Story Hub: [link]
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Strange things were happening in the Cosmic Wall. Outer rim outposts and listening stations insisted nothing was wrong for the longest time, but suddenly many planets on the fringes of the Themision Federation territory started going dark. It began with unaffiliated low-tech worlds technically under the Federation’s jurisdiction, then it spread to their outermost colonies, and now even planets close to the middle rim were rapidly losing contact with their scattered settlements. Yet the outposts and listening stations kept sending the all-clear. When these locations were inspected to determine the cause of their negligence, they were all empty and devoid of life. That is, if the teams sent to perform inspections returned at all.
The Federation Senate was rife with talks of blame and finger-pointing, more so than usual, but a few cooler heads prevailed and put more funding and manpower behind discovering the source of this issue. However, not too many resources were invested in this search, the Federation had other problems and wars to fight. So many planets were lucky to have teams as large as three people coming to their aid. And in most cases the ‘aid’ was more inspections and scouting. In some people’s eyes, it was better than nothing. Others saw the obvious insanity in sending as few as three people to scout an entire planet.
All these thoughts and more bounced around the mind of Special Security Officer Mixly. He cared little for his new “rank,” which pulled him away from the war with the Bacchus Union where he was really needed and sent him on, in his own words, “senate mandated shite work.” That’s why he and his partner were shipped to planet Upillio, the closest core world to the outer rim and the latest victim of mysterious issues and unexplained signals.
As he gazed at the rolling hills and city-sized swathes of cultivated land that made up the farming world, Mixly could say only one thing. “We will find nothing, and receive nothing but grief for it.”
“Don’t be so quick to assume the worst, Mixly,” his partner, Jastear, assured. “I’ve been hearing rumors from my friends upstairs. There’s a lot more to these happenings than the Senate is willing to let on. That’s why the keeper is with us.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Mixly sighed. Some of the higher-ups keeping needless secrets had become an unfortunately common thing in his line of work. He used to be annoyed by it, but now he was furious because it literally almost cost him an arm and a leg in his last mission.
“A few of the bigwigs have a solid idea of who is responsible for all these missing colonies and empty outposts, but they’re not willing to admit it,” Jastear explained. “That, and they don’t have much in the way of real evidence. It’s not like they have survivors to squeeze info out of.”
“So, they’re either terrified of being wrong, or they’re terrified of being right?” Mixly suggested.
“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Jastear agreed. “And of course those jarheads are too spineless to even give us enough resources to solve the problem if it is as bad as they think it is.”
“This is not the time for idle speculation, Security Officer,” a filtered voice echoed from behind them. The two officers turned to see a man encased in stylized armor that hummed with enough electricity to power a small tank. The faceplate of his helmet was a flat, polished silver that matched his stoicism. He stood a full head taller than both men, but his sheer presence made him seem almost twice as large. Like a statue come to life, he glared down at the two men with disapproval. “We have a mission, and we complete it with the resources provided to us. Or are you implying that you are incompetent?”
“No, sir,” Jastear stiffened up, desperately suppressing every insubordinate thought he could.
“Do not suppress your true feelings. I am not a direct superior with fragile feelings,” the armored man replied. “Explain to me your worries in detail.”
“While I lack official intel, sir,” Jastear gulped, “I have word from people I trust that whatever we might be after is a serious threat, and we won’t be prepared for whatever we find.”
“I understand your concern, but it is unfounded as long as I am here,” the armored man assured.
“Yes sir, Lord Keeper,” Jastear saluted.
“I am not yet a Lord, Security Officer. I’m still just a humble Knight,” the keeper clarified. “Referring to me as Knight Sabre will be sufficient. And despite the rank’s name, calling me sir is unnecessary.”
“Yes, Knight Sabre,” Jastear saluted.
“Now, I’ve found an unusual signal of unknown origin,” Sabre revealed a hand-sized holographic projector displaying a map and coordinates. “It resembles signals from other locations like Theta-4, Iluxio, and Bulliries.”
“I heard about what happened with the first two, but what happened on a backwater planet like Bulliries?” Mixly asked.
