From Black Skiesby The Fanatical ChristianChaptersThe start of something big [Human]Rushed descisions and early mornings [Human]Exodus [Human]Strange New World [Human]Visions [Pony]Day One [Human]Maybe Icarus was a Bad Idea [Human]Screams from the depths [Human]The start of something big [Human] Dairy of Private Ryan Stephson Entry 1 12/5/78 Hello, I am Ryan Stephson, I am straight, white, male living in the good’ ol US of A and I have just become 14. This is a new diary I will be writing to keep track of my life. Enough said. Today I got my first part time job as a grocery bagger in Target and I am being paid minimum wage, if I work hard I should have enough to go to some form of higher education when I become a legal adult. Other than that nothing interesting has happened to me today. Entry 109 24/9/78 Nothing much has changed in my life for a while. So instead I’ll just write on what’s happening in the world right now. Tension has been building between Western Defence Front, an alliance consisting of the USA, the UK, Russia, France, Spain, Germany and Belgium and the African-Asian Defence Front consisting of China, India, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and a few slave states in Africa. Nothing seems to be coming of it but it is still worrying to think about. Entry 134 9/1/79 Yesterday world war 3 started. The African-Asian Defence front attacked Russia today over 15 million soldiers died. The west is in chaos and the WDF is scrambling troops. This is all I can write for now, I have to go. Entry 334 23/5/80 At last I am 16. Now I have enrolled in the US Marines, much to the dismay of my mother. I will be leaving with the next bus with 400 other men to the nearest training camp. Soon I will face our enemy and make them pay for the 3 billion human casualties on our sides. We will make them pay for what they have done! Entry 339 28/5/80 I have arrived at our base camp a started my training. With any luck and the help of reduced training times we will soon avenge our lost. Entry 360 23/6/80 At last I have finished training and have received my orders, I can’t reveal them but I am very excited to finally fight with the men I have trained with. Entry 372 2/7/80 I’ve killed people. I haven’t felt right since the first kill, I can still remember it, shooting him in the chest with the plasma cannon. His body ripped apart limb to limb, blood everywhere, the last thing I saw of him was his face, screaming. I may have made myself to sound like a monster in these diary entries but in reality I care about the men in the enemy’s army as much as our own. All I wanted was to avenge the dead but I am still a person and I care for everyone in this war, even if I have to kill them. If an Enemy soldier is reading this, I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for what I have done even though I will do it all again. Entry 444 16/9/80 In a last ditch attempt to save the West we detonated a prototype weapon over China known as Icarus. It wiped out almost half the planet and made the area uninhabitable as it actually changed the laws of chemistry over that area of land. The blast was so powerful that it pushed earth out of the goldilocks zone towards the sun tidal locking it so it can’t turn on its axis any more. That leads me to where I am now. Humanity banded together and managed to survive in a ring around Earth between where we would freeze and where we would melt. With the help of atmospheric conditioning and a magnetic shield around the ring we managed to save ourselves along with some animal and plant species. Now the sky is red all day and night, the plant life is brown and wilted. The plants only survive with artificial sunlight with a strict amount of plant food. We are all that remains, 3 million survivors, from a glorious race of 18 billion. We now all work together as one nation, one species now. However, I can’t help but to feel sad, my children will never know what Earth was like, what real Earth was like, they will have to live in a harsh hell scape that we created, that I helped create. End of diary entries. Private Ryan looked up from his diary and did something he hadn't done since the survivors settlement was set up, he thought about something that wasn't work. 'I'm 18 tomorrow." he thought with some excitement. After the Icarus event when he lost his family he didn't think about much but work. He sighed and thought about how humanity was to get out of this mess. He would have thought about it further but a knock came to the door of his assigned room. "Um, come in!" he shouted to whoever was on the other side of the door. The automatic door opened and a middle aged Asian man walked in wear a army generals uniform with matching identification on it. In a flash the Private was on his feet and saluting. "Sir! Private Ryan Stephson reporting for duty! Sir! he shouted with evident fear in his voice. "It's alright private, at ease." The general who was identified as Mourge according to his name tag replied calmly. "Do you mind if I take a seat Private?" The general continued. "No, no of course not sir." Ryan replied, trying to remain composed remembering that a general could not only have him flogged, but also shot for the smallest of reasons. "I suppose you want to know why I'm here, hmm?" "Yes sir." "Well what I'm about to tell you is highly classified at the moment, which is why you were given the sound proofed room, would you like to know what it is?" "Yes sir." "Well as I said this is classified so keep this to your self but we've built a space ship and a remarkable one at that. "A-a space ship sir?" "Yes it is the first of its kind. You see shortly before the war an astrologist discovered a small Earth like planet, habitable, in orbit around a sun similar to our own 4 million light years away So now we built a ship using pre and post war tech to transport 200 men, a few plants and animals to set up a colony. That is where you come in private." "S-sir?" We've seen your record private. It's excellent, to say the least. You've fought in the wastes against mutants and in the war against some of the deadliest contraptions ever made. So now we want you to go on this ship with 200 other men and establish a colony for humanity. I know this is fast but I need an answer now. What do you say?" Ryan stood there in awe for a few seconds, processing the information. First of all an alien world? What would happen if he left, his family were dead and he so were his friends. His squad had been wiped out before he got a change to know them, hence why he was here. However his mouth answered before his mind could. "Sir. Yes. Sir." Three years earlier in a top secret equestrian military complex: Deep under ground a mint green mare sat in a black interrogation room. In there with her was a brown furred stallion wearing a lab coat. "Dr Lyra, tell me about the screams." The stallion asked. "W-well, I was trying out a new spell, a telepathy spell. I-it worked great when I tried it on my f-friend Bon Bon. But when I went home that night after a walk around Pony ville, the next morning I was planning to got to canterlot to tell the university of advanced magic of my findings. But I had an idea, the magic, when cast on a group of ponies can't work unless they are all feeling or thinking the same thing, the longer the distance the more ponies thinking or feeling the same thing has to increase or the intensity of the feeling. So I thought it may be a good idea to point it at a star, you know? So I cast the spell at the third star in the hoof star constellation and for a while there was nothing, just silence. I figured it was because even if there was alien life on that planet, they couldn't all be thinking the same thing. B-but suddenly there were nothing but screams, pony screams! Billions of them! A-and then billions more joined them. It was so loud, but then there was just... silence. " Rushed descisions and early mornings [Human]"Sir. Yes. Sir." "Now Private you do realise you could be on that planet for the rest of your life, don't you?" The general asked him calmly. This time Ryan's mouth actually allowed him to think before answering. 'Well for a start I get off this miserable planet and I can find a new home for humanity. Not to mention I don't have friends because I have to change squads so often because they keep being killed, poor guys and it's better than doing the same depressing work of fighting mutants and thinking about everything we lost. I could focus on what we would be gaining.' He thought deeply. "Sir. Yes. sir." came his reply "Excellent." The general exclaimed, sounding more excited than serious now. "You have until 0530 to gather up all your belongs and I mean all of them you aren't coming back. An agent will pick you up at that time, do not leave this room until he comes, understood?" the veteran finished. "Sir. Yes. Sir." Ryan replied wearily. "Very good, I'll be seeing you soon." General Mourge said pleased, before getting up and walking out the door with the words of "Goodnight Private." escaping his mouth. Ryan stood in the middle of the room once again processing the information. "I'm going to another planet." He said shocked that he hadn't fully understood that when the general had told him. 'How long were they planning to ask me, they gave me a sound proof room when I came in and I've only been here a day.' Ryan looked at His alarm clock on his desk, it was 9:30, he had to leave at half past five. 'I need to get packed.' Without another thought he walked over to his wardrobe and putting folded clothes on his bed next to a suitcase that he forgot to leave by. 'I only unpacked and now I have to do it all over.' he thought with some humour. Ryan jumped out of the VTOL into the battlefield, all he could see at first was the bright beams of the standard issue gauss rifles and plasma bolts. He ran into the battle, quickly jumping into a trench just as beam from a gauss rifle buzzed past his head. The crack of the rifles continued fire hit hard against the top of the trench. Only then did he take time to listen, all he could hear was the sound of weapons fire. he looked around to find six other men in the trench with him ducking down. Some he recognised, some he didn't, but what he did recognise was the look of unadulterated terror. a feeling he too was familiar with, before and in his current predicament. The sound of fire hitting against the trench stopped leading him to believe the enemy soldier had run out of ammo, he quickly peered out over the top before bringing his weapon up and started to fire in the general direction of the enemy. The thing is it's actually very hard to look another man in the eyes and shoot him without proper training and thanks to his accelerated courses he hadn't had any proper training. eventually the rifles massive clip became empty and Ryan quickly duck back into cover, shortly followed by the other men just as the enemy resumed there assault on the trench. "Hey!" some one shouted to him. He looked over to the owner of the voice, a sergeant, calling him. "Private get on that plasma cannon!" Ryan without answering ran over to the turret and pulled of its dead operator. The operator was another young man from boot camp he recognised as Henry, Ryan laid down his still warm body carefully and started using the plasma turret. The plasma cannon was a fine piece of engineering topping the standard gauss rifles by a mile, however Ryan had little time to admire the heavy machine gun as he started firing. The plasma bolts tore threw the enemy trench causing the opposing soldiers to fall back into the dark dugout. However one man jumped out of the trench, he was a veteran, with proper training that would not hesitate to kill him. The man was pulling out his weapon and aiming it at Ryan. Ryan couldn't move, all he could do was watch, what should he do? Then he remembered the plasma cannon, his fingers moved by themselves on instinct. Ryan pulled the trigger Beep! Beep! Beep! Ryan awoke with a cold sweat to the sound of his alarm clock ringing. He quickly got up and walked over to the desk, turning it off, he checked the time. 2:50 '40 minutes let until the agent comes' Ryan sighed, he had gotten used to the nightmares but it still had a huge effect on him. 'Just try to forget' he thought shamefully. Ryan, trying to take his mind off of the dream thought again of the immenseness of what he was going to do, he thought he was dreaming when the general had told him. Trying to pass the time as fast as possible he checked that his baggage was secure and contained all of his possessions before checking the room again. After checking to see if he missed any belongings he did some exercises consisting of: 200 push ups, 200 sit ups and a standing jog for 10 minutes. The time was now 3:10 for the remaining 20 minutes all Ryan did was walk around the room and wonder if it was genuine or not, was it some prank from the other marines or was this actually happening. But he didn't have time to worry about that, for all he knew a general just told him he would be going to an alien planet, Now that he thought about it there may even be sentient life there since the conditions were perfect for civilization to thrive if what the general told him was right. Eventually after enough waiting it was 3:30, Ryan stared at the door wearily, seconds passed. Was the agent late? As soon as he thought that a knock came to the door. Ryan grabbed his case and walked up to the door and took a deep breath and stared at it for a few seconds. 'Get ready here it comes.' he thought trying to calm himself down. Finally he opened the door. He was greeted by the sight of a marine, staff sergeant if the marking on his shoulder was accurate, wearing full standard issue body armour... and a heavy gauss rifle. "Private Ryan Stephson?" The sergeant asked, his voice masking all emotion. "Sir. Yes. Sir." Ryan replied, struggling to stop his voice from shaking. "Please come with me." "Yes sir." The marine turned and signalled for Ryan to follow "Please save any questions for when we're in the dropship, we don't want anyone to hear." The marine said in the same emotionless tone. "Sir, Yes, Sir." Ryan replied still deliriously nervous. The marine walked down the few corridors of the barracks until the duo reached the exit. "If you want we can stop by the armoury and pick up your armour if it has any value to you." The marine suggested, Ryan couldn't get his name as the marines armour lacked all identification oddly. "Um, yes sir." Ryan replied, his armour meant a lot to him being with him since he enrolled, he would hate to lose it. The pair soon reached the small armoury, once inside the marine told Ryan he would wait at the door but that he should be quick. Ryan walked over to his locker and pulled out his mark IV tactical body armour, he remembered all the times this armour had saved his life meaning it had to be repaired dozen's of times. He quickly put on the armour plates and putting the rest of the equipment in the locker When Ryan came out he had just put the visor over his eyes and was adjusting the neck scarf over his face. The marine looked him over and told him to remove his name tag to avoid recognition. The marine then told Ryan to follow and took him to a dropship outside the fortress. They both stepped into the VTOL. Then the marine reached up and removed his helmet to reveal the face of a handsome young man. with a head of brown hair that covered his head. The man cleared his throat "Sorry about that private, I had to avoid my normal behaviours to avoid being recognised if any one was watching. Nice to meet you, I'm staff sergeant Alec Davis. I'm really sorry for the bad first impressions, especially since your going to be living in close proximity to me for the majority of your adult life. And don't worry about being formal with me, leave that at the door." He said smiling. "Oh, hello. Um, its alright sir. You seem quite nice to be honest. You're part of the program too?" "Yeah, this is the first official meeting. Pretty crazy what were doing, huh. Also Private you can call me Alec." Alec said as the VTOL shook as it took off. "Yeah, crazy. I guess we'll find out more when we get there, maybe we should get to know each other first. Since we will be seeing each other a lot." "Sounds great. All they told me about you was your name, tell me about your self." Exodus [Human]The drop ship set down next to the old' abandoned 'argata' airport. As far as the 3 hour VTOL flight had went he had found out much about Alec. He was 22, from Florida and was a scout for United Human Defence Front, humanity's new military force to name a few things about him. He had fought in the war since its start and was actually in the impact zone of Icarus when it detonated. He also said that he had a friend he served with who was part f the project too. The pair stepped out onto the cracked concrete. the airport was built shortly after humanity tried to set up the first settlements after the fall, however due to the high amounts of acid rain and a mutant infestation of the area had quickly lead to the base being abandoned. the two stood in the direction of the airport, the warm air generated by the dropships VTOL blew dust particles around as it took off again. "So, what were the orders sir?" Ryan asked. "They didn't tell us much, just to wait out here until we were 'identified'." Alec responded. The two stood there for a few minutes and Ryan was just about to say something until a door opened. As soon as it had around forty men in full U.H.D.F armour, bearing rifles dashed out of the building. Before surrounding the two, pointing there weapons at them. One of them, the leader if Ryan was correct, cleared his throat and began to shout. "Drop your weapons and identify yourselves!" The man shouted. Ryan and Alec quickly threw there knives and other melee weapons to the ground and Alec gently set down his heavy gauss rifle. Raising there arms Alec responded to the armoured man. "Staff sergeant Alec Davis and Private Ryan Stephson of the U.H.D.F, here on behalf of orders from general Mourge." The man kept his weapon trained on the two, then ordering on of the soldiers. "Check 'em." The soldier approached the two men slowly keeping the rifle aimed at them. He reached over and pulled out there identification tags. "Looks clear sir." The man said to the leader of the group. There leader then nodded before ordering the duo. "Remove your helmets." Ryan and Alec did what they were told. "Is that them corporal?" The man in charge asked. "Yes sir." the man who had checked them replied. The men all lowered there weapons and sighed in relief. The leader of the group walked up to them and removed his helmet as well. "Hello sergeant, private, I'm lieutenant James Murphy. We've been expecting you, follow me." The lieutenant said as he turned to walk towards the airport. "Our new captain has been expecting you." Murphy said calmly. "New captain?" Ryan asked. "Yes, the captain of the ship we're going on." The lieutenant responded. "Your all part of the project?" Alec asked. "Every one of us that's here, right now we're waiting for our pick up." Murphy replied. The large group entered the airports huge main hall containing about 200 other men. The rest of the group who had went out to greet the pair dissipated into the larger group of men. The remaining three walked towards a man in the centre of the room who was talking to a marine. Murphy signalled for the Alec and Ryan too stop as he went to speak with the 'captain'. The marine talking to the captain walked off and left the lieutenant talking to the 'captain'. After the two talked some time Murphy and the captain walked over to Alec and Ryan. The man was not wearing his helmet, revealing a handsome face with scars down his neck and bottom left cheek. "Hello, I'm captain Will Jones. I'll be your commanding officer for the majority of your remaining life. we have been waiting for you." "Thank you sir." Alec responded simply but respectfully. "We're waiting for our pick up, a transport has been set to pick us up and take us to the training site. I would spend the time to get to know you better but I have important matters to attend to. I suggest you get acquainted with some of your new associates." The captain said Ryan nodded and turned, but that's when he noticed, out of all of the people in the room, there were no women. "Uh sir, where are all the girls?" Ryan asked confused. "There are none. Everyone here was chosen for a specific task on our mission, even though we are all soldiers, some of us have other jobs also. So when we were picked out, by coincidence there were no girls, I trust that isn't a problem?" The captain replied. "Uh. No sir, it's just some people would be very offended if that was found out by the public, this project is going public, right?" Ryan asked. "Yes, it is eventually Ryan. In fact this mission is actually more for morale than anything, so in all honesty the crews gender diversity doesn't really matter." "Yes sir." "And Ryan. Dump the formalities, we are all going to be living together for a majority of our adult life." "um ok, will." Alec tapped Ryan on the shoulder. "Hey, Ryan I got a fried for you to meet. He's great, your gonna love 'em." "Great, looks like you did all the work for me." The pair turned and Alec lead the way towards two men talking to each other it the corner of the room. Alec and Ryan eventually navigated threw the crowd and over to the small group, the two men talking looked up at them and one of them gave Alec a smile of recognition. Alec walked up to the man and gave him a man hug. "Cole, good to see ya buddy." Alec said happily. "Nice to se you too Alec" the man said in a deep voice, he was a veteran by the look of him, no older than 27. Ryan also noticed how tall he was, Ryan was 5'10 and Alec was around 6'2 but this man had to be around 6'7 and he had enough muscle to make Arnold Schwarzenegger jealous. His face also sported a beard and a normal length of dark brown hair and brown eyes, his neck was scored with scars as was the area concealed by the beard. Ryan was surprised that the man could even talk with the extent of the scaring on his neck. "Who's this?" Alec asked Cole gesturing to the man Cole was talking to. "This is Corporal Dereck Mc'graidy, he's from Scotland in the UK. He is one of our medical division marines, head doctor of the ship actually." Cole said. "Hi. Nice to meet you." The man said. He did in fact wear the tell-tale white armour of a medic. He had a clean shaven face and was good looking man by American standards and a very very good looking man by British standards. (I just had to make that joke, please take no offence. I am in fact also British so I actually just shot myself in the foot.) He had black hair of an average length and he had light blue eyes. "Hi I'm staff sergeant Alec Davis, I'm from Florida." Alec greeted. "Private Ryan Stephson, I'm from Mississippi." Ryan said "You lived in a river?" Dereck asked confused. "No, no I don't live in the river. I live in the state of Mississippi." "Oh, sorry." The medic said sheepishly. "I'm Cole Markson, I'm from Alaska." Suddenly there was high pitched screech of a VTOL engine outside, then someone shouted. "Oi! Lads, that's our ride. get goin!" Three months later,Ryan: Three months. Three long months of Hell on Earth. The training program for the marines had been brutal. Every fear that the marines had, hadf been taken into account and used to make the training a nightmare. Not to mention the flood therapy, he never liked spiders, so naturally the trainers locked him in a small 1m cubed room with hundreds of different types of spiders. It worked though. Then there was the team exercises, the idea was that two men would take part in a seemingly impossible and physically gruelling task, but it did help them to get to know each other. The weapons and vehicle training was fun though. The marines were using the mark IV weapons range, renowned world round for their durability, high clip capacity low recoil and sound, deadliness and last bit not least, the agonising amount of pain it could cause You see, during the start of the war China had a problem with deserters, a lot of Chinese people hated their new Government for declaring war and essentially ruining China. So the deserted, to counter this the Chinese military commissioned for Chinese and POW engineers to design a gauss rifle for the task, what they came out with were the deadliest infantry weapons ever devised. It shot an osmium bullet at 22% the speed of light and was coated in a material that prevented blood clotting and caused tremendous amounts of pain. This weapons were so effective that whenever the Chinese government realized that they were losing the war, they mass produced the weapons and they alone were the reason the African-Asian Defence Force could turn the tables so quickly. Then there was his armour. (Please note that this marine is not Ryan but another marine in the project. The art is halo marine concept art by Bungie even though this is not a halo fic.) The armour looked the same but had a truckload of upgrades. The lightweight alloy the armour had been enhanced to absorb more damage and was lined with extra thick graphene, it now had a air conditioning system. It also had an improved gas mask in one of the compartments that could attach to the armour when needed, the suit itself was airtight thus the marines could be put in no oxygen conditions for 10 minutes with a new built in air tank. The suit also had a layer of shock absorbing gel that hardened when force was applied but quickly became flexible again. It even had an advanced tactical visor to help the user in combat. It even had a drug injection system which could inject various combat drugs into the user. That led him to where he was. On board the ship. The 'Pale Blue Dot' as the ship was called, was named after the famous photo of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 probe from the edge of the solar system, It was not overly big, only the size of a aircraft carrier and a third, not as big as the next generation would be. The ship was a large rectangle with huge thrusters at the end and a large protrusion coming out from the top this was the bridge and the engine/reactor room. The main section of the ship, the rectangle part was mainly used as a cargo/hangar bay but the front section, about a quarter of the main body was dedicated to cryostorage. The final part of the ship was a small observation deck on the bottom of the ship, it was mostly reinforced transparent steel and was where the crew would control the ship when it entered orbit of the alien planet. Their orders were to fly out to the Moon and drop automated rovers, a resource extractor and other automated machinery to collect the resource rich dust of the Lunar surface. The remnants of humanity would then build a small battle fleet which would fly out to the Moon, they would then set up a base and build a bigger fleet using the moons resources that were collected by the rovers. After the fleet had been built they would use the helium 3 to power there warp drives and travel to the alien planet, officially named 'New Terra', where the crew of the Pale Blue Dot would have established a military presence and a political process if there were in fact aliens. This whole process would take 60 years. And now everything was ready, the ship had left the the ship building bay in the Earths orbit and had successfully landed the rovers on the Moon. Now he sat in the ships cargo bay, Alec was securing the tanks for the warp jump and Dereck was in a modified heavy APC that served as a mobile med bay and since the ship never had a med bay installed as they would be building one when the arrived on the planet. Cole was sitting on a crate next to the medical APC, he was cleaning his plasma cannon and Ryan thought it best to not disturb him during this time. Alec had told him that cleaning heavy weapons, specifically plasma weapons, brought back bad memories to Cole. Not all of them were from the war, as Cole had told him only a few days before he had once been married. The worst part was, that Cole had thought everything was fine until the final days of the marriage. At first, him and his wife, Maria, could get any happier. They had thee kids and held a stable relationship for over four years. But then Maria had started to get involved with a radical belief system which she referred to as 'feminism' and 'social justice'. Over time her views started to change, but she never had let it upset the marriage so Cole had assumed it was fine. But then, the arguments started, she started shouting about 'checking his privilege' and other nonsense like that. Eventually the arguments got so bad that, one morning Cole woke up to find his house barren of life. The only thing he found was a note on the kitchen table. It had said that she was tired of his oppressive beliefs and was leaving him to go to Germany, the note also told him how she had taken the kids and that she illegally divorced him. Cole became depressed and couldn't keep a job, eventually he lost his house and found a place to live under an overpass. His depression worsened to the point of near suicide. So when the war started, he had nothing to lose. Cole was quickly promoted to staff sergeant due to putting himself in so many dangerous situations and managing to survive. However instead of simply dying like Cole planned when he joined the war effort, It actually lifted Coles depression. He once again had a family to care for and to look after in the military, thus Cole great fully accepted his rank and all the responsibilities that came with it. While Ryan had simply joined the military to avenge the fallen and also for the sense of adventure that was plentiful in the army, he was still glad to have someone like Cole watching over him. Ryan sighed again. "I'm gonna go check on Alec." Ryan shouted over to Cole. "Ok, see ya later." Cole replied simply, sounding saddened as he usually did when he cleaned his plasma cannon Ryan jumped off of the crate he was currently sitting on and began to walk to the tank section of the ship. While the hangar bay was all one room, it was divided into different sections for different things. The walk to the tank section where Alec was went straight threw the section for the crews belongings. So naturally Ryan thought it reasonable to check on his belongings for what would be the last time for fourteen months Ryan walked quickly past the other marines and their crates to his own, the men had only been allowed to take a certain amount of belongings with them. Thus after he was told this Ryan chose very carefully what to bring with him, however since he didn't have very many belongings he could easily bring them and some random extra stuff. Ryan casually approached the crate, only to have Alec jump out from behind it. "Boo!" Alec shouted. "Gah!" Ryan screamed as he repulsed backward in shock "Got ya." Alec said proudly. "what was that for?" Ryan asked shocked and dazed. "Nothing, I just felt like it. What brings you here?" Alec asked. "Well, I was going to check on you to see if you were done with the tanks yet and thought I would check my crate first." Ryan replied. "Oh, well what's in your crate." Alec asked. "personal Tablet, normal clothing, Bible, that type of stuff." "Huh, I brought that and some seeds." Alec continued. "You were allowed to bring seeds?" Ryan asked confused. "I mean, there for eating, not planting." Alec answered. "Oh." Ryan said stupidly. "So are you ready for this. You know, the whole warp drive alien planet scenario?" Ryan asked. "Ryan, I was born ready for this. Heck, I can barley wait, I've been scratching to get going. More importantly Are you ready?" Alec asked. "I think so. It's just, what if there's something out there on that rock that's dangerous. I men, more dangerous than we've ever seen before. Could we fight it? Would it attack Earth? Would it wipe us out?" Ryan half asked, half shouted. "Hey, listen, we've got some the best tanks, aircraft, vehicles, weapons and machines ever created by mankind. There is not a single alien on that planet who could look at a mark V heavy anti-vehicle anti-infantry anti-air tank and not think we shouldn't be messed with. If anything tries to kick us off that rock, it can expect a tank shell to the face, heck, we've got an Icarus charge on board. You know what those things can do?" Alec replied. Ryan sighed in relief. "I guess your right. Nothings standing up to an Icarus cha-" Ryan was interrupted by the voice of the captain or commander Jones as he was formally known over the intercom. "All personal, this is captain Jones speaking, we are making the jump in six minutes. Head to your cryo-pods. If anyone has not had their pre-cryo injections see chief doctor Mc'graidy immediately. "That's the call Ryan, let's go!" Alec shouted as he began to jog towards the cryo-pods with Ryan in quick pursuit. When Ryan and Alec got to the pods there were already men strapping themselves into the pods and preparing themselves for the jump. "There squad 42, that's us!" Ryan shouted, pointing at their squads cryo-pods. "Quick get in!" Alec shouted. The pair leapt into their cryo-pods and began to secure themselves in. The two then sat in awkward silence for the next 3 minutes after realizing that they had made a big deal for literally no reason. Soon after the rest of the marines had arrived the intercom came to life again. "All hands, this is captain Jones. We are now about to make history. As of now, we have travelled farther than any human has travelled before. Now, we will go even farther with a prototype warp drive. After the jump we will have over a year to travel at top speed until we reach the planet. We have a years supply of food but that is needed for the first year while we produce our own food. If the planet turns out to be uninhabitable then we will starve to death, but it's worth the risk for mankind. When we reach the planet, we will enforce and military, industrial and if necessary, a political presence. We will make a beach head for the rest of the fleet when they arrive. This mission is not for our nations, but for our species. For mankind!" The captain shouted which was followed by cheers from the men. The voice over the intercom changed to one of the engineers. "Warp jump commencing in 5, 4, 3 ,2, 1, Jumping!" The ship suddenly started to accelerate alarmingly fast, pushing the marine towards the end of the ship. But as soon as it had started, it stopped, the force of the deceleration would have thrown the marines out of their seats if it weren't for the harnesses. "Warp jump successful!" The marine shouted, which was followed by the mad cheers of the crew. Ryan high fived Alec who was seated next to him. "Now that's what I'm taking about!" Alec shouted, numb with the adrenaline coursing threw his veins. The captains voice came over the intercom again. "Gentlemen we just made history! No one has ever done that before!" The captains voice was followed by a chorus of gleeful cheers. "Excellent job men, your cryo-pods are being initiated! I'll see you on the other side!" The captain finished. Suddenly Ryan's pod door closed and it became very cold. The temperature soon dropped to below freezing and Ryans body became numb. His heartbeat began to slow and his brain began to shut down. Ryan's eyelids became heavy and he lost consciousness. The enzymes in his brain that sustained consciousness began to stop catalysing. He fell into a deep cryostatic sleep. Author's Note I improved chapter one if anyone didn't know. And the next chapter will have pony's and will be longer. And sorry if this chapter felt rushed. Merry Christmas by the way Strange New World [Human]"Wars take many lives away. Humans never forget the grief, but they also never stop the fighting. Streams of blood and tears are only an ornament for their destructive ritual."