“Why the fuck didn’t you do that to start with?” Andrea screamed loudly at me from where she hid between a chair.

I scowled as I realised I was now down to seven rounds.

“Yeah. Glad you’re okay too, I guess,” I muttered and frowned at the corpse. The corpse that was now indeed a corpse. I begrudgingly loaded another round and twisted the cylinder. I didn’t cock the hammer though, and approached the prone xeno’s still body.

“Unless it’s brain is in its ass, I’m pretty certain its dead,” I said to Andrea.

“Are you guys okay?” Nikhara concerned voice filled my coms-link.

“Yeah. Just a little roughed up.”

“Ugh, I might’ve actually shit myself,” Andrea groaned and clung to the chair wheeling it out and over to me. Like it would make any difference against this thing. “So what the fuck is it?”

“No idea. Let’s take it back with us and examine it on the Erebus.”

“Yeeyyaahh-no. Seriously babe, that thing was scary as fuck. There is no fucking way I am bringing that thing onto my ship end of discussion.

“We are,” I said firmly and crouched down beside it. I prodded at one of the black triangular plates. It was hard and when I tried to move the arm of the thing, it moved with it. “It’s like chitinous armour,” I mumbled in amazement. The strange black skin of its body was hard as well and ridged, interconnecting in sections like a exoskeleton.

“Well I’m glad you truly find it fucking-fascinating, babe. I am, truly. But can we seriously get off this ship and back home. It’s spooky enough as is, without you playing with a corpse.”

I smirked at the android sassiness and rose.

“Sure. You get the legs, and I’ll take the its arms.” After a bout of complaining from Andrea. We started off back through the ship, and my feeling of impending dread had lessened—making the trip a little lighter—but it hadn’t abated at all.

Sure enough when we passed the spot we’d seen the corpse that is now a corpse previously. It was gone, and now held between us.

We made it back to the Erebus quickly, and I set the body down walking over to close the airlock door. I heard the clamps disengages and then we were free of the destroyer Hazard -A55B14ch.

Jets hosed us down as we waited. And a minutes later I saw Nikhara on the other side of the internal airlock. She had one of Andrea’s laser pistols in hand and nodded at us through the small window.

The door released with a hiss, and Andrea clunked out first with me following behind. The unidentified xeno carried between us.

“Glad you’re okay,” Nikhara told me as I past her by.

“Yeah, I’m fine as well ya know,” Andrea called back and rolled her head like she was rolling her eyes at us.

“Missed your blue-ass as well Andii,” Nikhara said with a grin. “Where’re we taking it then?”

“Down to med-bay,” I replied and nodded ahead of us to the elevator. Once we were on level four of the Erebus, we shuffled down the corridors and into the med-bay, the orc-dryad scurrying ahead of us to enable the med-pod.

We hauled the thing inside, and stepped away as the pod shut closed. “It’s doing a full scan, and should take about an hour to fully process, then we can decide on an autopsy,” Nikhara said as she viewed the holographic display for the pod.

The familiar scan light switched on, and slowly—by increments—moved up the things body.

“I need to get out of this suit and have a shower. Has there been any activity?” I asked Nikhara as we moved to leave the med-bay.

“None whatsoever, hon. All seems rather dead out there. Almost like everyone just up and left”

“Or died…” I murmured quietly and made sure to mute my voice both internal and externally. My mind once again drifted back to my home-world.

I shook my head, “I’m gonna grab a bite to eat. Andrea, do you want to drop off your gear and meet in the ready room. In say fifteen minutes?”

“Sure, babe. That’ll give me enough time to scrub the memory from my brain,” I could hear the weak smile in her tone and nodded. Leaving them behind as both women began to chat, I made my way back to the elevator and up to level two.

I removed my armoured-suit, and stripped out of my lightweave flight-suit. Then I popped down to the communal showers. Which were usually inactive, and tried with a futile effort to scrub the encounter from my mind as well.

I hadn’t thought of my home-world in years and all of a sudden this sensation of familiarity and dread was occupying my mind. I remembered how’d I been caught stealing from the bakery. Bryson’s Baked Biscuit, something.

The fat owner clubbing me over the head with a stun rod.

I’d been living in the loft of the small bakery for about a month, after a gang had driven me from my previous hideout. Beggars had turf after all, and I had infringed on several gangs by begging in their territories. Never did get on well with others growing up.

