Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #46 – Night Owls

The imposing silhouette of Lagash towered over the ashen fields, in front of the slowly rising sun. The light reflected on the obsidian surface, scattered all around the desolate wasteland that surrounded the seedship. A wasteland that was once the largest, most populated city in the known world, now turned into a lifeless expanse of gray dust. An expanse growing bigger by the minute, at the speed of one meter per second, almost four kilometers per hour. In the ten hours that had elapsed from the Turn of the Millennium, the swarm had spread over a circle of nothing with a radius of thirty-six kilometers, encompassing not only the former capital but also its smaller satellite cities. Captain Kostas Milon Gravess stared at the imposing figure in the distance, hovering in his Seraph forty meters above the ground. Good machines, those flying armors. More flexible than fighter jets, albeit not as fast and not as good at high altitude – still worth striking a truce with the Eastcol. The Pangean Union got a good deal out of their mutual support agreement – intercontinental missile tech against Seraph Mark II, the second to last generation produced by their once bitter enemies. In comparison to the Mark III, the version they were given access to had a bulkier frame and a worse fuel economy, plus no support for different weapon sets. The Seraph Mk. III was designed with flexibility in mind, resulting in its only fixed equipment being a set of needle guns. Blue units, also called ‘herons’, were usually carrying a Raphael rocket launcher and a Cryosawa plasma blade. Black units, a.k.a. ‘dogs’, only carried anti-personnel weaponry, such as a light needle machine gun, which supported the twin barrels already available to the pilot, and a smaller plasma knife. Red units, the infamous ‘mavericks’, carried the same equipment as ‘herons’, plus additional shoulder needle guns, a small Michael missile launcher and a second plasma blade. The Mk. II was, instead, a jack of all trades, master of none high-speed fighting unit, mounting two needle guns, a handheld Michael missile launcher, an old fashioned Cryosawa plasma cleaver and a light shoulder machine gun. Its top speed was slower than its successor’s, but its frame was somewhat more resistant to projectile weapons. Gravess gazed at his squadron, at the fifteen other Seraph Mk. II assembled behind his own, all freshly painted with their distinct camo patterns. Niteowls, they were called in the language of exchange. Their name in the official Pangean common idiom was harder to pronounce for those barbarians in the other regions, so, in order to strike fear, they resigned themselves to use their international callsign. Now, the sixteen members of the Niteowls were ready for the most important raid of their life – one that could make them the saviors of Lagash. Since New Netherlands dropped the ball so hard, it was Pangean and Eastcol responsibility to put an end to that madness. Gravess felt his blood boiling at the thought of those weak politicians that unleashed hell on their world. If they had better control on their plants, if they simply treated them better, nothing would have happened. The news of rhizomes being burned alive in the streets as if this could placate the invisible gods of Lagash made him retch. Brutal methods for primitive people, people that turned into nothing but a bunch of savages.

He glanced at the timer on his HUD. Two minutes to the beginning of the operation. Two minutes before the Aquila air fortresses started with the high frequency bombing, to confuse and scramble whatever defense systems the seedship had at her disposal. The government had already taken into account the total loss of the Aquila squadron and found it acceptable. Everyone was on board. Everyone had something to protect. And everyone would protect it, be it family, friends or even their idealized version of a country. Pangea wasn’t heaven. There was too much economic inequality and corruption, but, at least, every citizen had the means to carry on a decent life. Not fulfilling, maybe, and lacking quite some perks, but nonetheless decent. A roof on their head, three meals a day, universal healthcare. Yes, Pangea wasn’t heaven, but it was very far from being hell. And, among all countries where he lived, Gravess would not think twice about getting back to his homeland.

One minute to go. He tapped the commlink, ready to share his words with his siblings in arms, not knowing how many of them would survive to see the next dawn. That thought scared him, but it was part of the job description. As their captain, it was his duty to take care of them.

“Niteowls? This is Captain Gravess. T minus forty. Preheat the boosters. As planned, we make a run for the seedship in four diamond formations, four members each – one leader, two wingmates and a rearguard. If the leader is shot down, left wingmate takes over, then right, then rearguard. Once we reach the main hangar, the plan depends on how many of us are left.”

He wore a tired smile, trying to keep his voice from breaking down.

“…please, don’t get shot down. I have a table reserved for sixteen at a nice restaurant in Kalymnou for tomorrow night. All drinks on me.”

Ten seconds to go. He inhaled. Exhaled. Let out a long breath.

