I was already planning on looking there. ("
(oops, I almost for got to post the next chapter, sorry! Here it is.)
Chapter 4: strange like me?
What had I gotten myself into? This is just like Feltago! I thought to myself. Is this ever going to end? We were rushed into safe areas of the base, and were told to stay there unless we were summoned. We waited for about half an hour in the safe room before I couldn’t stand being cooped up in it anymore. “I am going to go insane if I have to stay in here any longer!” I screamed in rage. I looked at the Doc. “We have to get out of here and help!” The Doc nodded in agreement. “At least they left the guns with us.” He reached down for what I had recently learned was called a BR55. I grabbed my own gun (an MA5B, again something that I had just recently learned.) and opened the door and crept out of it. Marines were running up and down the hallways. We stopped one and asked what was going on. “They have taken the south wall.” We rushed to the south wall of the base; sure that was where the mysterious soldier was at. We figured that he would be where the fighting was the fiercest.
I saw him standing on a pile of dead aliens, and about 30 more rushing towards him. I ran towards him gun blazing. Aliens dropped left and right as the deadly bullets sprayed across their unprotected heads. The strange soldier turned to see who was rushing into the most dangerous area of the base with him. He saw me. “What are you doing?!?” he exclaimed, “You are going to get yourself killed!” I didn’t answer right away; instead I just shot aliens when they got to close to us. I looked back at him, guns blazing, looking like one of the Greek Spartans of old defeating every foe that came in his reach. “We thought you could use some help, sir!” I answered his startled yell. “What can we do to help?” He looked back at me again, and realized that the Doc, and myself would not be persuaded by anything he could say to us. “All right, cover my back. Take cover behind that broken wall.” He pointed to where he wanted us to go. I told the Doc, and we hurried to it before the next wave of aliens hit us.
We fought for about 2 hours before they finally gave up on taking the base. But during those 2 hours, all hell broke loose in the fighting around that base. After the battle the marines cheered, as did the Doc and I, but the Strange soldier said nothing, just did what he always did: stand guard.
I looked at the marines; they were cheering and congratulating each other for repelling the foul aliens. I pulled one of them aside, and asked them him if he knew anything about the strange soldier. He didn’t, so I let him go back to his celebrating. I motioned for the Doc to come over. “We have to get off this planet Doc. There aren’t any people here except the marines, and this planet is going to be glassed any day now! We have to get off it!” The Doc looked at me, “yes, we do, but there aren’t any ships here, they have all been destroyed. How would we get off?” I looked around; we can get them to let us search for a ship, if we find one we can bring it back and then we can all get off before it gets destroyed.
I went to find the Sgt.; he is the man that I would have to ask to search for an abandoned private ship. I found him in remnants of the base that was still in one piece, looking over a fallen comrade. “Sergeant, I need to ask you a question.” He looked up. “What is it, civilian?” He scowled at me, because of the interruption. I paused for a moment, and then I posed my question. “I want to take a few men and search for a ship to get us off the planet before it gets glassed.” The Sergeant looked at me. “I suppose that we don’t really have much choice do I. I will send 5 men with you, and you can look for a ship. But be back before 3 days are up. I am told that they will be in position to glass us before the week is out.” I am going to take the Doc with me too, he could be useful.” He nodded, “yes take him.” He smiled at me.
The next day I took the Doc, and the 5 men that the Sergeant had ordered to come with me, and left the base. “Wait,” I turned around. “The sergeant informed me that you intend to search for a ship to get us off the planet, he also asked if I would go with you.” I smiled, “This way then!” We walked to the jeeps that the Sergeant had given us to search the surrounding area with.
For the first half an hour things were pretty quiet, we didn’t see any hostile forces, so things (for the most part) went well. But about 6 hours into our search, we came across a large enemy patrol. I was blown out of my seat by the blast from a large blue alien, a kind I had never seen before. (I was later told that I was lucky to have even survived such a close hit. It landed not 4 feet from me.) The Strange soldier seemed to know something about it though and proceeded to kill it swiftly. I was so impressed with the speed and skill that he displayed that no words of mine could ever give them justice. Nevertheless I will try. As the large creature brought it’s awful and terrible shielded arm up to crush him he rolled under it, and brought his gun up to bare and fired half a clip into its unprotected back. The thing roared in anger, and spun around with a speed that I wouldn’t have thought possible for a creature so large. It batted him off of itself as if he were no more than a fly! He landed on the ground some feet away, but got to his feet again and repeated the actions that had got him a swat from the mighty left arm, but this time the creature crumbled when he fired into its back, and orange blood spattered everywhere. All this time I was ducking and firing for all my life was worth.
We were the only three left, the Strange Soldier, the Doc, and I. We were forced to retreat into a small cave that we had found about an hour earlier. We hadn’t explored it much; just enough to find out if it was some private citizen’s hanger, which it wasn’t. This time we went as far back into it as we dared, for fear of the enemy blocking up the entrance while we were inside. We left the strange soldier at the entrance so that if they should find our hiding spot, we might be able to hold them off.