-Duo Maxwell 21 hours 52 minutes 3 seconds until arrival at New Terra> [ship status update in progress] nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal damaged- satellite range significantly reduced <> [beginning external navigational scan] [initiating deep scan] [evaluating situation] [calculating additional solutions] Ryan Ryan stood in the middle of the desolate hell-scape, lava flowed in rivers across the scorched earth as radioactive ashes danced like snowflakes in the wind of the approaching firestorm. The sea of lava bubbled and cracked as a overhang collapsed into the fiery ocean of death. The ground was smoking from constant heat exposure and radiation, a terrifying screech came from a dark cave in the hell-scape as the abominations awoke from their malevolent slumber. This was the burn zone, the area that was always facing the sun but still cold enough to support life. A hole in the Earth vomited out even more lava and a human skull rolled to Ryan's feet. 'why doesn't this scare you?' Ryan's subconscious asked. suddenly the environment changed and Ryan was thrown into the nightmare he so desperately tried to escape but still found him every night. The war. Explosions shook the ground as men jumped out of trenches and were mowed down by plasma cannon fire. Exo marines jumped over the trenches into the carnage. Another round of artillery shook the battlefield and a mans arm went flying. The marines rifles cracked as they fired at the enemy while British decimator tanks crushed the injured enemy forces. A Canadian soldier threw a gas canister into a group of enemy soldiers, only to be torn to shreds the enemy's guns before they succame to the gas. An armoured military jeep armed with a X-D95 SC fired at an Australian soldier, causing his head to explode sending fragments of his skull flying everywhere like shrapnel. Flame-thrower marines burst out of an abandoned building and torched group of Chinese soldiers. Meanwhile two exo soldiers were locked in a round of deadly melee combat until one managed to rip off the others left arm before grabbing him by the shoulders and kneeing him in the face, crushing his skull. suddenly the whole world shook and there was a white flash as a nuke detonated in the distance. 'This scares you.' His mind whispered. Everything went black. Ryan awoke with a jump from cryosleep and vomited all over the floor of the cryo-tube. His senses quickly returned to him, his body was cold and numb all over, Ryan's stomach churned again and he bent over and clutched his stomach in pain as he vomited again. His body continued to regurgitate the contents of this stomach all over the floor of the cryo-tube until nothing came out. Ryan felt a searing pain in his head and his fingers and toes were freezing. Ryan groaned in pain from the aching all over his body. "I thought this armour was supposed to keep you warm." Ryan wheezed still holding onto the side of the cryo-tube for stability. Ryan opened his eyes, the red flashing lights of the reactivation sequence hurt his already stinging eyes. He looked around to see that the rest of the crew were having a similar experience, groaning in pain from the less than pleasant awakening. The private looked to his left to see Alec vomiting up his 14 month old pre cryo-sleep rations. Ryan tried to speak but a searing pain in his abdomen caused him to quickly hunch over and grab his chest, he groaned in pain for the second time that day. He looked at the undigested food he had vomited up, something Dereck told him about how during cryo-statis the body stops producing gastric acid almost immediately but continue making a neutralizing substance for a few weeks. Ryan wheezed as the pain slowly subsided. He again looked over at Alec and tried to talk again. "Ahh-Is it just me or does-ahh-it feel like-gah! someone's just ripped out your intestines?" Ryan gasped out. "Yeah-uhhgh!" Alec grunted. "Funny how I'd know how that feels." Cole wheezed. Scootaloo Scootaloo sat up in her bed and stretched before yawning. She quickly pulled off the sheets and got out of her bed. She stood up straight and stretched again, this time spreading her wings out as far as she could. She had slept like a tap ever since her sleep over with the rest of the crusaders. She smiled and looked down at her cutie mark. 'Hard to believe its been a year since I got it.' she thought, happy memories flowing back to her, elevating her already good mood. She yawned again. "That was the best sleep I've had for weeks." She said out loud. Ryan It had been 10 minutes since the less that pleasant awaking from cryo-statis, Ryan's headache was subsiding and the others were in a similar state. "I thought this armour was supposed to keep you warm." Ryan groaned. Alec chuckled. "Not when the temperature settings are designed to cool you down when the cryo-sleep process starts." "I know but.. could they at least make it a little less unpleasant." Ryan responded "Now that I think about it, I had a hangover like this once when I was 19." Alec half laughed, half coughed. 40 minutes later- The marines had recovered quickly from the de-frosting and had begun to fulfil tasks assigned by their squad leader. Each squad was a 4 man team with the minimum of a medic, two rifleman and a heavy weapons expert. In Ryan's squad the heavy weapons expert was the team leader, no other than Cole, The medic was Dereck, leaving Ryan and Alec as the rifle men. Ryan set down that heavy crate he was carrying and wiped his brow. "Is it just me or is it weird that for some we all got in the same squad and we all are best friends with each other?" He asked. "No, its got something to do with how the trainers observed who we are best with and would be good in a team together." Cole responded. "You know what I thinks weird, how come Cole gets promoted to a gunnery sergeant and I don't, I don't mind him being squad leader, but how is that fair." Alec said wiping his face with his red bandana. "Probably because your the type that would rather go on a mission with other staff sergeants than subordinates" Dereck answered. "Attention all hands this is captain Jones, we have successfully made it to New Terra!" The men in the hangar clapped and cheered at the news. "The planet is around 94% the size of Earth but it only has around 78.9% Earths gravity and best of all its a rocky planet with liquid water and a breathable atmosphere. And there appears to be carbon based plant life! There is no deadly radiation and its day is around 23 hours long!" Again there was a avalanche of cheering. "In 21 hours we will be in orbit above the planet. However we've detected an energy field surrounding the planet. The navigation satellite was damaged and reduced it range greatly, that is why we were only awoken now instead of 18 hours from the planet. The field doesn't seem to harm us or technology for that matter but it's still under examination. We've done well up to this point, if we successfully land we will be well on our way to restoring humanity. As a final order before the landing I want you to finish any tasks assigned by your superiors and prepare cargo for landing. If your an engineering squad preform a safety check on your designated systems, after that your all done." There was another round of cheering, that was before the marines fully grasped what the commander had said. "Umm...did anyone else hear something about an energy field?" Alec said as he looked back to his squad. Scootaloo Scootaloo was excited beyond belief, she was barely able to stop herself screaming. This was the best thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life. While Scootaloo was on the verge of screaming, Twilight was pacing around in circles. "I told her to be a Sugar Cube Corner at 9 AM sharp, is that to much to ask for? It's not like it's that early." Twilight turned to Scootaloo. "How can you not be mad at her for being late to this, the day you have something important to tell her? This is one of the biggest things to ever happen to you and she's late." Scootaloo responded in a heartbeat. "I couldn't care less if she was late, this is the best thing to happen to me ever, just as long as she gets the message!" Scootaloo responed ecstatically. Twilight was about to respond but Rainbow Dash burst into the shop. "Hey! Sorry I'm late, I was held up at a wonder bolts meeting. Spitfire is in Manehattan to see her sister, she's sick or something. So they needed volunteers to train the new recruits." She looked around before asking. "What was it you two wanted to tell me?" Twilight grinned. "Scootaloo has something to tell you." Rainbow Dash looked to Scootaloo. "Scoots?" Scootaloo couldn't contain herself any longer. "I was accepted into the Wonder Bolts!" She shouted, her voice shrill with excitement. Rainbow Dash stared back at her in shock for a few seconds. To Scootaloo it felt like hours. She looked up at her sister waiting for her response which came in a sudden cry of joy. "Awesome!" 6 pm standard Equis time- The crew of the human ship had completed their tasks hours ago and the marines had been sent to rest to prepare for the landing. The lights had been turned off save for one at the elevator to the bridge and other stations providing the only light. While the rest of the men slept, Alec remained fully awake. Ryan Ryan shot up from his sleeping bag as the alarm went off. The nightmare he had just witnessed had been a bit more...disturbing than usual, another symptom of prolonged cryo-statis. He shuddered as he remembered the dream, the thing about the nightmare was that it wasn't like the regular ones he had, the nightmare wasn't even about whatever abominations could be lurking on the planet or his own. Instead this particular nightmare had delved into the effect of the human condition on other worlds, no humans fighting each other. instead the exploited his deeper fear, that had developed during his life, significantly more during the war. There were no aliens trying to wipe out humanity, it was humans invading foreign soil, a battlefield. Humans on one side, his species tools of destruction tearing down the weak resistance from the aliens who desperately tried to halt the massive death machine with primitive world war 1 tech. The battlefield of his nightmare changed, showing him dozens of worlds, its inhabitants trying to defend their homes with varying degrees of inferior technology. One world that stuck out to him particularly was a forest planet with 14 foot tall, muscular alien tribesmen trying to defend their village from the invasion force of flesh and metal. A VTOL launched a cluster missile into the primitive aliens. The reactions of the aliens to his peoples weaponry was an obvious fear from the resistance and absolute terror from the fleeing women and children. Ryan was pulled away from the memory by Coles hand on his shoulder. "Hey! You alright kid?" Cole asked in his deep and rough voice. "Oh. Yeah sorry." Ryan said a little surprised by the sudden contact. "Here," Cole threw him an MRE. "We should be in orbit over the planet now and we're gonna do a few laps of the planet and then make planet-fall in 5 hours. We need to be at our best." "Ok, thanks Cole." Ryan replied as he looked down at his MRE which he had caught. The MRE's that were issued by the Human Defence Front were the same as the ones issued by the Russians in the war, High nutrient, calorie and mineral content and would meet the daily vitamin quotient for the standard human. Of course after the war the HDF decided to change the amount of food and its nutrient value based on the individual and not the average. However the down side to this was that if the said individual were doing more exercise than standard or had just returned from battle, the personalized MRE's wouldn't be enough to satisfy the bodies needs, thus a high energy bar was developed with incredibly large amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, amino acids and non-saturated fats. However like the MRE's that the rest of world used, they were disgusting. Ryan remembered the first time he tried one it had resulted with him nearly vomiting all over another marines boots. Ryan chuckled a bit at this memory, ever since then he had gotten used to the disgusting taste, and had actually began to enjoy it. The MRE's container was just a shock-absorbent plastic box, about the length and breath of a magazine, but much thicker, in an elastic packet. The thing inside that was supposedly 'food' looked like a pile of dried, brown blades of grass that had been pressurized to make it have a similar consistency to steak. Ryan picked up the lump of organic and synthetic food and took a bite out of it without looking at what it was supposed to taste like. It had a distinct flavour of grinded up gravel mixed with dirt. 'That's chicken,' He thought. 'Definitely chicken.' He looked down to the packet. Turkey. 'Close enough.' His train of thought drifted back to the nightmare and he shuddered again. What he had seen in the war would undeniably haunt him for the rest of his life, he luckily never developed PTSD but he had the occasional flashback. The dream hadn't been outright terrifying for Ryan like the usual ones, but it had touched into his deeper fears, deeply disturbing. The saddest part about it was that it was a very likely scenario. He took another bite of the disgusting MRE. "Hey Tyrone." Ryan looked up from the revolting food that put his old school dinners to shame in terms of educing prolonged vomiting and saw Alec trying to get the attention of another marine. The marine turned around, revealing the face of a well shaved black man, Michelson, or Tyrone as he was more commonly known did a full turn to face Davis. "Wot's up Davis." He asked in a thick English accent. "I'll trade you your steak MRE for my chicken one." "Why? Cos' I'm black?" "Because I know you like chicken." "Fair enouf, fanks." They exchanged MRE's and went back to eating. "You know what would make these MRE's better?" Davis asked. "Maggots." "Maggots." "Maybe a few termites." The squad responded almost instantly. "Too bad the Embryos are still in cryo-statis." Cole said. "Cryonics are pretty cool think when you think about." Dereck said as he stretched and got up. "What do you think we'll find down there?" He said grabbing some cleaning equipment from his kit. "Something that's gonna get it's ass kicked if it scratches the paint job on my ar," Davis said. He pulled out his heavy assault rifle. It was the standard black colour with the words 'democracy' hand painted by Davis on the side. "I only got this done before we left Earth." "Let's hope it likes the taste of quartite rounds with a side of plasma and hydro ozone urdite hexa-thermite. Cole said as he lifted out his prized plasma cannon, the thing was a triple barrelled Gatling gun that fired .50 cal and .30 cal rounds, it wasn't even meant to be carried and was supposed to be a stationary turret. It had no noticeable modifications other than the un-ironic name that Cole had given the weapon after one of his slightly...strange political opinions, 'Communism'. Ryan spoke up. "Hopefully nothing as bad as the mutants in the burn zone, or the freeze zone for that matter. How do those things even live, I mean, part of them isn't even on the same Higgs field as the rest of the universe." Ryan thought back to the freeze zone on Earth, the opposite of the burn zone, the side where Icarus detonated. "Freaks," Alec said suddenly serious. "I mean that's it, really, the only way they can work like...that. Their freaks." Dereck spoke up "That's enough of that," The rest of the squad looked to him. "We're not here to think about what's back at home," home, that word stuck out to Ryan, was back there really his home, was that the same Earth he read about in school books. Is that really Earth? Is that what we did to that? Images of the destruction that mankind had caused flooded his mind, the rainforests, all those species now extinct, Icarus. 'Did we really do that? We did that? "Where here to fix the mess we're in, the planet has a habitable atmosphere, there's no ionizing radiation all over the place, theirs clean water, the sky's actually blue! Earth's a message to anything on that planet that has the guts and idiocy to mess with us. If we can survive Earth we can survive here." Dereck looked too his squad who nodded in agreement and admiration of Dereck's words. Ryan spoke up. "Well, whatever we find down their will defiantly be weird after having to live on post war Earth for four years." "definitely." Alec agreed. Commander Jones Some hours after- "Sir we're in orbit over the planet!" The Helmsman called out. The sound of clapping engulfed the bridge. "Excellent work Paul, remind me to buy you a drink if their are any pubs down their. Logan, start a der scan on the planet and that energy field. Paul I want you to take us over all major continents, oceans and anything else of interest, you know the drill. Alexei, drop those satellites over those key areas. Keep me posted on the situation." Will said, pleased by the missions smoothness. " Sir yes sir!" The addressed marines responded. Will pressed a button on his captains chair and spoke into his mouth piece. "All hands this is captain Jones, we have successfully entered orbit over the planet," An uproar of applause came from the earpiece. "We will be making planet fall in 5 hours if all goes to plan, begin final landing preparations and secure all cargo. Engineering squads begin your final check of the ship and report anything out of the ordinary. I want the chief marines in the engineering,medical and physics department up on the bridge to study the energy field ASAP." He pushed the button again and cut off the inter-comm. He looked out at the large blue and green orb his ship was orbiting with a strange pink bubble around it and a moon that was in a close orbit, it too somehow had a breathable. The planet reminded him of Earth before the war, everything beautiful about his old home, his Birth place, humanities birth place. In fact, New Terra seemed to be more welcoming and habitable than Earth ever was. He similed gently. "Beautiful." Will turned to his sub-commander, Emilie Hudson. "What do you think Hudson?" "Beautiful, looks habitable and seems to have plenty of natural resources if scans are right." "Indeed." The commander responded. Jones thought back to when he had first met Emilie. "Do you understand commander?" General Mourge asked Jones. "Yes sir. I will do what is necessary for our goals." Jones responded. "Excellent, Commander this is Emilie Hudson, he is going to be your sub commander for this mission, I will fill in the details later however, I have a very important matter to attend to. I will see you tomorrow." Mourge said as he began to leave the room. "Very good sir." Jones replied. He turned to 'Emilie'. He was tall, but not nearly as tall as Jones was, he guessed around 6 foot compared to Jones' 6'4. His body was muscular and scars adorned his body like most marines. How ever his face was clear of all damage, that looked to be around the mid-twenties with a shaved face and black hair of an average length. "Hello, I'm commander Will Jones as you probably know, nice to meet you." Jones introduced himself. "Thank you sir," He spoke with light English accent. "I'm Emilie as you know, I'm your new sub-commander, 'pleasure to meet you." "Thank you," Jones responded tiring to think of a way to ask the question without sounding rude. "Uh, did you say your name was Emilie?" Hudson stood and looked at him for a few seconds. "My parents wanted a girl." They certainly did, Emilie was the only male child to a American mother who was a feminist and a emasculated British father. He spent his life as an emasculated, low testosterone man, that was until the war. He refused to join the war effort and was a Chineese sympathiser and so decided to hand himself over to the enemy. It was only then, when he was trained and abused with other POW's to be soldiers that he discovered his masculinity and love for his two parent countries. when he was sent to the front lines he was disgusted with the POW's for becoming supporters of his new enemy ,enraged by them firing on their own, Emilie killed his entire squad including the Chinese sergeant and for the next 3 days sabotaged the Chinese ammo supplies before escaping to W.D.F territory. Emilie's response to how he had changed his life long brainwashing was simply. "War changes people." The sound of the elevator door opening disrupted his train of thought and he swung the chai around to see 9 marines exiting the elevator. "Gentlemen, I think you already know why your here, but if you don't. We want you to study the planets energy, find out what t does, how it works, its effects on organic matter and our tech. Understood?" The marines looked at each other before turning back to the commander. "Sir yes sir." Alec 10 minutes until planet fall- Marines were running around the ship, grabbing gear and strapping themselves into their seats. However Alec had a different task than that. Alec was part of the Orbital Drop Reconnaissance Group, or the ODRG for short. The groups task was to drop into the landing zone, scan for harmful bacteria and secure the area for the landing. Alec sprinted to the twelve drop pods and quickly jumped into the one labelled STF SGT Davis. He strapped in his rifle and pushed a few buttons in the pods and the doors closed, a screen in the top right corner notified him of when the pods would depart and until the ship begins the landing procedures. 2 minutes and 32 seconds until the pods left. There was a crack from the speakers and the captains voice came over the comms. "All hands, this is Jones. We have scanned the planet and have found a suitable landing area, it's a large island in similar size to Sri Lanka on Earth. Its in the southern hemisphere. It's dry, covered in sand and seems to be the least likely place to be an alien presence. There is no detectable large flora masses and it has a similar climate to north south Africa We will be dropping in in nine minutes and the ODRG will be dropping in less than three." Adrenalin began to rush in Alecs system. "Once we get on the ground or objective is simple, secure a the landing zone and set up a fire base. Any sentient or sub sentient lifeforms are to be treated as hostile until proven otherwise. If anyone isn't strapped in I advise you do so now." The commanders voice boomed over the inter-comm. Alec grinned to himself. There was a crack from the radio in his helmet and Coles voice followed. "Davis? This is Markson, I'm just saying don't do anything stupid down there." "Alright, no promises. I'll see you on the ground." "See you on the ground." The radio cracked again and cut the connection. "This'll be fun." Davis said to himself. For the next few minutes Davis felt the adrenaline in his system build. He looked at the count down for the eightieth time that day. 20 seconds left. Alec felt another surge of adrenaline. 15 seconds. An air tight blast door folded over the pods to protect the crew from the depths of space. 10 seconds. The floor under the pods folded away to allow a clear path to the planet below. 5 seconds. A screen in the pods began to display a flight path. 1 second. Alec held his breath. There was a beeping from the monitors and the pods shook as they disconnected from the ship. The thrusters on the tops of the pods activated and fired the pods towards the planet. He stared through the glass part of the pod and watched as the pod became closer and closer to the pink energy field surrounding the planets atmosphere. The pink field of what could be death for all he knew, approached rapidly. "Hello, ODRG? This is Wilson speaking, you're about to hit that energy field. We don't know what's going to happen when you do, give us a report the moment you pass through, understood?" "Understood." The marines replied in unison. The pink energy field continued to approach at a brutally fast pace. Wilsons voice came over the radio again. "Breaching in 5..." Contrary to the last five seconds on the ship, these five seconds were the fastest of his life. The pods dived through the energy field into the planets atmosphere. "ODRG, This is command! What is your status?" Lieutenant Murphy, the leader of the drop troopers spoke first. "This is Murphy, situation normal, energy field had on effect on me or my pod, running diagnostic." The rest of the marines responded and reported themselves in an identical scenario to Murphy. "Commander, their fine, no apparent effect on them or the pods." Wilson said to Jones. "Team, initiate your micro-organism detectors." Wilson directed the men. Alec pushed a few buttons and flicked a switch, a screen came alive and displayed a buffering symbol with the words, Searching for micro-organisms. The pods continued to push through the atmosphere. Davis looked through the glass again and looked at the ground approaching rapidly. Soon enough the air brakes and the thrusters activated and slowed the pod down. The pods crashed onto the ground with a loud bang. "Command this is Murphy we have landed, all personnel have survived." "Excellent, stay n your pods until the scanners finish. Davis looked at the radar tracker built into the pod, nothing outside the pod. The looked through the pods porthole. There was a blue sky overhead with no clouds to be seen, the island was flat for as far as the eye could see save for a narrow steep gorge about 150 meters beside them that looked wide enough for the ship to rest on without falling in. The gorge seemed to go for a mile across and the team had seemed to land half way. At one end of the gorge there was a stream that went over the edge to form a water fall. The area was sandy with a light orange colour. It was beautiful, this type of view completely alien to him since the war ended. A sudden beeping from one of the monitors made him tear his gaze away, it was the micro-organism scanner, it had finished its scan. No detectable micro-organisms. 'that can't be right.' He thought. "Hey, I think I got a glitch here. My scanner isn't detecting any micro-organisms." He said. "Run a diagnostic, that's impossible." Wilson responded. "I'm getting the same result." Another marine said. "And the pod reads fine according to the diagnostic." "Same here." "Same result." The other marines reported in confusion. "That can't be right. Alright, just put on your air masks to be safe and secure the land site, we'll get a more precise result from the ships filters." Wilson ordered the marines. "Understood. You heard the man, masks on!" Murphy started. The marines complied to the order, applying the mask over their helmets. Alec heard the seals on the mask and helmet seal and cool air began to flow. "Marines clear the landing site!" Murphy's' pod door blasted off and he slammed his boots onto the hard ground. The rest of the marines followed the order, jumping out of their pods with their gauss rifles they scanned the wasteland. The area was completely baron of life and was completely flat as far as the eye could see, save for the gorge. The air was hot but not like in was back on Earth, it was a good hot that bared no threat of mutants or developing cancerous growths. Now that they were no longer on Earth the men no longer needed to take anti-radiation meds. "Um, guys?" A marine said, a tone of confusion was held in his voice "What's the problem?" Murphy asked. "Has anyone noticed that there is zero radiation showing up on the count meter?" Alec's eyes were once again torn away from the landscape to view the radiation counter in the top left corner of his HUD. Zero. "That's impossible." "That can't be right." "Command this is Murphy, we are detecting no radiation whatsoever." "No radiation? Not even background radiation? Are you sure?" "You have live data feedback from the pods, you tell me" "Well there was radiation when you were landing, but that must of been from the thruster fuel." "This just keeps getting better and better." Alec said with dry sarcasm. Murphy muttered something before giving out more orders. "You three," He said pointing at Alec and two others. "Check that gorge." The three jogged over to the cliff. On the way to the gorge Alec realized how light he felt, he had been so caught up with the landing that he had failed to notice that he felt considerably lighter. The marines peered over the edge of the steep cliff, it looked to be around 1000 meters deep. The waterfall went all the way to the bottom where the stream started again and continued to the other side where it vanished into a cave opening. Alec reached up to his helmet and pressed the record button. "Maybe we should record this." Alec said to the other three. "Nah, it's already being recorded by the ship, they've got live feed from the helmet cams." A marine said. "Still a great place for a postcard." The other marine said. The marines musing was interrupted by Wilson. "Hey you know that massive gorge down there that some of you are standing beside? Well command were thinking that since we have a elevator shaft in the hangar that can fit a tank we're going to land right on it for easy access. So for you guys standing right next to it I would advise moving away so you don't get crushed to death." "Understood." Murphy responded simply. "You heard the man, get your asses back over here." Murphy barked over the radio. The three marines quickly turned around and sprinted back to the pods. The three broke their sprint when they made it to the pods. Alec turned to focus his gaze at the sky, waiting for the imminent arrival of his fellow humans. Ryan Ryan was having an...interesting discussion with Cole about fascism when the commanders voice came over the inter-comm. "Attention all personnel, This is commander Jones speaking. We are about to begin our landing. If anyone is not strapped into their cryo-pods then get in now. In the next few minutes we will be on New Terra, treat any alien lifeform with extreme prejudice and treat as hostile until proven otherwise. We will be landing over a gorge for maximum use of the heavy duty elevator for maximum mobility between the ship and the gorge bottom. Remain strapped in until the light above your head goes green. Jones out." Ryan looked at Cole who had a look of concern and a small amount of, was that excitement on his face? "Here we go kid." He said as he stretched his right shoulder. "Any last words or statements before we do this?" Dereck asked jokingly but with a concealed hint of seriousness. Ryan looked to Cole and the back to Dereck. "Anyone else think it's weird how the nearest habitable planet is 4 million light years away? I mean, isn't that a bit much. We used to think there were lots of Earth like planets, but once we developed the tech we used to find New Terra, turns out their all dead planets but the moment we turn our gaze 4 million light years away, there are more habitable planets than there are fresh water sources on Earth. If we go 470 light years past New Terra there are hundreds of habitable ex-planets. Isn't that not a bit weird how we are so far away from any other habitable planet and the planets inside that range were like distractions, to slow us down and keep us away." The other two processed the information. "Maybe there's something here that we were supposed to leave alone, to protect us from it." Dereck suggested. "Or maybe it's the other way around." Cole added. "I think you may be right Cole, after everything humanities done then that may well be the case." Ryan said, this voice sounding deep in worried thought. He was about to say something more with one of the marines shouted. "Hey! We're moving!" Ryan and the rest of the team synced their HUD to the ships external cameras, a small window opened in the corner of his HUD, they were moving alright. The ship glided through the vacuum with ease and was rapidly accelerating and heading to the planets surface, suddenly the ship jerked and began to shudder as it hit the pink energy field and tore through the atmosphere. "Here we come Alec!" Cole shouted in excitement, showing that he was clearly having an adrenaline rush. Ryan noted that this was one of the rare times that Cole seemed to be excited about flying. The shaking got more and more intense, Ryan closed the camera window and gripped the rails on the side of his cryo-tube tightly. Ryan noticed that even the vehicles were attempting to free themselves from their constraints. Jones was clenching tightly onto the command chair as the ship shook furiously as it ripped through the atmosphere. The landing control room was on the underside of the ship and was a large room mainly composed of reinforced glass. Different crew members sat at different areas, the most prominent being the pilots seat, which was a chair with multiple screens attached and two long metallic arms reaching down from the roof so the user could control the ships descent. The ship suddenly shook more violently than normal, Jones, sensing the anomaly quickly raised the com-link to the engine room. "Hey Jameson, is everything alright down there?" Jones shouted over the roar of the ships engines and the shaking of the ship. "No! Of course everything's not fine, we ran out of fuel a year and a half ago! The only thing keeping us going is our power cores!" A mans voice yelled back. "But will we make it to the surface?" Jones shouted back in response. "Yes, we're fine but th-Just what wanted to hear" Jones interrupted. He quickly turned of the com-link and narrowly avoided a barrage of insults and vile obscenities. Jones looked back over to his crew to see the Helmsman, Paul seemed to be struggling with the controls. "Paul, can you land this thing?" "I'll just say flying this thing is harder than flying an A-42 Clansman VTOL with a thruster severed in a hot zone, drunk and high on Class A drugs." The pilot responded. "And have you done that before?" Jones replied almost shocked. "It didn't end well, that's all I'll say." The man responded, somewhat distracted. The ship continued its course towards the surface and began to slow as the thrusters were engaged. The ship continued to approach the planet until it was only 100 metres above it. The hulk of metal slowed above the ground and came to a vertical stop "Activating landing gear." One of the marines shouted. The ship now floated down to the ground and the landing gears adjusted itself for the landing into the gorge. Suddenly the ships thrusters stopped when it was a mere 7 foot of the ground and it fell into place the landing gear quickly adjusting to the terrain and lowering the ship to the ground around the cliff. The bridge crew looked at each other for reassurance. "Did you do it? Are we good?" Jones asked Paul cautiously. "Um I think so." He responded, keeping his hands away from the controls as to not cause any unwanted complications. The bridge crew began clapping at the successful landing meanwhile in the hangar the rest of the marines were doing the same. "Good work Paul, if there are bars down there remind me to buy you a drink. Anyway what's the situation outside?" Jones said pleased at the huge feat. "Well, the island seems uninhabited as the ODRG's said," A marine said as a monitor descended from the celling. Feed from external cameras lit up the monitor. "The site looks clear, I'm initiating scans now." The marine continued. A black window with the ship in the middle opened in the corner of the monitor and the marines terminal, there was a pulse from the ship and as it spread out from the ship a map of the terrain was generated. The land was flat, dry and sandy with no plants or animals present. "Looks clear, I'd say it's a good place for a forward operating base. No animals or aliens present to interfere with any operations and according to the scans there seems to be huge amounts or raw materials and rare substances." The marine finished. "Terrific, give the men down in the hangar the call. Ryan The men in the hangar were clapping at the landing, Ryan body was rushing with adrenaline and other hormones. The light at the top of the men's pods suddenly flashed red before turning green. The marines quickly lifted up their harnesses and unstrapped themselves from their seats. Ryan and the rest of the expedition force hastily fast jogged over to the crates for their weapons and combat gear. Ryan took the lid off his squads shared weapons and gear crate which was strapped in before the landing as others were doing the same. He lifted out Coles massive weapon and tossed it to him. 