Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (28 page)

The data Mace carried eventually became a part of the Aelita itself, a
library of information about the Earth filled with ancient knowledge and
reports that described various timelines associated with the future. However
there was one encoded message that was never read. Something nether Mace
nor any of the elders after him had been able to unlock. The message was
something Aira eventually uncovered.

Aira’s father was a cruel man. It seemed Mace’s bloodline only gave birth
to monsters. Her father lived for violence and self-satisfaction torturing Skrav
and human alike, species didn’t matter. Onboard the Aelita they called him
Zeus. When Aira was born he wanted a son, he had planned to name the son
Ares after the god of war. When that didn’t happen he let the mother, a young
woman who could barely take care of herself name her. She chose the name
Aira meaning ‘pure’ and ‘chaste’ hoping that one day she would be loved by
Zeus as a daughter rather then a warrior or object.

Zeus and Balkava had been close allies. It seemed as far as anyone
could tell the two plotted together and killed all of the elders forever ending
the rule of ‘the Sons of Sol’ and beginning what they called the rule of the
‘New Gods’. The ‘Sons of Sol’ wanted New Eden. They believed it would be
a place for humanity to runaway and hide itself from the rest of the hostile
universe. They believed it was a place they could ascend into a realm above
our own and that somehow this long journey humanity had undertaken was a
part of that exodus. Zeus and Balkava saw it as an origin point. To them it
was a place to start an empire and end humanity’s dark age. Only through
destruction could we aspire. They already had two warships and with a
world hidden among the stars they could hide away inside stasis until they
had fleets at their command. They were the last two elders and with that
alone they had power.

Zeus’s corruption eventually led to his very downfall. When Aira was
taken aboard the Aelita she was abused, tormented, and tortured ruthlessly
by both the man she had once called father and the crew. The only thing she
had was that she was smart and brave. She had always been smart. She was a
slave but that didn’t mean she didn’t have access to a computer terminal now
and then. Everyone had a small console in their room - it was an easy way of
providing communication through the ship. She spend years hacking through
the Aelita’s storage system as one of the few things she could do for
enjoyment. She found the encrypted message from the past detailing all of the
events that transported after reaching Eden. It was a part of the message
carried by Mace. The message took her years to hack. Inside she found
transcripts depicting future events about her father and Balkava. The
rebellions and murders that would occur, the genetic manipulation the duo
would perform and eventually the destruction their actions would bring to the
fabric of reality. It would be a slow process, a slow burn that would take
thousands of years but the destruction would be absolute. New Eden was a
weapon, a world capable of solar destruction created by the Lethe.

Aira murdered Zeus in his sleep.
She used a small dagger given to her as a gift by Sev as a child.
A weapon from Errikus that she had kept hidden for years; the only

reminder of the life she had once had. The crew and soldiers knew who she
was. All of those aboard bowed to her demanding that she take charge and
without hesitation she decreed her first order, an embargo against the Erebus
- against Balkava.

“So that’s why you never came to help us?” I said listening to a holo Aira
had made detailing bits and pieces of her life and what has been happening
aboard the Aelita. Some of it was more explicit in detail then I wanted to hear
but it was her truth, her story to tell and I had to listen. When the Aelita
crashed she and several other abandoned ship in shuttles and escape pods.
She took Lore as her bodyguard and several others all of whom were now
dead - murdered by both Skrav and Scourge. When the Scourge entered the
battle above the orbital it was an accident. They had broken lose from their
stasis pods and begun slaughtering men and women still aboard and stealing
shuttles. That was when the Aelita set itself on a crash course.

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. Balkava was someone close to me.
I was one of the few that suspected that she had killed the elders on the
Erebus after she herself joined them but there was no proof whatsoever aside
from what Aira had claimed to see. The Erebus had been under attack by the
antliods for what seemed so long. I needed to stall, there had to be a way both
Aira and Balkava could compromise.

