Who am I again? Oh yes! I'm a writer! Well, in that case, here comes the first of three planned sections for this blog. In this particular section, I will begin and continue an ongoing story once a week, as with each other section. Think of it like a webcomic, except with more words! Enjoy!
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With Earth dying behind them, four ships carrying only ten percent of the human population left for space. For a hundred years, these ships traveled, destined for a newly-discovered life-supporting planet on the edge of the next galaxy. Dangerously untested, and hastily researched antimatter travel powered their journey, and they rocketed through space at speeds previously believed impossible. With no other option than leaving the planet behind, those who were lucky enough to reserve a spot on the ships, along with those who managed to stow away, took the risky journey. Between the choice of certain death and uncertain life, what man would hesitate in making the decision?
Over a hundred years, you would imagine that plenty of stories happened on each of the four Space Arks. And your imagination would be correct. However, the story you're here for today is none of these. The story you find here begins with humanity's first physical contact with a new planet outside of the galaxy, and the wonders and life they discover there. It continues with their fight to thrive on a completely alien planet. We begin with one ship, though they all land in nearly the same instant (keep that in mind, it will be important.) Our first story is that of the landing of the crew and passengers of the Valkyrie.
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“Men and women of the SpArk Valkyrie... These are words we've waited to hear for a long time. We've arrived.” Silence filled the ship for possibly the first time ever in the long journey, aside from the initial liftoff from Earth. One hundred years aboard the ship meant that many of the current passengers were the second, third or even fourth generation, and never knew anything but the ship their entire life, “I know we're all feeling apprehensive. I am, too. As long as I've been alive, the world has been this canister of metal.” Throughout the ship, everyone looked at all the metal walls around them, “But that's all going to change. Hold on, we're setting down.” A heavy thump rocked the ship, “Welcome to our second Earth. External sensors read ideal oxygen levels, as projected.” Hundreds of people clustered at the loading/unloading dock, waiting for the doors to open. Waiting for their first glimpse of the new world. A loud clunk echoed through the cavernous room as the locks slid away from the ramp door.
Collectively, the crowd's eyes narrowed as they bathed in their first glimpse of sunlight. Only the absolute oldest men and women on the ship remembered sunlight, and even those were vague, fogged memories from infancy, stuck in their head because it felt so different from everything else they would know until now. Recalling them was like walking through a bog on a warm day, the rising mist and fog showing illusions of the impossible. The only difference from Earth was that the sky took on a different hue: a pale orange.
As the opening door revealed more of the sky, the explorers were greeted by something entirely new: two suns. One appeared much larger than Earth's Sun, and was apparently much cooler, considering the moderate temperature pervading the ship's interior despite blazing ball's apparent closeness. The other was but a miniature circle on the first's periphery, orbiting much further from the planet. The two shone together, the small one creeping visibly through the sky, the big one moving much slower, appearing to stay in place.
The next sight fit to blow the mind were the treetops against the skyline as the lowering door continued to unveil more of the world. An incandescent rainbow of foliage met the crowd's eyes. Trees of red, yellow, blue and more sprouted into the heavens, all of varying heights, all standing tall in the sky. The door continued its descent, showing the tree's trunks to be a deep green. Marveling at the sight, the crowd continued to await their first steps into the new world. Those steps would not come until many hours later.
Another marvel waited for them in the deep blue hue of the planet's grass. This sight lasted all of two seconds however, as every eye fell on something else entirely. Standing at the base of the forest was their first sighting of the planet's fauna. With a thud that crushed the grass beneath it, the ramp finished its lowering arc, and the first man stepped onto its metal surface. He stared across the length of the field, watching the creature. It watched them back with three eyes, one resting on the hunch formed by its back, the other two in a 'normal' place on what looked like its head. Something twitched and fell behind it to both of its sides. They were tails, the watchers realized, with wicked points of bone sticking out at semi-random intervals. It took a step forward, and the man standing out front realized something. The look in its eyes was not curiosity or confusion. It was rage. Hate.
It braced itself and arched its head to the sky, letting out a roar that easily traveled across the distance to the ship. From the forest, three more of the same creature stepped out. Then four more. Then eight. Twenty. Before long, they were innumerable.
“Close the door.” The man out front whispered. The first creature took another step forward. Then another. And then it charged, followed by the many behind it. Thousands, it felt like, and even what looked like new creatures, impossible to identify in the surging crowd, “Close the door!” The man screamed this time, “Everyone get inside!” His screams were engulfed by the crowd's yelling. Inside, someone ran to the ship intercom and pressed it, calling into it.
“Close the ramp!” Up in the cockpit, the message came through garbled by the yelling. The pilot, still gazing upon the tangerine sky with wonder, assumed it was the celebratory cries of the ship's many passengers.
“What was that?” Captain Riley pressed the button and called back, “We need to camp? Well of course, we're not going to have a town overnight!”
“No! The ramp! Monsters! Coming!” His heart stopped. Monsters? He understood the words 'No' and 'Monsters.'
“What do you mean monsters?”
“Charging the ship! Thousands!” And then, obviously at the very height of his lung power, the voice called out, “CLOSE THE RAMP!” Wasting no time to reply, the captain slammed the button that closed the door. His heart hammered. Was it too late?