'Surprisingly light,' He thought erratically. 'Must be the low gravity.' He fished out Dereck's assault rifle and handed to him with a nervous grin which was returned giving a feeling of mutual anxiety. The squad then headed over to the shared military resources. The men grabbed a few magazines from an open crate while Cole grabbed a chain of ammunition from another net next to the mechanized infantry marines who were loading there exo-skeletons with ammunition. Ryan had always admired the mechanised infantry, they combined human mobility and dexterity with the heavy armour and weapons of vehicles. the exo-suit drivers had to under go weeks of intensive training just to be ready for the transition between man and exoskeleton. However he hadn't time to stop and gawk, he needed to worry about himself before anything else. he loaded his rifle and out of the corner of his eye, Ryan saw the commander and a few other men from the bridge crew exit the elevator shaft to prepare themselves for the exfiltration. Ryan grabbed a few frag grenades before standing aside so that the massive tanks and other vehicles could move through the various lanes to the side doors for exfiltration. The tanks moved effortlessly to the door despite the fact that some of them were massive forty tonne beasts made of metal with cannons and various other weapons designed to cause suffering on their tops. The vehicles took their place at the front lines and were flanked by the mechanized infantry. The rest of the marines then moved into the spaces in-between the vehicles pointing their weapons at the massive door. Ryan was situated between two tanks with Cole at the front of him and Dereck behind him. Next to them on their left was a squad of flamethrower marines. Ryan eyed the two vertically placed massive tanks on their back with another smaller tank beneath them placed horizontally. These tanks had tubes connected to them which connected to lead into a flamethrower. There were also canisters strapped to their bodies and belts. The fluid in the canisters was hydro ozone urdite hexa-thermite, the stuff was a lethal acid that could melt through flesh in seconds and when it was ignited it became a bright, sticky acidic fire that could melt through concrete that burned at over 970 degrees Kelvin. In fact the only reason that it wasn't universally deployed was that it was incredibly underpowered against armour The fact that the stuff could kill him in seconds and that the flamethrowers tended to be psychopathic and ruthless killers on the battlefield didn't exactly made Ryan feel comfortable despite knowing all the marines quite well. Not to mention the mark II decimator anti infantry tank to his left. The decimator tanks were developed in secret by the British and looked remarkably like the first tanks ever made, however they were banned due to the tanks in-humane ways of disposing with infantry. Such as a massive shrapnel cannon on the top that spat hot razor sharp shrapnel shards at the enemy, or how it would spray the enemy with hydro ozone urdite hexa-thermite and then activating its three frontal flamethrowers to burn the enemy to a cinder. But the reason that the decimator tanks were named Crushers, were because of how brutally they drove over infantry who were either crushed or impaled on the spikes on the under side of the tanks. That was when Ryan took notice to his own gear, the assault rifle he was holding could travel for thousands of miles if fired into space and fired whole bullets meaning their was no need for a hole for empty cases to escape. The their was his body armour, it was made mainly out of Physicorum, literally translating to indestructible in latin. the material was an artificial metal element that was incredibly light and was 60 times tougher than titanium, combined with the fact that it was super dense it could actually stand around six or seven shots from a gauss rifle. And not only was it strong, it was also unbelievably easy to produce, thus it was put in everything. Ryan's train of thought was interrupted by the commanders voice. "Gentlemen! May I have your attention please!" It sounded more of an order that a question. The commander stood on top of one of the tanks, clothed in the standard marine body armour with his rifle in one hand. "So, as you know we are here, on this planet with the primary task of securing a beachhead for a battle fleet that will be here in around 60 years. All we know about the planet is that it is very capable of sustaining any kind of life, it has huge amounts of natural resources. The most recent things we have learned may seem nothing short of impossible. When our drop team first arrived, they detected absolutely no micro-organisms, at all." The men whispered to each other when hearing this before falling back into silence. "After we tested the atmosphere with the ships filters we concluded that this was, in fact the case. The team also detected no radiation in any amount, not even from the sun." The whispering started again before the hangar once more fell silent other that the hums of engines. "Again, we tested this with the ships equipment, this was also the case. We concluded that radiation from the sun was blocked by chemicals in the upper atmosphere. However we are completely clueless why there is now radiation on the planet. And as you already know, there is an energy field that surrounds the planet, it appears to be supplying it with a strange energy, but it doesn't seem to effect us or our tech. The planets moon is also very close to the planet, it appears like our own but for reasons unknown, has a breathable atmosphere." The whispering started but died faster than it did before. 'Energy field and now this. What's up with this place?' Ryan thought confused. "But that's beside the point, in thirty seconds that door is opening and we will have the job of establishing a base." The commander suddenly shouted. "So let's get this done and make everybody back home proud!" The marines shouted in approval. "OORAH!" The men, now rallied by their commander pointed their weapons back at the door with new born enthusiasm. The seconds crept in slowly. There was the sound of metallic clamps loosening and seals breaking. The massive door which stretched the length of the hangar bay opened slightly to reveal a blue sky. The marines looked at the opening and stood in awe as the light flooded in. The marines again began to talk again, dumbstruck by the beauty of the natural sky. "I haven't seen a sky like that in a while." Dereck said, not taking his eyes off the spectacle. Ryan took in the beautiful view and took a refreshing breath of the fresh air. "Now that's something I could get used to." He said indirectly to his squad. The door jerked again without warning, snapping the men out of their gaze and back to reality. The door continued to open all the way down to the ground. Revealing 8 marines standing idly in outside of the hangar bay. There was silence for a few seconds before a voice, unmistakably Alecs' spoke up. "Took ya long enough." Scootaloo Scootaloo awoke with a jolt, almost screaming. She was panting and covered in sweat. She had the nightmare again, only this time worse, considerably worse. It had started like it normally did. Her house, at night, there was a hill with an old, destroyed house on the top. And like always, there were creatures walking from the abandoned house to her own. As they eerily limped towards her house they disappeared into a thick forest. That was how all the dreams before ended, but this time was different. Six of the creatures emerged from the forest, she couldn't picture them but see knew there was just something wrong with them. But the worse was yet to come, the six creatures reached her house, and immediately began to bash the door with brutal force. Then, an army of the creatures came out of the forest, they ripped the door off its hinges. They burst into the house and began tearing things apart. The army of beasts stumbled up the stairs The mass of living destruction menacingly fumbled down the hallway, down to her room. The thing, Scootaloo didn't feel as if they were individual abominations, but a single abomination. They broke down the door to reveal her. Sitting on her bed writing her diary only to look up in horror at It. The mass moved towards her, arms stretched out for her. She screamed as the mass came closer to her. But one thing stuck out in her memory. One of the Things, though she couldn't tell, this one seemed like the youngest and the lowest ranking one of the monsters. It stared at her, only a few feet away as the mass reached for her. The thing uttered one word that she heard over the terrifying mass. "Help." Scootaloo had to cover her mouth to stop herself from screaming at the thought of the nightmare. The scary thing about it was that the dreams started after Twilight cast a future vision spell on her a gfew weeks ago to see if there would be a test in school the next day, but the side effects were visions or dreams of the future for a few weeks. And what scared her even more was that her house and the house on the hill felt like a metaphor for something even bigger, like equestrian. Or even. Equis. It had been seven hours since the landing and Ryan was panting from the work and intense heat. After the landing the commander had ordered the vehicles to set up a perimeter while the men began to build. The job was simple, the base needed buildings for things, so the men had to build them. The thing was, the building materials were thick, heavy, dense blocks that looked like white concrete. The blocks were damage resistant, anti gauss weapon and were incredible insulated. The problem was that they were very heavy, even in New Terra's gravity and there was no room on The Pale Blue Pot for construction vehicles Ryan panted and spat on the ground as Cole lifted another block. Dereck strolled out casually to the men. "Wow, five buildings in seven hours, I thought you'd only be starting your third." Dereck said impressed. "Yeah well we need somewhere to sleep tonight." Alec said as he lifted another block and grunted. "So, what are the medical tests showing on us after the landing?" Cole asked Dereck. "We all have six moths to live." Ryan and every other marine in the area stopped and looked at him in shock. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding! In fact your vitals improved after we landed." The marines groaned and sighed. "You have a nasty sense of humour." Ryan said in-between breaths. "Are you at least going to help now?" Alec asked after taking a drink from his canteen. "Not yet." "What? Why not?" Dereck took something out of his pocked and threw it to Alec. Alec looked at the packet and realized what it was. "Lunch." Ryan set the massive brick down. "About time." Dereck handed him his MRE and gave a thanked him. He sat down on a stack of the bricks. He coughed and looked at flag in the middle of the camp. It was black with a picture of a human skull in the middle. The flag of humanity. Author's Note Sorry for how late this was. Visions [Pony]"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." Scootaloo glided over Ponyville, her wings were outstretched as she took in the marvellous view she had gotten so used to. Life was good, Equestria was living in a time of peace, school was going well and she had even been accepted to join the wonderbolts. Then she remembered the dreams, more specifically, last nights dream. The sky seemed to darken a little. To say the dream had scared her was an understatement. She could barely get back to sleep afterwards and only did because she felt as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. The creatures in the dreams were so vivid, but they were covered in a shroud that she couldn’t understand or describe. She couldn’t make out their forms other than they stood on two legs and looked like ponies. And the thing that kept her quite literally up a night was that twilight had cast a future telling spell on her only a few days before the nightmares started, Twilight took no joy in telling Scootaloo about the disturbing nightmares that occurred as side effects that depicting the negative events of the future. She felt a shudder travel up her spine. ‘I should really tell Twilight about that.’ Scootaloo thought to herself. ‘But at least I've been accepted to the Wonderbolts.’ She thought gleefully to herself. The world brightened up again and the view caught her attention again. Earth three years prior inside infected zone "This is bravo 15 to command we're getting swamped we need additional bio hazard teams!" "Alpha 7 to command we're being over-run by mutants we need back up!" "Uh, this is superintendent Collins something's trying to get in here, I can hear it outside." "This is bio-hazard mechanized infantry flamer team Bravo 22 mutants have breached the fuel storage facility and are trying to get into the main facility seal off the bulkhead or their gonna get in!" "This is Bravo 2, infected squads are being over-run, are there any available units in the area? "This is bravo 15 we need back up! Repeat need back up!" "Uh, this is superintendent Collins, the noises have stopped." "Bravo 22 to command, our sergeant's dead we need reinforcements!" "Bravo 2 to command the infected teams are dead the mutants are trying to get through the air lock." "This is Bravo 15 we need bac-argh! *Static*" "Bravo 22 to command, I'm the only one left. I sealed myself in the air lock, there's an Alpha outside." "This is Bravo 2 they've got through the air lock-OW GET OFF!" "This is superintendent Collins, there's an alpha in here, I'm hiding under a...I think it's saw me." "This is bravo 22, it's trying to get through the door." "This is Alpha 7 their inside the complex!" Cole listened to the distress calls and shouts of pain. The platoon captain frantically pushed buttons and redirected troops. Meanwhile he was siting naked on a operating table with scientists buzzing round and technicians prepping the suit. "Alright," The captain started. "We are being swamped, there are about eleven thousand of those things coming for us and their are only about four hundred of us here." Cole remained silent. "So you are going to get in that and go and hold them off until back up arrives in around 20 minutes." He said pointing the mech behind him. It was a next gen, prototype, heavy mech suit. The suit was a new design that was planned to be implemented in the next ten years. As next generation of human warfare tech was developed virtually all designs were either replaced with improved model or upgraded in some fashion. Mechs were no exception. He looked up at the machine in front of him and brushed his hand over the metal implant at the back of his head to connect with Exo-suits and the like. 'How did it end up like this?' Scootaloo stared up at the creature in front of her, It was tall, that was all she could discern, and it brought something terrible with it. there was an aura of immediate danger around it. The area surrounding them was ponyville, was ponyville. It had been completely destroyed, houses had collapsed and were burning, some were turning into ashes as soon as they caught fire. There were huge craters and a thick grey mist lay close to the ground. The thing in front of her looked like the same one from her previous nightmare, a lower rank but still deadly. This had gone too far for her. 'I need to tell Twilight about this.' Then it spoke. "It doesn't matter," It said. "We're already here." Scootaloo shot up panting. She looked around in shock. She was in the park on one of the many benches that dotted ponyville. She must have fallen asleep again. "Why does this keep happening?" She said out loud, her voice sounding almost desperate. The things in the visions seemed so alien, they looked like ponies in their build but they were taller and somehow she knew that they were much stronger. But there was something so wrong about them So unnatural and disgusting. Something that would stop at nothing to assure its survival. 'Survival.' A shiver went down her spine, she didn't know how she came to that conclusion but something told her that she was right. She stood up and headed towards The Castle Of Friendship. Ryan stared off at the VTOLs' in the distance, a mlag or a multi purpose linier assault gunship or MLAG for short. It looked like the average military helicopter only instead of a propeller it had two circular VTOL engines on either side and a plasma minigun at the door of each troop bay as well as two heavy plasma cannons and two plasma miniguns and the front. Of course only the best would be used for the first ever extra solar expedition to an alien planet, therefore a special forces version of the MLAG was used. It was equipped with two missile launchers with tracking capabilities, thicker armour and enhanced radar and navigation systems. They buzzed around looking for anything unusual. Unusual to a human. Speaking of humans, Ryan wondered what an alien wold think when they saw a human for the first time. 'Fear' A voice in his head spoke. Ryan sighed, the voice was right of course. If he saw a massive ship land in his back garden with hundreds of soldiers with gauss rifles and Plasma cannons, 9 foot tall mechanized infantry exo-suits, tanks and a whole host of other things to cause pain and suffering he would be pretty scared. "Hey Stephson you alright?" He looked up at the man in the rig. "Oh, yeah sorry." The man, Corporal Jeffery O'Brien an mechanized infantryman was in the armour rig, a built in set of scaffolding built to help apply the armour onto the user, however there was a problem. While the power armour would seal itself over the user piece by piece, The armour also needed to be bolted together at some points in the chassis, then to keep the joints protected they were covered in armour plates that fit exactly in place and make it look like there were no bolted points at all. Fusion gel would cause the two parts to fuse into virtually one and would result in the armour looking like a single set rather than a collection of metal parts. He screwed in the bolts with the drill and sprayed the armour plate with the fusion gel and welded it in place. The problem with having to put on each part on separately and drilling it together then running diagnostics on it after each piece was that it took around three hours to complete the task. Not only that but the ship only had four rigs. They were only one hour in. 'Only two left' He thought. 'Great.' Scootaloo walked briskly through the streets, occasionally she preferred to walk rather than fly. Unlike most other pegasi she could appreciate the view from the ground. She needed to get to Twilight and flying may attract attention from rainbow dash, and while she enjoyed and admired her she needed to speak with Twilight immediately. She had just about had enough of these nightmares. That was when something new happened. She had just made it into the middle of ponyville when she glanced over to her left. Lyra heartstrings, just sitting there on a bench minding her own business. 'Didn't she have a mental breakdown a few years ago?' That was when it started Images that flashed in front of her The ground went red as a crimson fluid formed a river in the gravel. All she could hear deafening cracks. A strange limb landed on the scorched gravel and the strange red fluid seeped out of it. There was the sound of machines and movement, metal grinding and suddenly a strange helmet landed on its side on the gravel. It was green and an odd shape, it looked like it had been designed to encompass the users entire head, it seemed damaged with a massive dent in it and what looked like lightning flaring out of it. The crimson fluid flowed from the helmet. That was all she saw before she collapsed in the middle of the town square unconscious. "Alright I'm booting up your helmet now." Sergeant Miller said to O'Brien as he tapped a few buttons on the tablet. "Uh, I can't see anything." "Yeah I'll power up your visual and HUD systems in a second." He tapped another button. "There you go." "Um, I think my eyes aren't working." "Have you tried opening them?" "Yes I've tried opening them ya yank scumbag!" "Cool it, keep yer ginger head on." "Maybe if I could actually move it would be easier." "That's a safety precaution ya guinness drinking physcopath." "Aye right it's a safety precaution! I'll rip your wee Texan arms off!" "There's the problem, there was a calibration error between the suit and your optic nerve." "Well then fix it ya eejit!" "Keep yer shirt on ya leprechaun." Ryan looked on worried at the two marines shouting at each other over something so petty. 'Short temper.' Alec would probably find something like this incredibly amusing. "What's the matter with them?" a marine carrying a crate asked. "Optic nerve calibration error." Day One [Human]"Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions. -Robert Ardrey Scootaloo slowly woke up from her unconscious state. She opened her eyes slowly, expecting to wake up in her bed. But to her surprise she was in a hospital bed. "uh, what?" She said as she rubbed her eyes and looked around. A stallion walked in wearing a" doctors uniform with a clipboard. "Oh good your awake." "Um yeah. what happened?" The stallion looked puzzled. "You really don't remember?" "not that much." "You were walking through the town square and you collapsed." "Really?" "Really." "What do you think it was." "Well there's only one disease known to pony kind that causes the victim to just pass out like that." "Homins disease." "Homins disease? What does it do?" "Causes head aches, fever, fainting and can sometimes cause death." She flinched at this, very few diseases ever caused something as severe as death. "But we were informed that it may be a side effect of a future sight spell." Scootaloo sighed a breath of relief. "There are ponies waiting to see you when you woke up. I'll send them in." "Uh, sure." Commander Jones looked over the map projected on the ships control room table. The island was baron, no life had been found anywhere. No plants, no animals, no insects. Just humans...and a lot of firepower. Not to mention the fact that the island was a goldmine of resources. The cave at the bottom of the crevice was a maze of tunnels that stretched out for miles that was lined with metals and other important resources and led to a cavity that was full of precious metals and other important materials. The table was surrounded with marines of a high ranking. Hudson was staring at the map, probably thinking about defensive troop placement. "Alright," Jones started. "What do we think. Hudson?" "Need to get a wall up as soon as possible and get our defences up. Send some tanks out to patrol the area until night. Marines and the rest of our tanks can guard the base and VTOLs can stay in the air. Get our armoured vehicles to form a perimeter around the base at night, can't rule nocturnal predators out." Jones turned to one of the marines. "Get on that." "Sir yes sir." "What about our fabricator and resource processer?" "Their being set up now sir." "And have we detected any alien lifeforms yet?" "No sir. Not even microscopic." This didn't make any sense, what happened here the caused all life in the area to disappear, even microbes weren't present. 'Everywhere else on this planet has life, except here." He scratched the back of his head. 'At least that means no interference.' Ryan checked the safety on his assault rife for the seventh time that day. "Man, guard duty is the worst." Alec said before kicking a rock. "Better than heavy lifting." Dereck replied. "Yeah well, I can just think of better things to do." "Like what?" "Shooting at aliens." "We haven't been here for twenty four hours and you already want to kill things." "It's better than this, and shouldn't you be doing medical things instead of standing around out here." "We have a medical facility set up yet, I've done all I can for now." "So we just get to stand around here?" "Yes." Cole answered him. "Yeah but, Oh come on!" The small group of marines approached the sandy beach. The four marines and four mechanized infantrymen walked cautiously towards the water. They stopped at the waters edge. "Well, we're here, lets do what we came to do." One of the mechanized infantrymen with a Russian accent said. One of the marines stuck a cylinder shaped device into the water. One of the marines bent over and looked into the water. "Looks like seawater, and smells like it." The other marine took the device out of the water. "No bacteria and a high level of that strange energy, but other than that it's normal seawater." The marine by the water stuck his finger in the water and tasted it. "Tastes like seawater." "Command this is Blok, mission accomplished. We're uploading the data now." The man in the exo-suit said "Receiving your data now, return to base for debriefing," "Copy that command," He said gesturing for the marines to start moving. "We're Oscar Mike." The marine kicked the rock into the pile. The cave tunnel had lead into a massive cavern that was lined with resources. Now it was his job, along with a few other marine squads, to mine the materials and transport them back to base with the limited amount of mining equipment. Back to base to be fed into a processer and a fabricator. Two building sized machines, the first breaking material down into its components and the other fabricating machinery, building materials and the like. "Hey are you actually gonna get back to work or are you just gonna stand around there?" "I'm going now sarge." Ryan looked at the massive tanks rolling out of the ship, the hulks drove straight out of the base and started to divide into groups of three. "Hey Liamson what's going on here?" Ryan turned his head to see Davis talking to a tank commander in one of the massive hunks of armour. "Command wants us to patrol, or something." "Patrol for what, what do you need all these tanks for?" The tank commander shrugged. "This is our island now, guess we better make sure it stays that way." He finished. "Do we have enough spare power cells to keep all these tanks moving?" Ryan asked. "These power cells last three weeks, each." The tank commander replied. "What so that's like nine weeks?" Dereck asked. "At least." "So now we can all be bored together." Alec finished. Scootaloo watched as her friends entered the hospital room. There was Applebloom and Sweetie Bell, obviously. Rainbowdash, her honorary sister. Fluttershy and Twilight as well as her parents. Rainbowdash had practically tackled her as soon as she got in only to be stopped by Twilights magic. "Scootaloo!" "Hey rainbowdash." "Scoots what happened, we were so worried." "Don't worry I'm fine, it's a long story." It was at that moment that Twilight dropped Rainbow Dash. "What do you mean?" She asked. Ryan watched the sun as it neared the end of it's journey. The humans first day on New Terra had been peaceful, to put it lightly. The day had gone in with incident. He briskly walked with his squad to one of the barracks that had been set up as tanks formed a tight perimeter around the base. The quickly approached the three buildings near a courtyard. The four stopped in front of the smallest of the four buildings. "So this is where we'll be sleeping for the next 60 years." Alec started. "I'll be honest I thought it would be more than one floor." Dereck said. "Least' its sturdy." Ryan said. The four continued to look up at the building for a few minutes. After they had stood and looked up at the building for more than an uncomfortable amount of time, Dereck looked to his team mates who were still staring up at it. "Are we gonna go in?" There was silence for a few seconds. "Yeah." Cole answered. The four then entered the barracks. "Wow," Alec started. "I was not expecting that." "That's one way to save space." Ryan said. The room was filled with metal poles going from the floor to the ceiling with two sheets of fabric one above each other, in other words, hammocks. Two per set of poles. "Did we miss the meeting about sleeping arrangements?" Alec asked. "I don't think so." Ryan answered "Far from the worst thing I've slept in." Cole said grinning. "Hey," The team heard someone shout to them. They turned to the source of the calling. There were two marines standing by the door, one with blankets and another with pillows." "You want one of these or not?" "Uh, yeah." Alec said. His team nodded. The men took the sleeping gear quickly and searched for the poles with their names on them. Instead of military paint, or a plaque with names on it, the names on the rectangular poles with marker. Two of the sets on the right, close to the centre was marked with their names. The team looked at the names on the poles. The set on the right from the door was marked with Dereck on top and Ryan bellow him. The other set had Alec on top and Cole on the bottom. Ryan threw the blanket and pillow on the hammock. There was 2 metal boxes under the hammocks, The boxes were also marked with his and Dereck's name on them. He opened the box with his name on it and confirmed that it was in fact his personal storage crate from the ship, and judging from the state of the contents they had actually handled the crates quite well. He closed the crate. "Well this is nice." Dereck said "Don't know if you'll think that after sleeping like this for a year." Alec responded. Jones pushed one of the buttons on the elevator and tightened the straps on his armour. As the doors began to close Hudson put his hand in the way and forced the doors opened and walked in. "What's the plan commander?" "We get out there, give a report, get a reactor set up, build a wall around the firebase and sit tight for a few weeks and then send out recon." "I meant about Jameson." "I guess we'll see." The doors of the elevator opened to reveal a very angry looking Irish man. "Alright Jameson, what's the damage?" Jones asked. "Oh nothing," The engineer said in a obvious sarcastic tone that only Jones caught on too. "Really?" Hudson asked in a dry tone. "Oh well other than the reactor being out of fuel and the emergency power cells being nearly out we're fine!" "Is that all?" Hudson asked. "Look, how long can we go on the solar panels and remaining energy on the reactor power cells." "Um," He looked at the data pad in his hand. "About 2 days." "We'll get you fuel for the reactor before then, just keep it together down here. Understood?" "Understood. Sir." The two turned around and got back into the elevator. "So I assume the plan is the same?" Hudson asked. "You assume correct." The squad made their way out of the barracks and into the centre of the base. The area was a large open space, with the ships hangar bay at one side and buildings around it. A courtyard of sorts that was filled with marines The squad filed in at the back and waited for one of their commanding officers to come out of the ship and give them a briefing. Something that would become a daily occurrence from there on out. Basically a briefing of what was going on that day in the morning and a report on any relevant information at night. Luckily for them the commander came out almost immediately after the team exited the barracks unlike the marines who had been waiting for almost fifteen minutes. The crowd slowly fell silent as their leader approached them with a data pad in his hand. "Okay I'll have to keep this short." He started as the marines waited to be called to attention, a call that wouldn't come. "Okay, day one there has been zero alien contact, not even microscopic life except for what we brought with us. FOB is under construction and ahead of schedule. A cave has been discovered and being mined for resources.