Zero Contact (an excerpt)

Klingon Hamlet

“Gun Tower Three: this is the Hub. Do you read? Over.”

The only response was the hiss of static.


Looking more and more worried, Gail leaned in and repeated,



“Gun Tower Three: this is the Hub. Do you read? Over.”


White noise and silence. Gail looked up at Captain Cole, who had stepped in behind her.


“Three’s gone silent, Captain.”


Cole grabbed the mic and punched the comm-link.


“Tower Three: this is Cole. Respond immediately.”


For what seemed like an age, the two stared at the console, praying for some sort of reply. None came.


Cole studied the night skies and the empty desert below. Out there somewhere, thirteen soldiers manned the farthest tower from the Hub. It was also the closest to the Broken Lands. Unspoken horrors befell anyone who entered those treacherous places, those dark and nasty towns that cut themselves off from civilisation. But the towers were safe, well-guarded, fully armed and heavily armoured. Bandits and cannibals were fiercely dangerous one-on-one, but against pulse cannons and ram-sticks they were as vulnerable as any other humanoid.


Still, Cole’s heart felt heavy, cold. Something bad had happened out there.


“I’m going to them,” he announced. “Taking a Pitbull. Keep radioing. If someone got to them—“


Gail gasped, eyes widening. The thought apparently hadn’t occurred to her.


“If,” Cole emphasised, giving her a reassuring nod, “someone got to them, I don’t want them knowing I’m on my way.”


He patted his side-arm.


“Rather I surprise them.”


Gail nodded, a little pale.


Cole slapped on his Kevlar bodysuit. It was a little snug.


“Gail,” he said with a warm smile, “we’ve gone through hell before. This is just a tiny worry.”


Seeing him tug at the collar as if it were chafing, she went over and loosened the cord, patting it into place.


“It’s a worry, all the same. It’s been so long since...”


“Exactly. Silly b&stards probably fell asleep on their watch.”


Gail gave another nod, and this time there was a bit more colour in her cheeks. Cole tried to ignore the feelings her smile brought out in him. Now was not the time. He also resisted the temptation to give her the evacuation procedures. She knew the drill, and besides, she didn’t need to know how seriously concerned he was.


She needed hope, now more than ever.


“I’ll see you later, Gail.”


With a friendly salute, he disappeared into the shadowy hallways.


Gail watched him go, heard the loud clank as the elevator swept him down towards the ground floor garage. Remembering his instructions she raced to her seat and went to call out to Three again. As she opened her mouth to speak, her eyes fell upon two fiery eyes burning in the desert sand below. She yelped. The glowing pupils swept left and right, seeking something out. And then she realised: they were the beams from the Pitbull’s headlights. With an embarrassed chuckle, she watched the bulky vehicle emerge from the forward bay doors and bounce across mighty dunes into the surrounding darkness.

Controlling her panic, she began. “Gun Tower Three...”

bakkiesbotha

I wouldn't like to get a smack of a ram-stick, that's for sure.

Klingon Hamlet

Cole gripped the wheel tightly as he steered the Pitbull through the desert. His radio was on, hissing but otherwise silent; no voices, nothing. But the crackle kept him company, as he drove deeper into the night. Made him feel a little less terrified.

He wore infra-red goggles. They turned the empty night into luminous, nauseous green. Far off mountains glowed like the outline of a sleeping giant, ready to wake at any moment. Sand-dunes became murderous grins in the face of the earth. His very own hands, garbed in war-worn gloves, resembled the claws of the flesh-eaters.


In the distance, something cried out.


“Sounds like a crow,” he said calmly, smoothly, and he almost believed it. But too many memories from the last time he was out here begged to differ. Too many echoes of those war-chants, those flesh-hungry souls roaming the shadows, calling out to each other, closing in on their prey...


From the left and much closer came another piercing cry.


Ahead, he could see the dim glow of Tower Three’s top beacon. Maybe everything was just alright, after all.


Something laughed in his ear.