“It’s time to prowl.”

He didn’t even complete that sentence, before the first missile exploded on the ashen plains. The Aquilas, just above the clouds, started to shell out cover fire, in a symphony of destruction. A second bomb. A third. Dumb devices, without any homing capabilities, but good enough for an old-fashioned carpet bombing. The Aquilas kept dancing in the sky, avoiding any vertical passage over the seedship. Gravess activate the thrusters, boosted forward in the blink of an eye. His wingmates and rearguard followed suit, then the other three leaders, their wingmates, their rearguards. Four diamonds of Seraphs flying ten meters above ground, heading at high speed towards the monumental seed ship, while everything around them exploded in massive balls of fire. They had less than one hour. Less than one hour before the next wave of nanos. The pathetic Neodutch attempts at stopping the flood ended up with legions of soldiers disassembled to their basic components, in a bloodless carnage that left no bodies. Still, that questionable waste of human lives had been a very precious source of intel and the ensuing drone tests showed that Lagash unleashed a new wave of nanos every sixty minutes sharp, eating everything on their way up to around ten meters of altitude – higher in specific wind conditions. That gave them enough time to get in and shut down the mechanism, whatever it was, provided they could survive the flaks and anti-impactor cannons that dotted the hull of the massive vessel. Gravess accelerated faster, started seeing more details on the black surface of the seedship. Strange spire-like structures were surrounding it, built from nothing by the army of nanos. They looked like antennas of sorts, maybe broadcasting messages to the units that were terrorizing the world. A sudden explosion, the tallest spire destroyed, falling to the ground in a shower of rubble. The cover fire from the Aquilas was working, taking down every structure built by the swarm, leaving only the core ship intact. That was a question of political convenience – Eastcol and Pangea might have nuked the seedship at any given moment, but doing that would have caused the rest of the world to chastise their methods, something a country without a formal head of state couldn’t do without careful consideration. Lagash, the starship, needed to remain unscathed, no matter what happened. Destroying it was the last shot nobody in power wanted to call.

A noise, a titanic noise coming from the ship. Cannon-like shapes emerged from the hull, coiling out of the black surface, turning around it, aiming up. A massive column of light dwarfed the dawn, obscured the sun, severing the sky in half. The icons on Gravess’s HUD flashed, warning and danger signals beeping all around his vision. He boosted forward, trying not to care. He already knew what they meant. Aquila Six was destroyed. Without even having time to attempt an evasive maneuver. A second cannon emerged from the body of the massive starship. A third. A fourth. White rays soared the sky, burning the air, scorching the atmosphere. Still, the bombing continued, the antennas crumbled, the spires broke down, in the sea of gray ash that once was New Babylon. The Niteowls accelerated again, moving around the planned bombing path, never keeping the same bearing for more than a couple of seconds.

A new structure emerged from the hull. Another cannon. This time, aimed at the ground. Aimed at the squad.

Gravess steered his Seraph left, cranked up the side boosters. His wingmates and rearguard followed suit, together with the four other Niteowls. The other eight dashed right, split into a second group. Just in time.

For the new cannon.

To shoot.

A shining white beam, glassing the ground, burning through the wasteland. Gravess felt his armor shaking, his Seraph having to adjust its bearing to avoid crash-landing. He managed to stabilize his thrust, to keep hovering up. But his left wingmate wasn’t that lucky. The shockwave made his seraph tumble, lose its stability, jerk downwards. Only to smash down on the ashen field, grazing the surface, sliding on the dead sand. Right where the cover fire of Aquila Nine was directed. Gravess cursed under his breath, averted his gaze, disabled the comms with the damaged unit, blacked them out for all other Niteowls. Listening to the death rattles of a teammate was horrible for the morale of the troops. Nevertheless, he would have never forgotten Lakaris. He would have remembered him, no matter what. The bombs exploded, obliterating the downed Seraph, projecting chunks of metal all over the ground. Gravess shouted in the communicator, almost to the point of tearing up.

“Watch out for the cannons! The seedship is targeting us! Group three! Group four! Split up! Group two! Take a wider turn left!”

That’s when he noticed something. Group Two Leader. The foot of her Seraph. A foot that had reached too close to the ground.

Was disappearing.

“The swarm!”