“I need to
find Hayden, I need your help,” I said.
“He is probably heading towards the Erebus now,” I followed after a
moment of silence. I hoped that maybe being united with both myself and
Hayden that it was possible the two of us could convince her there was
another way. I was wrong.
“We already have him. We found him before you, he was passed out in the
snow; he had lost a lot of blood. We are holding him in stasis now. We had
hoped to find others but the two of you are the only ones alive we have seen
since we made it to the surface.”
I couldn’t believe it. I said nothing else. Finding a compromise would have
to wait. We walked together in silence to the makeshift refugee camp made
from the dropship Aira and Lore had escaped to Eden in. There he was.
Nanites, reverse engineered from the ones discovered on Parcae filled the
stasis chamber. They were reprogrammed to heal organic tissue. They were
making quick work of Hayden.
The bite on my hand was getting worst. The cold wind and frostbite I had
didn’t help with anything either. If there had been another hellbeast tracking
us I know Lore could probably take it out but if there was a mature one or
anything worst on this world that liked the smell of a wounded warrior we
would be done for. I already knew at this point I was near useless in a fight.
Aira grabbed her gear and injected me with a syringe. I could feel the nannies
going to work inside my hand, my body, running along my ribs repairing
fracture tissue and broken bone.
“We can’t take the shuttle anywhere, some of those things, the Wesp or
whatever you called them got in while we were out and started eating the
cables to the ion drive. Killed them but its too late this bird is never going to
fly again,” Aira said. She was hardly thrilled to be stuck like this. She
sounded exhausted and I could only wonder if she had gotten any sleep or
even if she needed sleep anymore.
“Swoop,” it was Lore’s scrambled voice that spoke.
“That’s right I almost forgot we originally landed here because we saw
some skimmers we were going to try and salvage,” she said almost smiling.
I went on to tell her about the one I had found several miles away. It
seemed both the Skrav and Scourge were spread out in the area. We waited
several hours for Hayden to become conscious. When he did he woke up
screaming. The last thing he could remember was crashing, grabbing his gear
and walking for what seemed like an eternity in nothing but a white haze. He
talked about seeing several yeti like creature but we had no way of knowing
whether he had been hallucinating or not.
Hayden was just as surprised to see Aira as I was.
She told him the same thing she told me. She wasn’t the same person.
We left Hayden alone as he learned from the holo and the three of us
began to eat some of the rations found in the wreckage. The two of them
seemed to have an understanding with one another. Some deep way of
communicating that I didn’t quite understand. I could see something else
buried deep in her eyes. Aira no longer felt like the person she was on Errikus
but she was still compassionate. She still had the same heart.
“We have to get back to the Erebus, I don’t care what you do to Balkava
but there is someone there I want to protect,” my voice was stern when I
spoke as I wanted to be clear that I was making a statement and not a
request, “a woman named Hera is there inside the bunker waiting for me.”
“Then she is in the core, that not a place you want to go Sev, not on that
ship,” Aira said.
“Sev isn’t the only one with family on that ship, Brecca, one of our team
and someone special to me is still there as well,” Hayden added.
“So I am suppose to help the two of you save your girlfriends over saving
the future?” Aira smirked adding, “I will help both of you return to the
Erebus but once we are there they are none of my concern, neither are the
two of you, my only concern is with Balkava and if you or they try to defend
her I will not hesitate to kill you,” she finished and with that we were back to
silence. I noticed that when Hayden mentioned Brecca Lore’s head lifted as if
he was remembering. I guess he was more then a pile of junk after all. Slowly
my heart began to fill with hope.
“Why do you want to kill her so bad anyway? I know what you said in the
holo, destiny, protecting humanity, protecting the fabric of reality and all but
why bother, we’re here and already the future has changed so much. Zeus is
dead so that future may not even be plausible now. All you are doing is
putting your life at risk,” I said to Aira as I finished the last of my rations.
“Balkava has done more to hurt me then you will ever know, it was her
order Zeus followed, there is so much more to the Erebus then you realize,”
she replied. Aira was vague. I hated the way she spoke to me as if she was
talking in riddles. It didn’t matter. I needed her help for better or worst to
save Hera.

We left the shuttle about midday. Up above us we could see several
birds in the sky. The first non-predatory animal we had each encountered on
this world with the exception of a few small insects here and there. Aira
traveled on Lore’s shoulders while Hayden and myself walked behind the two
of them. Lore was the gun and Aira acted as his eyes. Anything that looked
hostile we shot at. It only took us several hours to get to the waypoint they
had spotted the skimmers several miles from their camp. They were right.
There was an entire squad of dead Skrav lying on the ground. Each looked
like they had been torn apart by some kind of wild beast.