-" Ryan listened intently as the commander went over a basic rundown of the day and other important day to day information when on base. "And one last thing, this planets orbit is irregular, the sun moves much faster when it's closer to the horizon." The commander finished with that and simply turned and walked off. The marines broke of as well and began to talk amongst themselves. "What was that last part?" Davis asked looking at his team. "This planet is all types of weird." Ryan said staring off at the sun as neared the end of its journey, its brightness dimmed by his visor. Then, as if by some magical force ~~Such as gravity~~, the sun was ripped from its place in the sky and disappear beneath the horizon. This unsurprisingly caught the marines attention and caused them to respond with how they were trained to, by pointing their guns where the sun had disappeared. After a few seconds the marines realised what had happened and slowly lowered their guns. "Agreed." Cole said. It was almost dark by the time Scootaloo had explained everything to them, and by the looks on their faces they were about as confused as she was... except Twilight. She looked more scared than Scootaloo was. "I think I needed a minute." She said, before falling flat on her face unconscious. Ryan lay awake trying to fall asleep, trying and failing. Needless to say his first day on a planet that had never seen the likes of his kind had been in some ways exciting but overall overwhelming underwhelming. This combined with the fact that the he couldn't sleep was somewhat agitating, and he would need sleep. 'Who knows what's out there." He thought. He sighed. Whatever was out there, he knew deep down, somehow that it would be nothing like the mutants back on Earth. Probably people like those back before the war. Only more primitive, and completely unaware of the war machine that had claimed their homes. Or what would come. Author's Note Important things coming in the next chapter. Maybe Icarus was a Bad Idea [Human]"So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force" -Daisaku Ikeda Ryan lay on his dirty rucksack in the sorry excuse for a firebase, which in reality was just a sturdy apartment block. For a war that was going so well things had taken a temporary turn for the worse as the Chinese had sent almost their military to push back the WDF invasion from the north, pushing their forces back but allowing a large assault on the Chinese eastern coast. As a result he was relocated to the far north. Ryan shifted around on the rucksack, it was the closest think to a bed he had, the closest thing to home he had. The first thing he had done when he had gotten to the firebase was find an empty room to rest in. Now the only thing he wanted to do was just get away from it all, the war, the noise, the shouting, the fire, everything. His team was dead, his battalion was gone and if the war went on any longer he would be joining them. He sighed. Most of the conscripts he went to boot camp with were his age, many he had went to school with, a few of them were good friends of his. However he had only been assigned to a team with only one person he actually knew, fortunately for him, that person was his closest friend, but that didn't matter much now. His old friend, his new friends, they were all dead. He rolled over on his makeshift bed to face away from the wall. The room he was in was devoid of people and filled with crates of ammunition, explosives and other ordinance. He adjusted himself on the rucksack, closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It took some time but he finally managed to drift off into a restless sleep. However he was soon roused from his nightmare filled slumber. It was a noise that had woken him. A sound, like someone weakly scratching a piece of sharp metal along rough stone. It alone wouldn't have been enough to scare him, or even wake him. But the noise felt...unnatural He didn't have a way to describe it, the noise didn't scare him. But something deep down in his core or in an ancient molecule of his DNA told him that he should be scared, he should be very scared. The scrapping noise grew louder, and louder. In a few seconds it had grown to the point where it was impossible for him to assert that it was his imagination, he was about to look out of the window, but suddenly it stopped...and it was replaced with a far more sinister sound. Ryan didn't hear anything for a few seconds, but then he heard it. An explosion, it was definitely an explosion. But it was an explosion like he had never heard before. It was screaming, lots of screaming. From lots of screaming 'people'. But it wasn't human screaming. It was something so otherworldly, so surreal. It was a noise that no human mind could conceive. It was beyond description how terrifying and unnatural it sounded. It was like a portal to another dimension had been opened, something that no man had never seen...things that no man should ever have seen. The noise continued for a few long, drawn out seconds until it suddenly faded into non existence. Then Ryan's terror vanished with it, as if both had never truly existed. Before he had a chance to react, a shock wave hit into the side of the building. It shattered the window's 'safety glass' and knocked Ryan off his feet. He fell onto the floor and his helmet rolled to his side. As it happened a spare assault rifle was shook from it's place on top of a crate above Ryan. The Rifle hung over the edge for a few seconds as it slowly began it's fall. The butt of the assault rifle hit him on the head and he was knocked unconscious instantly. Author's Note Just a bit of exposition about Icarus before the next chapter which is going to take a while to come out. Screams from the depths [Human]The weak will die out and the strong will survive, and will live on forever Ryan watched from the icy hill as the elephant sized mutant dug around in the irradiated, dirty, off-white ice from what used to be the Atlantic ocean as a blizzard raged on around them. With every unnatural movement of the creatures body Ryan pressed his chest deeper into the frozen Earth of the freeze zone as the blizzard roared on around them. Despite its alleged heightened senses the monstrosity hadn’t noticed him or the marine sergeant next to him. The sergeant was a fit middle aged man with graying brown hair, green eyes and pale white skin. His Armour was white, a fitting color for where his division was located, the freeze zone. The mutant thrashed around as it dried to claw at something in the frozen dirt. “Alright,” The sergeant started as he put away the binoculars he was observing the beast with. “That mutant has captured a military asset that we want back.” He continued. The mutant in question was an oculus , an abomination that telepathically restrained its prey with its large eye, a strange type of suggestive hypnosis that had never been observed before, then it devoured the victim while it was in this state. “You distract it while I take it out from behind. I’ll give you the go ahead when I’m in position." He said before leaning in closer, trying his best to express the urgency of what he was about to say. "Whatever you do, don't walk towards it when it tries to hypnotize you and don't get any of its blood on exposed skin." Ryan nodded instead of verbally responding knowing that the sergeant couldn't care less how he chose to reply. The sergeant began crawling around the left side of the hill and then disappeared out of view. Ryan looked at the beast one more time before checking that his assault rifle was ready for a fight. Then the pistol, the pistols used by the HDF, or any pre-war military at all weren't actually very useful since the gun wasn't big enough to hold a functional magnetic accelerator to make it effective against any form of armor or most mutant carapaces. However it was relatively effective against unarmored tissue. He checked the chamber of the pistol and the safety before placing it back in its holster and readying his rifle before attaching his rebreather. It was almost another 3 minutes before the sergeant's voice crackled over the radio system. "I'm in position, move in. Remember not to get blood on you or walk towards it." "Solid copy." He responded simply, grunting a little as he got up. He raised to a crouching stance and began to move down the hill towards the mutant which was still thrashing at something in the ice. He silently slid down the mountain and did a quick roll when his boots hit the ground, raising the rifle to point at the beast. Still, it remained unaware of him. ‘What’s so interesting to this thing.’ Ryan asked himself, looking at the ice the mutant was thrashing at. He continued to approach it, his rifle sights aimed at it at all times. He stopped when he was around 30 meters from the beast, which to his surprise, still hadn’t noticed him. The blizzard would have shrouded his movements somewhat but with its senses it should have noticed him. Ryan observed the creature in all its hideousness, it was about the size of an elephant, but much longer. It’s body was long and tube like, with skin that looked like a grey, slightly wet, rubbery leather that bore no fur. The body ended with a flat surface like the end of a cylinder. Its front was a massive closed eyelid and at the top 2 stems an over sized eye could be seem on each. It had 6 legs that were narrow and looked as if they were made out of chitin that sported 2 joints on each leg that ended in stumps. Ryan looked around, not phased by the disgusting freak and noticed a small chunk of ice the was lying on the ground next to him. He picked it up, careful to keep his eye on the mutant, the chunk of ice was heavy for its size mostly likely caused by the chunks of rock could see embedded in it. He looked at the mutant and back to the chunk then back to the mutant again. With a small amount of hesitation he hurled the chunk at the mutant. He watched it sail through the air before begin smashed on the mutants thick hide. The mutant turned instantly to look at Ryan. It’s eyes fixed upon him for a few seconds, absorbing his features, time stood still for a brief moment. The eyes retreated back into the stems and the massive eyelid opened. The eye behind it was gargantuan. It took up the entire front of the beast and began to bulge out wards. It’s sclera was white like the surrounding environment but it’s Iris was blue and looked as if it was made of thousands of thick fibers that were all...moving. There were also red fibers that seemed to pulse and flash with bio luminescence as well as move. The disproportionately large pupil was black, in fact it seemed blacker than what was actually possible for human eyes to see, almost as if it was a gate way into some intangible place of emptiness. 'Eyes are the gateway to the Soul.' Ryan though, sending a small shiver down his spine. He was about to fall back and wait for the sergeant to open fire but the red fibers began to glow and pulse more aggressively and the blue fibers, or more like tendrils began to spasm and move erratically. The image of the eye froze Ryan in place, he didn't know what it was...but something about the eye just told he couldn't move, absolutely couldn't. The eye stared at him, almost as if it was analyzing him. He stood still in place, terrified to disobey whatever force this thing was controlling him with. Then it moved forward shaking Ryan from his trance, he tried to turn and run in the opposite direction, but nothing happened. He tried again, nothing. And again, nothing. His eyes might have widened as he realized what was going on but he couldn't even blink. A fiber in the beasts eye moved and snapped him back to reality. He stared into the beasts approaching eye, unable to move. But the eye had...changed. He couldn't tell how, but it had. Something about seemed different, mesmerizing even. To his sudden surprise and horror his body relaxed slightly, something about the eye was calming him down against his will. He should have been terrified and he knew it, but he wasn't because of whatever this thing was doing to him. He struggled to move, to turn and run. Still nothing happened, his body refused to move as he continued to stare into the flailing eye. There was something mesmerizing about it, not of this world. He continued thrashing in his mind, but to no avail. The eye stared, maliciously, like it knew he was struggling to move. The monster stopped its approach and one of the red fibers twitched and bulged out, pushing against the eyes membrane. Ryan froze, suddenly he was relaxed, the eye was fine, the eye wasn’t dangerous, he didn’t need to run away at all. He may have laughed at himself for being so stupid, this thing wasn’t a monster, if anything it was a friend. Sometimes his own stupidity embarrassed him. Ryan’s foot took a step forward and he snapped out of his trance. ‘What?’ He felt his other foot try to rise. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He stopped his foot before it could leave the ground. He pondered why his feet were moving by themselves before realization hit him like a aircraft carrier. It wanted him relaxed, it could only move him if he didn’t resist. Another fiber twitched and began to bulge outwards as the black pupil began to open, exposing sharp teeth and a long, muscular channel into the things stomach that looked like it could crush a person. An explosion of adrenaline entered his blood as he tried to break free of the things grip on his body and to resist the mind controlling distraction of the bulging red tendrils. Ryan tried to pull his leg back, to turn and run, this seemingly invoked the mutants psychic wrath even more. Every time he tried to pull his foot back an image of an atrocity flashed surreally before his vision. A first person view of him stabbing a defenseless civilian in the chest, someone getting crushed by devastator, a nuclear bomb incinerating a city and other unspeakable sights. Ryan was disgusted but kept pulling, eyes watering before an electric pain started in his toes and began spreading up his legs. Just as Ryan was about to break to the mind control he heard a shout and saw a grenade sail through the air and land on top of the beast where he couldn’t see. The beast roared and it’s massive eyelid shut and the two smaller stems burst out of the body to locate the perpetrator, but it was too late. The grenade exploded spraying shrapnel into the beast. Ryan heard an otherworldly screech of insurmountable pain and raised his arms to protect himself from the shrapnel and blood of the creature. He heard several small metal objects bounce off his fore arms and other Armour plates. He waited a few seconds, panting as the thuds of shrapnel hitting the frozen ground was drowned out by the blizzard. He lowered his arms and looked at the warm corpse, The entire back of its head had been reduced to a smoldering crater, brain fluids mixing with the burns leaving the stench of charred flesh mixed with noxious smell of industrial strength cleaning products and smoke. The remains of the exploded flesh had seemed to have rained down on the beast after the explosion had sent what Ryan perceived to be its brain flying upwards. The beast had been drenched in its own viscera, leaving it resembling an bizarre modern art piece of some form. Ryan morbidly admired the vile display of mans relationship with nature. A primal electric pulse in his brain sent a shiver of euphoria as he gazed on the carcass. Ryan turned to face his superior as the Sergeant came into view. "Did any of its blood get on ya?" His voice crackled over the helmets com link system. "Negative Sergeant." "Ain't nothing much after a well placed grenade, Are they?" The aging man chuckled, gazing over at his creation. "Grenade Sir?" "Yeah, when these Oculus things go into a hypnosis state the psionic part of their brains tend to heat up a good bit, so a bit of the hide near their brain pulls back to let heat out of some pretty large pores. It just so happens that the holes fit a grenade." Ryan looked back at the modern art atrocity. "So that was just..." "Experience? Yeah." The Canadian Chuckled looking back to the dead oculus. "Now let's get our asset back." he said, slinging his kit off his back. "We still got a job to do." Ryan abruptly woke from his sleep courtesy of the deafening ringing sound that almost caused him to reach for his sidearm. He looked around quickly, the high pitched noise causing him to forget where he was for a second before realizing that the ringing was supposed to be a wake up call that they were briefed on the previous night. He took in his surroundings as some of the marines reacted similarly to the alarms earsplitting ringing, being conditioned to associate loud noises with gun fire. Some seemed as if they had been waiting for the alarm for a while, being ready for the deafening noise. Ryan stretched his arms and swung his legs out of the hammock and narrowly avoided getting kicked in the face by Derek who was doing the same. Ryan stretched and scratched his stiff, sore back before standing up to his full height and bending his spine back into space. "Morning guys," Davis started, swinging out of his pitiful sleeping space and landing on the ground with a soft thud. "Everybody sleep well?" He asked in his usual upbeat tone, giving his arms a warm up stretch as he did. "I don't think anyone slept well Davis." Derek, replied groggily as he hauled himself out of his hammock. "We're not keeping this, right? They're just temporary aren't they? My backs killing me after that." Derek continued. "Hope so." Davis replied, already having moved on to squats. The trio heard a deep groan as Cole rolled onto the floor, he landed on his side with a dull thud. He lay curled in a ball on the floor facing away from them for almost a minute, completely silent as his squad watched awkwardly. "ya' alright buddy?" Davis asked, continuing his squats. Cole groaned and forced himself off the floor and onto his feet, still not facing them. He cupped his head with his right hand as a headache made itself known to him. With his left hand he scratched his neck "Just...shut up and get to the mess hall." He finally answered in a hoarse, authoritative voice. Scootaloo again woke up to find herself in a hospital bed. "Uh," She groaned as she stretched her wings and rubbed her eyes. She looked around her as she recalled the events of the day before. Her recently awakened mind swam with her memories of yesterday. 'Twilight.' she thought. Her small room lacked the company of another pony or even any other beds so she threw the covers off and got up. She started towards the door but it opened just before she reached it. A nurse walked in looking at clipboard before she noticed Scootaloo standing in front of her. "Oh, your up. Good morning." She said in a surprised tone with a matching expression. "Uh, yeah. good morning. Um, do you know anything about what happened to Princess Twilight last night." Scootaloo asked, yawning after she finished. still in the process of waking up. "Oh, the princess. That's actually why i'm here, she asked for you as soon as she woke up." The nurse replied as she began searching through her clipboard for something. "Is she alright?" Scootaloo asked, worried about any connect between her story and Twilights sudden fainting. "Oh yeah, she was sleep deprived and she says something you said shocked her enough to faint." The Nurse replied, looking at a document in her clipboard "Huh, so where is she." Scootaloo inquired, her fears confirmed and now interested by the 'shocked enough to faint' comment. "I'll take you too her now but I need to do some tests first to make sure we can let you out today." The nurse said, taking out a pen as she did and flicking through some more documents on her clipboard "Aight." Scootaloo replied simply. "So, an entire alien world to explore and we get the job of exploring, no not even exploring, guarding the unexplored regions of a cave system at the bottom of a ravine." Derek said flatly from the back of the APC as it rolled over the rough terrain at the bottom of said ravine. "Hey Derek, look on the bright side, think of all the things we could find down there." Alec replied. "We're guarding mining equipment not exploring the the caves Davis." Cole interrupted bluntly. "Actually why aren't we doing that, exploring the caves I mean." Ryan asked, suddenly interested in the conversation. "The brass wants to take things one step at a time and get better situated before we start venturing deeper into the caves than we already have." Cole replied scratching his well kept beard. Derek groaned. "Hey it's better than bein' roasted to death top side." Davis suggested, still trying to cheer up Derek. "Anythings better than roasting to death topside Davis." Derek retorted in rapid response, causing Ryan and Cole to break into a grin. "Yeahhh, but-" Davis started. "Hey ladies, your here. Get out." A impatient voice from the front of the APC rattled down its armored innards. The motorized door at the back of the APC opened to reveal the brightly lit and expansive chamber that had been set up as a base of operation for the mining operation. The marines dismounted the vehicle before it sped away, back up the wide entrance to the chamber that led back up to the ravine floor, a few hundred meters away from the steep chamber entrance. The chamber was expansive, probably about the size of a football field (or a Soccer field if you live in the US) and the ceiling was over 40 feet above them. Part of the chamber seemed to be dedicated to vehicle driving and parking as there wasn't any equipment or marines stationed there, also due to the fact that there was a huge gaping hole, in the wall that seemed to have been artificially enlarged and was kept stable by metal support beams where dirt tracks had been left from haul trucks and other quarrying vehicles that had ventured that way. Water from the river in the ravine flowed into the chamber from the cave mouth covering the floor and leaked into deeper parts of the cave. In the other part of the chamber that hadn't been dedicated to vehicles there were marines dotted about random bits of equipment, ranging from communication, mining and even some explosives as well as some miscellaneous equipment. The 3 squads of marines gazed around as they were approached by lieutenant Murphy. ~~Remember that dude bro from chapter 3?~~ "Right you lot," The lieutenant started, his tone indicating that he wasn't about to tolerate any nonsense. "Welcome to the caves, you'd get a tour but we don't have time for that and we've got maps everywhere. So first of all that is the mine, its not very deep and we've fully explored it but it is full of ores." Murphy said, gesturing to the tunnel that Ryan had correctly assumed was a mine. "That other tunnel is much deeper and we haven't fully explored it yet and since we can't expend anymore man power we've barricaded ourselves in, just in case. There are already marines manning the first lines of defense, you guys are manning fallback points closer to home. If anything goes wrong further down you guys give e'm support and fall back if you need to-" Murphy continued, trying to explain the situation and procedures to the marines as quickly but thoroughly as possible. "Sergeant Taylor take your squad to fall back point 1, Montgomery your squads at fallback point 2, Markson get you squad down to fallback point 3." Murphy finished before turning around and heading back to what he was doing before their arrival. "Yes sir." The marines said in unison as they turned and made their way towards the tunnel. The marines carefully but quickly made their way deeper into the cave. The grey rock the walls were made of was rough and sharp, combined with the large number of marines packed close together as they made their way deeper into the endless cave made the stony walls seem suffocating and hostile. Ryan felt a tightness in his chest as the memory of the time he got stuck in a drainage pipe as a child wormed its way into the forefront of his mind. Eventually the cave split into two separate parts, however it wasn't an even split. Sergeant Taylor and Montgomery took their squads down the larger passage way, labeled according to their respective destinations. Ryan squad on the other hand, made their way down the smaller much tighter passage that also appeared to be steeper as well. Being large enough to only be able to fit one person at a time the feeling of claustrophobia exacerbated. The squads only comfort being the lights that had been attached to the cave wall every few meters and the promise of a resting place further down the cave. Eventually the cramped passage ended and the cave floor flattened out mostly, giving way to a still small tunnel, but better than what they had just endured. There was an indentation in the cave wall to their left as they made their way forward that led into a small chamber with a bright lantern in the middle of the chamber with 4 other marines crowded around it. "Bout time you guys got here." one of the marines said as they all stood up. "We've been down here for hours." Another said as he picked up his rucksack and pulled it onto his back. "There's a motion detector mesh further down the tunnel, if anything comes your way it'll let you know if its one of ours or not. The monitor is over there." The squads sergeant told Cole as he pointed over to a box of something in the corner of the chamber and explained some other things to him before he quickly left with the rest of his squad. "Good Luck men!" He shouted back at them on his way. "That was brief, i guessing this is going to be boring." Derek said as he watched the squad make their way back up the tunnel to see daylight again. "Probably." Davis said trying to think of a way to spin the situation into a positive light. The chamber had been equipped with ammunition boxes and medical equipment, as well as some communication equipment that Ryan guessed would be their method of contacting Murphy and crew. There was also a few portable stools lying about with some other miscellaneous equipment as well a battery packs that powered the equipment. A white plastic map had been drilled into the wall and had an arrow pointing at fallback point 3 reading "you are here." "Well this is cozy," Davis exclaimed as he pulled one of the collapsible stools over and promptly sat on it. "I mean, it could be worse. I can definitely think of worse places to be. The ground in here is flattish for a start." He continued, swinging his rucksack off his back and leaning it on the wall. "The water made it all the way down here." Ryan said curiously, watching the stream of fresh water from the river all the way back at the ravine make its way deeper down the tunnel, although none of it had gotten into the small fallback point luckily. "This the monitor to that motion detector mesh Murphy told us about." Cole said as he read a note taped to a device sitting on top of a box of emergency rations. "That could come in handy i guess, hope we don't need to use it though." Ryan said as he walked over to observe the device. "Command sure ain't taking chances when it comes to security." Davis exclaimed, looking at his wrist mounted PDA, before sighing. "Only 4 hours and 53 minutes left." He then murmured sounding deflated. Ryan checked the safety on his rifle for the fourth time in ten minutes. No wonder the other marines had been so eager to leave, cave guard duty was boring. Without so much as a sandy horizon to gaze out at or even fresh air to breath the initial intrigue of guard duty in an alien cave had worn off quickly. Leaving the squad bored with little to converse about other than the usual 'alien planet' talk. "Hey can our orbital satellites we left in orbit pick up signs of civilization?" Davis asked out of the blue. "Yeah probably, why?" Cole responded quickly, desperate for something to take his mind of the boredom. "Well if command has figured out if there's sentient life on this planet when do you think they'll tell us?" Cole furred his brow. "I don't know, probably not immediately." The conversation was interrupted by a sudden, brief blast of static from their communication equipment built into their helmet as well as from the stationary communication equipment in the chamber. A mildly distressed, hoarse voice came over the speakers. "This is 2nd lieutenant Baker at outpost 3! Three of our guys just got grabbed by something in the caves, we need immediate reinforcement! Repeat we need immediate reinforcement over!" Cole barked into the headset and grabbed his gear as the others did the same. "This is sergeant Markson at fallback point 3 we'll be with you ASAP over!" "You'd better be quick sergeant, the things that took our guys are still tripping the motion sensors." The lietenant shouted as someone cursed in the background and the sound of gun fire began. The marines stormed the tunnel at full speed, nearly slipping a few times on the damp cave floor. Gunshots and machine gun fire echoed in the distance and humans barked back and forth at each other. Ryan let out a grunt as he nearly slipped on the floor for the fourth time as they descended deeper down the planets throat. The weapons fire continued for a few minutes as they continued down the cave but it quickly died down. The squad slid down the last part of the tunnel and into the small barricaded encampment. The outpost was far larger, looking as if had been artificially enlarged to accommodate the two squads that had been on guard duty. The artificial chamber ended at a large opening that gave way to side of a huge tunnel going horizontal to the direction they had just came in. The opening had been blocked with 2 standard HDF barricades with machine guns mounted on top of them. There was a narrow opening between them big enough for one person to walk through that had be closed up with a gate built into the barricades design. 6 marines occupied the chamber 2 on the machine guns the rest in cover, weapons at the ready. The 6 of them turned to look at the squad, the machine gunners only looked briefly before turning away and the rest looked away a half second later, save for the lieutenant who sighed in relief. "Markson are we glad see you." "What happened?" "Straight to it eh? Something tripped the motion sensors but nothing came from it, so i sent a squad out to see what was going on. Before they even got out of our sight something swarmed em, only Evans made it out. They tried to swarm us too so we opened fire, but we stopped they started looking like us, didn't want to hit our guys who were still in the thick of those things, they were running away at that point anyway." The lieutenant answered calmly. "They looked like you?" Cole asked intrigued. "Yeah, and i don't mean they looked human, they looked exactly like us. voices and everything." The lieutenant answered his voice betraying his concern at the newly encountered threat. "But they looked strange up close, like... there was something wrong with the way they looked." Evans interjected from his crouched position at the barricade, he was clearly a little shaken up but still ready for a fight. Cole poked his head out from the barricade and observed the corpses of the creatures littering the cave. There had to be at least 3 dozen, only a few had made it close to the barricade luckily enough. They were bipeds with a dark black chitinous outer layer that oozed luminescent green blood from the gaping bullet holes in their bodies. Their extremities all had vacuous holes in them for some unknown purpose. Their legs ended in what looked like hooves, their heads also portraying equine features such as ears and a snout, another interesting addition was the malformed horn on their heads. Their eyes were a sickly shade of blue and seemed to glow slightly, much like the thin and translucent membrane like wings on their backs that seemed to lack the luminescent properties. "Any idea what they are?" Derek asked intrigued at the prospect of alien lifeforms as he tried to get a better look at the corpses. "Insects of some sort." Evans replied simply, checking the safety on his rifle as he did. The group were silent for a short time, allowing Ryan's mind to fill with thoughts of the missing humans fates. Why were they taken? To be eaten? Studied? His mind wandered to visceral scenes of torture and bodily degradation. "How hard were they to kill?" Ryan asked in a deadpan tone, his mind occupied with visions of torment. "Actually not too bad, one shot through the head or the chest and they died. There were just so many." Someone answered. Ryan relaxed slightly, his mind was eased at the revelation that the insect like creatures weren't as hardy as the mutants back on Earth. "You said that they took three of your guys, can you track them?" Alec inquired. "Negatory," The lieutenant replied. "Rocks too thick, and the minerals in these caves mess with radio waves so that's out." There was another brief silence, that was broken this time by Derek. "Well you were right about one thing Davis," He began. "We didn't know what we would find." Author's Note It's back. Thanks for being patient. Before the next chapter comes out i'm going to improve some of the previous chapters and also retcon a few things. For those of you that don't want to go back and read the first chapters all over again i'll put a list of changes in the authors note of the next chapter which hopefully won't take the near eternity this one did. And again, thank you for being patient.