The nanos spread around the ashen field, those building the spires. Her mech had flown too low, right into their midst. In that second, in that interminable second, Gravess took out his plasma cleaver, ignited it, boosted towards Leader Two, slashed the legs of her mech, cutting them under the thigh, above the knee. The recoil made the damaged Seraph rise up, while the severed legs, what was left of them, were devoured by the nanos, leaving nothing behind – not even sawdust. Leader Two recovered her heading, stabilized her Seraph, her wingmates and rearguard regrouped. Gravess shouted in his microphone once again.

“Group two, switch Leader and Rearguard! Mariakidis, your Seraph can’t land safely anymore! Bail out and head back to base fifteen!”

“…understood, sir.”

“Godspeed. Keep that table warm for us.”

The crippled Seraph boosted up, thrusted away from the battlefield full speed ahead, leaving its three companions behind. Gravess saw Mariakidis’s mech becoming smaller and smaller, farther and farther away from danger. When the dot disappeared from his radar, he drew a sigh of relief. Then, he focused back on the remaining members of his unit.

“Group two, join group one. Double diamond. Two leads, two wingmates, two rearguards.”

“Yes, sir!”

The six surviving Niteowls of the first two groups compacted, sped up as a single unit, bursting forward, burning obscene amounts of fuel, keeping their velocity low enough to avoid obstacles, fast enough to blaze through the ashen field. In the distance, group three and four were also dashing through the explosions, following the pattern etched in their combat plan. Another white flash, a white beam scorching the sky up above. Another. Another. The wreckage of Aquila Seven came down burning, a ball of fire and scrap metal slowly reaching terminal velocity. Aquila Three’s remains started to fall down too, in a rain of meteors turning the sky red. Gravess checked his HUD. Almost all the Aquilas had been shot down, but not in vain. Four hundred meters to the entrance. He started the deceleration maneuvers, pushed a button on his cloche. Two drones blasted off from his shoulders, shot towards the main gate of the seedship, ten seconds before contact. The rocket-mounted cameras entered the gate, sent back a full scan, before self-destructing two seconds later. The last chance to back down.

All sensors went green.

“No nano activity. Entrance cleared!”

One hundred meters.

The double diamond turned into a line, heading for the main entrance. Group three and four started to converge.

Fifty meters.

Gravess reduced his Seraph’s speed once again, aiming at a smooth landing.

Twenty meters.

The Seraphs of the mixed group blazed through the gate of Lagash, one by one, halting their momentum, quenching the boosters.

Contact.

The legs of Gravess’s Seraph made contact with the polished metallic floor of the seedship, screeched, the dampeners and retractable landing wheels softened the impact. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty meters later, the flying armor stopped, followed by five others. Gravess turned around, towards the open gate, towards the rapidly approaching group three and four, now orphans of the Aquila cover fire.

That’s when he heard something.

A bellowing, a metallic noise.

The gates of Lagash.

Were closing.

With them inside.

“What in Lagash’s name…?”

Before he could utter anything, the entrance was sealed.

Leaving everyone else out in the ashen fields.

Gravess turned on the communicator again, tried to check the status of the Niteowls. Nothing. Just digital noise. Lagash, the seedship which brought mankind to that once desolate planet, was shielding all the signals from the outside world.

“Captain Gravess, sir! We lost contact with Three and Four.”

“It’s the ship.”

There was a distinct gravity in those words, as if they weren’t meant to be pronounced. Gravess felt a heavy weight on his chest, his breath ragged, sweat drenching his forehead. The ship. The closest thing his planet had to a god. They were inside it. Inside the belly of their mother. That itself was sacrilegious, unholy. Even now that their mother decided to wipe them out and start anew, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being unwanted. Still, he was there, with orders. Stop the massacre. Stop the nanos before they eat Pangea. Divinity or not, Lagash’s master plan had to be thwarted at all costs.

“…it’s the ship, Mipouros. She… kept them out.”

Gravess pushed a button on his dashboard, activating the disembarking process. The arms and legs of his Seraph stood still, the core started to open. A breath of fresh air welcomed his filters, the helmet with an owl drawn on its side, together with the number one. Gravess let go of his controls, stepped out of his flying vehicle. His companions started to do the same, as more and more Seraphs opened, revealing the humans hidden in their pulsating heart. All in full tactical armor. All with matching owl-themed helmets. Gravess pulled out his tactical backpack from the underside of the core. A simple rifle with six magazines, a pistol, a plasma knife, two grenades. The standard equipment for a scouting mission. He put on the backpack, allotted the weapons in the slots spread around his uniform.

“Mipouros. Kalisandre. Nitoris. Thouma. Zegaris. It’s all up to us. The others had orders to retreat, if they weren’t able to enter the ship. They are probably safe, by now.”

