#sol2487-3

Here is my first “earth is space australia and humans are space orcs” post. Have read those and got stucked on the “poisonous oxygen breather”. If other races would breath less deadly (and less energetic) gases for their cell functioning, their bodys were bound to have quite inefficient growth compared to us. So basically, oxygen breather are just fricking huge to aliens. Oh, and I think human’s and bird’s eyes are quite the thing, our eyesight goes beyond most sentinent race’s imagination, but that’s a later term. It’s planned to have several episodes, hope you enjoy it. Please don’t mind my english and leave a comment.

That puny little Planet in System Sol2487, the only one with liquid water there, was indeed a scary one. Our ship was sent to investigate, take some specimens, and leave. No extraordinary thrilling task. The atmosphere was breathable, enough C02 to keep our bodies running, and nothing eminently deadly in there. The oxygen content was somewhat high though. And the sun’s radiation, too. This planet was so tiny in comparison to our homeworld, but much nearer to this system’s sun. Better not risking anything and taking the full protective gear with respiratory support. And those interferences with our ship’s navigation system bothered me. Some mysterious electromagnetic radiation, maybe signs of a sentinent race’s culture? But here? Oddly enough there was life on this overcooked lump of spacerock, but sentinent one? I doubted it. Must have been the planets magnetic field. The gravitation was stronger than expected of that little planet. Not that far off to my own homeplanet. That was at least twenty times larger, though. How was this possible? We landed on a flat, grey and solid hard surface. At the horizon we saw near endless forests, except for two opposing directions, where this weird grey soil reached til the line of our sights and probably far beyond. “Is this an empty river’s bed?” I remember asking my first mate, Xato Nexgrra. He was Pakoralean, a race of rather slender built, but quite of the bright site of the universe, capable of some serious multitasking with his fifteen flexible limbs. “Negative, Captain” he had replied. “It’s stone, once liquid and now hardened again.” “A vulcano?” “No, Sir, I examined it with my tactile knots and it feels sort of, I don’t know, artificial to me. A Street. Of hardened tar.” “Ok, a sentinent race on this planet. Well, that’s unexpected. But who in Xaleates’ damn universe would build a street in the middle of nowhere, wide enough to fit two of our expedition space crafts next to each other, on this puny planet?” It wasn’t like me to use our races deity’s name that informal, but for all that I knew, this was weird. Not even the Morians, the biggest of the known sentinent races, would be in need of streets that wide. “Captain!” It was Loxxar Kraes, my head of security, an Ukraera, quite smart for his race, but his biggest trade was his speed and agility. Must be down to the fact that they use five of their seven limbs for running.  “We secured the landing zone to the edge of that forest, but... uhm, that ain’t no trees. It’s grass.” “Grass? You mean, like a meadow?” “Kinda.”

“This is the weirdest ride of my life” noted Xato Nexgrra. I could only consent him. Our platoon of eleven, sitting in a CARDBOX, big enough it could have been a scouting ship, attending to our incapacitated member while being carried by a foreign race’s pup, which had the size of a legitimate skyscraper, stomping through the endless plains. Each step of the tremendous creature echoed in our heads and brought us dozens of IFPS standard steps ahead. With our improvised vessel in one and the smaller vicious gazing beast - a cat, as Dr. Proaxl could tell us after touching the giant pup’s mind - in the other hand, the giant crossed the lands in an astonishing swift manner.

“So exactly how is this giant going to help us?” I asked Dr. Proaxl. The doc, while easing Loxxar Kraes’ pain by mental attendance as best as she could, answered to me. “It’s taking us to its home, where we will find shelter, food, medical equipment and - so all your religious deities are at our side - the support of its family. For this it would be great if we all could communicate with them. Mindtouching is really tiresome and I don’t want to translate between you as our leader and this world’s inhabitants the whole time, so... Üprrkl, how’s it going?” The annoying Pjörecian scientist had gone silent for a while now and hatched on the task Dr. Proaxl had ordered him. A brilliant move of her, both shutting him up and giving his undoubtedly enormous brain something better to do than analysing the non-existing chances of our survival. “Not bad, the data you collected from the pup’s mind are feeding our intercom’s translation codes. They are fragmentary, and at first glance I would say this specimen does not understand its own language’s grammatic rules quite well - or those rules are so broken and arbitrary I for myself can’t wrap my brain around their structure - but its quite the basis. Some rudimentary communication with natives should be possible at least, until you are able to widen the database by mindtouching a - let’s say more experienced - specimen.” “OK, then let’s try it” I said and formed with my forelimbs a funnel before my mouth. “Hey! You!” I yelled towards our ride. “It’s name is Max” filled Dr. Proaxl me in. "Hey! Max! Can you understand me?!” “YE... I... UN... U...!” The roaring voice echoed in our whole bodies and stressed the intercom’s abilities. “Maybe I should build in a filter that pitches the tune up and the volume down” suggested Üprrkl. “Wait a moment.” He manipulated his own intercom and shared the changes to the others. “Now.” “I’ll try again, Max!” I shouted again. “We couldn’t understand you! Say something, please!” “CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME NOW!!!?” We flinched under the noise. “You aren’t too quit, you are too loud! Volume down, please!” “Oh, sorry. Better?” “That’s it. Good work, Üprrkl. Ok, Max, we can understand you now. How far is it to your home?” “Why? We’re here!”

