First Contact

Chapter 836: Book of the Dead

You can wipe off that grin

The blood from your chin

You know that we're gonna die

Now pick up that gun

Embrace what you've done

And who fell and died - Song: Scars of Last Night, Album: Starcrash, Band: Night of the Cobra, 6853 PG

There's a thing you have to understand about humans. All of them.

While almost every other species does not train warriors until they are at full maturity, Terrans, Earthlings, Humans, however you want to call them, are able to fight at an early age.

Fight and kill.

Never forget: They came from a Hellworld. A Deathworld.

A world where even bacteria and viruses are out to kill you.

A human has to fight to take its first breath.

And fight to take every breath after.

Even the last one.- Wemtarran saying.

The city was burning.

Skyrakers were engulfed, either fully, partially, or from the midway up. Windows shattered and either flame or bodies leaped out. Explosions were lighting up the streets.

Bodies lined the expressway. Some half out of their cars, others had been fleeing their cars or fleeing across the expressway, the rest were in the cars.

Dana'ahsh stared at the road, at first trying to weave around the bodies.

The human, Herod, reached over and grabbed the steering yoke for a brief time, holding it steady, forcing Dana'ahsh to drive straight down the expressway.

Running over the bodies of over a dozen species as the car sped toward the city.

After a while the human let go over the steering yoke, turning his attention to the boxy robot and the long gun he held in his lap.

"Ever kill anything?" the Earthling suddenly asked. "You do time in the war?"

"No," Dana'ahsh shook his head. "I worked in a factory."

The Earthling nodded. "Yeah, I can understand that."

"You?" Dana'ahsh asked.

"Yeah," the Earthling said. He worked the forward action on the long gun with a loud clacking noise.

"The Big C3?" Dana'ahsh asked, wincing as the car thudded over bodies that had fallen as they had run from a vehicle that was crashed against the divider and on fire.

"Part of it," the Earthlings said softly.

A pair of shades lunged up, out of the darkness. The red front of the car hit and they both splattered into goop that the electrostatic field over the windshield burned away.

Dana'ahsh saw them reform in the rearview mirror.

"How do we stop them?" Dana'ahsh asked.

The Earthling looked over at Dana'ahsh and shook his head. "They can't be killed. They're already dead," he hefted the long gun. "You can make them dissolve. You can force them to vanish for a few moments," he nodded at the city. "But they'll be back."

"Why are they doing this?" Dana'ahsh asked, gritting his teeth as the car thudded over another set of bodies.

"Because they're angry. They're dead. Being dead makes them angry," the Earthling said. He put the long gun against the floorboard and the door and reached into his pocket. "It'd make me mad too."

Dana'ahsh didn't say anything as the Earthling lit a Treana'ad smoke stick then reached back into his pocket to pull free a can of fizzybrew.

"Where are they coming from?" Dana'ahsh looked at the city ahead of them.

"Through the ansible," the Earthling said. "That's why we have to cut it off," he cracked the window and blew smoke. "This ansible is for the entire Unified Council Sector. It's the big one, from Confederate Space, across the Great Gulf."

Dana'ahsh nodded. "You came here to check its records, right?"

"The logs. Yeah," the Earthling said. He exhaled a stream of smoke out the crack in the window.

"What for?" Dana'ahsh swerved around a couple of cars that were slammed together, the polymers melting and burning.

"Hints of my mother," the Earthling said. "Figured the ansible handling sector traffic would be my best bit. The logs would be thick enough that she might have missed something I can use to track her down."

Dana'ahsh just nodded again. "I searched for my mother too," he said. "Never found her. She vanished into the pleasure domes about ten years before you Terrans showed up and the Big C3 started."

The human, Blue Herod if Dana'ahsh remembered correct, just nodded. "Lots of people vanished due to the war," he mused, looking out the window. "You know how to get to the ansible?"

Dana'ahsh nodded. "Knew a female who worked there," he said. Dana'ahsh shrugged, feeling an old pain. "She got killed during the Atrekna invasion."

Herod nodded, staring out the window. "Lots of us did."

There were long minutes that passed slowly. Dana'ahsh slowed down to move through the wreckage scattered here and there. Several times shades rushed the car, slamming against the red paint and clawing at it before either sliding away or exploding into clear goo.

The Earthling sat silently, smoking the Treana'ad smokestick, drinking the fizzybrew, and staring out the window.

