation from the window of their tree house as the flaming object crashed not two miles from the edge of the forest.

Silence. Stillness. Emptiness. The radio signal was gone.

“Am I… dead?”

Darkness gave way to blinding light and Gerald Hanes squinted against the obscenely blue sky outside the fore viewport of the ship, now bucking and jerking in the air as the forest below became closer and closer.

Jer grasped the ship’s joystick and frantically tried to pull up, but the controls were locked. The altimeter spun rapidly and the forest ahead seemed to be rushing up to meet the ship, as if in greeting.

A deadly calm overtook the exterminator, and he glanced out the window to the left. Nothing but a sea of trees. He glanced right, and noticed what looked like a settlement in the distance. He took note of the apparent position of the town and once again set his gaze toward the oncoming ocean of dense, temperate foliage.

A smirk played across his thin lips.

“I’ve been practicing my poker game, Satan. Hope you’re ready for a challenge…”

Snapping branches and screeching metal. Darkness once more.