Due to the sunset and the speed, we hadn’t even noticed the sudden difference in the scenery. We entered some gigantic building and the reddish yellow light of the sun changed to the cold blue shining of electric lights. Of course this building had to be gigantic, given the fact the giant carrying us - Max – was only a pup, the house of its family must have been astronomic to our standards. It was just reasonable. But nevertheless we were struck speechless, for this building was for real taller as you could see. Max brought us in through a huge gate – or was it a simple door? It was archaic, moving around a pivot without any means of electromotoric assistance. Then he brought us upwards by stairs into his room. Beside the electric lights there were no proofs of advanced technologies. At least those giants seemed to be far away from space travel and so they posed no threat for the IFPS for now. “Wait here, I’ll get some food and medicine. What do you need?” asked Max, the giant. “Something to prevent inflammation and a narcotic against pain” answered Dr. Proaxl. As a bodyless being, it was only natural for here to ignore the offered food. So I added to her request: “Some water and something filling and easy to swallow, please.” Max showed quite the troubled face, but nevertheless left us alone in his room. Thank Xaleates he took that “cat” with him, wouldn’t have wanted to be left alone with that.

After a short while we heard those gigantic steps approaching again, but this time it seemed to be four legs. “Please Mom”, we heard Max’ voice from behind the door, “just promise me you don’t freak out!” “Maxwell, I dare you, if you took in a spider or a snake, you’ll sleep in the garage tonight!” The door swung open and a way taller giant came in, the head covered in lots and lots of those swirly filaments nearly every living thing here had – hair, as Dr. Proaxl told us. The bigger giant glimpsed at us. “Quick!” insisted Dr. Proaxl, “Wave one of your forelimps and bare your fangs! It’s a gesture of greetings.” We did as she told us – but… “AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…!!!!!” My eyesight went blank, my hearing broke down, my intercom went sparkling and – I admit it with disgust – I had lost control of some of my digestive organs for a moment. When I regained my senses, I found more than half of my men on the ground, struggling for breath. And even Dr. Proaxl, whose nebulous body usually shimmered in a sparkling yellow white, now smouldered in a nauseous looking green. “WHA… THE… HE…HA…!” My hearing was still burrowed under a constant screaming noise, but I registered the muffled rough roar coming from the gate. And through my limbs I felt the tremors of a vast approaching third giant. Just when would this superlative end? The third one was even taller than the second, by at least two heads. And I mean their heads, not mine. It gestured to the second, the second to Max, and Max gestured to us. And all of them made those annoying roaring noises. My head went numb. Then finally, the biggest one made a wide gesture and the noises stopped. I remember the face of that giant coming nearer and nearer until it filled all of my field of vision. Then my mind went black.

Still shocked from the total annihilation of our ship and half of our crew, whereas another one was grievously wounded and at death’s door, we retreatet into the field again. That pitchblack winged avatar of doom wasn’t alone anymore. Hordes of them circled in the sky and stalked through the shredded pieces of our ship, scavenging the mortal remains of our crew, of our comrades, of our friends. And there was nothing we could do about it. Even with full force, our weapons would barely harm even one of those sick bastards, let alone drive the whole flock away. So all we could do was accept, retreat and reconsider our situation - or going nuts, like Üprrkl, a Pjörecian scientist under command of Dr. Proaxl. “We’re done for! We all gonna die! Abandon all hope, for there is no chance we’re gonna make it! Our ship - gone! Our supplies - gone! Our respiratory systems - at 35%! Our...” It was my first mate Xato Nexgrra, who attended to him. Calmly he put his weapon away, crawled over to the shivering, babbling formerly rational man. He sat down before him, showed an understanding glimpse. And hit him full throttle with all fifteen of his whip like limbs right in his face. “SHUT! THE HELL! UP!” The scientist, completly taken by surprise, obeyed speechless while rubbing his left face knob.