Anyway, the fat baker had clubbed the back of my skull and I had blacked out. When I came around, everyone was dead. Well, except for the animals. But those that ate any of the corpses dropped dead not long after. It had been slightly terrifying at first, but a part of me had been overjoyed at seeing all of them dead.

All of those that had ignored me. Spat at me. Beat me to a bloody pulp. I was the king of the world for five(ish) months.

The whispered thoughts in the back of mind, wanted to feel that way again. Like a seed that thought had taken root long ago. Now it was all I could do to turn my mind away from it. From the lure of wanting and having it all.

The hot jets washed over my face and I let myself be lost in that moment. I had the Erebus, I had Nikhara, and Andrea, and I loved them deeply, and sincerely. I didn’t need more.

I had tried to curve my dark desires with the military. My home-world had been on another fringe sector between Zaria and Dias’andries, which was elven-xeno territory.

I cut the jets off and shook my head rigorously, marching over to a side mirror I examined myself intently. My sharp and rugged features and fiercely intense verdant green eyes. My dark auburn hair had been shaven, and was quickly growing out again. I had an assortment of shrapnel scars along my right pectoral, and upper arm. And a small thin hooked scar that curved my lower jaw.

I nodded to myself. Unsure of why I’d looked at my reflection so intently, as if searching for something that had changed. And for the briefest of moments, it seemed as if my green eyes had glowed with a pale inner light.

But I shook my head and dispelled the thought as me being tired.

“Marcus?” I heard Nikhara called out from outside the communal showers entrance.

Why she didn’t just enter. She’d seen me naked more than enough times. Yet after every mission, she let me have my five to ten minutes of peace as I sorted my head out.

“Yeah Nik?” I called out, and grabbed a towel from the dispenser and began to dry myself off as I walked to the door. I swiped at the pad to open the door, and it beeped a dull red light at me. “What’s up? can you open the door for me, the pad is being dumb again.”

“Sure,” she laughed lightly. It slid aside and the picturesque beauty of fitness and femininity stood before. “You been showering this whole time?”

I frowned, “sure I have. Why?”

“It’s been thirty minutes. Andrea was done and ready twenty minutes ago. We tried to call your implant. But it wasn’t active.”

I blinked as I realised it was in fact turned off. Blinking my left eye twice and squinting, my neural-implant spun to live and stuttered, before winking out. “Huh, my implant’s playing up.”

“Andii will have to check it out later. We did a quick review of what she managed to pull off the -Ahem- ship. It’s some very interesting footage.”

“Alright. Give me a minute, I’ll be quick,” I told her and sped up my towel drying. There were dry jets in the communal showers, but they took a good half minute to heat up.

“I’ve heard that before,” Nikhara said, and I looked over my shoulder to see her staring intently at my ass.

“Must’ve been before you met me then,” I quipped back at her.

Once I was dry and dressed we made our way up to the operations deck. I took a quick moment to stare at the large display that showed the blackness of space, and the glint of the drifting ships. Beyond them was the three planets.

Lios the one that Bill had mentioned to me, it was an orange desert of a world. To the right beside that was Portia, the exact opposite of Lios. It was entirely oceanic, with only a small percentage of landmass. To the right of that was a more equally balanced planet, but the majority of its landmass was jungle, rainforests and snowy capped mountains. With sixty percent of the planet being ocean.

We moved quickly into the ready room, to see Andrea messing with my scry table. They had both laughed at me, when I called that. Yet I was adamant on it being something at least along those lines. It just made the Erebus way cooler in my head.

The amount of people who had tried to take her from me. Either by violence, or cheating me. They always want one thing more than my women. And it was the Erebus.

I wasn’t even sure where I’d come up with the name for her. I imagined it was similar to how a mother named her child. It just fit the black raven ship.

Andrea looked and furrowed her brow in annoyance at me. “I know, I know. Just lost track of time is all, sorry,” I said heading off her annoyed objection.

“Well then get your ass in. My day has been weird enough, without you forgetting to turn your implant back on.” I wanted to rebut her statement, but thought better of arguing with the beautiful blue-haired android.

“Now, can you manipulate your damn ‘scry’ table so I can link to footage through. Stupid thing never does what I want it to do.”