“What happened?” most Skrav could put up a good
fight and their armor
was most definitely stronger then ours and yet there were tons lying on the
ground defeated and dead.

“Hellbeast, Scourge, something on this world we haven’t seen, you name
it,” Aira answered. Every word she said seemed demeaning and yet it was
easy to see she was just being straightforward telling me something we
already knew the answer too.
There was one body among the dead I did recognize.
Laying facedown in the snow was Addax.
“He must have fallen all the way down, of course knowing him he might

have grabbed hold of some Skrav ship and glided down,” I was trying to
remember him for the strong and funny man he was but my comment
probably came off far more uncaring then I liked. I felt like Lore remembered
his fallen friend the way he stood over the body.

“Addax fought bravely sacri
ficing his body so that the rest of First
Descent could survive. He was alongside Duv’Mir in the end but somewhere
they must have gotten separated,” I said.

Lore looked at Addax and without hesitation lifted his old friend from the
ground. The entire front side of Addax had been grinded to tiny bits, there
was nothing left but flesh and metal.

Lore turned Addax around again as if waiting for his old friend to come
back to life then it became clear. Lore was searching for Friday. Somewhere
there was an invisible signal being transmitted across the snow-clad
landscape. It was a message only Lore and others like him could hear. Aira
though she had plenty of augmentations never had any kind of digital A.I.
inside her head.

Lore took a small piece of wire from out of a storage capsule he had
hidden behind his elbow. The wire had a small self-guiding needle attached to
the end. Lore jabbed the needle into the back of Addax’s skull. A small
amount of coagulated blood came oozing out of the new hole. It was
disgusting and brutal but in less than a minute Lore had uploaded Friday and
what little pieces of Addax’s consciousness remained into his own.

“So none of us really die after death do we?” I was half-joking but Aira
replied by saying, “You have no idea.”
“Can he tell us anything about what happened here?”
Hayden chimed in wondering how Addax had ended up in this spot.
“Fell,” was all Lore/Addax could say.
He was processing the data Friday had collected and then slowly Lore/
Addax began to talk in a two voices at once…
“Moments will be gone, falling, ruins,World-eaters, sun-killers,
leviathan-seraphim, dark-ones, past future,run,Falling, ruins, world-eaters,
sun-killers, leviathan-seraphim, dark-ones, past-future,
Run, falling ruins, world-eaters, sun-killers, leviathan-seraphim, dark-ones,
Past future, run, falling, ruins, world-eaters, sun-killers, Leviathan-seraphim,
dark-ones, past-future, run, falling ruins, world-eaters, sun-killers, leviathanseraphim, dark-ones, past-future, run, falling, ruins, world-eaters, sun-killers,
leviathan-seraphim, dark-ones, past-future, run, falling ruins, fell,Ruins,
world-dead, sun gone, gods—dead, Immer-gone, time-dead, worlds-gone.”
It kept going on until finally the Friday A.I. and Addax consciousness
faded into nothing. Lore was silent once again. This was the song of two
cybernetic friends; the words echoed coded line after line set on repeat it was
Addax’s way of saying goodbye.
Moments later Lore buried Addax under the ground. Digging his grave
with his brutish metal hands and in that moment Addax had become the first
human buried on Eden-3.

Using the skimmers we made our way past ruined Lethe architecture
entire cities ruined and buried beneath debris and snow. The entire orbital
looked was like graveyards yet there wasn’t a single body or fossilized remain.
Pieces of the Erebus, Aelita, and Skrav ship were spread out across the entire
plain. We only took three skimmers as Aira rode on the front of Lore’s. He
was her bodyguard but sometimes the way she looked at him reminded me of
when we were children, she looked at him like a big brother, the same way
she use to think of Dom, Hayden, and myself. She never did explain to me
what happened to Dom. All she did was say I would find out for myself. I
wasn’t sure what that meant but then again I didn’t really want to know.
There were too many other questions that needed answering. All that was
important now was reaching the Erebus. Dom was dead I watched him
drown - I looked at him inside a coffin. I watched his family cry and for years
I could never accept it. Haunted by it in my dreams.