Down below, the beasts drew closer and closer, and the ramp had only begun to raise. The creature's mouths frothed with anticipatory saliva as deep hatred burned in their eyes. Deep in the crowd, a man sighed and reached inside his dark jacket. “Am I really the only one who thought of this possibility?” From a pocket hidden within he produced two pistols, weapons his great grandfather had smuggled aboard. Reaching for his back, also underneath the coat, he pulled a shotgun upward and handed it to a man standing beside him, “Take it. Fight.” The man stopped screaming as the gunman stepped forward and looked down at the shotgun in his hands. It was a foreign object. “Come on everyone! I'm out of guns, but grab something! Anything! They'll be here before the door closes! Fight!” The gunman called above the crowd before stepping to the front, standing in the opening.
He raised both pistols and aimed at the first creature, right between the eyes. Years of training his aim, not with the actual gun but with a toy gun that fired plastic pellets, guided him. His father, passing down his grandfather's wisdom, always told him, “Firing guns in the ship is extremely dangerous, never do it.” The first shot surprised him, his arms catapulting over his head like the arms of a trebuchet with the force of the kickback. The bullet went wild, screaming off into the forest, and he laughed – his father warned him, but his toy pistol never had such kick! He could compensate, though. The next shot hit its mark, piercing it between the eyes. It flew backward and landed, the thump inaudible over the screams of men and roars of monsters. He smiled, beginning to take aim at the next attacker, but the smile faded before he fired again. The beast he'd left on the ground was stirring, and soon returned to its feet and charged once more.
“Hmm. Between the eyes, but not a kill point.” He took aim and fired again, sending a shot deep inside the eye on its back. It fell, and he watched it carefully. This time, it stayed down, “Ah! There we go!” He turned, noticing the crowd had partially torn apart the ship in arming themselves with steel bars and other such metal objects. The door was significantly less than halfway closed, and the creatures would soon descend upon them, “Everyone! When they get here, remember: a vital organ is inside their hump. Aim for that!” The man to whom he handed the shotgun stepped forth from the crowd with a nod.
“I think they understand.” He held the gun forward, “I don't know how to use this.”
“Shotguns are pretty simple. Just point it at the enemy, pump that piece right there once, first toward you, and then back to its original position. Then you just pull the trigger, right there, when they get close. Hard to miss with a sawed-off.” He said, giving the most abbreviated explanation he could muster.
“Thanks, I think. I'll do my best. Who are you?”
“I'm Kevin Collinson, born of a stowaway.”
“Ah, that explains the, uh... These.” He gestured to the weapons, “Got any more?”
“I wish. But with the three guns here, and everyone else with their own makeshift weapons, we'll be able to hold until the ship closes. Now, way I see it, they'll be able to board until the ramp's about halfway closed. At that point, no more will be able to jump that high. Door's at about twenty percent now, at my best guess, and that's not so bad. Time they get here, it'll be twenty five percent. We just gotta fight until it's up far enough. Got all that?”
“I... I think so. None of us have ever really seen a fight.”
“I know, neither have I.” Kevin raised his voice, “Just watch the tails! That's the most dangerous part on the bunch.” His voice resumed the quick, conversational tone, “Don't worry. They won't even get close to you or me. It's the people swinging around melee weapons who're in real danger. Here, I forgot to give you these.” He pulled shotgun shells from his pockets, as many as he could find, “There are about twenty shots in total. Use them well. You load it like this.” He took the weapon and broke it down, opening the loading chamber, showing it to the other passenger, “Got that?”
“I think so...” The other passenger answered once more, this time a bit less shaky.
“Good. One more thing before they get here.”
“What's that?”
“What's your name?”
“Gareth Redwind.”
“A strong name. I made a good choice, handing you that.” He threw a wild glance to the approaching beasts, “Here they come!” He turned and fired three quick blasts, the first three crumpling before they could reach the boarding platform. An explosive blast sent Gareth flying backward, falling on his behind. He laughed.
“Might've warned me about that!”
“Right! It's got a kickback, by the way!” Kevin called with a chuckle in his voice over the sound of five more shots.
“Never could have guessed!” Gareth called back, pulling himself back up to his feet and bracing himself before the next blast.
The beasts reached the platform in the next few minutes, and the passengers of the Valkyrie surged forward. Keeping ahead of the crowd, Gareth and Kevin managed to blast the first wave off the rising platform. Still others tended to the sides of the platform, where still more creatures leaped aboard. It's like baseball, Kevin noted as he watched a passenger winding up a metal bar over his shoulder before letting it fly into the midsection of a leaping beast. He'd seen pictures and even the odd video of the game being played, and he chuckled to himself as he let off another round of pistol fire into the oncoming surge of monsters, It's exactly like baseball.
Groups of passengers lined almost every inch of the loading dock, wooden planks, steel bars and various other weaponized ship pieces at the ready. Gareth gave a cheer beside Kevin as he blasted another set of three leaping beasts with his next-to-last bullet. Kevin grinned, although he could tell he was running low on bullets, himself. The fight had already waged for at least three minutes, and he felt his feet begin to slip under the increasing angle of the dock.
“We're almost out, folks! Start falling back, and let this thing close up!” The combination of having the high ground and having steel weapons readily available had handed even this inexperienced group a victory devoid of casualties. Even as they retreated, one or two beasts still made the difficult jump onto the closing ramp, but Kevin had saved his final shots for exactly that occasion. They fell, and they fell easily, corpses sliding down the ramp to join the passengers still basking in the shared adrenaline rush of a battle won. A cheer filled the unloading bay, followed by the deafening sounds of excited conversation. Kevin remained silent, his thoughts elsewhere.
By the time the ship closed, the din had died down, shifting to an eery silence. Kevin's one thought had finally jumped through the minds of every passenger: this victory was awfully hollow. With who-knows-how-many beasts out there, and everyone still stuck inside, how would they leave the ship? Food supplies would not last forever.
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