“They went dark a few septocycles ago. It likely wasn’t mentioned in your briefing as it was recent and considered low priority,” Sabre explained. “However, the signal on this planet most closely matches the one on Bulliries, so I saw it relevant to mention.”
“Know anything about that place?” Mixly turned to his partner.
“They’ve got an obscure language, I took it for a couple of semesters in the academy,” Jastear commented. “Other than that, all I know is it’s another farm planet, and not a very expansive or profitable one.”
“No surprise it went dark then if the threat is real,” Mixly sighed.
“Agreed, I request that you two head out to investigate the signal,” Sabre ordered. “I’ll follow shortly. I wish to investigate the wider area.”
“Consider the matter done, Knight Sabre,” Mixly and Jastear saluted.
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Following the signal, Mixly and Jastear descended into the furthest, most remote corner of the planet. The endless rolling farmlands gave way to uncultivated forests before they finally tracked the signal to a cave system hidden near its heart.
It was an odd sight: while the cave entrance appeared natural, the formation was equally out of place. It looked old, as though it had been carved out over centuries of nature doing what it did best. However, the entrance sat in the middle of a clearing in the trees, as if dropped there by unseen hands.
“I have no clue what to make of this,” Jastear admitted. “Does that look right to you?”
“Not by a long shot,” Mixly replied. “The clearing on its own would be fine, and the cave on its own would be fine. But together? The whole thing looks off, like two different environments were carelessly jammed together and this is the result. Normally I’d think someone culled the trees to make way for the cave, but it looks more like someone found a clearing of trees and plopped the cave right there.”
“Think it could be a trap?” Jastear theorized.
“If it is, it’s the most obvious trap I’ve seen in my life,” Mixly answered. “Message the keeper and tell him what we’ve found, then we proceed with caution.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jastear agreed.
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As the two security officers delved into the cave, their questions and confusion grew by the minute. Within was not a sprawling maze of rock walls nor a giant cavern, but something resembling a village with a mushroom motif and an artificial sky. It resembled a village, but it was most certainly not a place where people lived. The area was deserted, and the “houses” were mere facsimiles of a home, with either no interior or a completely hollow inside. Even the false sky was merely paint, very meticulously applied paint, but paint nonetheless that was already in the process of peeling.
“What do you make of this?” Mixly asked his partner.
“Honestly, I’ve got nothing, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Jastear admitted. “Gates of Paradise, look at this place from another angle.” Jastear tilted his head left, and as Mixly did the same, he immediately realized the problem. The “village” only looked vaguely convincing from one angle. If you angled your head even slightly, it started to look like you were on the wrong side of a cheap movie set.
“Why even bother? It already looks wrong. I think those houses in the back are blending into each other,” Mixly pointed out. Once his partner pointed it out, Jastear noticed it everywhere. Mishapen buildings, melded structures, and plastic plants growing out of random surfaces. It looked like the area was designed by a random number generator.
“I guess this narrows down the list of suspects. I can’t think of many factions that build like this, in fact, I can’t think of any,” Jastear exclaimed. “This makes the whole thing…hold on, I saw something.” The officer shifted into a combat stance and raised his laser rifle. It was a much higher-quality weapon than the standard-issue pea shooters given to most enlisted soldiers. This thing was designed to kill the much nastier creatures that stalked the darkest corners of the Outer Rim. “It wasn’t big, nor was it moving fast, I don’t even think they’ve seen us yet.”
“Then let’s take this slow,” Mixly drew his own rifle as the two began to skulk after the unknown life form. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find it, as it wasn’t running away from them. It was a small humanoid figure seated at a crude replica of a café. Mixly pulled down a visor that magnified his vision and got a better look. “It’s…a cyangel? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one completely on their own.”
“Let me look,” Jastear pulled down his own visor to see. Just as his partner said, a lone cyangel gynoid sat at a table, pouring a drink from a thermos. She had medium-length black hair that covered her eyes, was barely taller than your average teenage girl, had very small wings on her back, and was dressed like she was attending a fancy military prep school. “I see her, and the signal is really strong around here, so either she’s involved or knows something about it. If she’s really on her own, we should be more than capable of dealing with her.” The two broke from their hiding spot and rushed the gynoid’s position.