The start of something big [Human] Dairy of Private Ryan Stephson Entry 1 12/5/78 Hello, I am Ryan Stephson, I am straight, white, male living in the good’ ol US of A and I have just become 14. This is a new diary I will be writing to keep track of my life. Enough said. Today I got my first part time job as a grocery bagger in Target and I am being paid minimum wage, if I work hard I should have enough to go to some form of higher education when I become a legal adult. Other than that nothing interesting has happened to me today. Entry 109 24/9/78 Nothing much has changed in my life for a while. So instead I’ll just write on what’s happening in the world right now. Tension has been building between Western Defence Front, an alliance consisting of the USA, the UK, Russia, France, Spain, Germany and Belgium and the African-Asian Defence Front consisting of China, India, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and a few slave states in Africa. Nothing seems to be coming of it but it is still worrying to think about. Entry 134 9/1/79 Yesterday world war 3 started. The African-Asian Defence front attacked Russia today over 15 million soldiers died. The west is in chaos and the WDF is scrambling troops. This is all I can write for now, I have to go. Entry 334 23/5/80 At last I am 16. Now I have enrolled in the US Marines, much to the dismay of my mother. I will be leaving with the next bus with 400 other men to the nearest training camp. Soon I will face our enemy and make them pay for the 3 billion human casualties on our sides. We will make them pay for what they have done! Entry 339 28/5/80 I have arrived at our base camp a started my training. With any luck and the help of reduced training times we will soon avenge our lost. Entry 360 23/6/80 At last I have finished training and have received my orders, I can’t reveal them but I am very excited to finally fight with the men I have trained with. Entry 372 2/7/80 I’ve killed people. I haven’t felt right since the first kill, I can still remember it, shooting him in the chest with the plasma cannon. His body ripped apart limb to limb, blood everywhere, the last thing I saw of him was his face, screaming. I may have made myself to sound like a monster in these diary entries but in reality I care about the men in the enemy’s army as much as our own. All I wanted was to avenge the dead but I am still a person and I care for everyone in this war, even if I have to kill them. If an Enemy soldier is reading this, I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for what I have done even though I will do it all again. Entry 444 16/9/80 In a last ditch attempt to save the West we detonated a prototype weapon over China known as Icarus. It wiped out almost half the planet and made the area uninhabitable as it actually changed the laws of chemistry over that area of land. The blast was so powerful that it pushed earth out of the goldilocks zone towards the sun tidal locking it so it can’t turn on its axis any more. That leads me to where I am now. Humanity banded together and managed to survive in a ring around Earth between where we would freeze and where we would melt. With the help of atmospheric conditioning and a magnetic shield around the ring we managed to save ourselves along with some animal and plant species. Now the sky is red all day and night, the plant life is brown and wilted. The plants only survive with artificial sunlight with a strict amount of plant food. We are all that remains, 3 million survivors, from a glorious race of 18 billion. We now all work together as one nation, one species now. However, I can’t help but to feel sad, my children will never know what Earth was like, what real Earth was like, they will have to live in a harsh hell scape that we created, that I helped create. End of diary entries. Private Ryan looked up from his diary and did something he hadn't done since the survivors settlement was set up, he thought about something that wasn't work. 'I'm 18 tomorrow." he thought with some excitement. After the Icarus event when he lost his family he didn't think about much but work. He sighed and thought about how humanity was to get out of this mess. He would have thought about it further but a knock came to the door of his assigned room. "Um, come in!" he shouted to whoever was on the other side of the door. The automatic door opened and a middle aged Asian man walked in wear a army generals uniform with matching identification on it. In a flash the Private was on his feet and saluting. "Sir! Private Ryan Stephson reporting for duty! Sir! he shouted with evident fear in his voice. "It's alright private, at ease." The general who was identified as Mourge according to his name tag replied calmly. "Do you mind if I take a seat Private?" The general continued. "No, no of course not sir." Ryan replied, trying to remain composed remembering that a general could not only have him flogged, but also shot for the smallest of reasons. "I suppose you want to know why I'm here, hmm?" "Yes sir." "Well what I'm about to tell you is highly classified at the moment, which is why you were given the sound proofed room, would you like to know what it is?" "Yes sir." "Well as I said this is classified so keep this to your self but we've built a space ship and a remarkable one at that. "A-a space ship sir?" "Yes it is the first of its kind. You see shortly before the war an astrologist discovered a small Earth like planet, habitable, in orbit around a sun similar to our own 4 million light years away So now we built a ship using pre and post war tech to transport 200 men, a few plants and animals to set up a colony. That is where you come in private." "S-sir?" We've seen your record private. It's excellent, to say the least. You've fought in the wastes against mutants and in the war against some of the deadliest contraptions ever made. So now we want you to go on this ship with 200 other men and establish a colony for humanity. I know this is fast but I need an answer now. What do you say?" Ryan stood there in awe for a few seconds, processing the information. First of all an alien world? What would happen if he left, his family were dead and he so were his friends. His squad had been wiped out before he got a change to know them, hence why he was here. However his mouth answered before his mind could. "Sir. Yes. Sir." Three years earlier in a top secret equestrian military complex: Deep under ground a mint green mare sat in a black interrogation room. In there with her was a brown furred stallion wearing a lab coat. "Dr Lyra, tell me about the screams." The stallion asked. "W-well, I was trying out a new spell, a telepathy spell. I-it worked great when I tried it on my f-friend Bon Bon. But when I went home that night after a walk around Pony ville, the next morning I was planning to got to canterlot to tell the university of advanced magic of my findings. But I had an idea, the magic, when cast on a group of ponies can't work unless they are all feeling or thinking the same thing, the longer the distance the more ponies thinking or feeling the same thing has to increase or the intensity of the feeling. So I thought it may be a good idea to point it at a star, you know? So I cast the spell at the third star in the hoof star constellation and for a while there was nothing, just silence. I figured it was because even if there was alien life on that planet, they couldn't all be thinking the same thing. B-but suddenly there were nothing but screams, pony screams! Billions of them! A-and then billions more joined them. It was so loud, but then there was just... silence. "
Rushed descisions and early mornings [Human]"Sir. Yes. Sir." "Now Private you do realise you could be on that planet for the rest of your life, don't you?" The general asked him calmly. This time Ryan's mouth actually allowed him to think before answering. 'Well for a start I get off this miserable planet and I can find a new home for humanity. Not to mention I don't have friends because I have to change squads so often because they keep being killed, poor guys and it's better than doing the same depressing work of fighting mutants and thinking about everything we lost. I could focus on what we would be gaining.' He thought deeply. "Sir. Yes. sir." came his reply "Excellent." The general exclaimed, sounding more excited than serious now. "You have until 0530 to gather up all your belongs and I mean all of them you aren't coming back. An agent will pick you up at that time, do not leave this room until he comes, understood?" the veteran finished. "Sir. Yes. Sir." Ryan replied wearily. "Very good, I'll be seeing you soon." General Mourge said pleased, before getting up and walking out the door with the words of "Goodnight Private." escaping his mouth. Ryan stood in the middle of the room once again processing the information. "I'm going to another planet." He said shocked that he hadn't fully understood that when the general had told him. 'How long were they planning to ask me, they gave me a sound proof room when I came in and I've only been here a day.' Ryan looked at His alarm clock on his desk, it was 9:30, he had to leave at half past five. 'I need to get packed.' Without another thought he walked over to his wardrobe and putting folded clothes on his bed next to a suitcase that he forgot to leave by. 'I only unpacked and now I have to do it all over.' he thought with some humour. Ryan jumped out of the VTOL into the battlefield, all he could see at first was the bright beams of the standard issue gauss rifles and plasma bolts. He ran into the battle, quickly jumping into a trench just as beam from a gauss rifle buzzed past his head. The crack of the rifles continued fire hit hard against the top of the trench. Only then did he take time to listen, all he could hear was the sound of weapons fire. he looked around to find six other men in the trench with him ducking down. Some he recognised, some he didn't, but what he did recognise was the look of unadulterated terror. a feeling he too was familiar with, before and in his current predicament. The sound of fire hitting against the trench stopped leading him to believe the enemy soldier had run out of ammo, he quickly peered out over the top before bringing his weapon up and started to fire in the general direction of the enemy. The thing is it's actually very hard to look another man in the eyes and shoot him without proper training and thanks to his accelerated courses he hadn't had any proper training. eventually the rifles massive clip became empty and Ryan quickly duck back into cover, shortly followed by the other men just as the enemy resumed there assault on the trench. "Hey!" some one shouted to him. He looked over to the owner of the voice, a sergeant, calling him. "Private get on that plasma cannon!" Ryan without answering ran over to the turret and pulled of its dead operator. The operator was another young man from boot camp he recognised as Henry, Ryan laid down his still warm body carefully and started using the plasma turret. The plasma cannon was a fine piece of engineering topping the standard gauss rifles by a mile, however Ryan had little time to admire the heavy machine gun as he started firing. The plasma bolts tore threw the enemy trench causing the opposing soldiers to fall back into the dark dugout. However one man jumped out of the trench, he was a veteran, with proper training that would not hesitate to kill him. The man was pulling out his weapon and aiming it at Ryan. Ryan couldn't move, all he could do was watch, what should he do? Then he remembered the plasma cannon, his fingers moved by themselves on instinct. Ryan pulled the trigger Beep! Beep! Beep! Ryan awoke with a cold sweat to the sound of his alarm clock ringing. He quickly got up and walked over to the desk, turning it off, he checked the time. 2:50 '40 minutes let until the agent comes' Ryan sighed, he had gotten used to the nightmares but it still had a huge effect on him. 'Just try to forget' he thought shamefully. Ryan, trying to take his mind off of the dream thought again of the immenseness of what he was going to do, he thought he was dreaming when the general had told him. Trying to pass the time as fast as possible he checked that his baggage was secure and contained all of his possessions before checking the room again. After checking to see if he missed any belongings he did some exercises consisting of: 200 push ups, 200 sit ups and a standing jog for 10 minutes. The time was now 3:10 for the remaining 20 minutes all Ryan did was walk around the room and wonder if it was genuine or not, was it some prank from the other marines or was this actually happening. But he didn't have time to worry about that, for all he knew a general just told him he would be going to an alien planet, Now that he thought about it there may even be sentient life there since the conditions were perfect for civilization to thrive if what the general told him was right. Eventually after enough waiting it was 3:30, Ryan stared at the door wearily, seconds passed. Was the agent late? As soon as he thought that a knock came to the door. Ryan grabbed his case and walked up to the door and took a deep breath and stared at it for a few seconds. 'Get ready here it comes.' he thought trying to calm himself down. Finally he opened the door. He was greeted by the sight of a marine, staff sergeant if the marking on his shoulder was accurate, wearing full standard issue body armour... and a heavy gauss rifle. "Private Ryan Stephson?" The sergeant asked, his voice masking all emotion. "Sir. Yes. Sir." Ryan replied, struggling to stop his voice from shaking. "Please come with me." "Yes sir." The marine turned and signalled for Ryan to follow "Please save any questions for when we're in the dropship, we don't want anyone to hear." The marine said in the same emotionless tone. "Sir, Yes, Sir." Ryan replied still deliriously nervous. The marine walked down the few corridors of the barracks until the duo reached the exit. "If you want we can stop by the armoury and pick up your armour if it has any value to you." The marine suggested, Ryan couldn't get his name as the marines armour lacked all identification oddly. "Um, yes sir." Ryan replied, his armour meant a lot to him being with him since he enrolled, he would hate to lose it. The pair soon reached the small armoury, once inside the marine told Ryan he would wait at the door but that he should be quick. Ryan walked over to his locker and pulled out his mark IV tactical body armour, he remembered all the times this armour had saved his life meaning it had to be repaired dozen's of times. He quickly put on the armour plates and putting the rest of the equipment in the locker When Ryan came out he had just put the visor over his eyes and was adjusting the neck scarf over his face. The marine looked him over and told him to remove his name tag to avoid recognition. The marine then told Ryan to follow and took him to a dropship outside the fortress. They both stepped into the VTOL. Then the marine reached up and removed his helmet to reveal the face of a handsome young man. with a head of brown hair that covered his head. The man cleared his throat "Sorry about that private, I had to avoid my normal behaviours to avoid being recognised if any one was watching. Nice to meet you, I'm staff sergeant Alec Davis. I'm really sorry for the bad first impressions, especially since your going to be living in close proximity to me for the majority of your adult life. And don't worry about being formal with me, leave that at the door." He said smiling. "Oh, hello. Um, its alright sir. You seem quite nice to be honest. You're part of the program too?" "Yeah, this is the first official meeting. Pretty crazy what were doing, huh. Also Private you can call me Alec." Alec said as the VTOL shook as it took off. "Yeah, crazy. I guess we'll find out more when we get there, maybe we should get to know each other first. Since we will be seeing each other a lot." "Sounds great. All they told me about you was your name, tell me about your self."
Exodus [Human]The drop ship set down next to the old' abandoned 'argata' airport. As far as the 3 hour VTOL flight had went he had found out much about Alec. He was 22, from Florida and was a scout for United Human Defence Front, humanity's new military force to name a few things about him. He had fought in the war since its start and was actually in the impact zone of Icarus when it detonated. He also said that he had a friend he served with who was part f the project too. The pair stepped out onto the cracked concrete. the airport was built shortly after humanity tried to set up the first settlements after the fall, however due to the high amounts of acid rain and a mutant infestation of the area had quickly lead to the base being abandoned. the two stood in the direction of the airport, the warm air generated by the dropships VTOL blew dust particles around as it took off again. "So, what were the orders sir?" Ryan asked. "They didn't tell us much, just to wait out here until we were 'identified'." Alec responded. The two stood there for a few minutes and Ryan was just about to say something until a door opened. As soon as it had around forty men in full U.H.D.F armour, bearing rifles dashed out of the building. Before surrounding the two, pointing there weapons at them. One of them, the leader if Ryan was correct, cleared his throat and began to shout. "Drop your weapons and identify yourselves!" The man shouted. Ryan and Alec quickly threw there knives and other melee weapons to the ground and Alec gently set down his heavy gauss rifle. Raising there arms Alec responded to the armoured man. "Staff sergeant Alec Davis and Private Ryan Stephson of the U.H.D.F, here on behalf of orders from general Mourge." The man kept his weapon trained on the two, then ordering on of the soldiers. "Check 'em." The soldier approached the two men slowly keeping the rifle aimed at them. He reached over and pulled out there identification tags. "Looks clear sir." The man said to the leader of the group. There leader then nodded before ordering the duo. "Remove your helmets." Ryan and Alec did what they were told. "Is that them corporal?" The man in charge asked. "Yes sir." the man who had checked them replied. The men all lowered there weapons and sighed in relief. The leader of the group walked up to them and removed his helmet as well. "Hello sergeant, private, I'm lieutenant James Murphy. We've been expecting you, follow me." The lieutenant said as he turned to walk towards the airport. "Our new captain has been expecting you." Murphy said calmly. "New captain?" Ryan asked. "Yes, the captain of the ship we're going on." The lieutenant responded. "Your all part of the project?" Alec asked. "Every one of us that's here, right now we're waiting for our pick up." Murphy replied. The large group entered the airports huge main hall containing about 200 other men. The rest of the group who had went out to greet the pair dissipated into the larger group of men. The remaining three walked towards a man in the centre of the room who was talking to a marine. Murphy signalled for the Alec and Ryan too stop as he went to speak with the 'captain'. The marine talking to the captain walked off and left the lieutenant talking to the 'captain'. After the two talked some time Murphy and the captain walked over to Alec and Ryan. The man was not wearing his helmet, revealing a handsome face with scars down his neck and bottom left cheek. "Hello, I'm captain Will Jones. I'll be your commanding officer for the majority of your remaining life. we have been waiting for you." "Thank you sir." Alec responded simply but respectfully. "We're waiting for our pick up, a transport has been set to pick us up and take us to the training site. I would spend the time to get to know you better but I have important matters to attend to. I suggest you get acquainted with some of your new associates." The captain said Ryan nodded and turned, but that's when he noticed, out of all of the people in the room, there were no women. "Uh sir, where are all the girls?" Ryan asked confused. "There are none. Everyone here was chosen for a specific task on our mission, even though we are all soldiers, some of us have other jobs also. So when we were picked out, by coincidence there were no girls, I trust that isn't a problem?" The captain replied. "Uh. No sir, it's just some people would be very offended if that was found out by the public, this project is going public, right?" Ryan asked. "Yes, it is eventually Ryan. In fact this mission is actually more for morale than anything, so in all honesty the crews gender diversity doesn't really matter." "Yes sir." "And Ryan. Dump the formalities, we are all going to be living together for a majority of our adult life." "um ok, will." Alec tapped Ryan on the shoulder. "Hey, Ryan I got a fried for you to meet. He's great, your gonna love 'em." "Great, looks like you did all the work for me." The pair turned and Alec lead the way towards two men talking to each other it the corner of the room. Alec and Ryan eventually navigated threw the crowd and over to the small group, the two men talking looked up at them and one of them gave Alec a smile of recognition. Alec walked up to the man and gave him a man hug. "Cole, good to see ya buddy." Alec said happily. "Nice to se you too Alec" the man said in a deep voice, he was a veteran by the look of him, no older than 27. Ryan also noticed how tall he was, Ryan was 5'10 and Alec was around 6'2 but this man had to be around 6'7 and he had enough muscle to make Arnold Schwarzenegger jealous. His face also sported a beard and a normal length of dark brown hair and brown eyes, his neck was scored with scars as was the area concealed by the beard. Ryan was surprised that the man could even talk with the extent of the scaring on his neck. "Who's this?" Alec asked Cole gesturing to the man Cole was talking to. "This is Corporal Dereck Mc'graidy, he's from Scotland in the UK. He is one of our medical division marines, head doctor of the ship actually." Cole said. "Hi. Nice to meet you." The man said. He did in fact wear the tell-tale white armour of a medic. He had a clean shaven face and was good looking man by American standards and a very very good looking man by British standards. (I just had to make that joke, please take no offence. I am in fact also British so I actually just shot myself in the foot.) He had black hair of an average length and he had light blue eyes. "Hi I'm staff sergeant Alec Davis, I'm from Florida." Alec greeted. "Private Ryan Stephson, I'm from Mississippi." Ryan said "You lived in a river?" Dereck asked confused. "No, no I don't live in the river. I live in the state of Mississippi." "Oh, sorry." The medic said sheepishly. "I'm Cole Markson, I'm from Alaska." Suddenly there was high pitched screech of a VTOL engine outside, then someone shouted. "Oi! Lads, that's our ride. get goin!" Three months later,Ryan: Three months. Three long months of Hell on Earth. The training program for the marines had been brutal. Every fear that the marines had, hadf been taken into account and used to make the training a nightmare. Not to mention the flood therapy, he never liked spiders, so naturally the trainers locked him in a small 1m cubed room with hundreds of different types of spiders. It worked though. Then there was the team exercises, the idea was that two men would take part in a seemingly impossible and physically gruelling task, but it did help them to get to know each other. The weapons and vehicle training was fun though. The marines were using the mark IV weapons range, renowned world round for their durability, high clip capacity low recoil and sound, deadliness and last bit not least, the agonising amount of pain it could cause You see, during the start of the war China had a problem with deserters, a lot of Chinese people hated their new Government for declaring war and essentially ruining China. So the deserted, to counter this the Chinese military commissioned for Chinese and POW engineers to design a gauss rifle for the task, what they came out with were the deadliest infantry weapons ever devised. It shot an osmium bullet at 22% the speed of light and was coated in a material that prevented blood clotting and caused tremendous amounts of pain. This weapons were so effective that whenever the Chinese government realized that they were losing the war, they mass produced the weapons and they alone were the reason the African-Asian Defence Force could turn the tables so quickly. Then there was his armour. (Please note that this marine is not Ryan but another marine in the project. The art is halo marine concept art by Bungie even though this is not a halo fic.) The armour looked the same but had a truckload of upgrades. The lightweight alloy the armour had been enhanced to absorb more damage and was lined with extra thick graphene, it now had a air conditioning system. It also had an improved gas mask in one of the compartments that could attach to the armour when needed, the suit itself was airtight thus the marines could be put in no oxygen conditions for 10 minutes with a new built in air tank. The suit also had a layer of shock absorbing gel that hardened when force was applied but quickly became flexible again. It even had an advanced tactical visor to help the user in combat. It even had a drug injection system which could inject various combat drugs into the user. That led him to where he was. On board the ship. The 'Pale Blue Dot' as the ship was called, was named after the famous photo of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 probe from the edge of the solar system, It was not overly big, only the size of a aircraft carrier and a third, not as big as the next generation would be. The ship was a large rectangle with huge thrusters at the end and a large protrusion coming out from the top this was the bridge and the engine/reactor room. The main section of the ship, the rectangle part was mainly used as a cargo/hangar bay but the front section, about a quarter of the main body was dedicated to cryostorage. The final part of the ship was a small observation deck on the bottom of the ship, it was mostly reinforced transparent steel and was where the crew would control the ship when it entered orbit of the alien planet. Their orders were to fly out to the Moon and drop automated rovers, a resource extractor and other automated machinery to collect the resource rich dust of the Lunar surface. The remnants of humanity would then build a small battle fleet which would fly out to the Moon, they would then set up a base and build a bigger fleet using the moons resources that were collected by the rovers. After the fleet had been built they would use the helium 3 to power there warp drives and travel to the alien planet, officially named 'New Terra', where the crew of the Pale Blue Dot would have established a military presence and a political process if there were in fact aliens. This whole process would take 60 years. And now everything was ready, the ship had left the the ship building bay in the Earths orbit and had successfully landed the rovers on the Moon. Now he sat in the ships cargo bay, Alec was securing the tanks for the warp jump and Dereck was in a modified heavy APC that served as a mobile med bay and since the ship never had a med bay installed as they would be building one when the arrived on the planet. Cole was sitting on a crate next to the medical APC, he was cleaning his plasma cannon and Ryan thought it best to not disturb him during this time. Alec had told him that cleaning heavy weapons, specifically plasma weapons, brought back bad memories to Cole. Not all of them were from the war, as Cole had told him only a few days before he had once been married. The worst part was, that Cole had thought everything was fine until the final days of the marriage. At first, him and his wife, Maria, could get any happier. They had thee kids and held a stable relationship for over four years. But then Maria had started to get involved with a radical belief system which she referred to as 'feminism' and 'social justice'. Over time her views started to change, but she never had let it upset the marriage so Cole had assumed it was fine. But then, the arguments started, she started shouting about 'checking his privilege' and other nonsense like that. Eventually the arguments got so bad that, one morning Cole woke up to find his house barren of life. The only thing he found was a note on the kitchen table. It had said that she was tired of his oppressive beliefs and was leaving him to go to Germany, the note also told him how she had taken the kids and that she illegally divorced him. Cole became depressed and couldn't keep a job, eventually he lost his house and found a place to live under an overpass. His depression worsened to the point of near suicide. So when the war started, he had nothing to lose. Cole was quickly promoted to staff sergeant due to putting himself in so many dangerous situations and managing to survive. However instead of simply dying like Cole planned when he joined the war effort, It actually lifted Coles depression. He once again had a family to care for and to look after in the military, thus Cole great fully accepted his rank and all the responsibilities that came with it. While Ryan had simply joined the military to avenge the fallen and also for the sense of adventure that was plentiful in the army, he was still glad to have someone like Cole watching over him. Ryan sighed again. "I'm gonna go check on Alec." Ryan shouted over to Cole. "Ok, see ya later." Cole replied simply, sounding saddened as he usually did when he cleaned his plasma cannon Ryan jumped off of the crate he was currently sitting on and began to walk to the tank section of the ship. While the hangar bay was all one room, it was divided into different sections for different things. The walk to the tank section where Alec was went straight threw the section for the crews belongings. So naturally Ryan thought it reasonable to check on his belongings for what would be the last time for fourteen months Ryan walked quickly past the other marines and their crates to his own, the men had only been allowed to take a certain amount of belongings with them. Thus after he was told this Ryan chose very carefully what to bring with him, however since he didn't have very many belongings he could easily bring them and some random extra stuff. Ryan casually approached the crate, only to have Alec jump out from behind it. "Boo!" Alec shouted. "Gah!" Ryan screamed as he repulsed backward in shock "Got ya." Alec said proudly. "what was that for?" Ryan asked shocked and dazed. "Nothing, I just felt like it. What brings you here?" Alec asked. "Well, I was going to check on you to see if you were done with the tanks yet and thought I would check my crate first." Ryan replied. "Oh, well what's in your crate." Alec asked. "personal Tablet, normal clothing, Bible, that type of stuff." "Huh, I brought that and some seeds." Alec continued. "You were allowed to bring seeds?" Ryan asked confused. "I mean, there for eating, not planting." Alec answered. "Oh." Ryan said stupidly. "So are you ready for this. You know, the whole warp drive alien planet scenario?" Ryan asked. "Ryan, I was born ready for this. Heck, I can barley wait, I've been scratching to get going. More importantly Are you ready?" Alec asked. "I think so. It's just, what if there's something out there on that rock that's dangerous. I men, more dangerous than we've ever seen before. Could we fight it? Would it attack Earth? Would it wipe us out?" Ryan half asked, half shouted. "Hey, listen, we've got some the best tanks, aircraft, vehicles, weapons and machines ever created by mankind. There is not a single alien on that planet who could look at a mark V heavy anti-vehicle anti-infantry anti-air tank and not think we shouldn't be messed with. If anything tries to kick us off that rock, it can expect a tank shell to the face, heck, we've got an Icarus charge on board. You know what those things can do?" Alec replied. Ryan sighed in relief. "I guess your right. Nothings standing up to an Icarus cha-" Ryan was interrupted by the voice of the captain or commander Jones as he was formally known over the intercom. "All personal, this is captain Jones speaking, we are making the jump in six minutes. Head to your cryo-pods. If anyone has not had their pre-cryo injections see chief doctor Mc'graidy immediately. "That's the call Ryan, let's go!" Alec shouted as he began to jog towards the cryo-pods with Ryan in quick pursuit. When Ryan and Alec got to the pods there were already men strapping themselves into the pods and preparing themselves for the jump. "There squad 42, that's us!" Ryan shouted, pointing at their squads cryo-pods. "Quick get in!" Alec shouted. The pair leapt into their cryo-pods and began to secure themselves in. The two then sat in awkward silence for the next 3 minutes after realizing that they had made a big deal for literally no reason. Soon after the rest of the marines had arrived the intercom came to life again. "All hands, this is captain Jones. We are now about to make history. As of now, we have travelled farther than any human has travelled before. Now, we will go even farther with a prototype warp drive. After the jump we will have over a year to travel at top speed until we reach the planet. We have a years supply of food but that is needed for the first year while we produce our own food. If the planet turns out to be uninhabitable then we will starve to death, but it's worth the risk for mankind. When we reach the planet, we will enforce and military, industrial and if necessary, a political presence. We will make a beach head for the rest of the fleet when they arrive. This mission is not for our nations, but for our species. For mankind!" The captain shouted which was followed by cheers from the men. The voice over the intercom changed to one of the engineers. "Warp jump commencing in 5, 4, 3 ,2, 1, Jumping!" The ship suddenly started to accelerate alarmingly fast, pushing the marine towards the end of the ship. But as soon as it had started, it stopped, the force of the deceleration would have thrown the marines out of their seats if it weren't for the harnesses. "Warp jump successful!" The marine shouted, which was followed by the mad cheers of the crew. Ryan high fived Alec who was seated next to him. "Now that's what I'm taking about!" Alec shouted, numb with the adrenaline coursing threw his veins. The captains voice came over the intercom again. "Gentlemen we just made history! No one has ever done that before!" The captains voice was followed by a chorus of gleeful cheers. "Excellent job men, your cryo-pods are being initiated! I'll see you on the other side!" The captain finished. Suddenly Ryan's pod door closed and it became very cold. The temperature soon dropped to below freezing and Ryans body became numb. His heartbeat began to slow and his brain began to shut down. Ryan's eyelids became heavy and he lost consciousness. The enzymes in his brain that sustained consciousness began to stop catalysing. He fell into a deep cryostatic sleep. Author's Note I improved chapter one if anyone didn't know. And the next chapter will have pony's and will be longer. And sorry if this chapter felt rushed. Merry Christmas by the way