Dr. Proaxl made a harrumphing noise - how exactly, without a throat, has kept me riddling ever since. I apologised to her. “I’m afraid one of the ship operating squad under my command laid a hand - or fifteen - on one of your squad members. It shall not repeat.” “Oh, you shouldn’t apologise. I wanted to thank you, Xato Nexgrra, for I would have slapped him myself if I had arms. It’s no help giving in to despair. We have to focus on surviving, and first in securing treatment for Loxxar Kraes. We were able to stop the bleeding for now, but he indeed won’t make it if we can’t prevent an inflammation of the wound and stop his pain. It’s at dangerous levels right now.” “J-just leave me behind” coughed the wounded soldier, and it seemed to drain all virtue out of him. “NO WAY!!!” I had to hold back an emotional shivering, for it was not my words alone, but nine out of ten of us said it in chorus, even the lower ranks went all out and ignored military discipline to decline his demand. Alone Üprrkl didn’t say anything and I didn’t care whether it wasn’t his opinion or he just had accepted to shut the hell up. Loxxar Kraes barked stertorously and closed his eyes, but his mime told me he felt proud and gratefull of his men and the rest of us.

“Allright, we can’t stay here, we have to move to find shelter, maybe supplies or even medicine. The road is out of the question, those flying spawns of hell would tear us apart. That round fluffy thing from before was at least peaceful when we didn’t try to touch it’s food. So through the woods, it is. Praxx, Rae’krotar, you both carry Loxxar Kraes. Dr. Proaxl and her squad around you, and Xato Nexgrra at the back, Lsrl Krck and Koarl cover the sides, I’ll take the lead. I’d say we follow the course of the road, maybe we find the sentinent life form and can request their help. Weapons alltime at the ready! Let’s go!”

Our formation ranged carefully through the terrain. After some distance, Dr Proaxl closed op to me. “Loxxar Kraes is a fine soldier. Not many could endure this level of pain that long. But we have to hurry.” I didn’t answer, just grumbled for myself. The doc’s nebulous body touched my arm and immediately her voice rang inside of my mind: “Do you believe it would be wise to force contact to this world’s inhabitants?” Under normal circumstances, this violation of my personal space would be considered grievely rude both in military and social ways, and if this would be any other day, Dr. Proaxl would be the last person in the whole universe who would nonchalantly cross that line. But this was not normal, this was not every other day, and we were not a IFPS ship’s crew anymore, we were cast aways, brothers and sisters who shared a gruesome fate. And I realised immediatly, she only asked me in mind so the others couldn’t hear it and fuel up their doubts and latent despair. “Have we any other choice?” I thought. I didn’t get an answer. Time was against us, in more than one way. We all knew that Üprrkl had hit the nail on the head. And any stand - the IFPS’ standardized unit of time - brought us nearer to the end - of whatever it might be. We swapped our positions, so everyone had once to carry our wounded companion, but it did’t help the fact all of us grew hungry and tired and slowed down. “Let’s rest. It’s no use if anyone of us broke down. 20 stands to regain some stamina.” “Wouldn’t it be nice to have something to eat?” asked Koarl. “I ain’t gonna touch those grains!” yelled Rae’krotar. We had seen some shadows of what might be those fluffy round beasts or any other lifeform of this planet. But since those shadows didn’t bother to come closer to us, we had no mentionable encounter since the disaster with our ship. And we intended to keep it that way, so we took some detours to avoid getting too near to any scattered grains crossing our path. “Guys...” It was Üprrkl. Xato Nexgrra’s slapping had shut him up for quite the time, but eventually he started to murmur his “we gonna die, we gonna starve, we gona suffocate” again and no one had the virtue to slap him again - at least hard enough so it would have any effect. So we decided to ignore him. “Guys!!!....” “Just what the heck is your probl... oh.” “Seems like we gonna be the food.” Behind our backs, two glowing yellow eyes glanced through the long shadows of the streaks. As I could recall, they were even bigger than that winged black bastard’s ones, and both of them starred at us simultaniously, frontal. The black pupils were narrow slits, and in the cornea we could see our own reflections. “Those eyes are aligned to create two overlapping fields of view, capable of exact depth perception. It’s a predator!” proclaimed Üprrkl. What an unnecessary piece of information. As if those fangs and claws wouldn’t be self-explanatory. The body of the creature, probaply even bigger than the black flying monsters, huddled up, not in a defending way, but to prepare for a jumping attack. Even if you could only assume the whole size - most of it was covered by the shadows - one could tell the attack was imminent.