“A long way from home, aren’t ya?” Mixly approached the girl from the front. She looked up and immediately jumped to her feet in panic, but as she turned around to flee, Jastear was already waiting for her.
“You’re not going anywhere. Now tell us what we want to know,” Jastear demanded. The cyangel immediately descended into hysterical crying and babbling in a language the two didn’t immediately understand. Mixly could at the very least tell she was afraid and begging for her life, but Jastear slowly recognized the words. “That’s the language of Bulliries she’s speaking.”
“Why would that be a cyangel’s first language?” Mixly wondered.
“No clue, but I intend to find out,” Jastear tried to grab her, but the gynoid wiggled out of his grasp and scrambled away.
“Shit,” Mixly primed his rifle. “Go for the legs!” He fired at the cyangel. Her erratic movements made her a difficult target, but Mixly was an experienced soldier and could easily adjust. Before long, two of his shots struck true, one in her upper thigh and another in the opposite leg’s calf. Despite being stunned for a moment, the cyangel quickly bounced back to her feet and kept fleeing.
“You’re kidding, you hit anything else with that, and they’d be lucky to ever walk again,” Jastear exclaimed. “Fuck it, aim for her vitals.” Jastear fired off his own volley of shots. Three laser bolts landed square in her back, and while the gynoid was knocked off her feet, there was no permanent damage, and she kept moving without injury. However, she had lost her bearings and was running in circles with no destination in mind.
“Does nothing hurt her?” Mixly fumed as he fired off the last few shots before he needed to reload. A shot to the cyangel’s tailbone only made her spring into the air briefly, while a hit on her arm only made her cradle it like one does a bee sting. Mixly was about at his wits’ end before his last shot clipped the cyangel’s wing, causing her to go into spasms. “That did something, corner her!”
“No more running,” Jastear came at the cyangel from the left while Mixly covered her right. They finally managed to corner her in a crude approximation of a back alley, complete with hollow trash cans and solid black rocks that resembled trash bags. The cyangel cowered in her corner, practically in tears as she continued to speak a mile a minute in the Bulliries tongue.
“What’s she saying?” Mixly asked.
“No clue, she’s talking way too fast and my Bulliries is really rusty,” Jastear admitted. “Let me try something,” the security officer said, thinking back to his old language classes. Using what he remembered of the Bulliries language, he asked her to calm down and speak slowly, which he had to repeat three times before the panicking gynoid heard him. When she finally registered what he was saying, she only replied with a brief sentence.
“Now what’d she say?” Mixly already sensed he wouldn’t like what the girl said.
“Your Bulliries sucks,” Jastear translated. “If that’s how you’re going to be,” the soldier armed his rifle and shot her leg, but despite the point-blank shot, the laser only inflicted a fleeting pain on the cyangel. Realizing she wasn’t in nearly as much danger as she’d thought, the cyangel laughed at the two men, mixing in some colorful words from her language.
“I don’t even need you to translate that last part,” Mixly seethed as he put his rifle to the girl’s head. However, she just stuck her tongue out without the slightest bit of fear. “Don’t test us, you scrap heap!”
The cyangel kept laughing as she swatted his rifle away and jumped to her feet. With a few hand motions, she rapidly assembled her own rifle, as if from thin air, and pointed it right at the two men. She spouted increasingly bold-sounding words as she primed the weapon.
“Careful, she’s threatening to blow our heads off,” Jastear took a defensive stance.
“Blast it all, call the keeper! We need help!” Mixly urged as she cyangel pointed her gun at him and pulled the trigger. Luckily for him, the recoil of the weapon knocked her off her feet, and the shot went wide. Fuming, she forced herself back to her feet and tried to shoot again, but only managed to jam her gun. Her confident boasts faded away as she returned to her rapid crying and panic.
“…Yeah, let’s call the keeper,” Jastear said, thanking his lucky stars.
To Be Continued…
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Lack of communication is just as bad as a miscommunication, because it forces the other party to make assumptions and act on incomplete information. It is rarely wise to act quickly on baseless assumptions, but sometimes you don't have the luxury to wait.
Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy.
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