Strange New World [Human]"Wars take many lives away. Humans never forget the grief, but they also never stop the fighting. Streams of blood and tears are only an ornament for their destructive ritual."-Duo Maxwell 21 hours 52 minutes 3 seconds until arrival at New Terra> [ship status update in progress] nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal nominal damaged- satellite range significantly reduced <> [beginning external navigational scan] [initiating deep scan] [evaluating situation] [calculating additional solutions] Ryan Ryan stood in the middle of the desolate hell-scape, lava flowed in rivers across the scorched earth as radioactive ashes danced like snowflakes in the wind of the approaching firestorm. The sea of lava bubbled and cracked as a overhang collapsed into the fiery ocean of death. The ground was smoking from constant heat exposure and radiation, a terrifying screech came from a dark cave in the hell-scape as the abominations awoke from their malevolent slumber. This was the burn zone, the area that was always facing the sun but still cold enough to support life. A hole in the Earth vomited out even more lava and a human skull rolled to Ryan's feet. 'why doesn't this scare you?' Ryan's subconscious asked. suddenly the environment changed and Ryan was thrown into the nightmare he so desperately tried to escape but still found him every night. The war. Explosions shook the ground as men jumped out of trenches and were mowed down by plasma cannon fire. Exo marines jumped over the trenches into the carnage. Another round of artillery shook the battlefield and a mans arm went flying. The marines rifles cracked as they fired at the enemy while British decimator tanks crushed the injured enemy forces. A Canadian soldier threw a gas canister into a group of enemy soldiers, only to be torn to shreds the enemy's guns before they succame to the gas. An armoured military jeep armed with a X-D95 SC fired at an Australian soldier, causing his head to explode sending fragments of his skull flying everywhere like shrapnel. Flame-thrower marines burst out of an abandoned building and torched group of Chinese soldiers. Meanwhile two exo soldiers were locked in a round of deadly melee combat until one managed to rip off the others left arm before grabbing him by the shoulders and kneeing him in the face, crushing his skull. suddenly the whole world shook and there was a white flash as a nuke detonated in the distance. 'This scares you.' His mind whispered. Everything went black. Ryan awoke with a jump from cryosleep and vomited all over the floor of the cryo-tube. His senses quickly returned to him, his body was cold and numb all over, Ryan's stomach churned again and he bent over and clutched his stomach in pain as he vomited again. His body continued to regurgitate the contents of this stomach all over the floor of the cryo-tube until nothing came out. Ryan felt a searing pain in his head and his fingers and toes were freezing. Ryan groaned in pain from the aching all over his body. "I thought this armour was supposed to keep you warm." Ryan wheezed still holding onto the side of the cryo-tube for stability. Ryan opened his eyes, the red flashing lights of the reactivation sequence hurt his already stinging eyes. He looked around to see that the rest of the crew were having a similar experience, groaning in pain from the less than pleasant awakening. The private looked to his left to see Alec vomiting up his 14 month old pre cryo-sleep rations. Ryan tried to speak but a searing pain in his abdomen caused him to quickly hunch over and grab his chest, he groaned in pain for the second time that day. He looked at the undigested food he had vomited up, something Dereck told him about how during cryo-statis the body stops producing gastric acid almost immediately but continue making a neutralizing substance for a few weeks. Ryan wheezed as the pain slowly subsided. He again looked over at Alec and tried to talk again. "Ahh-Is it just me or does-ahh-it feel like-gah! someone's just ripped out your intestines?" Ryan gasped out. "Yeah-uhhgh!" Alec grunted. "Funny how I'd know how that feels." Cole wheezed. Scootaloo Scootaloo sat up in her bed and stretched before yawning. She quickly pulled off the sheets and got out of her bed. She stood up straight and stretched again, this time spreading her wings out as far as she could. She had slept like a tap ever since her sleep over with the rest of the crusaders. She smiled and looked down at her cutie mark. 'Hard to believe its been a year since I got it.' she thought, happy memories flowing back to her, elevating her already good mood. She yawned again. "That was the best sleep I've had for weeks." She said out loud. Ryan It had been 10 minutes since the less that pleasant awaking from cryo-statis, Ryan's headache was subsiding and the others were in a similar state. "I thought this armour was supposed to keep you warm." Ryan groaned. Alec chuckled. "Not when the temperature settings are designed to cool you down when the cryo-sleep process starts." "I know but.. could they at least make it a little less unpleasant." Ryan responded "Now that I think about it, I had a hangover like this once when I was 19." Alec half laughed, half coughed. 40 minutes later- The marines had recovered quickly from the de-frosting and had begun to fulfil tasks assigned by their squad leader. Each squad was a 4 man team with the minimum of a medic, two rifleman and a heavy weapons expert. In Ryan's squad the heavy weapons expert was the team leader, no other than Cole, The medic was Dereck, leaving Ryan and Alec as the rifle men. Ryan set down that heavy crate he was carrying and wiped his brow. "Is it just me or is it weird that for some we all got in the same squad and we all are best friends with each other?" He asked. "No, its got something to do with how the trainers observed who we are best with and would be good in a team together." Cole responded. "You know what I thinks weird, how come Cole gets promoted to a gunnery sergeant and I don't, I don't mind him being squad leader, but how is that fair." Alec said wiping his face with his red bandana. "Probably because your the type that would rather go on a mission with other staff sergeants than subordinates" Dereck answered. "Attention all hands this is captain Jones, we have successfully made it to New Terra!" The men in the hangar clapped and cheered at the news. "The planet is around 94% the size of Earth but it only has around 78.9% Earths gravity and best of all its a rocky planet with liquid water and a breathable atmosphere. And there appears to be carbon based plant life! There is no deadly radiation and its day is around 23 hours long!" Again there was a avalanche of cheering. "In 21 hours we will be in orbit above the planet. However we've detected an energy field surrounding the planet. The navigation satellite was damaged and reduced it range greatly, that is why we were only awoken now instead of 18 hours from the planet. The field doesn't seem to harm us or technology for that matter but it's still under examination. We've done well up to this point, if we successfully land we will be well on our way to restoring humanity. As a final order before the landing I want you to finish any tasks assigned by your superiors and prepare cargo for landing. If your an engineering squad preform a safety check on your designated systems, after that your all done." There was another round of cheering, that was before the marines fully grasped what the commander had said. "Umm...did anyone else hear something about an energy field?" Alec said as he looked back to his squad. Scootaloo Scootaloo was excited beyond belief, she was barely able to stop herself screaming. This was the best thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life. While Scootaloo was on the verge of screaming, Twilight was pacing around in circles. "I told her to be a Sugar Cube Corner at 9 AM sharp, is that to much to ask for? It's not like it's that early." Twilight turned to Scootaloo. "How can you not be mad at her for being late to this, the day you have something important to tell her? This is one of the biggest things to ever happen to you and she's late." Scootaloo responded in a heartbeat. "I couldn't care less if she was late, this is the best thing to happen to me ever, just as long as she gets the message!" Scootaloo responed ecstatically. Twilight was about to respond but Rainbow Dash burst into the shop. "Hey! Sorry I'm late, I was held up at a wonder bolts meeting. Spitfire is in Manehattan to see her sister, she's sick or something. So they needed volunteers to train the new recruits." She looked around before asking. "What was it you two wanted to tell me?" Twilight grinned. "Scootaloo has something to tell you." Rainbow Dash looked to Scootaloo. "Scoots?" Scootaloo couldn't contain herself any longer. "I was accepted into the Wonder Bolts!" She shouted, her voice shrill with excitement. Rainbow Dash stared back at her in shock for a few seconds. To Scootaloo it felt like hours. She looked up at her sister waiting for her response which came in a sudden cry of joy. "Awesome!" 6 pm standard Equis time- The crew of the human ship had completed their tasks hours ago and the marines had been sent to rest to prepare for the landing. The lights had been turned off save for one at the elevator to the bridge and other stations providing the only light. While the rest of the men slept, Alec remained fully awake. Ryan Ryan shot up from his sleeping bag as the alarm went off. The nightmare he had just witnessed had been a bit more...disturbing than usual, another symptom of prolonged cryo-statis. He shuddered as he remembered the dream, the thing about the nightmare was that it wasn't like the regular ones he had, the nightmare wasn't even about whatever abominations could be lurking on the planet or his own. Instead this particular nightmare had delved into the effect of the human condition on other worlds, no humans fighting each other. instead the exploited his deeper fear, that had developed during his life, significantly more during the war. There were no aliens trying to wipe out humanity, it was humans invading foreign soil, a battlefield. Humans on one side, his species tools of destruction tearing down the weak resistance from the aliens who desperately tried to halt the massive death machine with primitive world war 1 tech. The battlefield of his nightmare changed, showing him dozens of worlds, its inhabitants trying to defend their homes with varying degrees of inferior technology. One world that stuck out to him particularly was a forest planet with 14 foot tall, muscular alien tribesmen trying to defend their village from the invasion force of flesh and metal. A VTOL launched a cluster missile into the primitive aliens. The reactions of the aliens to his peoples weaponry was an obvious fear from the resistance and absolute terror from the fleeing women and children. Ryan was pulled away from the memory by Coles hand on his shoulder. "Hey! You alright kid?" Cole asked in his deep and rough voice. "Oh. Yeah sorry." Ryan said a little surprised by the sudden contact. "Here," Cole threw him an MRE. "We should be in orbit over the planet now and we're gonna do a few laps of the planet and then make planet-fall in 5 hours. We need to be at our best." "Ok, thanks Cole." Ryan replied as he looked down at his MRE which he had caught. The MRE's that were issued by the Human Defence Front were the same as the ones issued by the Russians in the war, High nutrient, calorie and mineral content and would meet the daily vitamin quotient for the standard human. Of course after the war the HDF decided to change the amount of food and its nutrient value based on the individual and not the average. However the down side to this was that if the said individual were doing more exercise than standard or had just returned from battle, the personalized MRE's wouldn't be enough to satisfy the bodies needs, thus a high energy bar was developed with incredibly large amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, amino acids and non-saturated fats. However like the MRE's that the rest of world used, they were disgusting. Ryan remembered the first time he tried one it had resulted with him nearly vomiting all over another marines boots. Ryan chuckled a bit at this memory, ever since then he had gotten used to the disgusting taste, and had actually began to enjoy it. The MRE's container was just a shock-absorbent plastic box, about the length and breath of a magazine, but much thicker, in an elastic packet. The thing inside that was supposedly 'food' looked like a pile of dried, brown blades of grass that had been pressurized to make it have a similar consistency to steak. Ryan picked up the lump of organic and synthetic food and took a bite out of it without looking at what it was supposed to taste like. It had a distinct flavour of grinded up gravel mixed with dirt. 'That's chicken,' He thought. 'Definitely chicken.' He looked down to the packet. Turkey. 'Close enough.' His train of thought drifted back to the nightmare and he shuddered again. What he had seen in the war would undeniably haunt him for the rest of his life, he luckily never developed PTSD but he had the occasional flashback. The dream hadn't been outright terrifying for Ryan like the usual ones, but it had touched into his deeper fears, deeply disturbing. The saddest part about it was that it was a very likely scenario. He took another bite of the disgusting MRE. "Hey Tyrone." Ryan looked up from the revolting food that put his old school dinners to shame in terms of educing prolonged vomiting and saw Alec trying to get the attention of another marine. The marine turned around, revealing the face of a well shaved black man, Michelson, or Tyrone as he was more commonly known did a full turn to face Davis. "Wot's up Davis." He asked in a thick English accent. "I'll trade you your steak MRE for my chicken one." "Why? Cos' I'm black?" "Because I know you like chicken." "Fair enouf, fanks." They exchanged MRE's and went back to eating. "You know what would make these MRE's better?" Davis asked. "Maggots." "Maggots." "Maybe a few termites." The squad responded almost instantly. "Too bad the Embryos are still in cryo-statis." Cole said. "Cryonics are pretty cool think when you think about." Dereck said as he stretched and got up. "What do you think we'll find down there?" He said grabbing some cleaning equipment from his kit. "Something that's gonna get it's ass kicked if it scratches the paint job on my ar," Davis said. He pulled out his heavy assault rifle. It was the standard black colour with the words 'democracy' hand painted by Davis on the side. "I only got this done before we left Earth." "Let's hope it likes the taste of quartite rounds with a side of plasma and hydro ozone urdite hexa-thermite. Cole said as he lifted out his prized plasma cannon, the thing was a triple barrelled Gatling gun that fired .50 cal and .30 cal rounds, it wasn't even meant to be carried and was supposed to be a stationary turret. It had no noticeable modifications other than the un-ironic name that Cole had given the weapon after one of his slightly...strange political opinions, 'Communism'. Ryan spoke up. "Hopefully nothing as bad as the mutants in the burn zone, or the freeze zone for that matter. How do those things even live, I mean, part of them isn't even on the same Higgs field as the rest of the universe." Ryan thought back to the freeze zone on Earth, the opposite of the burn zone, the side where Icarus detonated. "Freaks," Alec said suddenly serious. "I mean that's it, really, the only way they can work like...that. Their freaks." Dereck spoke up "That's enough of that," The rest of the squad looked to him. "We're not here to think about what's back at home," home, that word stuck out to Ryan, was back there really his home, was that the same Earth he read about in school books. Is that really Earth? Is that what we did to that? Images of the destruction that mankind had caused flooded his mind, the rainforests, all those species now extinct, Icarus. 'Did we really do that? We did that? "Where here to fix the mess we're in, the planet has a habitable atmosphere, there's no ionizing radiation all over the place, theirs clean water, the sky's actually blue! Earth's a message to anything on that planet that has the guts and idiocy to mess with us. If we can survive Earth we can survive here." Dereck looked too his squad who nodded in agreement and admiration of Dereck's words. Ryan spoke up. "Well, whatever we find down their will defiantly be weird after having to live on post war Earth for four years." "definitely." Alec agreed. Commander Jones Some hours after- "Sir we're in orbit over the planet!" The Helmsman called out. The sound of clapping engulfed the bridge. "Excellent work Paul, remind me to buy you a drink if their are any pubs down their. Logan, start a der scan on the planet and that energy field. Paul I want you to take us over all major continents, oceans and anything else of interest, you know the drill. Alexei, drop those satellites over those key areas. Keep me posted on the situation." Will said, pleased by the missions smoothness. " Sir yes sir!" The addressed marines responded. Will pressed a button on his captains chair and spoke into his mouth piece. "All hands this is captain Jones, we have successfully entered orbit over the planet," An uproar of applause came from the earpiece. "We will be making planet fall in 5 hours if all goes to plan, begin final landing preparations and secure all cargo. Engineering squads begin your final check of the ship and report anything out of the ordinary. I want the chief marines in the engineering,medical and physics department up on the bridge to study the energy field ASAP." He pushed the button again and cut off the inter-comm. He looked out at the large blue and green orb his ship was orbiting with a strange pink bubble around it and a moon that was in a close orbit, it too somehow had a breathable. The planet reminded him of Earth before the war, everything beautiful about his old home, his Birth place, humanities birth place. In fact, New Terra seemed to be more welcoming and habitable than Earth ever was. He similed gently. "Beautiful." Will turned to his sub-commander, Emilie Hudson. "What do you think Hudson?" "Beautiful, looks habitable and seems to have plenty of natural resources if scans are right." "Indeed." The commander responded. Jones thought back to when he had first met Emilie. "Do you understand commander?" General Mourge asked Jones. "Yes sir. I will do what is necessary for our goals." Jones responded. "Excellent, Commander this is Emilie Hudson, he is going to be your sub commander for this mission, I will fill in the details later however, I have a very important matter to attend to. I will see you tomorrow." Mourge said as he began to leave the room. "Very good sir." Jones replied. He turned to 'Emilie'. He was tall, but not nearly as tall as Jones was, he guessed around 6 foot compared to Jones' 6'4. His body was muscular and scars adorned his body like most marines. How ever his face was clear of all damage, that looked to be around the mid-twenties with a shaved face and black hair of an average length. "Hello, I'm commander Will Jones as you probably know, nice to meet you." Jones introduced himself. "Thank you sir," He spoke with light English accent. "I'm Emilie as you know, I'm your new sub-commander, 'pleasure to meet you." "Thank you," Jones responded tiring to think of a way to ask the question without sounding rude. "Uh, did you say your name was Emilie?" Hudson stood and looked at him for a few seconds. "My parents wanted a girl." They certainly did, Emilie was the only male child to a American mother who was a feminist and a emasculated British father. He spent his life as an emasculated, low testosterone man, that was until the war. He refused to join the war effort and was a Chineese sympathiser and so decided to hand himself over to the enemy. It was only then, when he was trained and abused with other POW's to be soldiers that he discovered his masculinity and love for his two parent countries. when he was sent to the front lines he was disgusted with the POW's for becoming supporters of his new enemy ,enraged by them firing on their own, Emilie killed his entire squad including the Chinese sergeant and for the next 3 days sabotaged the Chinese ammo supplies before escaping to W.D.F territory. Emilie's response to how he had changed his life long brainwashing was simply. "War changes people." The sound of the elevator door opening disrupted his train of thought and he swung the chai around to see 9 marines exiting the elevator. "Gentlemen, I think you already know why your here, but if you don't. We want you to study the planets energy, find out what t does, how it works, its effects on organic matter and our tech. Understood?" The marines looked at each other before turning back to the commander. "Sir yes sir." Alec 10 minutes until planet fall- Marines were running around the ship, grabbing gear and strapping themselves into their seats. However Alec had a different task than that. Alec was part of the Orbital Drop Reconnaissance Group, or the ODRG for short. The groups task was to drop into the landing zone, scan for harmful bacteria and secure the area for the landing. Alec sprinted to the twelve drop pods and quickly jumped into the one labelled STF SGT Davis. He strapped in his rifle and pushed a few buttons in the pods and the doors closed, a screen in the top right corner notified him of when the pods would depart and until the ship begins the landing procedures. 2 minutes and 32 seconds until the pods left. There was a crack from the speakers and the captains voice came over the comms. "All hands, this is Jones. We have scanned the planet and have found a suitable landing area, it's a large island in similar size to Sri Lanka on Earth. Its in the southern hemisphere. It's dry, covered in sand and seems to be the least likely place to be an alien presence. There is no detectable large flora masses and it has a similar climate to north south Africa We will be dropping in in nine minutes and the ODRG will be dropping in less than three." Adrenalin began to rush in Alecs system. "Once we get on the ground or objective is simple, secure a the landing zone and set up a fire base. Any sentient or sub sentient lifeforms are to be treated as hostile until proven otherwise. If anyone isn't strapped in I advise you do so now." The commanders voice boomed over the inter-comm. Alec grinned to himself. There was a crack from the radio in his helmet and Coles voice followed. "Davis? This is Markson, I'm just saying don't do anything stupid down there." "Alright, no promises. I'll see you on the ground." "See you on the ground." The radio cracked again and cut the connection. "This'll be fun." Davis said to himself. For the next few minutes Davis felt the adrenaline in his system build. He looked at the count down for the eightieth time that day. 20 seconds left. Alec felt another surge of adrenaline. 15 seconds. An air tight blast door folded over the pods to protect the crew from the depths of space. 10 seconds. The floor under the pods folded away to allow a clear path to the planet below. 5 seconds. A screen in the pods began to display a flight path. 1 second. Alec held his breath. There was a beeping from the monitors and the pods shook as they disconnected from the ship. The thrusters on the tops of the pods activated and fired the pods towards the planet. He stared through the glass part of the pod and watched as the pod became closer and closer to the pink energy field surrounding the planets atmosphere. The pink field of what could be death for all he knew, approached rapidly. "Hello, ODRG? This is Wilson speaking, you're about to hit that energy field. We don't know what's going to happen when you do, give us a report the moment you pass through, understood?" "Understood." The marines replied in unison. The pink energy field continued to approach at a brutally fast pace. Wilsons voice came over the radio again. "Breaching in 5..." Contrary to the last five seconds on the ship, these five seconds were the fastest of his life. The pods dived through the energy field into the planets atmosphere. "ODRG, This is command! What is your status?" Lieutenant Murphy, the leader of the drop troopers spoke first. "This is Murphy, situation normal, energy field had on effect on me or my pod, running diagnostic." The rest of the marines responded and reported themselves in an identical scenario to Murphy. "Commander, their fine, no apparent effect on them or the pods." Wilson said to Jones. "Team, initiate your micro-organism detectors." Wilson directed the men. Alec pushed a few buttons and flicked a switch, a screen came alive and displayed a buffering symbol with the words, Searching for micro-organisms. The pods continued to push through the atmosphere. Davis looked through the glass again and looked at the ground approaching rapidly. Soon enough the air brakes and the thrusters activated and slowed the pod down. The pods crashed onto the ground with a loud bang. "Command this is Murphy we have landed, all personnel have survived." "Excellent, stay n your pods until the scanners finish. Davis looked at the radar tracker built into the pod, nothing outside the pod. The looked through the pods porthole. There was a blue sky overhead with no clouds to be seen, the island was flat for as far as the eye could see save for a narrow steep gorge about 150 meters beside them that looked wide enough for the ship to rest on without falling in. The gorge seemed to go for a mile across and the team had seemed to land half way. At one end of the gorge there was a stream that went over the edge to form a water fall. The area was sandy with a light orange colour. It was beautiful, this type of view completely alien to him since the war ended. A sudden beeping from one of the monitors made him tear his gaze away, it was the micro-organism scanner, it had finished its scan. No detectable micro-organisms. 'that can't be right.' He thought. "Hey, I think I got a glitch here. My scanner isn't detecting any micro-organisms." He said. "Run a diagnostic, that's impossible." Wilson responded. "I'm getting the same result." Another marine said. "And the pod reads fine according to the diagnostic." "Same here." "Same result." The other marines reported in confusion. "That can't be right. Alright, just put on your air masks to be safe and secure the land site, we'll get a more precise result from the ships filters." Wilson ordered the marines. "Understood. You heard the man, masks on!" Murphy started. The marines complied to the order, applying the mask over their helmets. Alec heard the seals on the mask and helmet seal and cool air began to flow. "Marines clear the landing site!" Murphy's' pod door blasted off and he slammed his boots onto the hard ground. The rest of the marines followed the order, jumping out of their pods with their gauss rifles they scanned the wasteland. The area was completely baron of life and was completely flat as far as the eye could see, save for the gorge. The air was hot but not like in was back on Earth, it was a good hot that bared no threat of mutants or developing cancerous growths. Now that they were no longer on Earth the men no longer needed to take anti-radiation meds. "Um, guys?" A marine said, a tone of confusion was held in his voice "What's the problem?" Murphy asked. "Has anyone noticed that there is zero radiation showing up on the count meter?" Alec's eyes were once again torn away from the landscape to view the radiation counter in the top left corner of his HUD. Zero. "That's impossible." "That can't be right." "Command this is Murphy, we are detecting no radiation whatsoever." "No radiation? Not even background radiation? Are you sure?" "You have live data feedback from the pods, you tell me" "Well there was radiation when you were landing, but that must of been from the thruster fuel." "This just keeps getting better and better." Alec said with dry sarcasm. Murphy muttered something before giving out more orders. "You three," He said pointing at Alec and two others. "Check that gorge." The three jogged over to the cliff. On the way to the gorge Alec realized how light he felt, he had been so caught up with the landing that he had failed to notice that he felt considerably lighter. The marines peered over the edge of the steep cliff, it looked to be around 1000 meters deep. The waterfall went all the way to the bottom where the stream started again and continued to the other side where it vanished into a cave opening. Alec reached up to his helmet and pressed the record button. "Maybe we should record this." Alec said to the other three. "Nah, it's already being recorded by the ship, they've got live feed from the helmet cams." A marine said. "Still a great place for a postcard." The other marine said. The marines musing was interrupted by Wilson. "Hey you know that massive gorge down there that some of you are standing beside? Well command were thinking that since we have a elevator shaft in the hangar that can fit a tank we're going to land right on it for easy access. So for you guys standing right next to it I would advise moving away so you don't get crushed to death." "Understood." Murphy responded simply. "You heard the man, get your asses back over here." Murphy barked over the radio. The three marines quickly turned around and sprinted back to the pods. The three broke their sprint when they made it to the pods. Alec turned to focus his gaze at the sky, waiting for the imminent arrival of his fellow humans. Ryan Ryan was having an...interesting discussion with Cole about fascism when the commanders voice came over the inter-comm. "Attention all personnel, This is commander Jones speaking. We are about to begin our landing. If anyone is not strapped into their cryo-pods then get in now. In the next few minutes we will be on New Terra, treat any alien lifeform with extreme prejudice and treat as hostile until proven otherwise. We will be landing over a gorge for maximum use of the heavy duty elevator for maximum mobility between the ship and the gorge bottom. Remain strapped in until the light above your head goes green. Jones out." Ryan looked at Cole who had a look of concern and a small amount of, was that excitement on his face? "Here we go kid." He said as he stretched his right shoulder. "Any last words or statements before we do this?" Dereck asked jokingly but with a concealed hint of seriousness. Ryan looked to Cole and the back to Dereck. "Anyone else think it's weird how the nearest habitable planet is 4 million light years away? I mean, isn't that a bit much. We used to think there were lots of Earth like planets, but once we developed the tech we used to find New Terra, turns out their all dead planets but the moment we turn our gaze 4 million light years away, there are more habitable planets than there are fresh water sources on Earth. If we go 470 light years past New Terra there are hundreds of habitable ex-planets. Isn't that not a bit weird how we are so far away from any other habitable planet and the planets inside that range were like distractions, to slow us down and keep us away." The other two processed the information. "Maybe there's something here that we were supposed to leave alone, to protect us from it." Dereck suggested. "Or maybe it's the other way around." Cole added. "I think you may be right Cole, after everything humanities done then that may well be the case." Ryan said, this voice sounding deep in worried thought. He was about to say something more with one of the marines shouted. "Hey! We're moving!" Ryan and the rest of the team synced their HUD to the ships external cameras, a small window opened in the corner of his HUD, they were moving alright. The ship glided through the vacuum with ease and was rapidly accelerating and heading to the planets surface, suddenly the ship jerked and began to shudder as it hit the pink energy field and tore through the atmosphere. "Here we come Alec!" Cole shouted in excitement, showing that he was clearly having an adrenaline rush. Ryan noted that this was one of the rare times that Cole seemed to be excited about flying. The shaking got more and more intense, Ryan closed the camera window and gripped the rails on the side of his cryo-tube tightly. Ryan noticed that even the vehicles were attempting to free themselves from their constraints. Jones was clenching tightly onto the command chair as the ship shook furiously as it ripped through the atmosphere. The landing control room was on the underside of the ship and was a large room mainly composed of reinforced glass. Different crew members sat at different areas, the most prominent being the pilots seat, which was a chair with multiple screens attached and two long metallic arms reaching down from the roof so the user could control the ships descent. The ship suddenly shook more violently than normal, Jones, sensing the anomaly quickly raised the com-link to the engine room. "Hey Jameson, is everything alright down there?" Jones shouted over the roar of the ships engines and the shaking of the ship. "No! Of course everything's not fine, we ran out of fuel a year and a half ago! The only thing keeping us going is our power cores!" A mans voice yelled back. "But will we make it to the surface?" Jones shouted back in response. "Yes, we're fine but th-Just what wanted to hear" Jones interrupted. He quickly turned of the com-link and narrowly avoided a barrage of insults and vile obscenities. Jones looked back over to his crew to see the Helmsman, Paul seemed to be struggling with the controls. "Paul, can you land this thing?" "I'll just say flying this thing is harder than flying an A-42 Clansman VTOL with a thruster severed in a hot zone, drunk and high on Class A drugs." The pilot responded. "And have you done that before?" Jones replied almost shocked. "It didn't end well, that's all I'll say." The man responded, somewhat distracted. The ship continued its course towards the surface and began to slow as the thrusters were engaged. The ship continued to approach the planet until it was only 100 metres above it. The hulk of metal slowed above the ground and came to a vertical stop "Activating landing gear." One of the marines shouted. The ship now floated down to the ground and the landing gears adjusted itself for the landing into the gorge. Suddenly the ships thrusters stopped when it was a mere 7 foot of the ground and it fell into place the landing gear quickly adjusting to the terrain and lowering the ship to the ground around the cliff. The bridge crew looked at each other for reassurance. "Did you do it? Are we good?" Jones asked Paul cautiously. "Um I think so." He responded, keeping his hands away from the controls as to not cause any unwanted complications. The bridge crew began clapping at the successful landing meanwhile in the hangar the rest of the marines were doing the same. "Good work Paul, if there are bars down there remind me to buy you a drink. Anyway what's the situation outside?" Jones said pleased at the huge feat. "Well, the island seems uninhabited as the ODRG's said," A marine said as a monitor descended from the celling. Feed from external cameras lit up the monitor. "The site looks clear, I'm initiating scans now." The marine continued. A black window with the ship in the middle opened in the corner of the monitor and the marines terminal, there was a pulse from the ship and as it spread out from the ship a map of the terrain was generated. The land was flat, dry and sandy with no plants or animals present. "Looks clear, I'd say it's a good place for a forward operating base. No animals or aliens present to interfere with any operations and according to the scans there seems to be huge amounts or raw materials and rare substances." The marine finished. "Terrific, give the men down in the hangar the call. Ryan The men in the hangar were clapping at the landing, Ryan body was rushing with adrenaline and other hormones. The light at the top of the men's pods suddenly flashed red before turning green. The marines quickly lifted up their harnesses and unstrapped themselves from their seats. Ryan and the rest of the expedition force hastily fast jogged over to the crates for their weapons and combat gear. Ryan took the lid off his squads shared weapons and gear crate which was strapped in before the landing as others were doing the same. He lifted out Coles massive weapon and tossed it to him. 