A terrifying tremor shook the floor. Then another. Gravess almost fell, tried his best to avoid tumbling. Then, silence, again. Gravess glanced around, looked for any indication of what it could have been. Maybe, it was the recoil of the anti-impactor cannons. Or, maybe, the remains of one Aquila had just hit the ground at terminal velocity close to the ship. He decided to ignore whatever implications both alternatives had. So, instead, he started to scan his surroundings. Lights were off. Only the faint LEDs from the instruments dotted the absolute darkness they had landed into. That was the main entrance of the seedship, the one from which the first humans walked out after being artificially grown in an array of capsules. The flight deck with the vaults was not too far, only five minutes of walking time in perfect conditions. Gravess called the HUD on his visor. Forty-eight minutes to the next nano swarm emission. That was how much time they had to disable the reset system and get out.

“Nitoris, trace the route. Everyone, switch on your flashlights. Our time is running out.”

In the empty corridors of Lagash, every second weighed like a geological era. Random tremors, every now and then, the soft humming of the electronics. The seedship bellowed, grumbled like a gigantic stranded whale, one whose entrails were walked by minuscule parasites, leaving even smaller footprints behind them. Gravess felt the sound of his own breaths, the sound of his heart beating. None of the Niteowls was speaking. All of them were following Nitoris, one of the two map specialists they had on team, while Kalisandre cross-checked every movement. Gravess hoped to have enough soldiers for two exploration teams, but spreading his five comrades thin would have been suicide, in hostile territory.

Hostile territory.

Lagash, the cradle of humanity, was now an enemy.

The thought made him shiver.

Gravess stopped.

A movement.

Something in the corner of his eye.

He turned around, checking for Mipouros. She was still there, looking at him behind her dark visor, stopping too.

“…sir?”

“I thought… no, nothing.”

It had to be his anxiety. No way something alive was lurking on that ship. The nanos would have killed it immediately, if that were the case. He tapped the side of his helmet, browsing through the menus on his visor, turned on the biosensors, launched a scan.

Six traces.

That was how it should have been.

He drew a deep breath, heaved a sigh. That situation was doing a number on him.

Seven.

He jerked, almost fell.

Six, again.

Gravess slammed his hand side of his helmet, armed his rifle, pointed it around.

“…sir?”

“Everyone, quiet. Turn on your bioscanners. Tell me how many traces you see.”

His voice trembled, as the the light from his aiming helper moved on the roof, through the cables, the pipes, the beams.

“Mine… must be defective.”

He watched as their hands went to their controls, as they all switched on their sensors. After a couple of seconds, the first answer came back.

“Six on my side, sir.”

“Six for me too.”

“Six.”

Gravess felt a deep feeling of relief. Yeah. A mechanical failure. That was it. That had to be it.

“Seven.”

Until Nitoris’s voice broke the spell.

“S… seven for me too, sir?”

Followed by Zegaris’s utterance.

“No, wait, six? It’s six again?”

“What the heck?”

A chill ran down Gravess’s spine. That didn’t make sense. It had to be an error, a bug in the system. Biosignatures couldn’t blink in and out of existence that quickly.

Thouma raised her hand, her finger pointed towards the end of a side corridor.

“It was there. The sensor marked it there, before it disappeared.”

Gravess nodded, knew what the following question would have been.

“Should we take a look, sir?”

He glanced at the timer. Forty-two minutes left. Investigating the flight deck had absolute priority, but being killed from behind by an unidentified creature was a risk he couldn’t accept. So, caution it was.

“Yes. If we stick to the plan, we could be ambushed by this… anomaly. We can’t take any chances.”

“What if we split in two groups, sir? One to the flight deck and one going on here?”

“That’s too dangerous. We go in together. We allocate a maximum of five minutes to this ghost hunt. If we can’t find anything, we run back.”

Splitting in the dark, in the belly of a spaceship made thousands of years before by another mankind. That was how all tragedies began, how all horror movies played out. No, splitting in that case was idiotic. Even if they were strapped for time, a cautious investigation had priority. So, he took the lead, walked towards the corridor Thouma indicated, with everyone else following him, slowly, carefully, methodically. His visor still said six signatures. There was something weird about that blink, something his technicians back at base fifteen would have needed to address, if they ever came back to tell the tale. He retracted that thought immediately. Base fifteen was just a temporary outpost, nothing more than a glorified refueling station in what once was the Eastern Fringe of New Netherlands. No way the technicians there were able to fix stuff that easily. Nobody of value was sent that deep into enemy territory. Still, the place was enough for Mariakidis to land safely and have her Seraph refitted, hopefully. Maybe, Thessalonios and the other members of group three and four got there too. Gravess could do nothing but pray for their wellbeing, while slowly walking through the unlit viscera of the whale.