“That’s because you’re too brash with it,” I muttered quietly to myself. And leaning over I tapped my pointer finger down twice on the table. Just as before it easily manipulated, and slid oily across the surface to congealed in the centre of the table. Rippling as it shivered up into glassy form.

Before us now was a three-way glassy mirror, standing on a pedestal of mercurial substance. The small grains constantly shifting and moving.

A dull grey light filled the mirrors and a second later, Andrea plugged a portable console into the tables port. She pressed a few buttons and then a distorted staticky display shone through.

“The footage is distorted,” Andrea started seeing our confusion. “Something or someone must’ve messed with the ships systems before the chaos started.”

“We have actually proof?” I blinked and looked at the android. She nodded soberly at me and returned her attention back the ethereal display. I did likewise and watched in fascination as she played the footage for us.

“Ma’am,” came a voice, it sounded drowned out and distant. I shot a glance at Andrea, but the android just shrugged helplessly.

“What is it?” came the sharp tone of my ex-wife. And looking through the staticky display, I saw the terse blonde and tall figure of Jessica as she strove towards the starboard side of the ships command deck.

Straight towards the communications terminal. She rested her hand on top of the console and leaned towards the young officer there.

“It’s-uh, probably nothing but we did an advanced scan of the planets and found nothing. No activity whatsoever. But we did find an anomaly on Lios, there’s a sub-facility beneath the city called Falcis. A for a brief moment there, there was a blip of life and now it’s gone.”

“Gone?” Jessica questioned rhetorically.

“Gone, Ma’am. It was there, now it isn’t.”

“I know what you meant lieutenant,” Jessica snapped harshly. “I want to know why it’s gone?”

“I don’t know Ma’am. Not unless we enter atmosphere, then sent a team down to investigate the anomaly we won’t know.”

“I’ll take your suggestion into consideration lieutenant,” Jessica said and leaned away from the young officer. The second she stepped away the whole screen of our display went fuzzy. The distortion worsening.

“Did we lose it, or was that it?” I asked Andrea.

“No. It’s comes back, but I can only guessed there was a span of hours between jumps. The footage had no time notations so I’m unsure on how long had passed.”

The footage feed came back, and the scene was a lot different. “Our ground team just reported contact, Vice-Admiral.”

“What contact exactly?” Jessica yelled as an alert rang out making the officers on the command deck jump. A red hue plastering the ceiling and floor.

“Higgs, what is going on?” Jessica called, and jumped out of her command chair to stroll towards the prow of the fore of the deck.

“Our sensors are picking up several battleships of unknown origin and model. I can’t get a complete read on them, Admiral.”

“Why?”

“Something is jamming our sensors beyond simple detection--”

“Team whiskey is down, Ma’am. They’re not responding.” Ignoring the man who’d interrupted her conversation with the previous officer, she continued.

“Higgs, put the ships on the live feed,” Jessica ordered the man and he nodded frantically. His finger dancing over the consoles key’s.

The camera we were viewing this all through distorted and briefly jumped to show the entire fore-deck, and I guessed this camera was on the rear wall.

Jessica stood at the centre of the deck, her back to the camera. Her arms behind her back as she looked out the massive display window. It showed the Lios planet, and a wavering haze above the planets’ atmosphere.

Everyone on the deck stopped what they were doing and stared at wavering distortion. Then a bright dark purple flash filled everything, and the camera footage went again.

“Oh, come on,” I growled in annoyance.

“Wait for it,” Andrea cautioned me, and I sat back in my seat and waited. Five minutes past and suddenly the footage reignited once again.

Everyone on the deck was lying slumped on the ground, they groaned as if hungover. And where Jessica once stood, was now a pool of blood and severed hand. “What the?” I started to ask in disbelief.

But a loud tearing rent of metal filled the audios, and a familiar shaped burst through the door and onto the deck. The footage distorted in and out of focus, but my eyes caught the wavering haze above the planet, as the—what I guessed was a—ship entered the planet atmosphere.

The haze around the enormous ships prow loosening and revealing a totally alien shape. Though I couldn’t make out all the details the ships front looked like that of a gargantuan black and purple skull. Weaving out behind the skull was something that looked like coils intertwining as they wove backwards, twisting like thick strands of hair.

Then the footage cut out and the audio played a long sonorous tone as screams could be heard in the background. Then it cut out completely.