'Surprisingly light,' He thought erratically. 'Must be the low gravity.' He fished out Dereck's assault rifle and handed to him with a nervous grin which was returned giving a feeling of mutual anxiety. The squad then headed over to the shared military resources. The men grabbed a few magazines from an open crate while Cole grabbed a chain of ammunition from another net next to the mechanized infantry marines who were loading there exo-skeletons with ammunition. Ryan had always admired the mechanised infantry, they combined human mobility and dexterity with the heavy armour and weapons of vehicles. the exo-suit drivers had to under go weeks of intensive training just to be ready for the transition between man and exoskeleton. However he hadn't time to stop and gawk, he needed to worry about himself before anything else. he loaded his rifle and out of the corner of his eye, Ryan saw the commander and a few other men from the bridge crew exit the elevator shaft to prepare themselves for the exfiltration. Ryan grabbed a few frag grenades before standing aside so that the massive tanks and other vehicles could move through the various lanes to the side doors for exfiltration. The tanks moved effortlessly to the door despite the fact that some of them were massive forty tonne beasts made of metal with cannons and various other weapons designed to cause suffering on their tops. The vehicles took their place at the front lines and were flanked by the mechanized infantry. The rest of the marines then moved into the spaces in-between the vehicles pointing their weapons at the massive door. Ryan was situated between two tanks with Cole at the front of him and Dereck behind him. Next to them on their left was a squad of flamethrower marines. Ryan eyed the two vertically placed massive tanks on their back with another smaller tank beneath them placed horizontally. These tanks had tubes connected to them which connected to lead into a flamethrower. There were also canisters strapped to their bodies and belts. The fluid in the canisters was hydro ozone urdite hexa-thermite, the stuff was a lethal acid that could melt through flesh in seconds and when it was ignited it became a bright, sticky acidic fire that could melt through concrete that burned at over 970 degrees Kelvin. In fact the only reason that it wasn't universally deployed was that it was incredibly underpowered against armour The fact that the stuff could kill him in seconds and that the flamethrowers tended to be psychopathic and ruthless killers on the battlefield didn't exactly made Ryan feel comfortable despite knowing all the marines quite well. Not to mention the mark II decimator anti infantry tank to his left. The decimator tanks were developed in secret by the British and looked remarkably like the first tanks ever made, however they were banned due to the tanks in-humane ways of disposing with infantry. Such as a massive shrapnel cannon on the top that spat hot razor sharp shrapnel shards at the enemy, or how it would spray the enemy with hydro ozone urdite hexa-thermite and then activating its three frontal flamethrowers to burn the enemy to a cinder. But the reason that the decimator tanks were named Crushers, were because of how brutally they drove over infantry who were either crushed or impaled on the spikes on the under side of the tanks. That was when Ryan took notice to his own gear, the assault rifle he was holding could travel for thousands of miles if fired into space and fired whole bullets meaning their was no need for a hole for empty cases to escape. The their was his body armour, it was made mainly out of Physicorum, literally translating to indestructible in latin. the material was an artificial metal element that was incredibly light and was 60 times tougher than titanium, combined with the fact that it was super dense it could actually stand around six or seven shots from a gauss rifle. And not only was it strong, it was also unbelievably easy to produce, thus it was put in everything. Ryan's train of thought was interrupted by the commanders voice. "Gentlemen! May I have your attention please!" It sounded more of an order that a question. The commander stood on top of one of the tanks, clothed in the standard marine body armour with his rifle in one hand. "So, as you know we are here, on this planet with the primary task of securing a beachhead for a battle fleet that will be here in around 60 years. All we know about the planet is that it is very capable of sustaining any kind of life, it has huge amounts of natural resources. The most recent things we have learned may seem nothing short of impossible. When our drop team first arrived, they detected absolutely no micro-organisms, at all." The men whispered to each other when hearing this before falling back into silence. "After we tested the atmosphere with the ships filters we concluded that this was, in fact the case. The team also detected no radiation in any amount, not even from the sun." The whispering started again before the hangar once more fell silent other that the hums of engines. "Again, we tested this with the ships equipment, this was also the case. We concluded that radiation from the sun was blocked by chemicals in the upper atmosphere. However we are completely clueless why there is now radiation on the planet. And as you already know, there is an energy field that surrounds the planet, it appears to be supplying it with a strange energy, but it doesn't seem to effect us or our tech. The planets moon is also very close to the planet, it appears like our own but for reasons unknown, has a breathable atmosphere." The whispering started but died faster than it did before. 'Energy field and now this. What's up with this place?' Ryan thought confused. "But that's beside the point, in thirty seconds that door is opening and we will have the job of establishing a base." The commander suddenly shouted. "So let's get this done and make everybody back home proud!" The marines shouted in approval. "OORAH!" The men, now rallied by their commander pointed their weapons back at the door with new born enthusiasm. The seconds crept in slowly. There was the sound of metallic clamps loosening and seals breaking. The massive door which stretched the length of the hangar bay opened slightly to reveal a blue sky. The marines looked at the opening and stood in awe as the light flooded in. The marines again began to talk again, dumbstruck by the beauty of the natural sky. "I haven't seen a sky like that in a while." Dereck said, not taking his eyes off the spectacle. Ryan took in the beautiful view and took a refreshing breath of the fresh air. "Now that's something I could get used to." He said indirectly to his squad. The door jerked again without warning, snapping the men out of their gaze and back to reality. The door continued to open all the way down to the ground. Revealing 8 marines standing idly in outside of the hangar bay. There was silence for a few seconds before a voice, unmistakably Alecs' spoke up. "Took ya long enough." Scootaloo Scootaloo awoke with a jolt, almost screaming. She was panting and covered in sweat. She had the nightmare again, only this time worse, considerably worse. It had started like it normally did. Her house, at night, there was a hill with an old, destroyed house on the top. And like always, there were creatures walking from the abandoned house to her own. As they eerily limped towards her house they disappeared into a thick forest. That was how all the dreams before ended, but this time was different. Six of the creatures emerged from the forest, she couldn't picture them but see knew there was just something wrong with them. But the worse was yet to come, the six creatures reached her house, and immediately began to bash the door with brutal force. Then, an army of the creatures came out of the forest, they ripped the door off its hinges. They burst into the house and began tearing things apart. The army of beasts stumbled up the stairs The mass of living destruction menacingly fumbled down the hallway, down to her room. The thing, Scootaloo didn't feel as if they were individual abominations, but a single abomination. They broke down the door to reveal her. Sitting on her bed writing her diary only to look up in horror at It. The mass moved towards her, arms stretched out for her. She screamed as the mass came closer to her. But one thing stuck out in her memory. One of the Things, though she couldn't tell, this one seemed like the youngest and the lowest ranking one of the monsters. It stared at her, only a few feet away as the mass reached for her. The thing uttered one word that she heard over the terrifying mass. "Help." Scootaloo had to cover her mouth to stop herself from screaming at the thought of the nightmare. The scary thing about it was that the dreams started after Twilight cast a future vision spell on her a gfew weeks ago to see if there would be a test in school the next day, but the side effects were visions or dreams of the future for a few weeks. And what scared her even more was that her house and the house on the hill felt like a metaphor for something even bigger, like equestrian. Or even. Equis. It had been seven hours since the landing and Ryan was panting from the work and intense heat. After the landing the commander had ordered the vehicles to set up a perimeter while the men began to build. The job was simple, the base needed buildings for things, so the men had to build them. The thing was, the building materials were thick, heavy, dense blocks that looked like white concrete. The blocks were damage resistant, anti gauss weapon and were incredible insulated. The problem was that they were very heavy, even in New Terra's gravity and there was no room on The Pale Blue Pot for construction vehicles Ryan panted and spat on the ground as Cole lifted another block. Dereck strolled out casually to the men. "Wow, five buildings in seven hours, I thought you'd only be starting your third." Dereck said impressed. "Yeah well we need somewhere to sleep tonight." Alec said as he lifted another block and grunted. "So, what are the medical tests showing on us after the landing?" Cole asked Dereck. "We all have six moths to live." Ryan and every other marine in the area stopped and looked at him in shock. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding! In fact your vitals improved after we landed." The marines groaned and sighed. "You have a nasty sense of humour." Ryan said in-between breaths. "Are you at least going to help now?" Alec asked after taking a drink from his canteen. "Not yet." "What? Why not?" Dereck took something out of his pocked and threw it to Alec. Alec looked at the packet and realized what it was. "Lunch." Ryan set the massive brick down. "About time." Dereck handed him his MRE and gave a thanked him. He sat down on a stack of the bricks. He coughed and looked at flag in the middle of the camp. It was black with a picture of a human skull in the middle. The flag of humanity. Author's Note Sorry for how late this was.
Visions [Pony]"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." Scootaloo glided over Ponyville, her wings were outstretched as she took in the marvellous view she had gotten so used to. Life was good, Equestria was living in a time of peace, school was going well and she had even been accepted to join the wonderbolts. Then she remembered the dreams, more specifically, last nights dream. The sky seemed to darken a little. To say the dream had scared her was an understatement. She could barely get back to sleep afterwards and only did because she felt as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. The creatures in the dreams were so vivid, but they were covered in a shroud that she couldn’t understand or describe. She couldn’t make out their forms other than they stood on two legs and looked like ponies. And the thing that kept her quite literally up a night was that twilight had cast a future telling spell on her only a few days before the nightmares started, Twilight took no joy in telling Scootaloo about the disturbing nightmares that occurred as side effects that depicting the negative events of the future. She felt a shudder travel up her spine. ‘I should really tell Twilight about that.’ Scootaloo thought to herself. ‘But at least I've been accepted to the Wonderbolts.’ She thought gleefully to herself. The world brightened up again and the view caught her attention again. Earth three years prior inside infected zone "This is bravo 15 to command we're getting swamped we need additional bio hazard teams!" "Alpha 7 to command we're being over-run by mutants we need back up!" "Uh, this is superintendent Collins something's trying to get in here, I can hear it outside." "This is bio-hazard mechanized infantry flamer team Bravo 22 mutants have breached the fuel storage facility and are trying to get into the main facility seal off the bulkhead or their gonna get in!" "This is Bravo 2, infected squads are being over-run, are there any available units in the area? "This is bravo 15 we need back up! Repeat need back up!" "Uh, this is superintendent Collins, the noises have stopped." "Bravo 22 to command, our sergeant's dead we need reinforcements!" "Bravo 2 to command the infected teams are dead the mutants are trying to get through the air lock." "This is Bravo 15 we need bac-argh! *Static*" "Bravo 22 to command, I'm the only one left. I sealed myself in the air lock, there's an Alpha outside." "This is Bravo 2 they've got through the air lock-OW GET OFF!" "This is superintendent Collins, there's an alpha in here, I'm hiding under a...I think it's saw me." "This is bravo 22, it's trying to get through the door." "This is Alpha 7 their inside the complex!" Cole listened to the distress calls and shouts of pain. The platoon captain frantically pushed buttons and redirected troops. Meanwhile he was siting naked on a operating table with scientists buzzing round and technicians prepping the suit. "Alright," The captain started. "We are being swamped, there are about eleven thousand of those things coming for us and their are only about four hundred of us here." Cole remained silent. "So you are going to get in that and go and hold them off until back up arrives in around 20 minutes." He said pointing the mech behind him. It was a next gen, prototype, heavy mech suit. The suit was a new design that was planned to be implemented in the next ten years. As next generation of human warfare tech was developed virtually all designs were either replaced with improved model or upgraded in some fashion. Mechs were no exception. He looked up at the machine in front of him and brushed his hand over the metal implant at the back of his head to connect with Exo-suits and the like. 'How did it end up like this?' Scootaloo stared up at the creature in front of her, It was tall, that was all she could discern, and it brought something terrible with it. there was an aura of immediate danger around it. The area surrounding them was ponyville, was ponyville. It had been completely destroyed, houses had collapsed and were burning, some were turning into ashes as soon as they caught fire. There were huge craters and a thick grey mist lay close to the ground. The thing in front of her looked like the same one from her previous nightmare, a lower rank but still deadly. This had gone too far for her. 'I need to tell Twilight about this.' Then it spoke. "It doesn't matter," It said. "We're already here." Scootaloo shot up panting. She looked around in shock. She was in the park on one of the many benches that dotted ponyville. She must have fallen asleep again. "Why does this keep happening?" She said out loud, her voice sounding almost desperate. The things in the visions seemed so alien, they looked like ponies in their build but they were taller and somehow she knew that they were much stronger. But there was something so wrong about them So unnatural and disgusting. Something that would stop at nothing to assure its survival. 'Survival.' A shiver went down her spine, she didn't know how she came to that conclusion but something told her that she was right. She stood up and headed towards The Castle Of Friendship. Ryan stared off at the VTOLs' in the distance, a mlag or a multi purpose linier assault gunship or MLAG for short. It looked like the average military helicopter only instead of a propeller it had two circular VTOL engines on either side and a plasma minigun at the door of each troop bay as well as two heavy plasma cannons and two plasma miniguns and the front. Of course only the best would be used for the first ever extra solar expedition to an alien planet, therefore a special forces version of the MLAG was used. It was equipped with two missile launchers with tracking capabilities, thicker armour and enhanced radar and navigation systems. They buzzed around looking for anything unusual. Unusual to a human. Speaking of humans, Ryan wondered what an alien wold think when they saw a human for the first time. 'Fear' A voice in his head spoke. Ryan sighed, the voice was right of course. If he saw a massive ship land in his back garden with hundreds of soldiers with gauss rifles and Plasma cannons, 9 foot tall mechanized infantry exo-suits, tanks and a whole host of other things to cause pain and suffering he would be pretty scared. "Hey Stephson you alright?" He looked up at the man in the rig. "Oh, yeah sorry." The man, Corporal Jeffery O'Brien an mechanized infantryman was in the armour rig, a built in set of scaffolding built to help apply the armour onto the user, however there was a problem. While the power armour would seal itself over the user piece by piece, The armour also needed to be bolted together at some points in the chassis, then to keep the joints protected they were covered in armour plates that fit exactly in place and make it look like there were no bolted points at all. Fusion gel would cause the two parts to fuse into virtually one and would result in the armour looking like a single set rather than a collection of metal parts. He screwed in the bolts with the drill and sprayed the armour plate with the fusion gel and welded it in place. The problem with having to put on each part on separately and drilling it together then running diagnostics on it after each piece was that it took around three hours to complete the task. Not only that but the ship only had four rigs. They were only one hour in. 'Only two left' He thought. 'Great.' Scootaloo walked briskly through the streets, occasionally she preferred to walk rather than fly. Unlike most other pegasi she could appreciate the view from the ground. She needed to get to Twilight and flying may attract attention from rainbow dash, and while she enjoyed and admired her she needed to speak with Twilight immediately. She had just about had enough of these nightmares. That was when something new happened. She had just made it into the middle of ponyville when she glanced over to her left. Lyra heartstrings, just sitting there on a bench minding her own business. 'Didn't she have a mental breakdown a few years ago?' That was when it started Images that flashed in front of her The ground went red as a crimson fluid formed a river in the gravel. All she could hear deafening cracks. A strange limb landed on the scorched gravel and the strange red fluid seeped out of it. There was the sound of machines and movement, metal grinding and suddenly a strange helmet landed on its side on the gravel. It was green and an odd shape, it looked like it had been designed to encompass the users entire head, it seemed damaged with a massive dent in it and what looked like lightning flaring out of it. The crimson fluid flowed from the helmet. That was all she saw before she collapsed in the middle of the town square unconscious. "Alright I'm booting up your helmet now." Sergeant Miller said to O'Brien as he tapped a few buttons on the tablet. "Uh, I can't see anything." "Yeah I'll power up your visual and HUD systems in a second." He tapped another button. "There you go." "Um, I think my eyes aren't working." "Have you tried opening them?" "Yes I've tried opening them ya yank scumbag!" "Cool it, keep yer ginger head on." "Maybe if I could actually move it would be easier." "That's a safety precaution ya guinness drinking physcopath." "Aye right it's a safety precaution! I'll rip your wee Texan arms off!" "There's the problem, there was a calibration error between the suit and your optic nerve." "Well then fix it ya eejit!" "Keep yer shirt on ya leprechaun." Ryan looked on worried at the two marines shouting at each other over something so petty. 'Short temper.' Alec would probably find something like this incredibly amusing. "What's the matter with them?" a marine carrying a crate asked. "Optic nerve calibration error."
Day One [Human]"Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions. -Robert Ardrey Scootaloo slowly woke up from her unconscious state. She opened her eyes slowly, expecting to wake up in her bed. But to her surprise she was in a hospital bed. "uh, what?" She said as she rubbed her eyes and looked around. A stallion walked in wearing a" doctors uniform with a clipboard. "Oh good your awake." "Um yeah. what happened?" The stallion looked puzzled. "You really don't remember?" "not that much." "You were walking through the town square and you collapsed." "Really?" "Really." "What do you think it was." "Well there's only one disease known to pony kind that causes the victim to just pass out like that." "Homins disease." "Homins disease? What does it do?" "Causes head aches, fever, fainting and can sometimes cause death." She flinched at this, very few diseases ever caused something as severe as death. "But we were informed that it may be a side effect of a future sight spell." Scootaloo sighed a breath of relief. "There are ponies waiting to see you when you woke up. I'll send them in." "Uh, sure." Commander Jones looked over the map projected on the ships control room table. The island was baron, no life had been found anywhere. No plants, no animals, no insects. Just humans...and a lot of firepower. Not to mention the fact that the island was a goldmine of resources. The cave at the bottom of the crevice was a maze of tunnels that stretched out for miles that was lined with metals and other important resources and led to a cavity that was full of precious metals and other important materials. The table was surrounded with marines of a high ranking. Hudson was staring at the map, probably thinking about defensive troop placement. "Alright," Jones started. "What do we think. Hudson?" "Need to get a wall up as soon as possible and get our defences up. Send some tanks out to patrol the area until night. Marines and the rest of our tanks can guard the base and VTOLs can stay in the air. Get our armoured vehicles to form a perimeter around the base at night, can't rule nocturnal predators out." Jones turned to one of the marines. "Get on that." "Sir yes sir." "What about our fabricator and resource processer?" "Their being set up now sir." "And have we detected any alien lifeforms yet?" "No sir. Not even microscopic." This didn't make any sense, what happened here the caused all life in the area to disappear, even microbes weren't present. 'Everywhere else on this planet has life, except here." He scratched the back of his head. 'At least that means no interference.' Ryan checked the safety on his assault rife for the seventh time that day. "Man, guard duty is the worst." Alec said before kicking a rock. "Better than heavy lifting." Dereck replied. "Yeah well, I can just think of better things to do." "Like what?" "Shooting at aliens." "We haven't been here for twenty four hours and you already want to kill things." "It's better than this, and shouldn't you be doing medical things instead of standing around out here." "We have a medical facility set up yet, I've done all I can for now." "So we just get to stand around here?" "Yes." Cole answered him. "Yeah but, Oh come on!" The small group of marines approached the sandy beach. The four marines and four mechanized infantrymen walked cautiously towards the water. They stopped at the waters edge. "Well, we're here, lets do what we came to do." One of the mechanized infantrymen with a Russian accent said. One of the marines stuck a cylinder shaped device into the water. One of the marines bent over and looked into the water. "Looks like seawater, and smells like it." The other marine took the device out of the water. "No bacteria and a high level of that strange energy, but other than that it's normal seawater." The marine by the water stuck his finger in the water and tasted it. "Tastes like seawater." "Command this is Blok, mission accomplished. We're uploading the data now." The man in the exo-suit said "Receiving your data now, return to base for debriefing," "Copy that command," He said gesturing for the marines to start moving. "We're Oscar Mike." The marine kicked the rock into the pile. The cave tunnel had lead into a massive cavern that was lined with resources. Now it was his job, along with a few other marine squads, to mine the materials and transport them back to base with the limited amount of mining equipment. Back to base to be fed into a processer and a fabricator. Two building sized machines, the first breaking material down into its components and the other fabricating machinery, building materials and the like. "Hey are you actually gonna get back to work or are you just gonna stand around there?" "I'm going now sarge." Ryan looked at the massive tanks rolling out of the ship, the hulks drove straight out of the base and started to divide into groups of three. "Hey Liamson what's going on here?" Ryan turned his head to see Davis talking to a tank commander in one of the massive hunks of armour. "Command wants us to patrol, or something." "Patrol for what, what do you need all these tanks for?" The tank commander shrugged. "This is our island now, guess we better make sure it stays that way." He finished. "Do we have enough spare power cells to keep all these tanks moving?" Ryan asked. "These power cells last three weeks, each." The tank commander replied. "What so that's like nine weeks?" Dereck asked. "At least." "So now we can all be bored together." Alec finished. Scootaloo watched as her friends entered the hospital room. There was Applebloom and Sweetie Bell, obviously. Rainbowdash, her honorary sister. Fluttershy and Twilight as well as her parents. Rainbowdash had practically tackled her as soon as she got in only to be stopped by Twilights magic. "Scootaloo!" "Hey rainbowdash." "Scoots what happened, we were so worried." "Don't worry I'm fine, it's a long story." It was at that moment that Twilight dropped Rainbow Dash. "What do you mean?" She asked. Ryan watched the sun as it neared the end of it's journey. The humans first day on New Terra had been peaceful, to put it lightly. The day had gone in with incident. He briskly walked with his squad to one of the barracks that had been set up as tanks formed a tight perimeter around the base. The quickly approached the three buildings near a courtyard. The four stopped in front of the smallest of the four buildings. "So this is where we'll be sleeping for the next 60 years." Alec started. "I'll be honest I thought it would be more than one floor." Dereck said. "Least' its sturdy." Ryan said. The four continued to look up at the building for a few minutes. After they had stood and looked up at the building for more than an uncomfortable amount of time, Dereck looked to his team mates who were still staring up at it. "Are we gonna go in?" There was silence for a few seconds. "Yeah." Cole answered. The four then entered the barracks. "Wow," Alec started. "I was not expecting that." "That's one way to save space." Ryan said. The room was filled with metal poles going from the floor to the ceiling with two sheets of fabric one above each other, in other words, hammocks. Two per set of poles. "Did we miss the meeting about sleeping arrangements?" Alec asked. "I don't think so." Ryan answered "Far from the worst thing I've slept in." Cole said grinning. "Hey," The team heard someone shout to them. They turned to the source of the calling. There were two marines standing by the door, one with blankets and another with pillows." "You want one of these or not?" "Uh, yeah." Alec said. His team nodded. The men took the sleeping gear quickly and searched for the poles with their names on them. Instead of military paint, or a plaque with names on it, the names on the rectangular poles with marker. Two of the sets on the right, close to the centre was marked with their names. The team looked at the names on the poles. The set on the right from the door was marked with Dereck on top and Ryan bellow him. The other set had Alec on top and Cole on the bottom. Ryan threw the blanket and pillow on the hammock. There was 2 metal boxes under the hammocks, The boxes were also marked with his and Dereck's name on them. He opened the box with his name on it and confirmed that it was in fact his personal storage crate from the ship, and judging from the state of the contents they had actually handled the crates quite well. He closed the crate. "Well this is nice." Dereck said "Don't know if you'll think that after sleeping like this for a year." Alec responded. Jones pushed one of the buttons on the elevator and tightened the straps on his armour. As the doors began to close Hudson put his hand in the way and forced the doors opened and walked in. "What's the plan commander?" "We get out there, give a report, get a reactor set up, build a wall around the firebase and sit tight for a few weeks and then send out recon." "I meant about Jameson." "I guess we'll see." The doors of the elevator opened to reveal a very angry looking Irish man. "Alright Jameson, what's the damage?" Jones asked. "Oh nothing," The engineer said in a obvious sarcastic tone that only Jones caught on too. "Really?" Hudson asked in a dry tone. "Oh well other than the reactor being out of fuel and the emergency power cells being nearly out we're fine!" "Is that all?" Hudson asked. "Look, how long can we go on the solar panels and remaining energy on the reactor power cells." "Um," He looked at the data pad in his hand. "About 2 days." "We'll get you fuel for the reactor before then, just keep it together down here. Understood?" "Understood. Sir." The two turned around and got back into the elevator. "So I assume the plan is the same?" Hudson asked. "You assume correct." The squad made their way out of the barracks and into the centre of the base. The area was a large open space, with the ships hangar bay at one side and buildings around it. A courtyard of sorts that was filled with marines The squad filed in at the back and waited for one of their commanding officers to come out of the ship and give them a briefing. Something that would become a daily occurrence from there on out. Basically a briefing of what was going on that day in the morning and a report on any relevant information at night. Luckily for them the commander came out almost immediately after the team exited the barracks unlike the marines who had been waiting for almost fifteen minutes. The crowd slowly fell silent as their leader approached them with a data pad in his hand. "Okay I'll have to keep this short." He started as the marines waited to be called to attention, a call that wouldn't come. "Okay, day one there has been zero alien contact, not even microscopic life except for what we brought with us. FOB is under construction and ahead of schedule. A cave has been discovered and being mined for resources.-" Ryan listened intently as the commander went over a basic rundown of the day and other important day to day information when on base. "And one last thing, this planets orbit is irregular, the sun moves much faster when it's closer to the horizon." The commander finished with that and simply turned and walked off. The marines broke of as well and began to talk amongst themselves. "What was that last part?" Davis asked looking at his team. "This planet is all types of weird." Ryan said staring off at the sun as neared the end of its journey, its brightness dimmed by his visor. Then, as if by some magical force ~~Such as gravity~~, the sun was ripped from its place in the sky and disappear beneath the horizon. This unsurprisingly caught the marines attention and caused them to respond with how they were trained to, by pointing their guns where the sun had disappeared. After a few seconds the marines realised what had happened and slowly lowered their guns. "Agreed." Cole said. It was almost dark by the time Scootaloo had explained everything to them, and by the looks on their faces they were about as confused as she was... except Twilight. She looked more scared than Scootaloo was. "I think I needed a minute." She said, before falling flat on her face unconscious. Ryan lay awake trying to fall asleep, trying and failing. Needless to say his first day on a planet that had never seen the likes of his kind had been in some ways exciting but overall overwhelming underwhelming. This combined with the fact that the he couldn't sleep was somewhat agitating, and he would need sleep. 'Who knows what's out there." He thought. He sighed. Whatever was out there, he knew deep down, somehow that it would be nothing like the mutants back on Earth. Probably people like those back before the war. Only more primitive, and completely unaware of the war machine that had claimed their homes. Or what would come. Author's Note Important things coming in the next chapter.