-----

The lights in the garage were dark crimson, turning the spilled oil and other lubricants into pools of blackened red.

Putting the vehicle in neutral and turning it off, Dana'ahsh let the car coast the last hundred or so feet to nearly the doorway.

"You can try hiding in the car till daylight," the Earthling said. "Might work, might not."

"Will they go into hiding or something at daylight?" Dana'ahsh asked.

The Earthling shook his head. "No. Makes them harder to see coming too."

"Then why would I hide in the car till daylight?" Dana'ahsh asked.

The Earthling shrugged. "It's that or come with me," the Earthling put his hand on the latch handle for the doorway. "And I'm heading to ansible controls."

"Can you stop it?" Dana'ahsh asked.

The Earthling shrugged. "I gotta try."

Everything went through Dana'ahsh's mind. It got fixated on one point.

A fellow Hashenesh, standing by the side of the major city avenue. Dana'ahsh knew what was going to happen, he had seen it a dozen times.

She was wringing her hands together, her barking sack deflated against her neck, her tail thin and bony. He scales were peeling off, discolored, and her eyes looked cloudy.

He could have stopped her. He could have reached out and put his hand on her shoulder and stopped her. She wasn't to the point of no return. He could have invited her to share his meager lunch.

But he didn't.

For a split second he heard the thump of the grav-hauler as it ran over the starving female. Remembered how he had half lifted up his hand, had slowly started to reach for her.

How he had half-hoped that she'd step into traffic before he could touch her so he could tell himself that at least he had intended on trying.

Except...

...he knew the truth.

"Why you?" Dana'ahsh asked, reaching out toward the Earthling as if to touch his denim clad arm.

"Then who?" the Earthling asked, opening the door.

For a moment Dana'ahsh hung in that split second of the past again.

Again, like he did at night so often, he heard that crunching thump again.

Dana'ahsh grabbed the Earthling.

"What can I do?" he asked.

The Earthling stared at him for a long second. The robot gave a low whistle.

"There might not be any coming back from this," the Earthling said, still bent over slightly. "Even if we do this, we might never be pretty again."

Dana'ahsh nodded tightly, feeling the urge to inflate his barking sack.

"We'll have to get to the main data core. They'll be in there," the Earthling said. He straightened up and slammed the car door. "Guess I better teach you how to use a gun."

Dana'ahsh nodded again, opening the door and getting out.

"Gimme a can of red, Wally," the Earthling said.

The robot made a chirping sound and raced around the car, a shivering grinding noise coming from its boxy body. It reached inside of itself and held out a spray can.

"Com'ere," the Earthling said.

Dana'ahsh hurried around his car, looking at the dents on the front of it. Slight depressions, like someone had thrown a ball against the macroplas body repeatedly. Not quite round, but not the outline of anything either, just deep enough to catch the light.

When Dana'ahsh reached the Earthling, they shook the can and sprayed Dana'ahsh down.

"You don't need it?" Dana'ahsh asked as the Earthling threw the can over their shoulder at the same time as they lit a smokestick.

Dana'ahsh briefly, for a second, wondered what it was like to be able to do two things at once like that.

"Naw," the Earthling said. "They have to rip my guts out the old fashioned way," the Earthling made a motion. "You know the way to anything?"

"Um, the maintenance closet?" Dana'ahsh said.

The Earthling nodded. "Nothing wrong with that. Knew a maintenance guy, during the war. Baddest little fucker I ever met. Someday they might get him, but he'll go down spitting in their eye."

The robot made a happy beep.

"Yeah, he liked you too," the Earthling said. He paused at the door to the stairwell, holding the door open with one hand and holding out the long gun with the other. "Take the shotgun, I'll teach you to use it."

"Uh, OK," Dana'ahsh said, reaching out and taking the long gun.

He'd seen them in a couple of movies, a couple of documentaries.

He was surprised at how heavy it seemed when the Earthling had held it out with one hand.

Down a few flights of stairs and the Earthling ran Dana'ahsh through how to operate the weapon. Work the action, called 'pumping', pull the trigger, reload on the side. The Earthling filled Dana'ahsh's pockets full of the shells.

"What we're looking for is probably in the basement."

"Why do you say that?" Dana'ahsh asked, following the Earthling through the door.

The Earthling accepted the plastic tube from the robot. He held one end in his mouth so he could crack it, then let it drop over the side.

"Yeah," the Earthling said. "That's why."