After two more steps, Gravess glanced around, turned his head left, then right. Something didn’t add up. That corridor they were roaming wasn’t in their briefing, wasn’t even on the maps. Or, if it were, he missed it completely.

“Nitoris? Where are we, exactly?”

“…”

“Nitoris?”

“Sir, I cross-checked the map twice with Kalisandre. This whole section was… previously sealed.“

“Come again?”

“It was one of the walled zones, those that were never opened despite all efforts.”

Gravess stopped. A sealed section. One were no human had been before. Opening after the nano swarm release. That couldn’t be a coincidence. That had to be the answer. Suddenly, his heart felt reinvigorated. Maybe, it was all by design. Maybe, that section contained the answer. The biosignal was a beacon, a way to lead them there, to retrieve the solution. Wishful thinking, he knew, but still better than letting all hope die.

“We head forward, then. Come on, we can’t waste time. Keep an eye on the biosensors.”

Six. It was still six. The corridor had no branches, it was a literal hallway, bathed in the vanishing light of blinking LEDs scattered on wires, pipes, metallic plates. A hallway without visible end. At least, till they reached a door. Open. A massive gate, a thick veil of darkness watching them from the other side.

Six. Six biosignals. Not more.

The fascination of the unknown, that ancestral thrill was taking over Gravess’s psyche. He drew a deep breath, crossed the threshold, stepped inside the room.

Nothing. Nothing happened. His flashlight browsed around, stopping on a plethora of displays. An old design, one that he hadn’t seen in years. Still, they were displays, there was no mistaking it. All dead. All dark.

“Nitoris, what do you think this room was for…?”

A sudden tremor.

Everything shaking.

Light.

All of a sudden.

Burned the dark, from all sides.

It was them, the displays.

The screens coming to life, one by one.

One by one, they switched on, as soon as the whole troop entered the room.

One by one, they showed an image.

A man in a blue suit.

Staring at the viewer.

“…Anthony Yarramundi?”

Gravess’s jaw almost fell. Around them, around his soldiers, there were thirty, maybe even fifty displays, all featuring that face. The face of the last president of the Human Commonwealth. Glaring down at them from every corner of the room.

“As the President of the Human Commonwealth, I’ve been granted the authority to choose my capital. It’s called Melbourne, the place where I was born. You’ll never hear of it again. I’ll be lucky if I die here.”

The recorded voice of Yarramundi echoed on the walls, amplified, more or less synced, reverberating. Several instances of that same speech, but with slight differences, slight changes in posture, in the intonation, in the facial expressions.

“This is to say that we know we’ve lost. We can’t stand any longer. It’s a question of one year at most, maybe two before we collapse. This is why we focused all our efforts on the seedship program. The only thing we could do was giving mankind a chance to be reborn in space. Stronger, more independent. But, since you’re watching this video, our mission must have failed.”

The speech of the Turn, the same chilling words and, yet, not the same. Gravess gasped, unable to understand, hypnotized by that view. What followed, though, was a cacophony of sounds. The voices spoke over each other, all saying something different, mingling together, mixing, shaking. Not one screen was the same. Not one version of the president was synced anymore with any other. Until, in one last moment, Yarramundi raised his arms to the sky, his mouth contorted in a grimace of pain, his eyes wide open.

On all of the displays.

At once.

“Let the tenth vault open. Let history… restart!”

A primal scream, a broken laughter, a mad grin.

“Humanity! Will live! Forever!”

That’s when Gravess’s visor beeped.

Seven.

Seven biosignals.

Now

stable.

And he saw it.

In front of a wall of screaming Yarramundi faces, it stood.

A shadow.

Colossal.

Inhuman.

Two shining red eyes on the backdrops of displays.

Shining eyes on a blank face.

Long tendrils. Sharp spikes.

That’s when Gravess realized it.

The biosignal wasn’t a trace.

It was a lure.

And they fell for it.

Before he could even raise his gun, the displays switched off, all together.

Leaving only darkness behind.

And the screams of six dots on a biosensor visor.

Six dots fading away.

One by one.