I stared at the blank ethereal mirror, as the grains of the table began to reknit and coalesce back together. Silently the scry table returned back to its dormant state.

Pressing a hand to my forehead, I couldn’t help but play the image of the unveiling ship breaching through Lios’ atmosphere. The whispered thoughts at the back of my mind harkening up images of my home-world.

“So what’d think you captain?” Andrea asked and her voice brough me back from the brink of … something. I couldn’t help but feel slightly interwoven with this plot.

“Have we heard anything from Bill yet?” I asked either woman.

“Nothing--”

“Not a thing babe--”

“I think… we’re dealing with an invasion,” I stated slowly and carefully.

“By the Yashrin confederation?” Nikhara asked me, but I shook my head silently.

“By what I don’t know. Has the scan completed for our unidentified guest yet?”

“No, but it should be done in the next half hour or so.”

“Okay, in the meantime try and get in contact with any Zarian Admiralty. Andrea, I want you monitoring our sensors and check for vital scans on the remain ships.”

“What will you do?” Andrea asked and I noted the concern in her voice.

“Get a quick nap. Wake me when the pods scan is complete, Nikhara.” Both women nodded at my orders and I gave them a wearily smile before I left and made my way down to level one. As soon as I entered my quarters and my head hit the soft foam pillows. My eyes blinked shut and worlds evaporated into darkness.

Only to snap open again as a tremendous roaring noise filled everything and shook my very soul awake. Scrambling to my feet I found myself entirely somewhere else. Massive bone spikes and curved pillars filled the desolate landscape and in the distance walked black skeletal figures numbering in the millions. The flashing purple sky erupted with lightning and I saw long towering roots of black bone shooting into the sky as they breached something.

Pulses of dark energy thrummed up the bone-like roots and into the breach. A thundering roar howled and shook the ground, causing the pillars and rib-like bones to crumble into dust.

I realised I was on a plateau overlooking all of this. And suddenly an enormous figure of colossal heights rose out of the ground. The black bone-like chitinous skin melded together as if it was forming as it rose. Two black skeletal monstrous heads arose up from the five-hundred-meter-tall giant’s shoulder.

Its back filled with the skulls of millions of skeletons, their mouths and hollowed orbs emitting a dark purple light that trailed wisps of dark energy.

The bipedal giant’s tail swayed back and forth idly as its double heads roared a thunderous cry that shook the landscape. The ground beneath me rattled violently and I almost fell over, when a pairs of hands caught my forearm and hauled me upright. The grip was so strong that I let out a slight gasp at the crushing feel of it.

“Careful there. These travels to the Abyssal Planes can still hurt, scrape a knee and it fucking kills when you wake up. Trust me on that.” The stranger said to me and looked back entranced at the scene before us.

I studied him as he gazed out. He was slightly taller than me, by about a few inches. Broad of chest and powerfully built, yet relaxed, agile, and comfortable in his movements. His entire right arm was a gauntlet than lead up into a pauldron stylised as a wolf’s head.

He wore strange armour, than was black, dark red and green the obsidian-like metal only broken up my fluid currents of what seemed to be molten lava.

His dark green cloak billowed out and I saw an image of a burnt tree on the back of his obsidian plate armour. His features were strikingly young, and yet also aged by wisdom and a rough many years. His hair was long and rested about his neck, the sides a silvery grey. His one eye was a bright blueish-green with a halo of gold around the pupil. His other eye concealed by a patch.

“That is what’re up against,” he told me and pointed out his gauntleted hand at the breach in the sky. “Not these distractions,” he waved his other at the colossal giant and millions of black skeletal figures.

“Sal’re’al said she’d found a Draugur seed, uncorrupted by the ether,” finally he looked back at me and the gold halo around his eye, flared with power and it felt as if my very soul had been weighed.

Then the intense man smiled crookedly at me, “you’re a good man, Marcus Haze. But this will really test that morality of yours. Fail and I’ll kill you like I’ll kill the rest of my brother’s forces. Prevail, and I’ll help you however I can.”

“Who’re you?” I shouted as the sides of vision started to creep close.

“I am Rokkaia of course,” he said gently, and his words seemed to whisper powerfully across the fabric of the Plane. The giant colossal beasts double-heads snapped in our direction and focused on the man.

Then it roared with anger, and fear.

This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]