He cried out, stamping on the accelerator and charging off straight towards the beacon. It rose higher and higher into the night sky as he came closer to its base. To his dismay he saw no other lights apart from that solitary beacon. The wind picked up and flung flecks of sand into his face. He sealed his lips in a grimace and stopped the Pitbull mere feet from the dark entrance.


Normally, searchlights would wash down upon any heat signatures detected at the main doors. A voice would demand an ID. None of this happened however. There was just Cole and the night-swamped desert and the silent tower.


Voices.


They were like mutterings. Two, maybe three sets of footsteps shuffling towards him. He swallowed his fear and pulled his mini-speargun from its place at his hip. He quickly inspected the side of it, ensuring the red light was blinking: armed and ready. Then he looked up to see two contorted half-men rushing at him, arms held up high, mouths open. They screamed and giggled like ecstatic babies as they leapt at him.


He put one foot forward and pulled the trigger. The gun quaked in his grip as it fired. The closer cannibal’s scream was cut short as five spears punched through his chest and ripped his heart asunder. He clutched the gaping wound and tugged, ripping his own lungs out as he feel to the sand dead. The second monster caught two in the shoulder and spun like a top, flopping to the ground comically. Cole stood on his forehead to keep him still. One crazy eye rolled up to look at him, until a spear plunged into the socket, bursting the eyeball open and sending brain-matter oozing out of his ruptured nose. The body spasmed for a minute, then went still.


Cole retched, then composed himself and watched as the strengthening wind deposited bits of sand across the ravaged face like stray maggots. Good enough for them, he thought, holstering his sidearm. They weren’t human, not anymore. He went to the access panel by the unlit entrance doors. Its screen was empty, unpowered. The buttons would normally hum and glow invitingly; not so. He had no way in.


“OK then,” he decided out loud. “Guess I’m going to have to climb.”


There was an emergency hatch up top, just by the beacon. He retrieved his emergency kitbag from the rear of the Pitbull, and from it he took out his climbing rope. A sharp hook dangled from the end. Thank god for the infrareads, he thought with a silent chuckle. Swing this blindly and I’d no doubt stab myself. He swung the blade-end of the rope in small circles at first, then raising his hand and building up the diameter until the hook was swishing loudly in the night air, louder than the breeze and the breathing.


The breathing, which wasn’t his own.


With a yelp he brought his wrist down sharply so the hook whipped through the air fast and low, aiming it directly for the face coming at him. Eyes wide and teeth displayed in a horrifying grin, the man-eater was grunting obscenities as he dove at Cole. The hook sunk deeply into the assailant’s ribs, disappearing into the body and bursting out the other side. He crumpled to the sand squealing, then pulled himself to his feet and looked at the hook protruding from his ribcage like a misplaced erection. He even toyed with it.


Trying to stay calm and ignore the bile rising once more in his throat, Cole unhooked his spear gun and aimed it squarely between the eyes. The eyes were not as crazy as the other two. There was intelligence there. Thought. But the tongue was forked much like his brethren, and there wasn’t much time left for him anyway. The Cure would be highly unlikely to help at this stage.


So he fired and a single spear drilled into the serene smile of the almost-human, sending teeth and chunks of flesh everywhere as it exited the back of his throat. He still stood for a second, ribcage torn, mouth in pieces, nose gone, that weird smile clinging to his face like a stubborn leech. And then he dropped to the ground, and he didn’t move, and he was dead.


No, not dead. He wasn’t alive to start with. Not after he Changed.


Cole studied the corpse with a strange feeling of guilt for about ten seconds. Light spilled over the rags wrapped round the body. Cole looked up to see the main doors of the ghost-tower rolling open with a gentle groan, the lamps inside burning brightly.


Come on in.

The gun still had thirty-five spears. The Pitbull had enough juice to get him home. He felt ready. Taking a moment to gulp down a nutri bottle, Cole unhooked his radio---still hissing and spattering---and, gun at the ready, he stepped into the open mouth of Tower Three.

bakkiesbotha

This is great stuff. I especially like the following:


five spears punched through his chest and ripped his heart asunder

the man-eater was grunting obscenities as he dove at Cole

The Cure would be highly unlikely to help at this stage.



Brilliant