Maybe Icarus was a Bad Idea [Human]"So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force" -Daisaku Ikeda Ryan lay on his dirty rucksack in the sorry excuse for a firebase, which in reality was just a sturdy apartment block. For a war that was going so well things had taken a temporary turn for the worse as the Chinese had sent almost their military to push back the WDF invasion from the north, pushing their forces back but allowing a large assault on the Chinese eastern coast. As a result he was relocated to the far north. Ryan shifted around on the rucksack, it was the closest think to a bed he had, the closest thing to home he had. The first thing he had done when he had gotten to the firebase was find an empty room to rest in. Now the only thing he wanted to do was just get away from it all, the war, the noise, the shouting, the fire, everything. His team was dead, his battalion was gone and if the war went on any longer he would be joining them. He sighed. Most of the conscripts he went to boot camp with were his age, many he had went to school with, a few of them were good friends of his. However he had only been assigned to a team with only one person he actually knew, fortunately for him, that person was his closest friend, but that didn't matter much now. His old friend, his new friends, they were all dead. He rolled over on his makeshift bed to face away from the wall. The room he was in was devoid of people and filled with crates of ammunition, explosives and other ordinance. He adjusted himself on the rucksack, closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It took some time but he finally managed to drift off into a restless sleep. However he was soon roused from his nightmare filled slumber. It was a noise that had woken him. A sound, like someone weakly scratching a piece of sharp metal along rough stone. It alone wouldn't have been enough to scare him, or even wake him. But the noise felt...unnatural He didn't have a way to describe it, the noise didn't scare him. But something deep down in his core or in an ancient molecule of his DNA told him that he should be scared, he should be very scared. The scrapping noise grew louder, and louder. In a few seconds it had grown to the point where it was impossible for him to assert that it was his imagination, he was about to look out of the window, but suddenly it stopped...and it was replaced with a far more sinister sound. Ryan didn't hear anything for a few seconds, but then he heard it. An explosion, it was definitely an explosion. But it was an explosion like he had never heard before. It was screaming, lots of screaming. From lots of screaming 'people'. But it wasn't human screaming. It was something so otherworldly, so surreal. It was a noise that no human mind could conceive. It was beyond description how terrifying and unnatural it sounded. It was like a portal to another dimension had been opened, something that no man had never seen...things that no man should ever have seen. The noise continued for a few long, drawn out seconds until it suddenly faded into non existence. Then Ryan's terror vanished with it, as if both had never truly existed. Before he had a chance to react, a shock wave hit into the side of the building. It shattered the window's 'safety glass' and knocked Ryan off his feet. He fell onto the floor and his helmet rolled to his side. As it happened a spare assault rifle was shook from it's place on top of a crate above Ryan. The Rifle hung over the edge for a few seconds as it slowly began it's fall. The butt of the assault rifle hit him on the head and he was knocked unconscious instantly. Author's Note Just a bit of exposition about Icarus before the next chapter which is going to take a while to come out.
Screams from the depths [Human]The weak will die out and the strong will survive, and will live on forever Ryan watched from the icy hill as the elephant sized mutant dug around in the irradiated, dirty, off-white ice from what used to be the Atlantic ocean as a blizzard raged on around them. With every unnatural movement of the creatures body Ryan pressed his chest deeper into the frozen Earth of the freeze zone as the blizzard roared on around them. Despite its alleged heightened senses the monstrosity hadn’t noticed him or the marine sergeant next to him. The sergeant was a fit middle aged man with graying brown hair, green eyes and pale white skin. His Armour was white, a fitting color for where his division was located, the freeze zone. The mutant thrashed around as it dried to claw at something in the frozen dirt. “Alright,” The sergeant started as he put away the binoculars he was observing the beast with. “That mutant has captured a military asset that we want back.” He continued. The mutant in question was an oculus , an abomination that telepathically restrained its prey with its large eye, a strange type of suggestive hypnosis that had never been observed before, then it devoured the victim while it was in this state. “You distract it while I take it out from behind. I’ll give you the go ahead when I’m in position." He said before leaning in closer, trying his best to express the urgency of what he was about to say. "Whatever you do, don't walk towards it when it tries to hypnotize you and don't get any of its blood on exposed skin." Ryan nodded instead of verbally responding knowing that the sergeant couldn't care less how he chose to reply. The sergeant began crawling around the left side of the hill and then disappeared out of view. Ryan looked at the beast one more time before checking that his assault rifle was ready for a fight. Then the pistol, the pistols used by the HDF, or any pre-war military at all weren't actually very useful since the gun wasn't big enough to hold a functional magnetic accelerator to make it effective against any form of armor or most mutant carapaces. However it was relatively effective against unarmored tissue. He checked the chamber of the pistol and the safety before placing it back in its holster and readying his rifle before attaching his rebreather. It was almost another 3 minutes before the sergeant's voice crackled over the radio system. "I'm in position, move in. Remember not to get blood on you or walk towards it." "Solid copy." He responded simply, grunting a little as he got up. He raised to a crouching stance and began to move down the hill towards the mutant which was still thrashing at something in the ice. He silently slid down the mountain and did a quick roll when his boots hit the ground, raising the rifle to point at the beast. Still, it remained unaware of him. ‘What’s so interesting to this thing.’ Ryan asked himself, looking at the ice the mutant was thrashing at. He continued to approach it, his rifle sights aimed at it at all times. He stopped when he was around 30 meters from the beast, which to his surprise, still hadn’t noticed him. The blizzard would have shrouded his movements somewhat but with its senses it should have noticed him. Ryan observed the creature in all its hideousness, it was about the size of an elephant, but much longer. It’s body was long and tube like, with skin that looked like a grey, slightly wet, rubbery leather that bore no fur. The body ended with a flat surface like the end of a cylinder. Its front was a massive closed eyelid and at the top 2 stems an over sized eye could be seem on each. It had 6 legs that were narrow and looked as if they were made out of chitin that sported 2 joints on each leg that ended in stumps. Ryan looked around, not phased by the disgusting freak and noticed a small chunk of ice the was lying on the ground next to him. He picked it up, careful to keep his eye on the mutant, the chunk of ice was heavy for its size mostly likely caused by the chunks of rock could see embedded in it. He looked at the mutant and back to the chunk then back to the mutant again. With a small amount of hesitation he hurled the chunk at the mutant. He watched it sail through the air before begin smashed on the mutants thick hide. The mutant turned instantly to look at Ryan. It’s eyes fixed upon him for a few seconds, absorbing his features, time stood still for a brief moment. The eyes retreated back into the stems and the massive eyelid opened. The eye behind it was gargantuan. It took up the entire front of the beast and began to bulge out wards. It’s sclera was white like the surrounding environment but it’s Iris was blue and looked as if it was made of thousands of thick fibers that were all...moving. There were also red fibers that seemed to pulse and flash with bio luminescence as well as move. The disproportionately large pupil was black, in fact it seemed blacker than what was actually possible for human eyes to see, almost as if it was a gate way into some intangible place of emptiness. 'Eyes are the gateway to the Soul.' Ryan though, sending a small shiver down his spine. He was about to fall back and wait for the sergeant to open fire but the red fibers began to glow and pulse more aggressively and the blue fibers, or more like tendrils began to spasm and move erratically. The image of the eye froze Ryan in place, he didn't know what it was...but something about the eye just told he couldn't move, absolutely couldn't. The eye stared at him, almost as if it was analyzing him. He stood still in place, terrified to disobey whatever force this thing was controlling him with. Then it moved forward shaking Ryan from his trance, he tried to turn and run in the opposite direction, but nothing happened. He tried again, nothing. And again, nothing. His eyes might have widened as he realized what was going on but he couldn't even blink. A fiber in the beasts eye moved and snapped him back to reality. He stared into the beasts approaching eye, unable to move. But the eye had...changed. He couldn't tell how, but it had. Something about seemed different, mesmerizing even. To his sudden surprise and horror his body relaxed slightly, something about the eye was calming him down against his will. He should have been terrified and he knew it, but he wasn't because of whatever this thing was doing to him. He struggled to move, to turn and run. Still nothing happened, his body refused to move as he continued to stare into the flailing eye. There was something mesmerizing about it, not of this world. He continued thrashing in his mind, but to no avail. The eye stared, maliciously, like it knew he was struggling to move. The monster stopped its approach and one of the red fibers twitched and bulged out, pushing against the eyes membrane. Ryan froze, suddenly he was relaxed, the eye was fine, the eye wasn’t dangerous, he didn’t need to run away at all. He may have laughed at himself for being so stupid, this thing wasn’t a monster, if anything it was a friend. Sometimes his own stupidity embarrassed him. Ryan’s foot took a step forward and he snapped out of his trance. ‘What?’ He felt his other foot try to rise. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He stopped his foot before it could leave the ground. He pondered why his feet were moving by themselves before realization hit him like a aircraft carrier. It wanted him relaxed, it could only move him if he didn’t resist. Another fiber twitched and began to bulge outwards as the black pupil began to open, exposing sharp teeth and a long, muscular channel into the things stomach that looked like it could crush a person. An explosion of adrenaline entered his blood as he tried to break free of the things grip on his body and to resist the mind controlling distraction of the bulging red tendrils. Ryan tried to pull his leg back, to turn and run, this seemingly invoked the mutants psychic wrath even more. Every time he tried to pull his foot back an image of an atrocity flashed surreally before his vision. A first person view of him stabbing a defenseless civilian in the chest, someone getting crushed by devastator, a nuclear bomb incinerating a city and other unspeakable sights. Ryan was disgusted but kept pulling, eyes watering before an electric pain started in his toes and began spreading up his legs. Just as Ryan was about to break to the mind control he heard a shout and saw a grenade sail through the air and land on top of the beast where he couldn’t see. The beast roared and it’s massive eyelid shut and the two smaller stems burst out of the body to locate the perpetrator, but it was too late. The grenade exploded spraying shrapnel into the beast. Ryan heard an otherworldly screech of insurmountable pain and raised his arms to protect himself from the shrapnel and blood of the creature. He heard several small metal objects bounce off his fore arms and other Armour plates. He waited a few seconds, panting as the thuds of shrapnel hitting the frozen ground was drowned out by the blizzard. He lowered his arms and looked at the warm corpse, The entire back of its head had been reduced to a smoldering crater, brain fluids mixing with the burns leaving the stench of charred flesh mixed with noxious smell of industrial strength cleaning products and smoke. The remains of the exploded flesh had seemed to have rained down on the beast after the explosion had sent what Ryan perceived to be its brain flying upwards. The beast had been drenched in its own viscera, leaving it resembling an bizarre modern art piece of some form. Ryan morbidly admired the vile display of mans relationship with nature. A primal electric pulse in his brain sent a shiver of euphoria as he gazed on the carcass. Ryan turned to face his superior as the Sergeant came into view. "Did any of its blood get on ya?" His voice crackled over the helmets com link system. "Negative Sergeant." "Ain't nothing much after a well placed grenade, Are they?" The aging man chuckled, gazing over at his creation. "Grenade Sir?" "Yeah, when these Oculus things go into a hypnosis state the psionic part of their brains tend to heat up a good bit, so a bit of the hide near their brain pulls back to let heat out of some pretty large pores. It just so happens that the holes fit a grenade." Ryan looked back at the modern art atrocity. "So that was just..." "Experience? Yeah." The Canadian Chuckled looking back to the dead oculus. "Now let's get our asset back." he said, slinging his kit off his back. "We still got a job to do." Ryan abruptly woke from his sleep courtesy of the deafening ringing sound that almost caused him to reach for his sidearm. He looked around quickly, the high pitched noise causing him to forget where he was for a second before realizing that the ringing was supposed to be a wake up call that they were briefed on the previous night. He took in his surroundings as some of the marines reacted similarly to the alarms earsplitting ringing, being conditioned to associate loud noises with gun fire. Some seemed as if they had been waiting for the alarm for a while, being ready for the deafening noise. Ryan stretched his arms and swung his legs out of the hammock and narrowly avoided getting kicked in the face by Derek who was doing the same. Ryan stretched and scratched his stiff, sore back before standing up to his full height and bending his spine back into space. "Morning guys," Davis started, swinging out of his pitiful sleeping space and landing on the ground with a soft thud. "Everybody sleep well?" He asked in his usual upbeat tone, giving his arms a warm up stretch as he did. "I don't think anyone slept well Davis." Derek, replied groggily as he hauled himself out of his hammock. "We're not keeping this, right? They're just temporary aren't they? My backs killing me after that." Derek continued. "Hope so." Davis replied, already having moved on to squats. The trio heard a deep groan as Cole rolled onto the floor, he landed on his side with a dull thud. He lay curled in a ball on the floor facing away from them for almost a minute, completely silent as his squad watched awkwardly. "ya' alright buddy?" Davis asked, continuing his squats. Cole groaned and forced himself off the floor and onto his feet, still not facing them. He cupped his head with his right hand as a headache made itself known to him. With his left hand he scratched his neck "Just...shut up and get to the mess hall." He finally answered in a hoarse, authoritative voice. Scootaloo again woke up to find herself in a hospital bed. "Uh," She groaned as she stretched her wings and rubbed her eyes. She looked around her as she recalled the events of the day before. Her recently awakened mind swam with her memories of yesterday. 'Twilight.' she thought. Her small room lacked the company of another pony or even any other beds so she threw the covers off and got up. She started towards the door but it opened just before she reached it. A nurse walked in looking at clipboard before she noticed Scootaloo standing in front of her. "Oh, your up. Good morning." She said in a surprised tone with a matching expression. "Uh, yeah. good morning. Um, do you know anything about what happened to Princess Twilight last night." Scootaloo asked, yawning after she finished. still in the process of waking up. "Oh, the princess. That's actually why i'm here, she asked for you as soon as she woke up." The nurse replied as she began searching through her clipboard for something. "Is she alright?" Scootaloo asked, worried about any connect between her story and Twilights sudden fainting. "Oh yeah, she was sleep deprived and she says something you said shocked her enough to faint." The Nurse replied, looking at a document in her clipboard "Huh, so where is she." Scootaloo inquired, her fears confirmed and now interested by the 'shocked enough to faint' comment. "I'll take you too her now but I need to do some tests first to make sure we can let you out today." The nurse said, taking out a pen as she did and flicking through some more documents on her clipboard "Aight." Scootaloo replied simply. "So, an entire alien world to explore and we get the job of exploring, no not even exploring, guarding the unexplored regions of a cave system at the bottom of a ravine." Derek said flatly from the back of the APC as it rolled over the rough terrain at the bottom of said ravine. "Hey Derek, look on the bright side, think of all the things we could find down there." Alec replied. "We're guarding mining equipment not exploring the the caves Davis." Cole interrupted bluntly. "Actually why aren't we doing that, exploring the caves I mean." Ryan asked, suddenly interested in the conversation. "The brass wants to take things one step at a time and get better situated before we start venturing deeper into the caves than we already have." Cole replied scratching his well kept beard. Derek groaned. "Hey it's better than bein' roasted to death top side." Davis suggested, still trying to cheer up Derek. "Anythings better than roasting to death topside Davis." Derek retorted in rapid response, causing Ryan and Cole to break into a grin. "Yeahhh, but-" Davis started. "Hey ladies, your here. Get out." A impatient voice from the front of the APC rattled down its armored innards. The motorized door at the back of the APC opened to reveal the brightly lit and expansive chamber that had been set up as a base of operation for the mining operation. The marines dismounted the vehicle before it sped away, back up the wide entrance to the chamber that led back up to the ravine floor, a few hundred meters away from the steep chamber entrance. The chamber was expansive, probably about the size of a football field (or a Soccer field if you live in the US) and the ceiling was over 40 feet above them. Part of the chamber seemed to be dedicated to vehicle driving and parking as there wasn't any equipment or marines stationed there, also due to the fact that there was a huge gaping hole, in the wall that seemed to have been artificially enlarged and was kept stable by metal support beams where dirt tracks had been left from haul trucks and other quarrying vehicles that had ventured that way. Water from the river in the ravine flowed into the chamber from the cave mouth covering the floor and leaked into deeper parts of the cave. In the other part of the chamber that hadn't been dedicated to vehicles there were marines dotted about random bits of equipment, ranging from communication, mining and even some explosives as well as some miscellaneous equipment. The 3 squads of marines gazed around as they were approached by lieutenant Murphy. ~~Remember that dude bro from chapter 3?~~ "Right you lot," The lieutenant started, his tone indicating that he wasn't about to tolerate any nonsense. "Welcome to the caves, you'd get a tour but we don't have time for that and we've got maps everywhere. So first of all that is the mine, its not very deep and we've fully explored it but it is full of ores." Murphy said, gesturing to the tunnel that Ryan had correctly assumed was a mine. "That other tunnel is much deeper and we haven't fully explored it yet and since we can't expend anymore man power we've barricaded ourselves in, just in case. There are already marines manning the first lines of defense, you guys are manning fallback points closer to home. If anything goes wrong further down you guys give e'm support and fall back if you need to-" Murphy continued, trying to explain the situation and procedures to the marines as quickly but thoroughly as possible. "Sergeant Taylor take your squad to fall back point 1, Montgomery your squads at fallback point 2, Markson get you squad down to fallback point 3." Murphy finished before turning around and heading back to what he was doing before their arrival. "Yes sir." The marines said in unison as they turned and made their way towards the tunnel. The marines carefully but quickly made their way deeper into the cave. The grey rock the walls were made of was rough and sharp, combined with the large number of marines packed close together as they made their way deeper into the endless cave made the stony walls seem suffocating and hostile. Ryan felt a tightness in his chest as the memory of the time he got stuck in a drainage pipe as a child wormed its way into the forefront of his mind. Eventually the cave split into two separate parts, however it wasn't an even split. Sergeant Taylor and Montgomery took their squads down the larger passage way, labeled according to their respective destinations. Ryan squad on the other hand, made their way down the smaller much tighter passage that also appeared to be steeper as well. Being large enough to only be able to fit one person at a time the feeling of claustrophobia exacerbated. The squads only comfort being the lights that had been attached to the cave wall every few meters and the promise of a resting place further down the cave. Eventually the cramped passage ended and the cave floor flattened out mostly, giving way to a still small tunnel, but better than what they had just endured. There was an indentation in the cave wall to their left as they made their way forward that led into a small chamber with a bright lantern in the middle of the chamber with 4 other marines crowded around it. "Bout time you guys got here." one of the marines said as they all stood up. "We've been down here for hours." Another said as he picked up his rucksack and pulled it onto his back. "There's a motion detector mesh further down the tunnel, if anything comes your way it'll let you know if its one of ours or not. The monitor is over there." The squads sergeant told Cole as he pointed over to a box of something in the corner of the chamber and explained some other things to him before he quickly left with the rest of his squad. "Good Luck men!" He shouted back at them on his way. "That was brief, i guessing this is going to be boring." Derek said as he watched the squad make their way back up the tunnel to see daylight again. "Probably." Davis said trying to think of a way to spin the situation into a positive light. The chamber had been equipped with ammunition boxes and medical equipment, as well as some communication equipment that Ryan guessed would be their method of contacting Murphy and crew. There was also a few portable stools lying about with some other miscellaneous equipment as well a battery packs that powered the equipment. A white plastic map had been drilled into the wall and had an arrow pointing at fallback point 3 reading "you are here." "Well this is cozy," Davis exclaimed as he pulled one of the collapsible stools over and promptly sat on it. "I mean, it could be worse. I can definitely think of worse places to be. The ground in here is flattish for a start." He continued, swinging his rucksack off his back and leaning it on the wall. "The water made it all the way down here." Ryan said curiously, watching the stream of fresh water from the river all the way back at the ravine make its way deeper down the tunnel, although none of it had gotten into the small fallback point luckily. "This the monitor to that motion detector mesh Murphy told us about." Cole said as he read a note taped to a device sitting on top of a box of emergency rations. "That could come in handy i guess, hope we don't need to use it though." Ryan said as he walked over to observe the device. "Command sure ain't taking chances when it comes to security." Davis exclaimed, looking at his wrist mounted PDA, before sighing. "Only 4 hours and 53 minutes left." He then murmured sounding deflated. Ryan checked the safety on his rifle for the fourth time in ten minutes. No wonder the other marines had been so eager to leave, cave guard duty was boring. Without so much as a sandy horizon to gaze out at or even fresh air to breath the initial intrigue of guard duty in an alien cave had worn off quickly. Leaving the squad bored with little to converse about other than the usual 'alien planet' talk. "Hey can our orbital satellites we left in orbit pick up signs of civilization?" Davis asked out of the blue. "Yeah probably, why?" Cole responded quickly, desperate for something to take his mind of the boredom. "Well if command has figured out if there's sentient life on this planet when do you think they'll tell us?" Cole furred his brow. "I don't know, probably not immediately." The conversation was interrupted by a sudden, brief blast of static from their communication equipment built into their helmet as well as from the stationary communication equipment in the chamber. A mildly distressed, hoarse voice came over the speakers. "This is 2nd lieutenant Baker at outpost 3! Three of our guys just got grabbed by something in the caves, we need immediate reinforcement! Repeat we need immediate reinforcement over!" Cole barked into the headset and grabbed his gear as the others did the same. "This is sergeant Markson at fallback point 3 we'll be with you ASAP over!" "You'd better be quick sergeant, the things that took our guys are still tripping the motion sensors." The lietenant shouted as someone cursed in the background and the sound of gun fire began. The marines stormed the tunnel at full speed, nearly slipping a few times on the damp cave floor. Gunshots and machine gun fire echoed in the distance and humans barked back and forth at each other. Ryan let out a grunt as he nearly slipped on the floor for the fourth time as they descended deeper down the planets throat. The weapons fire continued for a few minutes as they continued down the cave but it quickly died down. The squad slid down the last part of the tunnel and into the small barricaded encampment. The outpost was far larger, looking as if had been artificially enlarged to accommodate the two squads that had been on guard duty. The artificial chamber ended at a large opening that gave way to side of a huge tunnel going horizontal to the direction they had just came in. The opening had been blocked with 2 standard HDF barricades with machine guns mounted on top of them. There was a narrow opening between them big enough for one person to walk through that had be closed up with a gate built into the barricades design. 6 marines occupied the chamber 2 on the machine guns the rest in cover, weapons at the ready. The 6 of them turned to look at the squad, the machine gunners only looked briefly before turning away and the rest looked away a half second later, save for the lieutenant who sighed in relief. "Markson are we glad see you." "What happened?" "Straight to it eh? Something tripped the motion sensors but nothing came from it, so i sent a squad out to see what was going on. Before they even got out of our sight something swarmed em, only Evans made it out. They tried to swarm us too so we opened fire, but we stopped they started looking like us, didn't want to hit our guys who were still in the thick of those things, they were running away at that point anyway." The lieutenant answered calmly. "They looked like you?" Cole asked intrigued. "Yeah, and i don't mean they looked human, they looked exactly like us. voices and everything." The lieutenant answered his voice betraying his concern at the newly encountered threat. "But they looked strange up close, like... there was something wrong with the way they looked." Evans interjected from his crouched position at the barricade, he was clearly a little shaken up but still ready for a fight. Cole poked his head out from the barricade and observed the corpses of the creatures littering the cave. There had to be at least 3 dozen, only a few had made it close to the barricade luckily enough. They were bipeds with a dark black chitinous outer layer that oozed luminescent green blood from the gaping bullet holes in their bodies. Their extremities all had vacuous holes in them for some unknown purpose. Their legs ended in what looked like hooves, their heads also portraying equine features such as ears and a snout, another interesting addition was the malformed horn on their heads. Their eyes were a sickly shade of blue and seemed to glow slightly, much like the thin and translucent membrane like wings on their backs that seemed to lack the luminescent properties. "Any idea what they are?" Derek asked intrigued at the prospect of alien lifeforms as he tried to get a better look at the corpses. "Insects of some sort." Evans replied simply, checking the safety on his rifle as he did. The group were silent for a short time, allowing Ryan's mind to fill with thoughts of the missing humans fates. Why were they taken? To be eaten? Studied? His mind wandered to visceral scenes of torture and bodily degradation. "How hard were they to kill?" Ryan asked in a deadpan tone, his mind occupied with visions of torment. "Actually not too bad, one shot through the head or the chest and they died. There were just so many." Someone answered. Ryan relaxed slightly, his mind was eased at the revelation that the insect like creatures weren't as hardy as the mutants back on Earth. "You said that they took three of your guys, can you track them?" Alec inquired. "Negatory," The lieutenant replied. "Rocks too thick, and the minerals in these caves mess with radio waves so that's out." There was another brief silence, that was broken this time by Derek. "Well you were right about one thing Davis," He began. "We didn't know what we would find." Author's Note It's back. Thanks for being patient. Before the next chapter comes out i'm going to improve some of the previous chapters and also retcon a few things. For those of you that don't want to go back and read the first chapters all over again i'll put a list of changes in the authors note of the next chapter which hopefully won't take the near eternity this one did. And again, thank you for being patient.