Dana'ahsh looked over the side, down the stairs.

At the bottom the shades were so thick the light was lowering slowly to the ground, slowed by something that Dana'ahsh wasn't sure about.

"Can we make it?" Dana'ahsh asked.

He felt like he should be terrified, too frightened to do anything, as he pulled back from looking over the edge. Dana'ahsh felt like that he should be backing away, running back to his car, and just driving for the next of the Forgotten Ones or wherever fate took him.

Instead, he inhaled deeply then let his barking sack slowly deflate with a hiss.

The Earthling shrugged. "Either way, Danny, we'll never be pretty again."

"What's that mean?" Dana'ahsh asked.

The Earthling shrugged, starting down the stairs. "I don't know. It was something I heard someone say once, I think."

The Earthling looked over at Dana'ahsh and gave him an odd look. "I don't remember everything clearly or linerally," he said.

The robot gave a whistle as it carefully maneuvered down the steps.

"Don't let them touch you," the Earthling said.

Dana'ahsh nodded tightly.

The trio rounded a corner and the Earthling stopped, holding out his hand.

Dana'ahsh could see that the Earthling's eyes were glowing red again.

"Here they come," the Earthling said softly. "Get ready."

Before Dana'ahsh could put together an answer, or maybe a question, there was an enraged shriek. From further down two shades swept up the stairs, hands out, mouths open in a scream, teeth glimmering, eyes full of hatred.

The Earthling had the pistols out, one in each time, both of them sending crashing thunder rolling up and down the staircase. Twice Dana'ahsh saw the Earthling smash aside a shade before shooting it. More than once the Earthling kicked the shade back, although they just swept through the others instead of tangling up in them.

Three times one almost slipped past the Earthling and Dana'ahsh fired the long gun. The first time it almost flew out of his hands and he landed on his ass on the steps, scrambling back up, suddenly terrified that a shade would reach from under the stairs, through the fake stone, and yank his soul out his backside.

The whole time the Earthling kept moving forward, twice shouldering the shades out of the way.

Dana'ahsh noted that the Earthling was shooting out datascreens that were showing advertisements. At one point the Earthling holstered the pistol, reached out and touched one of the screens, placing the empty hand flat on the screen.

Dana'ahsh saw the screen flicker as it went through a GUI menu, then text menus, then straight down to command line, the data flickering so quickly that Dana'ahsh wasn't even sure what the Earthling was doing.

The whole time the Earthling kept firing. When the pistol ran out they pulled the long gun off their back. Their hand went in the handle along the stock, their finger on the trigger. They would pull the trigger and spin the long gun, working the lever attached to the handle, aiming and firing from the hip.

The small nanoforge on the side of the rifle was smoking as the Earthling fired and Dana'ahsh dug in his pockets to shove more of the red colored shells into the long gun he was packing, his hands shaking so bad he was afraid he would drop the rounds.

"Fab Danny up some more salted iron buckshot, Wally," the Earthling said.

The robot beeped, vibrated a moment, then moved up, holding up two paper boxes.

Dana'ahsh took the boxes, kneeling down and stripping the paper away before shoving the large shells into his pockets.

"Come on, come on," the Earthling muttered, reloading the long gun by flipping it in his hand, pulling the trigger, and flipping it again.

The nanoforge on the side of the rifle hissed like a snake.

"Got it," the Earthling said. He pulled his hand away, clenched his fist, and smashed the screen. "Two rights, a left, and we'll probably have to kick in the door."

"Why can't we just shoot the computer?" Dana'ahsh asked.

"The main ansible, what's passing the data to the Confederacy or the Lanaktallan sectors is out by the Oort Cloud. Even if we blew up the building, it wouldn't effect that," the Earthling said, slinging the long gun and loading the pistols quickly, pulling the speed loaders from his pockets.

"Then what are we doing?" Dana'ahsh asked.

"Blowing the system," the Earthling said.

Dana'ahsh thought for a second, keeping right behind the Earthling. "But... won't that mean that nobody will be able to use faster than light data?"

"Would you rather use a courier to talk to someone or be dead?" the Earthling asked.

"But, what about FTL data streams?" Dana'ahsh asked.

"Those will have to go too," the Earthling said. He peeked around the corner and pulled back, taking a deep breath. "Don't you get it? Terrans figured out how to turn themselves pure data before they even left their home stellar system. Now the dead ones are invading the entire galactic arm's data network."