The first encounter with life on Sol2487-3 - we called it “weeny wacky mudpot”, at least for the time being - would proof itself as one of the most gruesome experiences of my life. We enterd the “field”, as Dr. Proaxl named it, but in fact it was a jungle. The stems of that cultivated grass reached far into the sky, almost as far as anyone could see. The soil underneath was brown, crumbling, muddy, and smelled like a space corps’ field latrine in Pjörecian summer. Our expedition platoon consisted of in total four security squads members, including Loxxar Kraes, respectively two members of both medical and scientific squad, on top of that Dr. Proaxl, my first mate Xato Nexgrra and myself. Eleven trained and experienced ambassadors of the Intergalactic Federation of Peace in Space, half of our ship’s crew. The other half stood behind and secured the ship. As we ranged the woods, suddenly a creature stepped out of the shadows. Our first encounter! Following the protocoll, we stayed alerted, but calm and peacefully. The creature was about our size, quite round and, well, fluffy. Its skin looked like it was covered of billions of the Grdklean Firewrappers poisonous prickles - hopefully it wasn’t as toxic as them. But our protective gear should grant our safety. The creature approached us on all four of its limbs, and began to collect grains that were scatterd around the ground and nibbled peacefully on them while it peered at us. Its eyes were dark and round and full of... nothingness. Did it even see us? Did it even comprehend the fact that it had encountered life from outer space? This one clearly couldn’t be one of this planet’s sentinent races. I at least couldn’t remember of any sentinent race that used the same limbs for running as for eating. And this empty glance, uninvolved to anything on this planet and propably the entire universe and... for Xaleates’ sake, just how many of that grains could this thing fit in its cheeks?! “Look how it’s stuffing itself” smirked Loxxar Kraes, “those grains must be quite delicious. Maybe we should take some, to...” As soon as he reached for one of the grains, the gates of Xyrrhos hells opened. The creature, just a second before dispassionate as a rock, jumped at him like a rabid Rjurcean Brooax. Fangs as long as my head burrowed into Loxxar Kraes’ breastplate. Fortunately it was designed for and tested in outer space, so there was no way it... it just broke. That beast just bit through one of the toughest armors the IFPS could provide. Loxxar Kraes screamed in pain, but was soldier enough to take his gun and shoot the damn monster in the face. I nearly had forgotten my position, as I pulled my gun and screamed on top of my breathing diaphragms “Fire! Fire! With all you’ve got!” Beams of blazing hot plasma and bolts of concentrated electric energy whooshed through the air and hit the creature hard. It squeeked in such a high pitched tone and absurd enormous volume, that three of our team’s members - one security and both of the scientists - fainted immediately. But thank Xaleates the beast fled, leaving a scent behind that was even worse than the latrine soil we stood in. “Status?” “He is alive” answered Dr. Proaxl, “at least for now. If we returned to our ship, we could stabilize and propably save him, unless...” “Unless?” I asked nervously. “Unless those spineless worms that prefer crouching through the mud rather than helping in medical care of a wounded comrade can’t pull themselfes up again!” she vituperated against the collapsed crew, especially her own squad members. The scolded ones flinched concerned, regardless the circumstance that Dr. Proaxl was the only one around who as a matter of fact had not a spine. “Ok everyone” I commanded, “return to the ship! Weapons at the ready and all organs of perception at work!”

We retreated as fast as Loxxar Kraes’ condition allowed. But as we reached the edge of the street, the next monster awaited us. Right on top of our ship sat - IT FRICKIN’ SAT! ON MY SHIP! - a monstrousity unheard of. Not even the scariest tales of my homeworld’s pitchblack mythology would have prepared me for this nightmare. A creature, covered in dozens of long spikes, each of them encircled with black filaments, like leafs of a tree. And its size. It was as tall as half of my crew stacked over each other. Its two limbs each branched into four roots, three in front and one in the back, wrapped around the ships hull and left screaching deep scratches, for the giant claw at the end of each root, that would have put the ceremonial weaponry of the IFPS’ guards of honour at blank shame. Its head alone was formed like an ancient weapon, a gigantic spear, meant to impale one’s body at whole. And its eye. It was gigantic, wide opened, deep as the wide darkness of space itself, but nothing compared to that earlier one’s eyes. This here seemed terrific intelligent. It fixated us with its cold, taxing glance. Suddenly, from one second to the other, the giant turned its head and showed us another eye, identic to the other one. It even bent its neck and stared down to us. It was horrific intimidating. Through the windows of the ship I could see the rest of my crew, shuddering of fear. Then the beast unbended two additional limbs one couldn’t have expected, it stretched those extremities as if it wanted to cover the sun and bring neverending darkness upon us. We could feel how the ground was shaking and from afar rumbling thunder approached to us. This was an incarnation of Xyrrhos himself and he was about to bring us doom. Then with a clash of its gigantic black limbs it jumped - No! It pressed the air beneth it! - it flew! It genuinly flew! Without any recognizable device, it flew! Away. “What at my progenitor’s lappets was that?!” whispered Xato Nexgrra. Then, the doom struck.

A mountain, taller than you could see, faster as you could think, with deafening uproar scorched through, black and silver linings hasted through my sights, a screaching noise of ripping metal echoed in my ears. Blazing storms dragged me along, hundreds of steps away from the point I stood before. When I could pull myself up again, the unimaginable had happened. My ship was gone. Obliterated. Pulverised. Half of my crew, shreds in the blasting winds. Exterminated by a might incomprehensable to my thoughts.