The Doc and I walked farther into the cave, until we noticed that the deeper into the cave we walked, the less natural it became. We finally came to a point where it looked as if it had been carved out by hands that were something akin to human. Although we could clearly see that the stature of these creatures was different than our own, we were astonished when at least we came to a door! Not some primitive stone door, but one of a strange make, and an advanced technology that (to my knowledge) surpassed ours. We paused, and looked around us to see if perhaps some unknown enemy might jump out and kill us. Fortunately we found none, seeing as how the area of the cave in which we found ourselves was small and open. I looked at the door, and reached to open it, but the Doc grabbed my arm. “No!” He cried, “It might be booby trapped!” I looked at his grim face. “Your right Doc, it might at that. But it also might be the door to a way off this unfortunate planet. He looked at the door, and then at me again, then let go of my arm. He nodded slightly in hesitant agreement. “Alright, but be careful.”
I reached out for the door again, and put my hand on it. A crack appeared on the edge of the door, and I looked inside. I heard a strange crackling voice talking from inside, almost like an old record playing. I didn’t see anyone inside so I opened the door the rest of the way. I almost immediately regretted it; we were barraged by tiny flying robots, the instant we stepped inside the room. We ducked, dodged and shot at them. (Looking back I have to admit that shooting them was not the brightest thing to do, since there were so many of them, and only two of us.)
We looked around trying to find refuge in the room, but they were everywhere! We finally found a small space where the tiny menaces wouldn’t go. It had a small door in it, and because we figured that it couldn’t be any worse than the tiny things flying around us, we opened it. It was dark inside, but as soon as we stepped in, the lights came on and the doors slammed shut behind us. We both tensed up, prepared for anything that might jump out at us. But after a few seconds nothing happened, and we relaxed. We wandered around us, looking for an exit since the way that we had come through was sealed.
After a few minutes we came across an ancient glass armor case. Inside it had two sets of armor, strange gauntlets, and various other strange items. We looked at each other, then back at the case. “I wonder who put this here,” said the Doc. I looked around to see if I could find another exit, but instead I found a computer console. I walked over to it to see if perhaps it controlled the doors. I was surprised to find that it was displaying in my language. It had several options to display. I chose one and a hologram of a strange being appeared and said the following:
“I am truly sorry for things to come to this. If this is playing then I know that worst has come to worst, and that the covenant have misunderstood the meaning of the artifacts that we left behind. On behalf of my entire race, I give my sincerest apologies. If we had but known what would become of them; we would have left things differently. But, we cannot change the past, so we must help secure the future! The suits that you see hanging in that case,” at this point is pointed at the ones we had found moments before, “are the most advanced fighting suits that we have had the privilege to construct for beings not of our own race. We built them for the race called ‘humans’. Two specific humans in fact, for we have seen that these two humans will be brought together through a third, although this third person is not entirely human himself. It is imperative that you use these suits, and save your planet. In doing so you will learn things that can save the human race from ultimate destruction!
It stopped there and I found a printed copy of what the hologram said. The Doc and I looked it over, and tried to decide what we should do. We decided to pick one of the other two choices, and the hologram came up again; but this time it was garbled and hard to understand. But what we could pick out one or two things that seemed important. But the only thing that I think is noteworthy was the fact that it mentioned both of our names! We stared at the hologram in astonishment, and looked at the suits. They chose the third option, and the hologram came up again, this time clear enough to hear the whole thing.
“Greetings again, my friends, again I apologize for the haste with which I make this record: the Flood is reaching the outer barriers of this chamber as I speak. The topic that I speak on in this message is using the suits. You will notice that you have peculiar birth mark on your hands. The suits will only work for people with this mark; it is a genetic marker that allows you to use our technologies at will. It is the reason that you can even be in this room, because without it the door would have killed you immediately. The hologram went on like this for some minutes, telling us how to open the case and retrieve the suits. Once we had them on it told us that the gauntlets were not only protective, but destructive as well: they were devastating weapons.
After about 10 more minutes we left the room in a very different state than when we entered it. We walked back to the entrance of the cave, the strange soldier was still there, and although we couldn’t see his face, we could tell that he was furious. “Who are you?!” It looked like we had some explaining to do. We warned took our helmets off, and showed him who we were, and he relaxed a bit. “What took you so long?!?! You have been in there for nearly half an hour!” We told him what had happened to us, and handed him the copy of what the old hologram had said. He took several minutes to read it, and reread it a few times just to make sure that he wasn’t being fooled. “You mean to tell me that you found this armor in the back of this cave?” He sounded stunned. “I wonder what advantages this armor gives you. Perhaps increased strength or speed?” We decided that it was best to try and answer these questions as we searched for a way off the planet. What we didn’t know was that our new armor was going to be tested sooner than we thought.
(EDIT: I spaced it out to make it easier to read.)
carefull... it^ will steal your soul...