Dana'ahsh was silent as he followed the Earthling around the two right corners.

When they went left Dana'ahsh felt his stomach cramp. He knew he wasn't the smartest Hashenesh out there, but it seemed catastrophic what the Earthling was talking about. Without the data transfers, law enforcement couldn't do its job between stellar systems, corporations couldn't work across mass distances.

Everything would be down to couriers, with delays of days or weeks.

But that system was full of angry dead Terrans. Angry dead Terrans that would then swarm the planet, killing everyone they found with only the color red to stop them.

The Earthling paused at a heavy duty blast door, holstering a pistol so he could slide up the panel cover next to the door. The Earthling looked at Dana'ahsh and gave a sad smile.

"We're about to end galactic civilization as we know it, kid," the Earthling said.

There were angry shrieks from further down the dark hallway.

Dana'ahsh nodded tightly.

Answering shrieks came from behind them.

"We'll be history's greatest monsters and our species's greatest heroes," the Earthling said.

"We'll never be pretty again," Dana'ahsh said.

The Earthling nodded as the security pad flashed and the door pulled aside, the four sections grinding back to where they were hidden in the walls.

Dana'ahsh could see the shades further down the hallway. Flickering, moving toward him jerkily. Each appearance still, like an unmoving hologram all in white light, before vanishing and reappearing closer in a different but still similar pose.

"Lets go," the Earthling said as the door opened.

Dana'ahsh hurried in, following the Earthling but moving before the robot. The human moved forward, looking over the work stations and the flickering screens for only a second before he started firing the pistols. Each shot caused a screen to implode, sparks showering the dead technicians that still sat in their chairs.

The little robot played a sound that demanded attention and when Dana'ahsh looked, he saw a container with a spout and "SODIUM CHLORIDE" written on the side, with a picture of him pouring it in front of the door and at the edge of the wall.

Dana'ahsh did it quickly, then put another line in between where he was planning on standing and the door, then a second line, and finally, at the pantomimed advice of the little boxy robot, a circle around himself.

Twice something tried to come through the door, screaming, but slammed into an invisible barrier.

The shades pressed against it, clawing at it, biting at it, screaming and glaring at Dana'ahsh with hateful red eyes.

Twice Dana'ahsh fired the long gun and heard them scream in rage and pain as they vanished.

The little robot held out another can, this one marked "RED PAINT" and Dana'ahsh sprayed the door quickly. He didn't know why the shades wouldn't just come through the wall on either side, but the Earthling had stated it would be rare for one too.

Something about acting in death how they had acted in life, barring the murderous rage.

"How will you know how to..." Dana'ahsh started to ask.

The Earthling stuck his hand in a holographic interface and it suddenly started flickering.

"I don't need a screen," the Earthling said.

For a moment Dana'ahsh could have sworn he could see data streaming by through the Earthling's eyes, which were back to just looking blue, no red.

"Come on... come on..." the Earthling said.

The robot played a warning sound.

"I know," Dana'ahsh said.

"Almost... stupid quantum encryption... stupid strange matter particle decay based randomization..."

The robot played a more intent warning sound.

"I know," Dana'ahsh said, lifting the '12-gauge' to his shoulder.

"...bypass confed lockouts... parsing elliptic curved 3d wave encryption..."

With a screech one came through the wall. This one was more solid, didn't do the jerky appear/vanish/reappear act.

It came straight at him.

He fired and it disappated with a splatter of the clear good.

There was a swirl and it was back.

Dana'ahsh fired again.

This time it jerked back, its face and jaw mangled.

It hissed, the jaws opening wide, the eyes not burning red but rather black pits of glittering malevolence. Liquid dripped from the jaws, steaming on the floor.

"...destabilize the fusion magnetic containment system and the gravitational containment system..."

Dana'ahsh fired straight between its eyes as it charged forward.

It flickered to the side, the shot going wide.

Dana'ahsh cocked the shotgun.

The shade slammed against the salt ring with enough force that salt sprayed up from the thick line. It clawed against the barrier.

Black energy, edges with what looked like starlight, glimmered where the claws raked at the barrier.

The boxy robot played a distressed tune.

"...artificial singularity emulation system destabilization..."

Dana'ahsh looked down and saw the salt line push inward.

He leveled the shotgun, pushing it out into the jaws.

The shade screamed and gnashed its teeth.

Dana'ahsh could feel the teeth grind on the steel.

He pulled the trigger.